 Well, the mics are on whenever you're ready. All right, I guess we'll get started. Good morning. Welcome to the 11 AM public portion of the closed session of the January 20, 2020 meeting of the city council. In this part of the meeting, the council shall receive public testimony thereafter. Council members will move to the courtyard conference room for closed session. I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council members Watkins? Here. Matthews? Here. Brown? Andy. Clever? Here. Sorry. Here. I love that. Everybody awake? Yeah. Yeah. We're all here. Cell phones off. Brown is currently absent, and Vice Mayor Meyers is currently absent, and Mayor Cummings. Here. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to any items listed on the closed session agenda? Seeing none. I will adjourn this meeting to the courtyard conference room where the council will go into its closed session. I go there, I don't know about it. Split second, it's like, okay, come over here. You want to start? Sure. Good morning, and welcome to our 1148 session of the January 28, 2020 meeting of the city council. And I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council members Watkins is currently absent. Matthews? Here. Brown? Here. Here, no. Glover? Here. Brown? Here. Vice Mayor Meyers, here, and Mayor Cummings. And if the clerk could please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. We'll follow this up with an introduction of new employees. I'd like to invite up the director of planning and community development, Lee Butler, to introduce Lane Zorich, associate planner one. Good afternoon, Mayor and council members. It's my pleasure to introduce you, Lane Zorich. She joined us early this year, or excuse me, in mid-December. And she grew up in rural Sonoma County and found an interest in urban planning while completing her bachelor's degree in geography from UC Santa Barbara. She received her master's degree from the London School of Economics in Urban Studies and Development. And her thesis there researched the role of community-based organizations on poverty management strategies in San Francisco's homeless population. After graduating, she spent time with a nonprofit in rural South Africa teaching entrepreneurial skills through sustainable agriculture to the local community. And then she joined the city of Brighton, Colorado's planning department before joining us here. She's got some great ties to the city and her family history. Her five times great-grandfather, Adina Hecox, was the last alcalde, or mayor, of the Santa Cruz Pueblo before statehood. And he was also the first lighthouse keeper for the city of Santa Cruz and served as treasurer and judge for the county. And the city's first public museum was founded after his daughter, Laura Hecox, dedicated her collection of natural artifacts to the city, some of which can still be found in the Natural History Museum. In Lane's free time, she enjoys reading, hiking, aerial arts, and is an avid traveler. So please welcome Lane. Welcome to the city. Next, I'd like to invite up Chief of Police Andy Mills to introduce Jeffrey Shaver, police and property of an in-specialist. Well, good morning, council, members and mayor. It is still morning. We've got a couple more minutes left. I'd like to introduce you, Jeffrey Shaver. Our police and property evidence specialist, Jeffrey, comes to us. He was actually raised here in Santa Cruz, but moved to Alabama, National Champs. And in 2013, where he got experience in industrial manufacturing and field working with Mueller Water Products, the largest supplier of fire hydrants worldwide. And Marcus, you can keep your hands off him. Thank you. And he came back to California in 2016, where he continued gaining experience in inventory control and reconciling property. He spent seven years of experience now, and now he comes to us where it changes dramatically. And we're so happy to have him. He lives in Scotts Valley, and loves taking his dogs, Bella and Gunner, to the beach for a walk or on West Cliff. And on sunny days, anyway, and then grabbing a custom beer with his friends. So if you're interested in craft beer, this is the guy. So anyways, welcome aboard, Jeffrey. Next I'd like to invite Director of Public Works, Mark Dettel, to introduce George Juarez, Parking Facilities Maintenance Assistant, Connor Pollard, Assistant Engineer One, Kaley Soon, Wastewater Reduction Assistant. Good morning, Mark Dettel, Director of Public Works. And it is my pleasure to introduce George Juarez. He's a new parking facilities maintenance assistant. George grew up in the beach flats in Santa Cruz and currently still lives in Santa Cruz. He's married and has two children, a six-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter. He, as far as past experience, he worked as a supervisor at 7-Eleven locally. He attended Harbor High and some Cabrillo courses focusing on culinary arts. And when he's not working, he enjoys spending time with his kids, relaxing and playing video games. So please welcome George. I'm going to, next to George is Kaley Soon. And she's a new waste reduction assistant. And she was born and raised in beautiful Napa Valley, California. She currently lives in Santa Cruz and has, okay, this is an interesting one, you gotta listen to her. She has a thousand pets, any idea what they are? And they help her clean up her food scraps every day. Worms. They're worms, exactly. She has compost worms, too many names to list off. She is a past work experience, ranges from a wine maker to wastewater laboratory technician. She's worn many different hats. However, she thinks she's finally caught, find her calling in waste awareness. She graduated from Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo with a major degree in enology. Enology, you know what that is? Wine. Wine making, very good. Science of winemaking with a minor in biology. When she's not working, she loves to play in nature or in the garden to cook and dance to great music as much as she can. And a fun fact she liked to share in high school, she had the opportunity to attend the inauguration of President Barack Obama with her choir. So please join us as our new waste reduction assistant, Kaley. Recycling program. She was also a graduate from our master's recycling program that she forgot to put on here, but I do remember that, so. And next to Kaley is Connor Pollard. He's a new assistant engineer, one. He was born in Riverside, California, and he now lives in Santa Cruz County, off Soquel, San Jose Road, near the summit. He has a mini-doxin named Tiki and two cats, Tiger and Cookie. And past experience, he's worked mainly his entire career in water. He worked for the Water District of Marin County and before that in Goleta, just north of Santa Barbara. He graduated from UC Santa Barbara with a degree in hydrology. And when he's not working, he plays guitar, spikes the snowboard, hike, garden, and read nonfiction. A fun fact is he's a dual citizen of the US and New Zealand. So please join me in welcoming Connor Pollard. Thank you very much. A few announcements, and then we'll move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television, channel 25, and streaming on the city's website, cityofsantacruise.com. Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left, and it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption. And we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside or outside our chambers. I'd like to ask council members if there's any statements of disqualification today. None. I'd like to call on the city clerk and minister to announce any additions or deletions. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on items that are not on the agenda. Oral communications will be held around 7 PM. I'd like to call on the city attorney to provide any reports on closed session. Thank you, Mayor Cummings, members of the city council. This morning a brief closed session commenced at 11 o'clock in the courtyard conference room to consider the following items. One was a liability claim, the claim of Markle for Santa Cruz Bay, Inc. DBA Deeks Market. Item B was conference with labor negotiators. The city received a report from its chief negotiator, Lisa Murphy, concerning Fire Locals 1716. Lastly, a public employee performance evaluation concerning the city manager position. There was no reportable action. I'd like to call on the city manager to report and provide any updates on city events and business items. Thank you, yes, there's a couple of items. Bonnie, if you could put up the slides, okay, thank you. Just really briefly, once again, the housing staff has asked that I announce the Housing and Urban Development Consolidated Plan that we're currently working on and that we have a survey that's still going and it's up until the end of the month. The survey results are intended to help determine how best to prioritize funding designated for eligible programs, projects, and services in our low income communities and neighborhoods and that'll be before the council. The survey's available in Spanish and English until the end of this month. So there's still a few days left so that the more input we get, the better. And then secondly, just wanted, just pleased to report and let the community know in the council know that our finance department has received a budget award. We've received this multiple years, but once again, the government finance officers association distinguished budget award was provided to the city and essentially reflects the commitment of the governing body and the staff to meeting the highest principles of governmental budgeting and presentations. And the guidelines for giving the award are based on whether, how well the city's budget serves as a policy document, financial plan and operations guide and the communications device. So as a result of the review, this is reviewed by all of the public government officers, finance officials throughout the state and they give these awards nationwide. And so just pleased to announce that our finance department again won this award. And with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. Some members have any questions for the city manager? Seeing none, we'll move on to our next item which is council member memberships and city groups and outside agencies. This is a time for council members to report out on actions at external boards, committees, and joint powers authority meetings. For future meetings, please come prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that occurred since the last council meeting. So the council and the public can be informed. And so I'd like to know if there's anyone who would like to start these report outs. Thank you, mayor. So I'll report back about the most recent meeting of the public safety committee. We met earlier last week to discuss a variety of issues. One was on tasers, the alternative forms of force that could be used by the police as opposed to lethal force. We received a great presentation by the deputy police chief and one of the lieutenants, Lieutenant Bush, I believe, and deputy police chief Filippo, about the different styles of alternative deterrents that they have. And they brought physical ones to the meeting, which was really nice to be able to see that and have that tactile experience with the foam bullets and the pepper balls and the bean bags to get an idea of what they felt like and what they looked like. As well as kind of get an understanding of their de-escalation tactics and the way that they try to avoid using force as well as answered questions on their policy, so it was a really nice presentation. We decided to table or postpone the additional two items, which were a conversation and an update around needles in our community as well as setting up a work plan because we only had two out of the three members of the committee present. So we wanted to make sure that we had a holistic and group opportunity to discuss the work plan. And we are planning our next meeting to take place some time before the end of February. And hopefully we'll be advertising that for the community to be able to come and participate when that date gets set. Very much. I was part of that and I think that Council Member Glover summed it up pretty well. Another committee I sit on is the community advisory group with the university. We haven't met for a while and there's a lot of, I would consider tension on the university campus. And the chancellor sent out a letter yesterday with some compensation for graduate students. But I think from talking to some graduate students wasn't nearly enough. And she said that she would begin sanctioning graduate students who didn't turn in their grades. So that was a step up in sort of like what the university is going to do as a result of the graduate student grade strike. Very much. Council Member Myers, is there anything to report? I'll report. Excuse me on a couple of things. Let's see, the downtown management corporation. We met last week and we got an update on a number of things. Specifically, what's called the PBID, which is a restructuring of the financing for our downtown district. That process has been going on for almost eight months and so that's going to be moving forward and probably coming towards Council sometime in the, I think, late spring or early summer. That will be a significant step forward in sort of re-looking at how we finance and organize around our downtown area. We also got some updates on outreach in parking garages and making sure people are keeping their things safe and secured and locked up in their cars. The efforts to kind of do more personal outreach in our parking garages. So, downtown volunteers being deployed to be able to help, especially during the holidays folks, just making sure they lock their cars and things like that. So, a lot of good outreach going on in the downtown through our downtown ambassadors and seeing a lot of really positive things from that program. So those were all really good things to hear. The cows working group met just last week and we will be initiating some additional studies. We hope with Stanford University to understand a little more around water circulation there at Cowles Beach. A research group from Stanford University did come to their meeting and made a proposal and we expect to hopefully do that work in April. Also, the Cowles Working Group will be meeting with the Stewardship Council of the Santa Cruz World Surfing Reserve next week. And we'll be updating each other on the work regarding the World Surfing Reserve and some of the stewardship activities of that organization. And finally, I think those are my two report outs right now. The Downtown Library Subcommittee, we met in December. A lot of information was put out around the library remodel. The existing library remodel and our committee will be probably reconvening, I believe in February to look at some evaluation criteria and some other things. So there'll be more coming out on that. And then lastly, I'll just, I did attend the League of California Cities Policy Committee, Statewide Policy Committee last Friday in Sacramento. A lot of really good legislation for us to track this year significantly. And sponsored by the City of San Jose is an effort. It's Senate Bill 378, sponsored by Senator Wiener. City of San Jose is heavily involved in this. And this bill would specifically look at reimbursements from PG&E on the shutoffs. As well as really trying to develop much more, much better communication strategies and command center types of resources for cities and counties to be working together with PG&E. And so this is a significant bill that seems to be moving pretty well through the legislature. Bills are due February 21st, so it's a very busy time in Sacramento. Also just briefly, we did hear that the governor, both in his budget as well as anticipated in his state of the state, will be focusing again on housing funds, homelessness funds. And also has initiated something called the Climate Catalyst Fund, which will, I think, fit with a lot of the things we're working on with sea level rise and some of the other items that are coming up. So that was a great meeting to be able to attend. That's all I've got, thanks. Thank you. I also attended a meeting last week, the US Conference of Mayors from last Wednesday to Friday. And it was a great opportunity to engage with mayors from around the country. Many of the issues are issues that we're similarly experiencing here in Santa Cruz around affordable housing, homelessness, addiction, there's also many concerns around public safety, especially in larger cities. But there are a lot of different tools and a lot of technology that was presented around data collection that seems like it might be worth pursuing for the city. In particular, there was a session on economic mobility and there was a 2020 economic mobility report, which I'm going to hopefully be sharing with some of the department heads and members of the city council, which really focused on some of the programs that have been implemented in different cities, ranging from less than 50,000 residents to over 200,000 residents. And really kind of comparing how these programs have been effective in different communities. And I think it would be a good place for us to work from, given that it was a report, looking at 56 cities from around the country. In addition to that, there was a meeting of the Rental Data Subcommittee. There's an opportunity for us to preview sub-technology that could be used for not only rental data collection, but also for code enforcement. And in addition to those two items, it also seems like a really good way to see what housing is available in our stock. What are the different, is it close to transportation? Schools, what are the cost of housing? And so it can be used in addition to a tracking mechanism, but as a way for students to actually find housing within our community. And so we will be meeting again in the next week or two. And then we'll be bringing an item back for council to consider later in February. And those are the only two I have to report out on. Okay, so, and I would just add on that, I was not able to attend the presentation made by the company that has this software. But they do have a record of being able to provide this kind of data collection system. And I think that was something that was kind of hanging us up and our planning staff suggested that with this, some of the challenges that they had thought might arise would kind of be ameliorated. So that was really good news to hear that it may not take very much staff time to implement something. And you'll hear more about that when we give you a recommendation. In terms of Outs External Committees Commissions, the Regional Transportation Commission met last week, I believe, two weeks ago. We had a special meeting and we don't meet at the beginning of January, but we did meet to receive input on the Measure D, Strategic Implementation Plan. This is the, as you all are aware, the sales tax measure that was passed to fund transportation, multi-modal transportation in the county. And the public input that we received by January 28th will be considered and distributed as part of the packet for consideration of the final strategic implementation plan. That's today, so I wanted to make sure that I put a shout out. If you have not weighed in and would like to, you can go to the SCCRTC, the Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission.org to provide input to us. And we will be approving that plan at our next meeting. First Thursday in February, we also approved a stakeholder engagement plan for our Transit Corridor Alternatives Analysis. This is the Regional Transportation Commission now owns and is consolidating the rail line right of way. And we are working on plans for how to proceed with use of that. Activating the rail trail, as you all know, segment seven, there was a celebration on Saturday, which I missed, but some council members were there if anybody wants to tell us how that was. So we are moving ahead in those segments. We also are looking at alternatives for use of the rail line itself. And so we are moving forward, you'll be hearing more about opportunities for engagement. And, well, it's not in the city, I do want to mention that we at the Regional Transportation Commission have been working on, and staff has been working very hard on developing the Complete Streets Plan, and safety improvements in particular on Highway 9 in the San Lorenzo Valley. And in response to some of the challenges that we've had along that corridor, I just wanted to say that it's been, for me, it's been really helpful and productive to be involved in those conversations to think about how we improve safety county wide for pedestrians because some areas are more challenging than others. In terms of other, let's see, I'm on the city county task force to limit UCSC growth or to discuss UCSC growth and to negotiate with the university. We have hired an advocate to work throughout the year on outreach and engagement. We have approved that contract, we approved it at our last city council meeting, but I just wanted to call that out, so there will be opportunities for community input there as well as we proceed. And the Area Agency on Aging met, we are moving ahead, taking another step towards developing a county wide coordinated plan for age friendly communities, so all of the jurisdictions in the county will hopefully get on board with that. You'll hear more from the council meeting in February. And I hope that's the plan. And I also wanted to just give a shout out that the Meals on Wheels program is currently in a location where they do their meal preparation behind the senior center in Live Oak. And they are potentially going to be losing that site, pretty likely that they will. And so we had a long discussion about what possibilities there might be to find alternatives. So I just wanted to put that out there, that's a conversation that is occurring in the community. They're not talking about, they're looking for other places, I guess I just wanted to put that out there. And I think that's all from me. Among those that have not already been covered, the revenue subcommittee continues to meet every two weeks. We've been focusing on outreach to the industry. We've taken some initial steps to the, well, to back up for the public. We, as the council knows, have been discussing a ballot measure regarding increase in the TOT hotel tax. Other jurisdictions are similarly considering this item. We've reached out to the industry for some background conversations. And now we'll be engaging some of the other jurisdictions as well so that we have something like a common understanding and direction. And are also working on some materials as we do the outreach that, and this is a result of our first conversations that describe some of the, well, how the city budget operates and what the TOT currently contributes in comparison to our general fund, what an increase might, and particularly what the budget demands are. And interestingly, there's a very shared interest in many areas. So this is still preliminary, but it's, I think, good that we are engaging the other jurisdictions as well. And have some good time to work on this. I did attend the League of California Cities regional meeting in San Juan a couple of weeks ago. We heard a presentation from Paul Mitchell, who is the principal for political data. Incorporated PDI provides amazing political data to anyone who wants to purchase it from him. But very interesting information on trends in voting. Every way you can cut that pie, demographics, what time they vote, who votes absentee, et cetera. So it was a fascinating snapshot. Kind of related to that, I participated on Friday and Martin was a speaker too at the Civic Summit that was put on, attended by over 450 high school students. It was amazing. The key partners were the County Office of Education, Elections Department, the Democratic Party took a lead role, but it was an absolutely nonpartisan event focused on education and registration of voters, very, very high energy and encouraging. So, and the city contributed a modest amount to that, so thank you for making it happen. Let's see, on the Mid-County Groundwater Agency, as I think I reported or Rosemary did. We did complete our sustainability plan for the Mid-County Groundwater aquifer. And that has now been adopted by the Mid-County Agency and forwarded on to the state for review. It could now take, they tell us, up to two years. The state will go through it with a fine tooth comb, but it was really a major achievement to get that, we had a terrific advisory group. So that now has been passed on, we certainly met the deadline. And now we move into an implementation phase, which still has many, many, many components. But for the Groundwater Agency itself, we'll probably go to a less frequent meeting schedule. I reported on the DMC, visit Santa Cruz County. I think I reported a while ago that among its many marketing activities, visit Santa Cruz County worked with community groups to identify some niche markets where we had some potential. One of which was heritage tourism, and they've been working on that, and the other was LGBT tourism. And so they've been working with great partners in the community to develop those plans. And they are doing a training for the hospitality and tourism industry. It's going to be this Thursday on how to create a friendly, welcoming, and appropriate environment, attracting, particularly the LGBT tourism for visitors to Santa Cruz County. It's obviously an area where we have lots of potential and that training has been very enthusiastically received. So I look forward to that happening. Thank you. Well, thank you, Council Member Matthews for bringing up the Civic Summit. It was really a wonderful event and encouraging to see so many youth interested in participating in our civic process. And just asking really thoughtful questions, really excited, I left really inspired by them. In regards to some of the committees, I'd say the community programs committee, if it wasn't brought up already, we had a meeting to discuss the set aside funding. We have yet to reschedule or have a follow-up meeting in regards to some of the recommendations we want to bring forward. The Health and Our Policy Subcommittee, I believe, is a sudden-setting, but we do have the implementation plan that's on the agenda today. The one else that I would add is the Criminal Justice Council had a presentation from some folks in law enforcement as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigations for our region. They were talking about the national impacts of gangs in our local communities. And this kind of came after the conversation around white supremacy and some of these terrorism type actions we've been seeing in local communities. They presented data I don't want to share any misinformation, but essentially kind of sharing that in terms of what they've been monitoring, it doesn't really come up on their radar in this area, which is encouraging. And we do and are continuing to work and monitor those types of behaviors and activities in ways that we can. So that was an interesting presentation. If there's interest in trying to get the PowerPoint presentation, I'd be happy to try to do that and share that with the council as well. And then lastly, I think the Youth Violence Prevention Task Force, they changed their name to Network, and that's a component of the Criminal Justice Council. They're really looking around how to support young men of color and violence in our communities through some grant funding that they have. As well as bringing partners together to talk about trauma and form changes to our systems and really supporting the youth and networking. And so they've evolved over the years. I've been part of them in my other capacity for about seven years now. So it's been interesting as they're re-prioritizing at this time. And I think that's all I have to say. There's nothing else to report. Thank you all for your participation and for reporting out. And then at this time, the next item on our agenda is the council meeting calendar. This is the time to remove or add meetings to the calendar attached to the agenda, which lists upcoming meetings, not items within each meeting. Are there any updates to the calendar? There are not. I have a question. I know, Mary, we've spoken about having possibly a study session on all the state laws coming down. Would it be appropriate that, is that in the workflow right now? Getting a council study session to look at all of different SB 330 and 50 and- I've also been thinking about that. And I think what would be good is if there are state bills or assembly bills that have come down that council members are interested in us having a study session on. It'd be great if you emailed those to me because I've brought that up as well. And members of the community have been interested in better understanding how some of the housing bills and private control bills are affecting people within the community. So if there are any bills that might be of interest that we could have on a study session, I'm happy to receive those and then have a discussion about that. You mean already adopted or in the works? Already adopted. Yeah. Next item on our agenda is the consent agenda. These are items 3 through 13 on our agenda. All items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion. Are there any council members who wish to pull any items today? Okay. Let's move around. So I, well I have a request for a couple of changes to item five, appointment of representatives to external agencies. And I don't know if that requires that I pull it and make a motion or if we could do that by general consensus, pull it. Okay, so I'd like to pull five and nine. And I just have a comment on item 10. Are there any other? I just have a comment on item 13. Okay. Are there any other items that council members would wish to pull or comment on? So I'd like to look for a motion to move the item. You need public comment. I'm sorry? Public comment. Oh, public comment, that's right, sorry. Would any member of the community like to comment on items that have not been pulled from our agenda? So those are all items with the exception of items number five and nine. Seeing none, actually before we vote, I'd like to actually return for the comments on item numbers 10 and 13. So council member Brown. I just have a quick comment on item 10 is our annual indexing of the city's living wage rate, which is a requirement that city contractors pay a living wage to employees. Conducting business on behalf of the city. And I was involved in moving this policy forward 20 years ago. Two of my colleagues on the council now were there at the table on the council at the time. And I think that while it has a relatively limited impact because it covers city contractors and we don't contract out a lot of work as some public entities do. It has been provided a standard for our community. And at the time, I also wanted to say we worked very hard to include the resources for our nonprofit contractors to also be included in that policy. And it's, as we know, it's a real struggle for nonprofits. And I just want to say that I'm really pleased that we're raising the living wage right now to 19. Dollars. Thank you, 1953. An hour, and I also have recently been at meetings with the Human Care Alliance, where they've done a big survey of all the nonprofit service providers in this community, affiliated with their association, which is most of the nonprofits. And 73% of nonprofit workers in our community earn less than that. They have reported earning less than that. This is a huge challenge for us if we want to be able to continue to have those services available. They do amazing work. And so I just wanted to put that out there that it's really important that we keep moving forward and recognize the need to find those resources for our community partners. Is there any other member of the city council would like to comment on item number 10? I have a comment for item number six. Okay, so item 10. This question for the city manager. Are the workers, I was asked this by a member of public, I didn't have the answer. Are the workers at the current shelter at the armory who work for the Salvation Army? Do they adhere to the minimum wage here? The contract for the Salvation Army is through the county, so it would have to comply with the county's requirements. And I believe they have a living wage ordinance, so if it applies, then it would. All right, let's move on to comments on item number 13, council member Glover. Thank you, yeah, this was something that I was requested by multiple community members to look into. I got a chance to talk to staff via email to get some clarity. There was some questions as to why there was a price difference between the two trucks that we approved at the last meeting compared to this truck. And that's because they're different types of trucks. One is a split load truck, the other one is a back loading truck. Also, the rationale behind it, people ask why are we getting new trucks so frequently and that according to staff has to do with the costs associated with the repairs and how frequently they're in the shop that could detract from effective service. So that is important for us to acknowledge as well as the costs for one of the trucks, the repair costs basically doubled from fiscal year 18 to fiscal year 19. However, with that being acknowledged, I will say that it's a little concerning about how we're continuously acquiring these fossil fuel and diesel vehicles. Especially after the body here voted to adopt the resolution supporting the Green New Deal and looking at ways that we can actively divest from fossil fuels. So I think that we really need to be proactively figuring out how we can start to do that aggressively even with our large machinery. And I would turn the council and the staff attention to an email that came in from Mr. Brett Garrett, I believe, that points to the tipping truck in Australia, which is now 100% electric, as well as their switch over to electric rubbish collection trucks. So I know that one of the arguments that we've heard in the past is that they don't have the distance or the charge to be able to make it or they're not readily available. But according to the article that was provided by Mr. Garrett, they are available. The question is how do we get it here and whether they're just in Australia and then they do cover a sizeable amount of distance. So I hope that we can move towards that as we continue on this path towards the divestment from fossil fuels. Thank you. And to member Watkins. Sure. I just have a brief comment and it's really just appreciation and gratitude to Dr. Tiffany Weis-West and Shepard Kalantari-Johnson for really translating the ordinance, the policy, the recommendations that came out of the health and all policies work into an implementation plan. And I look forward to seeing how it unfolds moving forward. So I just want to publicly show appreciation to their work. All right, thank you. Now I'm looking for a motion on the remaining consent items with the exceptions of items number five and number nine. So moved. Second. That was motion made by Council Member Cron, seconded by Council Member Matthews. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. So then we'll return to item numbers five and nine that were pulled by Council Member Brown. Okay, so item number five is the appointments to be made for Council members to serve on external agencies, boards and commissions. We just reported on some of those. And I wanted to make a request for two minor changes to the list that was sent out and included in our agenda packet. And that is for the Monterey Bay Community Power Policy Board. I have been the representative and am unable to attend some of those meetings due to conflict. And so Mayor Cummings, who is very interested in these issues, is going to take over. And then Council Member Glover has been my representative, or the alternate for that. And he also has a conflict. So I'm hoping that we can substitute me for Council Member Glover as the alternate and I will work with you to make sure that we get those meetings covered and give you, transfer some information. So that's one. The other request is to, as our Regional Transportation Commission alternate to substitute Council Member Crone for Vice Mayor Myers. Vice Mayor Myers serves on the Santa Cruz Metro Board of Directors and she is an alternate there. So she does sometimes fill in for Metro Board commissioners at board members at our commission. And so I'm hoping to just have that additional coverage in case there are absences for both the city and the Metro. And I've talked with my colleagues about this in advance, so hopefully it's not too controversial here. Council Member Watkins. I just wanted to make a request if there's interest. If there's interest, I'd like to continue to serve on the city's schools committee. I feel passionately about that, but can not serve on that committee if there's more interest for those that have been selected to serve, but I'd be happy to do so if there is interest. The other was the farmer's market. And I spoke with Nesh and having served on the board and he expressed that he would like to see me continue on that in that position and I would be very much so interested in continuing as well. And I'm happy to serve on both standing committees and or if others want to serve on one or the other, I'm happy to do that. Council Member Brown. Yeah, so I actually, and I apologize, Council Member Watkins for not contacting you when I saw this list. I wanted, I had intended to let you know that if you were interested, which I assume you would be, that I'm happy to cycle off that and let you continue to do your great work there. Thank you, Council Member Brown. I guess I have a comment that I would like to make on a number of items. With community programs, I'd had a discussion with Council Member Watkins prior to sitting today and also with Council Member Matthews and given that with the standing committee as Council Member Watkins expressed, possibly stepping down from one of those, we were considering replacing Council Member Watkins with Council Member Matthews, who said she would be willing to go on to the community programs subcommittee or standing committee. Additionally, given conversations that I've had with Vice Mayor Myers, we were looking at the composition of the affordable housing ad hoc committee and thought that because of continuity, since we both come into office, it would make sense for both of us to serve on the affordable housing committee and Council Member Brown, who has also been on the housing blueprint subcommittee to be on that committee as well. And so that would be replacing Council Member Watkins with Vice Mayor Myers. And I would just like to say that for the Santa Cruz Community Farmers Market, I'm happy to allow or have Council Member Watkins serve in that role, given the desire of the members of the Farmers Market Board to continue to have her on. I would just like to then see if it would be okay for myself to replace Council Member Crohn so that as we transition and given the uncertainty of the elections coming up that I would stand in that place for that position as well. Thank you. Was that it and get it? We're the Farmers Market to service the alternate. That's okay. Any further comments? So I can repeat back. Sure. So the change would be community programs. Watkins would be replaced with Matthews. Affordable housing. Watkins would be replaced with Myers. Santa Cruz for affordable housing, she's already on there. City of Santa Cruz schools, Brown would be replaced by Watkins. Honorary Bay Community Power, Glover would be replaced by Brown. Santa Cruz County Regional Transportation Commission, Myers will be replaced with Crohn. Santa Cruz County Farmers Market, Cummings will be replaced by Watkins. And as the alternate, Crohn will be replaced by Cummings. Is there any member of the public who would like to speak on this item? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to Council for Action Deliberation. Yeah, I'll move approval as amended. I'll second. So that was moved by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Senator Myers. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passage unanimously. Our next item that was pulled from our consent agenda is item number nine and I'll refer back to Council Member Brown. I just wanted to, one, thank staff for bringing us this overview to provide some background for us on the current housing support programs that we offer, that we provide resources to local community partners to provide these services. And also to make a request that with respect to the proposed relocation assistance pilot program, which I'm totally supportive of, and thank you for your kind of working up what this might look like. I'd like to ask my colleagues if you'd be willing to, and so I'll make a motion to include direction to staff to include $15,000 in first budget discussions for our 2020-21 budget. So that there's a placeholder there should we decide to proceed with the program. Before we have a second on that motion, I'd like to see if there's no other further comment that we open up to public comment. So first, I'd like to ask if any of the council members have a comment on this item. You could repeat the motion, but if you want. I'll wait on the motion. So is there any member of the public at this time who would like to speak to item number nine on our consent agenda? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to Council for Action Deliberation. So the motion then would be to receive the informational report on current tenant assistance housing support programs and current status of the proposed relocation assistance pilot program and direct staff to include $15,000 in the 2020-21 budget for consideration at budget hearings. I'll second that. I have a question, if I may. In the fiscal impact of this item, there's a $10,000 to $15,000 cost. Is that in addition to that or is that just using the $15,000 as the placeholder? Oh, okay, just to clarify that we want to have it there for a budget discussion. Any other comments, questions? You know, personally I would rather have the study first and then come back with amounts. And when all of these are looked at, look at where additional funds might be most effective. A placeholder is a placeholder, but we may see other priorities when the bigger picture comes back to us. Is this money that could be used then for what we talked about in the past where a building gets red tagged and residents are put out on the street and they have nowhere to go and we expect the landlord to put them up? Is there a member of the economic development potentially? I'm Bonnie Lipscomb, Director of Economic Development. My understanding from the direction from the last meeting in November is that the direction you gave staff was to look at developing a program specifically for relocation assistance for tenants who are experiencing no fault evictions. And so that's specifically the conceptual program that we've been working on. We've met both with Community Action Board and with Housing Authority and sort of determined in trying to leverage the funding as far as we can go. In looking at and meeting with both organizations, it seemed like actually building off for the majority of a new program off the security deposit assistance program we have at the Housing Authority. We really cut costs overall because they can do the income verification for those who are already looking to receive some security deposit assistance. So that's where we're focusing right now on the program, but it specifically would be for individuals and families who are experiencing no fault evictions. So somebody who gets the building red tagged and the residents are out, that's not included under no fault evictions? I'm not really sure. I think it most likely would be if they were evicted because of that. I think that would meet the criteria. I'll just also point out that under that circumstance, the code requires the landlord to provide relocation assistance to the tenant. Where I'm going is that the landlord is not going to do that. And it's going to take a while for the landlord. I'm saying when you put somebody out, you want to compensate them right away and then go after the landlord if they're not going to compensate the city. That's the problem with that. That's the loophole in that thing because a bad landlord who lets their building gets red tagged isn't really going to fork over some money for the tenants to move. I could just make a quick comment. So Council Member Cron and I had discussed this and I brought it up at previous council meetings during budget time. And so I'm hoping that we can have that conversation. But given that this was a specific response to the direction that we gave around our early implementation of AB 1482, I thought we would leave it there and just have that put in the budget. And then I'd be very interested in having a conversation about how we move forward. Because as we know, there have been issues with tenants who have been evicted due to red tags not receiving their relocation assistance. And so I'd be interested in working on that as another item. I will just add in the report does outline the other programs that we currently funding we currently have available through Community Action Board, CRLA and the Housing Authority. And the city does provide close to 250,000 in annual support for tenant relocation assistance. So we do have some existing programs as well. Okay. Is there any further comment on this item? So just really quick. I think that we should be investing as much as necessary in protecting renters and protections and earmarking money right now to make sure that's there and then waiting for an analysis and potentially allocating more. If it comes down to that time to make sure that we're keeping people off the streets and supported since we have not been able to implement the necessary renters protections and rent controls to avoid it in the first place. So thank you. So if I can repeat the motion, it's to accept the staff report and create a $15,000 placeholder in the budget for the current 2020-2021 budget cycle. That motion was made by Council Member Brown, seconded by Mayor Cummings. Is there any further discussion? Just because it's not clear in the motion and we have had some discussion in that we would accept the staff's direction for their initial program development as outlined working with existing agencies. So basically I just, it was, my motion was the staff recommendation, which is to do that. The recommendation is pretty vague here. Right, thank you. I'd like to ask the clerk if she has, is the motion clear? I'd like to accept the staff recommendation. And support the direction for the pilot program as outlined by staff. To that extent, yes. Yeah, I'd accept that amendment. I think it is important to clarify that, that we are on board with moving forward, the staff moving forward in the direction they initiated. I think that's a good point as well. There's no further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. That moves us to our consent public hearing up next. These are items 14 through 17 on our agenda. Are there any council members who would wish to pull items 14 through 17? Seeing none, I'd like to open it up to the community for public comment. Any member of the community who would like to comment on items number 14 through 17 on our agenda today? We'll have two minutes. Hey, Garrett Phillip. My concerns about, this is item number 17. My concerns about the last meeting's tenant free speech political sign ordinance were not addressed by the council and mischaracterized by council member Cron. Let's start over and go slow starting with the SB 337 digest. This quote, Bill would require a tenant to comply with the time period established by the local ordinance for the posting and removal of political signs or in the absence of those provisions by reasonable time limits as specified established by the landlord. That's a summary. This ordinance is not that. It seems like a calculated one-sided special interest political grandstand pandering progressive act of class warfare. Civil law like SB 337 settled a dispute between property rights, tenants free speech rights, and allows local government to establish tenant obligations and restricts landlords policies to restrict tenants rights at minimum reasonable limits, if, as in this case, local ordinances are silent on free speech time limits and tenant obligations. Since no time limits or tenant compliance is expressed by the ordinance itself, SB 337 timelines depend on if a landlord policy exists. I doubt many landlords have such a policy, probably none. This ordinance is solely about shoving it to landlords absent any real evidence that they do anything or any worse than tenant activists with others political signs. I had Measure M signs stolen. If no landlord signed policy exists, your local punitive ordinance would remain in effect forever. Signed blight could ensue. I'm kind of going to skip over this, but my suggestion today is to preferably put in an exception for landlord consisting of an effective time limit on issuing ordinance infractions to be 90 days before to 15 days after any election to which political signs refer to avoiding creating new lease conditions. Or set time limits such as 337 suggests. And the reason for this is that otherwise you're going to actually restrict tenants free speech rights more than if you leave it the way it is. Because I think they will do that to protect their liability very much. Is there any other member of the community would like to comment on this item? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to council. Member Cron. Yeah, I just wonder if the city attorney could speak to Mr. Phillips comments. I'm sure the ordinance has written invokes civil code section 1940.4 which contains the 90 day before and 15 day after election requirements. And so in my view, ordinance is consistent with the state law. If the if the council wanted to include similar or redundant language in this ordinance, we could certainly do so. But it's not required. I don't think I'm pretty good with what we have. Thank you. Any other council members who would like to comment on the answer public hearing. Just wanted to say like someone stealing your political yard sign or your yard sign isn't the same as your landlord, you know, removing your law yard sign. Is there a member of the city council would like to move our public consent hearing. I'll move the consent public hearing agenda. Those made a motion by council member Brown seconded by council member Glover. Any further discussion? All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Next item on our agenda today is public hearing. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff for the council members who brought forward the item followed by a question from council. We will then take public comment and then return to council for deliberation and action. And the first item is the downtown plan A19-005 amendments to the downtown plan. Modified regulations related to sale of alcoholic beverages for off site consumption at two parlors and personal service uses in the downtown. And I'll turn this over to senior planner Catherine Donovan. Good afternoon council. I'm Catherine Donovan senior planner in the advanced planning division. And we're bringing forward today some amendments to our downtown plan. Just a brief history. The downtown recovery plan was originally adopted in September 1991 after the Loma Prieta earthquake. And certain strategies and actions were adopted in 2000 which included our list of prohibited uses in the downtown. The prohibited uses were granted a 20 year amnesty and that amnesty runs out on October 10th of 2020. And in that list of prohibited uses are tattoo parlors and the sale of alcohol for off site consumption which in more normal speech just means buying liquor at a store as opposed to at a restaurant or bar. In 2017 we did some amendments to our downtown plan which included an amendment to the alcohol related prohibition. And that was to allow the off site sale of alcohol when it was clearly incidental to other principally permitted uses. And it represents a small percentage of the total shelf space of the business and directed staff to create operational criteria to limit the impact of the alcohol sales. And so we have done as directed and are proposing the following operational criteria. We are proposing to limit the hours of alcohol sales from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. And to the security and location of alcohol in the store would be mitigation that would be approved by the police department. And the single serving containers which were also an item that was requested to be addressed would be limited to two craft beer only. Since 2000 the legal framework established for tattoo parlors has been that they are a free speech right and must be treated as other personal service uses. Social attitudes towards tattoos have also changed and so this amendment would remove tattoo parlors from the list of prohibited uses. Since certain court cases have come down we have not been enforcing tattoo parlors as a prohibited use so this is basically just a cleanup item. The third item we're addressing today is the personal services restrictions in the downtown. Currently an administrative use permit is required in all the sub districts except the North Pacific area. And in the Pacific Avenue retail district the personal services are only allowed in interior spaces. What we are proposing is to allow personal services by right meaning they would not require an administrative use permit except on the ground floor in the Pacific Avenue retail district where they would continue to require an administrative use permit. Currently there is a restriction even with the administrative use permit that they cannot be within 75 feet of Pacific Avenue or 40 feet of the side streets. And we are proposing to allow an exception to that if the space has physical restrictions so that you could not provide 40 feet, an alternative of 40 feet, if the use would contribute to the character or mix of uses in the downtown or if the use would be a significant draw to the downtown. And this would all be part of the use permit process to make those determinations on that use. And there's one other change that we're proposing and that is there's currently a finding for personal services that you must be able to return the space. That the space would be capable of being transformed into retail use in the future. And we had some discussion related to a project in the downtown and frankly if you have enough money anything is pretty much anything is capable of being returned to the use. But that was not the intent of this and so we're simply proposing to add without extensive remodeling. Because the implication is that it should be a fairly easy process not something that would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And so I have written out the recommendations for you. I know sometimes it's easier to read from the screen than from your staff report. And there are two parts there. This is a portion of the downtown is in the coastal zone and so for that portion it needs to go to the Coastal Commission for approval. And if anyone has any questions I'd be happy to answer. Matthew. Yeah I do and I didn't get it to you in advance but it may be somewhat related to the personal services uses. And I understand this is part of just the changing nature of businesses that are located in downtowns and so forth. In the downtown plan there are guidelines for what windows look like and some both retail and other businesses. Well some of the retail windows are transparent. You see into the store there's a display others although that you may not see into the store. There's a little setback in the window. It's interesting. There's design. There's pedestrian interest. And some windows downtown and the side streets just have a curtain up and that was never the purpose. That was never part of the design plan. So I just raise this not that it needs to be added because I think it's already in there. But I think it's something to look at maybe in terms of just reminding people as the conditions of approval or the design plans that the whole idea for the street level businesses whatever they are is that they have an attractive pedestrian component. Right. And I think you're correct. I think it probably that those businesses are probably not in compliance with their conditions of approval. So if you have specific addresses or businesses in mind we could look into those. You can just walk around and see and you know it's not rocket science. I think it's intent rather than anything else. Yeah. Council members have questions. It's interesting that Walgreens doesn't fall on this and that seems to me would be a you know calls for service and things like that. You said an email was outside of the downtown zone. What about that flashing light? Are they allowed to advertise alcohol on that on the sign along Laurel Street. You mean the sign in front of their business. Yeah. The only one that's ever been approved in Santa Cruz in about 30 years. You know I don't know if there are specific rules that prohibit alcohol as a flashing light. I'd have to look into that. A couple questions. My first one is I was just curious what portion of the downtown this downtown plant covers the coastal zone. It's right below Cathcart between Cathcart and Elm. So that portion is in the coastal zone. Okay. And I guess what businesses would be affected. I mean in terms of I think I'm speaking in terms of the are there any of these like alcohol distributors or would there or is this more along the lines of like retail and services. For example like tattoo shops that could go in that area. Yeah it would be the tattoo shops and the personal services. Benicio's is is in that area. But they would have to make major changes to comply. Anyway. And then my other question was just along the lines of the current office is because the hours I'm assuming are for offsite purchases of alcohol. And I was just curious what the current hours are. The only one currently that is open past 11 is CVS. Well CVS and Benicio's. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. So I had sent some questions ahead of time just with regards to some of the concerns I had, especially with regards to the restriction of certain types of alcohol or beers and stuff that sold compared to craft beer in the language around craft beer. I noticed in the agenda report under the planning commission and public hearings section, it does acknowledge that there was conversation and acknowledgement that it could be potentially discriminatory, especially around different socio economic conditions and people that are not able to afford craft beers. But I understand that the planning commission voted to move forward with it either way. What were some of the rationale that it would not be discriminatory for people that were not able to afford craft beers? I know in the email that I received, it was saying that people could still buy multiple packs of the other types of beers or vendors could serve single serve craft beers. But, and I don't really drink a lot of beer that much, but it's my understanding that even in single serve sizes craft beer is considerably more expensive than say like a Coors or some of the more name brand cheaper beers. So how can you counter the argument that it would be discriminatory towards poor people? And then I know the other argument was that if they wanted to, they could go up to the 7-Eleven on Chestnut or up to Ocean and Broadway. And there's also the concern of people driving different distances, but if say you're someone that has a ton of stuff that you have to carry with you and you're in the downtown area because that's where you're at. Having to walk an additional five blocks or whatever it might be to go and obtain an additional single serve Coors or whatever it might be. So how can we justify that not being discriminatory? So originally this was part of the 2017 amendments. Staff was directed to come up with limitations for single serve containers. And when we first were looking into it, we thought we'll just eliminate the sale of single serve containers. But we have a large number of craft beer distilleries in Santa Cruz and the surroundings. And we try very hard not to support our local businesses. And so we thought, well we can make an exception on for craft beers. And quite frankly because we were thinking of it in terms of a prohibition entirely and then the exception for the local industry. Before the planning commission, it did not occur to me that this might be seen as a discriminatory action. And then in the planning commission discussion, I also do not drink a lot of beer. And so I'm not really familiar with pricing that much. But there are several things that came up. It's available other than in the downtown and frankly right across the street at CVS. You could potentially, I'm sorry not CVS, Walgreens. I don't know if they sell single serving beers, but it would be permitted for them to. Also apparently six packs of some of the cheaper beers are possibly the same price as a larger single serve. So people who are only looking to spend the least amount of money to get some alcohol would still have that option. And this was originally part of the discussion in 2017. It was brought up by the police department because this is something that is a problem in the downtown with serial inebriates in the downtown. And this was something that they felt would be helpful and that has been used in our use permit conditions of approval in other areas. And so we were frankly just following direction from the city council and the police department and then trying to carve out that exception for our local industry. Thank you. Yeah, just because I had mentioned it specifically by name is being possibly discriminatory in the agenda report and associated with the planning commission hearing. And then getting the report back in the email with regards to the that was passed with two people absent and then five people from the planning commission being present. Just, yeah, just, you know, I don't want us to be creating a space that's only for the affluent, if that makes any sense in that concern. And I understand that you were just following direction and just doing what you were instructed to do. So I'm not suggesting that it was the intent or, you know, the goal to make it discriminatory. But I think that if we're thinking about policy, not only how it can be perceived, but also the effect it'll have on keeping certain populations from being able to be downtown and obtaining alcohol that they may want to consume. There is a concern there. Also, just with that in regards to the enforcement of people and where they're at and where they're consuming alcohol and how that plays into some of the different court rulings that we've run into recently. It's tough, but I appreciate the answers. Thank you. Oh, I noticed in the list of nuisance activities that was provided with regards to the downtown area, there were things. So no use, even though listed as a permitted use or otherwise allowed shall be permitted by reason of its nature or manner of operation is deemed by the zoning administrator to be creating a condition. That is hazardous, noxious or offensive through the emission of odors, fumes, smoke, cinder dust, gas, vibration, glares, refuse, water carried waste or excessive noise. So that could then open up the possibility for us to ban cars from Pacific Avenue then because they're emitting fumes and glare and sound and noise and all of that. Right, just correct. Just want to make sure I'm interpreting that right. I think you could probably make that argument. I don't know how much water it would hold. Wonderful. Just want to make sure I'm interpreting it the right way because if we're doing it for alcohol, which and then classifying the type of alcohol that people can buy, which is more expensive. I think it's like $7 a glass for a craft beer, a single craft beer or whatever when you're out in the establishments and then figuring out how we might be able to make downtown nice in other ways too. So thank you. Right on. Are there any other comments or questions from council members? I have a comment, but I wanted to hear from the public if anyone's. And I will open this up for public comment. Is there any member of the public who would like to speak to us on item number 18 at this time? Seeing none, I'll bring it back to council for further discussion and deliberation. Well, I'm happy to put a motion on the floor with the staff recommendation. So there's some motion by council member Matthews seconded by vice mayor Myers to accept the staff recommendation. Council member Brown. Yeah. So, you know, I'll support the record the staff recommendation and I appreciate all the work that's gone into it. But I do want to say that, you know, for the record, I'm not sure that the direction that we've taken and in particular with respect to single serving. Alcohol containers that we're actually going to achieve any, there's going to be any impact. I mean, serial nebriates, serial inebriation and the relationship between serial inebriation and single serving like airplane models or, you know, individual beers is dubious at best. But, you know, for the, you know, to try to kind of follow through on the previous direction from the council and the staff attempt to move in this direction. I'll support it. I do think I also have concerns about the discriminatory discriminatory potential because I don't see why we don't just include craft beers in the prohibition. But I'm not so concerned about it that I want to try to persuade my colleagues. Any other comments? One suggestion could be to have maybe a report back on any kind of data and outcomes that this may have influenced by this decision at a future time in a potential year or so once enacted. Because I think we want to know if it's making a difference in the way that's intended. So did you say they did discuss like a craft beer like Sierra Nevada? Would that be a craft beer? The craft, it would be, craft beers are defined as those that are made by small producers who produce under, was it 60,000? Yeah. So I don't believe Sierra Nevada would qualify. But it's a tight, it's there. It's the type of license that they have. So it would be easy to check. And you said we thought or the planning commission thought about maybe just making it Santa Cruz County or Santa Cruz City craft beers that would be allowed or that was not in discussion. That was not discussed. The definition of the small breweries is that they tend to be sold locally or regionally. And so we felt that that was significant, sufficient for our purposes. We don't necessarily want to limit it only to breweries in the city of Santa Cruz, although it is our intent to support our local breweries. I know we have a letter here from the owner of Benesios. How much of a lawsuit would we get here? Or if we're taking away, it looks like 60 or 70% of his business. He purchased the business after this prohibition was already in place. So probably should ask our city attorney, but I don't see any lawsuit at all. This is actually loosening the rules rather than tightening them. You agree? Yes. I think it's, you know, for me, I'm happy to cut it back to 11 o'clock. I think that's a good idea. I'm happy to cut their business back as well. But I'm persuadable, Council Member Brown, because I do think that it is discriminatory when you talk about the craft beers. If you're not going to just limit the craft beers then to are the ones that Santa Cruz produces and then, you know, if you have a craft beer from Maine or from Germany or somewhere. I mean, that doesn't make sense to me. So I'm not going to support the motion that's on the floor. The comments. I just, I guess I have a couple of comments. One of which is that with regards to, again, the craft versus noncraft beer designation, I think that, again, yes, it can be interpreted as discriminatory. And I think that my other concern is with the hours because when people leave bars at different times and they may consider getting something on their way home, being able to walk to an establishment is much safer than people having to figure out where's the nearest establishment and then potentially get into their cars and drive to the next nearest establishment because of the fact that one that was accessible is no longer successful. With regards to crime, I understand from the police perspective that that corner has been an area of concern with regards to crime in a long time. But one thing that's just happened that potentially can have a very large impact on that is the closure of Taco Bell where a lot of people used to spend a lot of time hanging out. Some of whom were involved in criminal activity, some of whom weren't, but that was a very problematic site. And having the Taco Bell directly across the street from Benicio's could have been a very problematic, you know, could have created a very problematic situation. And now that Taco Bell is gone, I think that, you know, reducing hours, in my opinion, it would be worth taking some time to see whether or not the removal of Taco Bell has any positive impact on that area. So I'm still waiting to hear from my colleagues. But with regards to hours, I'd become more comfortable with 1 a.m. to start and also having all single serves rather than just craft so as to eliminate any perception of discrimination around that. That would be splitting the baby for me, but I would go with that. I personally don't mind Benicio's cutting back their hours, but if we got a report back on how that situation changed. So I'm understanding you're not going to be supporting the motion that's on the floor. I'm still waiting to hear back from my colleagues. But the other portion of it too is that we've also restricted their production line, right? So we've decreased what they're able to sell, and we're increasing their hours of sale and what they can sell during those hours. So I think that there's compounding effects that might actually be detrimental towards that business in particular and would probably be beneficial to businesses like Walgreens across the street that is corporate and not a local business. So I would then incorporate your comments right now into a substitute motion such that we do not restrict the single beers and also leave the hours till 1 a.m. That sounds like what? I'd like to ask prior if there's any further discussion or support. Well, I'll second it if I can clarify that you're talking about the prohibition on single-serving containers being applied to all rather than, are you asking to eliminate the craft beer exemption? Or are you asking to eliminate the single-serving restriction? Where are we? I'm not sure what. Singlet. I'd just like to clarify that. Yeah, no, I could go either way, but it is discriminatory on the face of it in my opinion looking at this ordinance. So that's why I couldn't support it. But I don't know what the mayor, were you looking to make all single-serving beers still legal to sell? Okay, yeah. I have the hours till 1 a.m. Okay. And evaluate. Yeah, I'll second that. Is that a friendly amendment? I think it should be structured as a friendly amendment, not as a substitute motion. Okay. Could I interject a comment? Just want a friendly amendment. Is it a friendly amendment? Or it should be, excuse me, as an amendment. And I have other comments as well. The main motion. Yeah. Well, as I read it, the craft beer exemption in the draft that's provided to you is an exemption from an otherwise prohibition on single serving of alcohol. So that would be shooters, small wine bottles, any small single serving alcohol container, not just cheap beer. Make sure that you understand that. So understanding that, I think the exemption we're on beer in particular, rather than, or I don't know if there's any further discussion. Single serve. I mean, in trying to limit hard alcohol consumption in downtown and or glass wine bottles and stuff. And I think that if we were to structure it so that we exempted craft beers and just beers in general and single serve, but then put a prohibition on the single, all other single serve alcoholic containers or whatnot. Because then it provides equal access to at least beer, which, you know, and then if people want to go walk somewhere, I guess to get liquor than they can. But our main focus is beer and reducing the amount of, I guess, intense alcoholism in downtown that's available to people. Ultimate goal of the. I would take just the beer. I don't know if it's it's for the second or was that sound right? Fine. Yeah, that's fine. Yeah, I think the police chief. That's what I wanted to do is get. And yeah, go ahead. Good afternoon. I'm a little bit confused on the conversation. Limiting just beer or all single sales of alcohol. And just from what I have experienced for 42 years, this can have an impact on the amount of inebriates that we wind up arresting in the downtown area. So I want to be very, you know, whether it's expanded boundaries, strength boundary, custom craft beers, no customer. I don't care. But I think limiting the amount of alcohol people have access to when there's a significant problem of people becoming intoxicated, we make hundreds of arrests for public intoxication downtown. So that's just my, you know, if I can get the clarity for me, so I understand what you want us to do and then go from there. Thank you. I'm just a question for the chief. So with regards to the chronic or repeat inebriate arrests that you're doing downtown, do you have a log of if those are housed people or fall into your category of transient or as I would refer to them as people experiencing homelessness? Just because looking at the 9th District Court of Appeals, I believe there's a footnote that says that cities can't penalize people experiencing homelessness for being drunk in public because they don't have a home in which to be drunken. So I just want to make sure that we're, that not only are we passing something that limits the amount of alcohol to say single serve beers only in downtown, which is what I was talking about. To make sure there's an even access to beer at least, even if it's not hard alcohol or wine and stuff like that. But then also just what you're talking about, about making hundreds of arrests surrounding that, is there data associated with who those arrests are? And are they, and I mean, that may be something that we want to review or the Public Safety Committee wants to review. But understanding and making sure that we're not citing and arresting people, which would be in violation of the 9th District Court of Appeals. Just want to make sure. Well, I would defer to the city attorney on the interpretation of that portion of the Martin versus Boise decision. However, my understanding is that the Penal Code for 647 F, which is being drunk and public and unable to care for yourself, was not struck down by the courts. And so therefore not everything goes. And I don't know that we capture, we could certainly try to capture how many people are homeless versus housed or unhoused versus housed. We certainly don't look at person's economic status and how much they make a year, whether we're deciding that. But I can tell you that alcohol consumption regardless of who it is, in excess of consumption of alcohol, is a significant police problem in the downtown area. And we arrest some of the same people literally over 100 times a year. And I think that is what we're trying to shut off. And so if you look at it one, two ways. If you take all the arrests and then look at, do they have a physical address that they give us? Or do you look at the repeat offenders and extrapolate that out? I think that we could probably take a look at both of that and report back to you at some point in the future. And I think we can both agree, and I'm sure all of us up here want to agree that we definitely don't want a downtown where just anything goes. Because we want to provide a safe and stable place for people to be able to be, but also an equitable access for people to be able to enjoy themselves in one way or another. Sure. Thank you. Vice Mayor Meyers. Actually, Chief Mills, I just wanted to maybe get your thoughts on the extension to the 1am versus stopping at 11. Kind of understanding, you know, later night, what, into the morning, what do you have a thought on that? Yes. The closer it gets to bar closing time, the amount of alcohol saturation goes up in terms of people level of drinking. And it's not unusual at a real late hour to see a pretty substantial line in front of Benicio's. And so to shut that off a little bit earlier would certainly help us do, you know, us manage the public safety downtown. Whether it's Benicio's or someone else, but that's really the only liquor store that I can think of. I know New Leaf, they're done at nine. I'm not sure about Trader Joe's. And so those are pretty responsible places we get zero problems out of CVS open CVS. I'm not sure how late they're open, but I think that they actually shut off the midnight sales at midnight. So I'd be in favor of bringing it back a little bit in time to a point where people are not as intoxicated and they can make better decisions. But certainly any time of the day, if somebody's a chronic alcoholic, they're finding a place to get that. And that's a different section that we can enforce. That answers your question. I'll just say that for as many years as I've been following and involved in downtown issues, the problems associated with alcohol or public safety and particularly serial enabriates gets back over and over and over again to the single serve. And that's why these restrictions have been included in the first place. And that's why I support, that's why I made the motion and we can certainly get more information on it. And Benicio's, as has been mentioned, staff report and by staff has had years of knowledge that this was limits. Yeah. I could just interject a comment is to be clear. We're talking about access to alcohol, not criminalization of someone for being drunk in public. Right. And I just want to follow up on that the reference made by council member Glover was to a footnote in the Martin versus Boise decision that had to do with a Supreme Court case called Powell versus Texas in which the court looked at the question of whether or not it was a violation of the 8th amendment for someone to be arrested for being drunk in public. And it was a plurality decision in which the court distinguished that from a similar case from California called Robinson in which the court struck down a law that made it a crime to be a serial anibriate as opposed to the act of being drunk in public in the court in the Powell versus Texas case did not state that a homeless person could not be prosecuted for being drunk in public. But a justice who wrote a concurring opinion raised that question as a hypothetical, but it didn't resolve the question. Just to be clear. Or not be clear, but for the police chief. Councillor Glover reference Taco or excuse me the mayor reference Taco Bell at being closed now how significant will that be for stuff that goes on around that area. I think it's too early to tell Council Member crown. It certainly could be significant. However, now without a capable guardianship over that property. That may actually have the opposite effect over time. Because it before you had people in there who could call the police who had video cameras that were operational and so forth. So until that gets torn down and developed, it could become a blight problem in the city for right now. It seems like it's doing okay. We're not getting an increase in calls for service there. And there's it appears to be this antidotally fewer people hanging out. But I want to see it over time before I can say that that's going to be effective effective use of that property. Thanks. And I just wanted to say anecdotally and my two walk along ride alongs with the police. They took big bottles fifths of gin and vodka off the two people in two different situations. Which I think is a bigger issue than than single use beers and which I would just have a problem with as far as if we're going to exempt them craft beers and not other single use beers. So I think that's why I put that forward. I had a very interesting conversation with the manager at Trader Joe's. And from his perspective, it is pretty dire the situation as far as stolen alcohol. They have a store policy where no employee can confront anyone who is stealing alcohol, can't go after him, nothing. In fact, someone was fired at another Trader Joe's for confronting someone for stealing alcohol. He himself saw someone steal two bottles of tequila and went to him and said, hey, could you bring those back? And he says, I don't have anything. And the guy just kept walking. And he was saying the word is out that, you know, this is what the situation at Trader Joe's, which I find really disturbing. But I'm not sure what exactly to do with that information other than that this exists, you know, this situation exists. And Trader Joe's does a good job of burying the alcohol now in the middle of the aisle and it's not near the door, either of the doors or anything. I know I said, well, what about a security guard? And he said, well, corporate wouldn't want that. That gives the wrong impression of what kind of store we are. So I don't know. And I know we've worked with CVS to get a security guard or maybe it's a security guard for the whole shopping center. I don't know if it's just for CVS. So I think my understanding is that social impacts of density of alcohol outlets, the length of time they're open usually have an implication in terms of our society. And that you do have more people accessing alcohol, more people under the influence of alcohol. And that's not really what I think we want or are trying to strive for. So I support the recommendation to change the time frame. I also, I don't really, I'm not sure if I follow the single consumption conversation in regards to the craft beers and then the noncraft beers, but in terms of all single use. I mean, so in terms of that distinction, either you're going to have single use potentially or not have a single use, but to have it just for beer seem somewhat are sort of strange to me. Do you want to clarify that in terms of, because a single use could be as indicated, hard alcohol, wine or whatnot? Right. And we originally, given the direction in 2017, our original thought was just to prohibit the sale of single serving containers. But then the issue of our local craft breweries came up. And since a lot of our local stores do make a point of carrying our local products, we wanted to have that exception just because of the support for the local industry. I don't know enough about the overall problems with alcohol to be able to say whether allowing beer but not other single serve alcohol would be enough, would do what we wanted to do by that prohibition. I just don't have that information. And if I could add, I think if the council is heading towards the direction of allowing single serve beer of any type, then it also raises the question about other single serving types, you know, whether that's hard cider or the alcohol seltzers or if that is malt liquor, for example. Are those included? Are those not? Some of the considerations early on, if we were excluding one, how would we differentiate, you know, if we say over a certain alcohol percentage, for example, well, there are certain beers that are very high alcohol content. And so I think if the council is going in that direction, there should be some discussion about exactly what you would want to allow in terms of not just beer, but also does that allow for hard cider? Does that allow for malt liquor? Does that allow for other types like the white claw seltzer that has alcohol in it? I'll just say that I think that that's one of my concerns, too, with this, is that a lot of craft beer can have very high alcohol percentages, and other types of domestic beers can have actually like lower alcohol percentages. So if we're making an exception for beer that costs more and has, if the arguments we're trying to keep people from consuming these products because they're going to be, you know, potentially more neighborate on Pacific Ave. If we're giving them access to alcohol with higher content in terms of craft beer and not providing an option for lower content, then one could say that we're actually, you know, providing access to single-serve alcohol that has the potential for having more adverse effects on individuals. And so I think it, and that's why I think it's, you know, from my perspective, you know, providing domestic and craft was the intent of that. It also, you know, it's come to my attention as well that this doesn't preclude people from purchasing packages. So if there's a six-pack or what have you, it doesn't preclude them from that. But I do know that for some craft breweries, they do sell larger volumes in single-serve, and some of those are our local industry. So that may be the issue that's occurring here. So I don't know how others feel, but that's... And just responding to Lee Butler's, when we're just talking about beer, beer is beer. Isn't there a definition for that? So the others would not be included. It's only single-use craft beer or, I don't know, corporate beer. We're even going to call that Budweiser, et cetera. So I think that's the only, and I think if we have a report back in six months, four months, that it says, talks about arrests, talks about what's going on, you know, in that area, I think the council would be amenable to changing this direction. In terms of the report back, I'm a little concerned that any statistics we would bring you would be hard to interpret because we've got the other factor of the Taco Bell closing. So we might bring you statistics that seem to indicate something, but we wouldn't be able to tell what was the cause, whether it had to do with our ordinance or with Taco Bell closing. That may be true, however, we're not looking at just that intersection. If we're looking at the crime data, we're looking at the entire downtown area, not just one location. I don't believe this is targeted just towards one business. This is, we're looking at all the outlets. If you do have more questions about the environmental changes that we're suggesting at CVS and some of the other stores make downtown, you know, Sergeant Jones is here and he can certainly address those as well because we are trying to deal with that side of the problem because, frankly, a lot of this does come from theft. And so it's kind of a very complex problem, but we would give you data from as much data as we can pull from all the downtown area, not just one intersection. This got way more complicated than I expected. And it seems to me, I think we want to move forward with most of what's here. And so one possibility would be just to prohibit the sale of single-serve containers, period, and get rid of the exception for the craft beers and all that other stuff. Keep it clean. I'm happy to do that. Is this a friendly? Yeah, it will. Kind of want to get a read, but I would be happy to change my original motion to say. Move the staff report as presented with removing the exception for craft beers. Or we could just vote on the amendment up or down and then vote on the main motion. I'll allow Councilmember Watkins and then Vice Mayor Myers and then we can vote on the amendment. My understanding is the interest really is around the removal of the single use access. And the craft beers was sort of an exception to try to support the local industry. But the overall intention was to, in general, have that be less available. So I followed the logic and I appreciate that. I also wanted to make sure I was clear. Did you, Chief Mills, say that CVS is open until midnight? And I know that there was a proposal to have it at one, but it's also recommended to close at 11. So I'm wondering if we want to change it to midnight for consistency. The CVS is open until midnight and the proposal would not require that CVS close at midnight just that they not sell alcohol beyond 11 p.m. Oh, this would apply to them. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I think my, thank you for clarifying that. I think I'm fine with the amendment around the single use. I think that makes sense. But I do share the Chief's sort of goal in terms of really trying to ramp down availability into the later parts, especially at 1 a.m. So I think if we are going to kind of be looking at this as something we might get some information on, see how it's working. There's a lot of moving pieces in this. I'd be much more supportive of going with the 11 p.m. stop right now rather than starting at 1 and trying to go backwards. So that would just be my hope. Just say that the idea of, you know, if we're going to do prohibition, then it should be, I think either we are going to have to figure out which ones we would include or we do a prohibition. So I'm happy to go on that route. I do still think though that having a later time would at least midnight would help for the fact that some people even get off work late and need somewhere to go purchase alcohol. And then the other concern I have is that if people are drinking and want to access something that they can take to their house, that they're not inclined to then get into a car to drive to you save or days or any of the safe ways around town which are open. And that folks who live in that area can easily access some of those stores by walking rather than getting in their cars. And so that's the real big concern I have around the 11 p.m. cut off. And then I had councilmember Brown and councilmember Glover. Yeah, so I, this has been a longer discussion than I anticipated as well. I am inclined to say, again, I don't have a strong opinion about whether we, with respect to single serving containers, it's all or none. But I understand that the logic that the, you know, the police chief has suggested that there may be a problem there and or there likely is. So I'm, I would be fine with the prohibition on all single serving containers with a report back. I get recognizing that we won't be able to make any, you know, causal determinations, but we can at least get a sense of where things are going from your perspective. Perhaps in six months after the prohibition, I would like to give businesses time to kind of with other, other regulatory changes we make. We give time for the business to sell whatever their current stock is. So if we could just make that possible, if that's the direction we go. The amortization period is until October. Well, that's right. It isn't here until October. Thank you. So, so we should consider that also in terms of the data. Anything we take from now to October will be inconclusive. Oh, correct. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me about that. So our report back six months from the date that this is fully implemented would seems like it would be reasonable. In terms of the hours, I agree with the mayor. You know, I think if we really want to think about how to address the concern that we have that in the direction that the previous city council provided about limiting the impact of alcohol sales. I think that allowing people to purchase alcohol when they're getting out of the bars at a location that does not require people to drive. When their, you know, their faculties are impaired is makes sense to me in terms of actually addressing the concerns we have. So I think that, you know, you having a one p one a.m. cut off time and seeing how that goes is makes sense to me. Over. Thank you. I support the later time for all the reasons that were mentioned. Also, I do want to acknowledge the intention of past council direction in supporting our local craft brew businesses. And I want to, you know, I don't want to have that be kind of pushed out of the conversation because of the complexity of identifying which single serves and which and not which single serves. I would like for us to say all single beer is exempted across craft and domestic distributors. But everything else for the time being like wine and liquor and all that other kind of stuff could be prohibited until after the data came back from the six months after the implementation of the policy. So I think with if we are able to extend the time to one one a.m. to avoid people unnecessarily driving and incorporate exemption for all single serve beers to be able to support our local businesses. Then that should be a good place to start personally. I guess what my only thought was the midnight seemed like a better hour to me because the longer of a place is open serving alcohol in an area where you have more density alcohol outlets usually leads to more alcohol consumption at a later time. And so for me in terms of the intention behind this and the locations in terms of access. I mean, we know density of access to healthy foods or other types of pro healthy type activities is the things that we want to move towards not necessarily density and length of time for more alcohol outlets personally. So for me, I think a compromise could be midnight. But I think the intention is to not have as much consumption at that late of hour. And in regards if I if I if I could maybe get clarification in regards customer Glover. We're you suggesting to add back in the craft brews into the exemption. No, the exemption to allow all single serve beers so that you were specifically saying beer yes just beers so that it's not discriminatory against people that can't afford single serve craft beers and allows for people to have access to just beer but limits the amount of liquor and wine that people can consume or purchase in those areas. So just to interject one of the things I'm hearing some can some consensus on is that there is a possibility that we can reduce the hours to midnight and add back in beer. And the impact of which would be that we're not discriminating one against people who can't afford expensive beer but then to we're also supporting our local breweries. And so for those other those other types of alcohol that were mentioned like malt liquor the spritzers and some of these other types of alcohol, we don't really have local industries that produce and manufacture those types of drinks. So given given that I think that maybe there's some area of consensus around this that where we would be able to limit the time to midnight and then bring back in all types of beer. So and there were two more comments one by Matthews the other microne. Well basically there are a million moving parts to this thing and I am interested in doing the things that we have to do tattoos and so forth. And get some improvement on the offsite alcohol sales I am willing to change the hours to end at 12 midnight. I do think that's reasonable cut cut back on on the cut off time. And I'm fine to go back to beer only with the exception of beer that will be some improvement. Maybe not what everybody wants but so I will modify my original motion to say that regarding the operational criteria. It would limit the hours of alcohol sales to between 7am and midnight. And prohibiting sale of single serving containers with the exception of beer. I appreciate that council member Matthews. But it did occur to me about hard cider and we do have quite a market. We do. So that's not that's not part of this and we don't want to exempt local hard cider. If I may make a comment on that is that this is just for single serve. And so I think that for local hard cider if people wanted to for example grab a six pack of hard cider they would be able to do so at that time. But they wouldn't be able to have a single serve. And so I think that kind of as our colleagues have mentioned you know trying to take a step forward and moving in a positive direction that this might be a compromise for now. And then we can get a sense of whether or not for example folks who are producing cider being negatively impacted. And I just want to point out as well it seems like the craft brew industries who reached out to us. And I think that we're covering them. Some of those do also produce ciders. But if their main the main product that producing is craft beer then I think that that wouldn't be as big of an impact on those businesses. So this might be a way for us to be able to move forward on this at this point in time. I'll withdraw my amendment. And vice mayor Myers. I was going to make another comment about cider but let's move on. I just want to before we vote. I do think it's really important to have some type of evaluation around the original proposal from the staff and specifically the police chief around the stopping of the sales at 11pm. So I don't want to lose track of that. And I think we need to just make sure that I don't want to put it in the motion but I'm just hoping that staff is clear that we should we do need to evaluate that. And I'm not going to vote no but I think that's you know really important part of what we're trying to do here. And I just want to just ask for point of clarification. Or I guess I would just point out that I thought I heard the mayor suggest that malt liquor would be excluded from the definition of beer. I think you need to make that clear in the motion so that we can say in the regulation that beer excluding malt liquor be provided for sale maker of the motion. That detail is out of my wheelhouse. If I could get a comment. I would suggest that malt liquor in the other thing that you may want to consider is the size of the beer. Whether it's a gallon beer or a 12 ounce beer. I mean there's all kinds of large beers out there. It's an expert or anything but. I'm just going to add malt liquor and let it go at that. I think you're going to entertain a size at 24 ounce. Remember our goal here. I would just say that 40 ounces generally are malt liquor. So and I think that in general for what craft breweries are selling a single serve larger beers are generally around the size of 24 ounces. So let's put that out there. Thank you. I appreciate all of the movement and amendments or changes that people have made thus far to address the issue of discrimination. I would just caution that malt liquor and 40s as Councilman Brown so wonderfully said there are songs about it. Yes, they are usually the ones that are acquired by the poor individuals and lower income individuals because you're paying less but you're still getting. Something for your money. So I'm a little hesitant with the inclusion of the prohibition of malt liquors associated with it and figuring out what the sizes are. I mean this gets into a longer conversation and I know that we need to move forward. But it's just something for us to be conscious about is that malt liquor is usually a focus of poor people when they're consuming alcohol. So if we prohibit malt liquor it's better than prohibiting all domestic or low cost beer as opposed to craft beer but there are still aspects of potential socio-economic discrimination in the restriction of malt liquor. I believe Councilmember Meyers suggested that or Councilmember Matthews excuse me suggested that it would be beer and malt liquor exempted from the prohibition. No. I thought it was the other way. So beer but not so only beer not malt liquor. Not malt liquor. Did I? Yes, that's what you said. That's what I understand. That's why I made that statement because it's still discriminatory. Anyway, liquor from the exam show. That's what the motion is. Is there a definition for malt liquor? I don't know. Yes. As opposed to beer. Understand. But sometimes the craft beers are at, I don't know, eight, nine, 10 percent. Malt liquor is a type of beer that additional sugar or syrup is added to to fortify the alcohol content. And I do believe just from a quick search that malt liquor may have higher alcohol contents than average beer. I mean, and this gets back to the conversation of craft beers and how they have higher contents of alcohol than your average beer. But if we're restricting people to only being able to purchase say Coors and Budweiser, which average to be I think between five and five nine and their alcohol content. Is that equitable if people can buy higher content craft beers, but not higher content domestic or low income beers in the same establishments? One thing if I could, if I may, that I would add is that the benefit is to not have people under the influence to the degree that they could be. So in the end, I think it's a healthy direction to move in this way, regardless of the type of beer and alcohol content. I mean, there will still be access. And the hope is that there won't necessarily be, as to the level that we've seen, cereal and ebriets accessing more alcohol. Hopefully they can access more healthier options and less alcohol use. It's a big issue. But given that, I would like to call a question. There's a call to question by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Cron. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Aye. So now to vote on the item, which is- Yeah, what's the vote? Oh, that one. There you need to vote on the item. Okay. So the motion, my understanding is to accept the staff recommendations for the downtown amendments with the exception of the hours being from 7 a.m. to midnight. And also prohibition on singles serve alcohol with the exception of beer minus malt liquor. All those in favor? All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The passing unanimously. All right. Moving on to our next item. General business item number 19, amendments to the Santa Cruz municipal code section 15.38.010 and section 15.38.30.030 regarding small cell wireless facilities. And I'll turn it over to the City Attorney. Yes, the request is to continue this item to your February 11th, 2020 meeting. Late last year, the council directed that we return with a certain amendments to the existing small cell wireless ordinance. And we have been working on that, but it was not ready for the agenda packet. So the recommendation is to merely continue this item to February 11th. So that moves us on to our next item, which is the Newell Creek Dam Inlet Outlet Replacement Project, approval of plans and specifications, authorization to advertise for bids and award contract. Our presenters today are Heidi Luckenbach, Deputy Director of Water Engineering and Management. And we also have our Water Director, Rosemary Menard here today. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. I'm just going to give you a very brief introduction for this item. As noted, Heidi Luckenbach, our Deputy Director for Engineering is here, but also the project manager, Leah VanderMottin. And they're going to give you a quick overview presentation of this particular project. We asked to put this on the general business agenda for today, because this is a project that has a price tag about in the neighborhood of 60 plus million dollars. And it seemed really important for there to be at least an opportunity for presenting what the project is going to do and kind of how far we've come in all of the work to get us here. It's a key project, one of the first of the big projects that we've been working on. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Heidi and to Leah. Hi, my name is Leah VanderMottin, as Rosemary said. I'm an engineer with the Water Department and the project manager for the Noel Creek Dam Inlet Outlet Replacement Project. As said, we're asking for you guys to approve the construction contract documents today, the plans and specs, and also authorize staff to advertise for bids and award contract. So I'll provide a brief project overview and then I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. So to provide a little bit of history here, the Noel Creek Dam was built in the early 1960s as part of the overall water system expansion project. And that included the Graham Hill Water Treatment Plant. These together have brought water supply reliability to the city and both a combination of being able to have the storage from Loch Lomond Reservoir and the treatment. So the Noel Creek Dam impounds Loch Lomond Reservoir. And this is our only water storage facility, our surface water storage facility. And it's extremely important for supplementing our water supply during peak season demands and during heavy rains when other water sources are more difficult to treat. Dam safety is a priority for us. The dam is routinely monitored by city staff, consultants, our consultants, and also Division of Safety of Dams, our regulatory agency. DSOD is what we often refer to them as, requires regular monitoring and reporting. And as needed, they can require rehabilitation or replacement of certain elements of the dam. I just wanted to reiterate that the dam we manage is safe and do in large part because we have a rigorous ONM program and we work closely with DSOD. This picture here shown on the slide is a photo of not too distant repair we made on our spillway as a result of an inspection prompted by DSOD for all dams. And with our spillway we showed very minor wear and tear. Just an example of how we work with DSOD. So with that said, that kind of brings us to this project. In the inlet outlet of the dam has aged and it is out of compliance with the modern standards and is required by DSOD to rehabilitate or replace. And this project started back in 2015. And at that time we were looking at both rehabilitation and replacement. And early on in the design phase we decided to move forward with replacement for a number of reasons. We did a thorough comparative analysis and determined that replacement was ideal for a number of reasons. We had the least operational impacts during construction on our water supply. There's no extended disruptions to the city's water supply. Significantly greater infrastructure life for replacement. It would also ensure that we could meet the current DSOD drawdown requirements in the event of an emergency. There are fewer construction unknowns with replacement. And it also, there's a number of enhancements that we're making with this project that increase the city's operational flexibility of the facility. And so access to the site and environmental stewardship is also improved. So just to orient you, this photo here shows, first or show up, okay. So you can see Lachloman Reservoir here. And here's the crest of the dam, existing control building here. And this is also at same locations where the proposed control building will go. Here is the downstream face of the dam and down at the bottom is the toe of the dam. And so this will help for some next slides. So here is one component of the inlet outlet works. This is the outlet structure. As you can see in this picture. And just to make sure everyone's aware of the purpose of the inlet outlet works. We use it to not only just allow for operational and emergency releases from the dam, but we also use it to inlet component is diverting water from San Lorenzo River and pumping it into the reservoir. We also convey water out of the reservoir to the Graham Hill Water Treatment Plant. We make releases for in-stream flow requirements for creek habitat. And those are all done through the inlet outlet works. So it's a critical component. So the proposed construction project has, we have a 3D video that you guys can look up on the website, the project website. Here's one shot from it. This project will be one of the most expensive and technically challenging projects in the water department's history. It includes a tunnel, as you can see highlighted here, that goes around the dam and into the reservoir. So it starts down at the toe of the dam about 1500 feet and ends in the reservoir. There are three vertical inlets here at different depths that allow us to collect water, different water quality, and also provide redundancy. The outlet structure, the proposed outlet structure is here in this orange color, here's the existing. And some of the improvements I was talking about will have a culvert crossing, which allows us to not drive through the creek anymore to access the facility. We've raised it up, so it's out of the flood zones. One of the things just involves, you can see there's quite a bit of earthwork dredging in the reservoir, earthwork down and grading down at the toe of the dam. So here is a timeline of kind of where we came from and up till today. We have just some milestones here. Like I said, in 2015 it was started with planning. It was in 2017, we completed 10% design, 2018 50% design. And that was also the time when we decided to move forward with replacement. We also started our state revolving fund loan application in 2018, which was, you guys have heard about before. In 2019, we had a number of meetings with the Water Commission presentations. In May 2019, the city council certified the EIR. And in September, we finished the 100% design. Here's a schedule of the project through completion. If approved, we will begin the bid period right away and it will be done in March. Regulatory permitting will also be expected to be completed in March. Award and notice to proceed in April, completing the final, the financial agreement with the loan with the state. In May, substantial completion will be about two years later and project close out April or August 2022. That's all the information about funding. As I said, we are just about done with our application process with the state drinking water revolving fund loan, which is a low interest rate loan. We're using Corolo, a consultant that's helping us navigate this application process and help make sure we comply with everything. There will be federally funded rules associated with this loan. And the anticipated package sign off eligibility date would be May 2020. Do you have any questions? Are there any questions for staff? Seeing none, I'd just like to say that seems like a pretty daunting project. So, cool congratulations on the design and best of luck. I'm sure we're going to love to hear how this project goes over time. Is there any member of the public who would like to speak on this item at this time? Seeing none, I'll return back to council for action and deliberation. Vice Mayor Myers. Is there questions of staff or anyone who is going to go ahead and just move the recommendation? Second that. So it's motion by. Go ahead. You can read it. So I'll move to approve the plan specifications and contract documents for the Neal Creek Dam inlet and inlet slash outlet replacement project and authorized staff to advertise for bids and award the contract in a form to be approved by the city attorney. The city manager is hereby authorized and directed to execute the contract as authorized by resolution number NS-27563. It's a motion by Vice Mayor Myers, seconded by Mayor Cummings. All those in favor, any for the discussion? Just a quick comment. I just, I want to thank staff. I tend to do this when I look at these projects and you bring us a presentation that really helps us make sense of these project that is a massive scale. And so I just want to say that I think for the general public that's that's listening. This is a huge undertaking and it's necessary one. It is going to have a really significant long-term impact on our ability to have a secure water supply. And so I just want to highlight that and say, you know, there's really no way to express how massive and daunting of a project it is. And I'm really glad that you all are, we have capable, capable stewards of our water system on our staff. Basically my comments as well, this could have gone on consent. You can see there's zero controversy on this. And it's really a testimony to all the work and the confidence we have in our staff to bring this forward. Just to say that this, the history given to us in our staff report, I recommend it for reading. Over 12 city council actions moving this forward over a period of five years for this project alone. And it's impressive. And thank you. Are there any other comments by council members? So I'll call the vote. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Maybe for our next item, I'll give council members and our staff a five minute break. And so we'll come back at 2.15. The direction that we're following from the, there it is. We are following from the last two times we appeared before the city council on this item about the general plan and our zoning ordinance and the level of development capacity that are accommodated in each document. So first I'll go through the direction that we got at the last meeting on November 26th. We were directed to do some information gathering about the number of units that might be, that are currently sort of accommodated and planned for in the general plan versus what the existing zoning, if we take, make an assumption about the existing zoning, how many units are zoned for in that area. And then also thinking about properties or locations or alternative configurations where the delta of those units might be reallocated throughout the city. And then secondly we're also, we have an update on our direction that we got on October 22nd about the objective standards grant that we submitted. So a little more background to the, in answering this first question about what's the sort of existing development capacity in the mixed use high density area along Soquel and Water. We need to take a look at the way that the zoning code and the general plan work together to regulate development. So there are, in the zoning code, they, in the CC zone district, there is actually no density that's stated for development of residential units when they're part of a mixed use project. So when a mixed use project is proposed on a CC zone site, that development is essentially regulated via site standards by the height that's in the zoning code, the setbacks that are in the zoning code, the parking requirement, and then also additionally the floor area ratio, which is established in the general plan. A floor area ratio, we call it an FAR, so I will be using that jargon. I apologize, I know it's going to slip out. So a floor area ratio is a ratio between the area of a building and the site on which that building sits. So a floor area ratio of one means that the building covers 100% of the site to a level of one story. A floor area ratio of two would cover 100% of the site to a height of two stories. So very few buildings that we would allow to be built actually cover 100% of the site because we require parking, we require setbacks. So you can start to see how a floor area ratio combined with the height limit sort of gives you an envelope of how a building might fit on a site and how that bulk might be regulated. So that is currently the way that we regulate mixed use development in the city on any CC-zoned property, which those are a long mission, soquel, water, and parts of ocean. So in answering the first question from the city council about what's the development capacity in the general plan versus the development capacity addressed in the zoning code, you know, for mixed use projects there really is no difference. They are the same because the both documents work together to regulate that intensity. So in answering that question we considered the standard that applies for residential only project. So we do allow in our CC zone district with a use permit the construction of residential only projects. So apartment buildings or condos, and we have a standard for those. They have to meet the same standard as our RM zone district, which has a density between 30 and 39 units per acre. So considering that as our standard and then relying on the methodology that was included as an attachment to the staff report for estimating the capacity of development that's contained in the FAR found in the general plan. We came up with an estimate of about between 2,500 and 2,600 units that could currently be accommodated in those 91 sites along water and soquel that are currently designated for mixed use high density in the general plan and zone for community commercial development. So comparing that to the RM zone district standards that would apply for residential only projects in the CC that gives us a delta of about 1,600 units that are accommodated in the general plan versus what is currently zoned for in the zoning if we take that point of view. So that's not an insignificant number of dwelling units and your council had asked for options of where they might, where those units might be reallocated or also other ways in which we could allocate them. And we've provided you with a pretty long list of 23 different options, different patterns of development that could be established in the city. And that list was generated through ideas that we've heard from the public in the past, ideas that have been floated in the media, tools that have been used by other jurisdictions, both currently and in the past. Every one of them has pros and cons, right, and they would, as you could see sort of reading through the list, they would generate some really different land use patterns with really different causes and effects. So at this point we're not recommending any one of them. We haven't done the math about how many of them we would need to use or which ones to accommodate, you know, a total of 1,600 units. Again, as we've said many times and I'm sure your council is well aware, this would require a general plan amendment because we can't show any loss of development capacity under our general plan within our boundaries. So obviously that could trigger additional environmental review if we change the pattern that was initially considered. And we would want to have really inclusive and equitable community engagement and it's a relatively long process, making that kind of a change to the pattern and the maps that we have. So the next thing that I'd really like to talk about is our progress that we've been making on our RFP for objective development standards. When we were here in November, we said we'd gotten staff level approval and we were hoping to have word from the state any day now that we had gotten the money and that is the same answer we have now. We've gotten staff level approval and we've had some back and forth with the state. They asked for a little bit of additional information on a certain couple of things and we are sort of expecting at any moment that we will be, those funds will be released to us and we'll be able to issue the RFP. We have a draft of our RFP but we're still kind of working through it right now, thinking about all the different ways that this project could go. We've been looking around at some of our existing objective standards. The example shown here is actually from our downtown plan and thinking about what are the key features as we develop objective standards for multifamily housing. What are the kinds of things that we want to think about? How have other places done this because we're not inventing the wheel here. This has happened elsewhere before so we've been kind of looking around for examples and thinking about that project. I should just mention we have done sort of the initial step in thinking about the outreach that would happen around this project. We started with a list of potentially affected interests and identified a bunch of different groups and individuals and categories of folks that we would want to include in our engagement and address their interests even if we couldn't include them. For example, children is one of the potentially affected interests as we develop standards for multifamily housing. These are places where lots of children are going to grow up. So we want to be thinking about how are we accommodating that interest even if they aren't maybe actively participating in our community engagement. We did that early on because we want to include that with our RFP. When we send our request for proposals out we want to make consultants aware of sort of the breadth and depth of community engagement that we are hoping to pursue with this project. So that was also included with your agenda report that initial sort of draft list of potentially affected interests. And in thinking about this project we are getting pretty excited that this is really an opportunity for creating high quality design at some really visible sites around Santa Cruz. Multifamily housing really contributes a lot to the character of a place a lot of people live in multifamily housing. So we want to have these standards be things that really reflect Santa Cruz and really accommodate a lot of different points of view. So we've been looking around the way that some other places address the need for objective standards. And I brought an example here from Redwood City. So yes, this is a jurisdiction over the hill so it's a little bit of a different scale than what we would expect here in Santa Cruz. But I just thought this was interesting. They actually have regulations for architectural character and they define six styles of architectural character and then they allow them in different locations based on this map. They also have specific regulations for public front edges that vary based on the type of street if it's a side street or a primary street or a boulevard that has like a median. They have specific standards for building placement and landscaping and height and where how buildings are sighted on the parcel. So this one is like very detailed. I don't know that our project would be able to get this detailed depending on, you know, based on the budget that we have. And it's still kind of just interesting to think about we could actually potentially regulate architectural character in an objective way. So what they've done here, so we have this map on the first this identifies zones and then the bottom piece here that you'll see and this isn't really large enough to read. But it just you can kind of get the idea that these different zones have names and different architectural styles are permitted in different zones and prohibited in certain zones. And so the very last the very bottom row here is the contemporary architectural style, which is the cut sheet that I pulled on the top. And you'll see that's really only allowed in one part of their downtown. They don't allow it elsewhere. They want things to be neoclassical or craftsman or Victorian and sort of reflect other parts of their city's history and character. So, and then what they in this particular plan, this was written, you know, sort of pre housing accountability act in 2011. So it does include guidelines, a lot of guidelines rather than strictly standards. And I think that a lot of these guidelines could pretty easily be converted into standards. And this is still a pretty good model, I think, for us to be looking at as we move into this project of, you know, providing really clear examples of like this type of window, this type of balcony, this type of awning. This is, you know, this is what we're looking for. And these are the regulations that describe these things. So I'll just show you now, oh, and then this is also, this is another sheet from one of the building, one of the sections about facade regulations. And I just wanted to point out they have different facade regulations on different street types, which I just think is really interesting. And sort of one of those things that really creates neighborhood character, how wide is the sidewalk and how does the width of the sidewalk relate to the height of the building and how do you feel as you walk down the street. So those are the kind of things that we're thinking about with this project. And so this is a project that came in on, this is on El Camino Real. And this is not a bad development project. It's in the contemporary style. It reminds me of the library that was at my university. You know, it has kind of an institutional feel. It's not a bad project. And this was the proposal before they had fully complied with the requirements of the downtown plan in Redwood City. And this is the after. So after they've gotten full compliance, the building has changed. It's still relatively the same mass and square footage. And the building looks different, it relates to the street in a different way. And to me, I drastically prefer the second one. Again, this is a different scale than maybe something we would expect to see in most neighborhoods in Santa Cruz. But I think it is sort of interesting to think that like this is, you can write objective standards that can get you from here to here. And that is what we are going to be looking to do with this RFP is looking for consultants that can help us get to this level of detail. So with that, our recommendation is that your council accept the monthly report on the general plan and zoning ordinance reconciliation effort. And we are available for any questions. Thank you very much for your presentation. Are there any council members who have questions at this time for our city staff on this item? I just want to make a quick comment. I and I'll make other comments in a bit, but I don't have specific questions right now, mostly because the report is very thorough and kind of provides an opening for further discussion. And I have lots of questions, but I don't think there are questions I would, you know, ask you to try to answer right now because I think there's a lot more conversation to be had. So that's what I do. So it's not that I'm not engaged. I do appreciate all of your work. And I'd like to hear from the public. I just have one, just I think the report. Let me just make sure the RFP has been issued or not? No, it hasn't been issued yet. We don't have the money yet from the state. So we're hesitating to release the RFP until we actually have the money. And I guess just based on your presentation just now. And really what I think is the thing that are, you know, a lot of people in our community are struggling with is, is this the sense that these things, you know, these, these new developments are going to change, you know, the character. So I really appreciate you pointing out how other jurisdictions are starting to think about this. When you do an RFP like this, are you able to just sort of describe our existing kind of land use situation here where we have, you know, a lot of, a lot of single family homes that are now budding up to sort of, you know, these, these areas that may be looked at for mixed use or other. You know, I think it's important that we, when we do this process that we are hiring a group that acknowledges the uniqueness of our land use pattern here and the types of, the different types of neighborhoods we have. And so are you able to articulate that in the RFP? I mean, is that something you guys have thought about in looking at that? Yeah, I mean, so to a certain extent we can articulate that in the RFP. And then I think, you know, to the sort of more helpful piece is that as we select a consultant, you know, step one is going to be a tour of the city and really talking about, you know, these specific locations and looking at those interactions and edges as they happened, you know, between neighborhoods and other, between neighborhoods and then between neighborhoods and commercial districts. So yeah, I mean that's definitely something that we're thinking about. And I think to the extent that we can put it as part of our scoring criteria, we'd want to look for firms that have worked with other smaller jurisdictions, you know, that don't have exclusively experienced in like really large, metropolitan areas because Santa Cruz is kind of a different place, you know, it's a different, it's a special place that has different special features about it. So that is definitely something that we're thinking about and thinking about how we, you know, articulate that really elegantly in the RFP. Yeah, I would just, yeah, as much as we can to really, to really find the kind of consultant that really can take the uniqueness of the community in place. Thank you. Are there any other comments by members of the council? Seeing none, I'll open it up to public comment. Is there any member of the public who would like to comment on this item? If so, please step forward. You'll have two minutes. Hey, my name is, excuse me, Mayor Cummings, Vice Mayor Myers and council members. My name is Allison Russell. I'm a longtime resident of Santa Cruz and a small business owner here. Thanks for this opportunity to provide input on where density might be focused in our city. I believe the city should prioritize the following seven points. The first one is traffic. Density will make existing traffic problems worse, particularly without new transit solutions. The city has already identified some intersections as being nearly impossible to fix. These include so-called Seabright as well as Seabright and Murray, which for this reason, please do not add density to Seabright, which is not a transit corridor, and it's not wide. And that's strategy number two. I have numbers of strategies that I'm writing about. In addition, please elevate traffic as a key element in density planning. It's very important. Number two, keep buildings over two stories out of residential neighborhoods. Focus density in and near downtown, which already has more of an urban character, as well as a transportation hub and also along River Street. And that is your list of land use strategies seven and eight. The third of my points helps students lower their carbon footprint by focusing some density close to the university. That is strategies 16 and 17. Four, incorporate density into larger semi-industrial areas, including on the west side, and that is your land use strategy number 10. Five, the affordable housing development near Water and Brant's 40 is a good example of density that is not overwhelming. Please keep developments to that size or smaller and emphasize quality of life and design. Density development should work alongside. I just have a few more minutes. I'm sorry, if you could just submit your comments to. Sure. Okay, that went quickly. I thought I had more time. All right. Thank you. Speaker. Mayor Cummings, Vice Mayor Meyers, and members of the council. My name is Walt Wadlow. I reside on the east side on Sumner Street. Regarding this item, if I were sitting among you, I might feel that the effort reviewed density transfer within the city of Santa Cruz is potentially overwhelming for a city that faces so many challenges and opportunities. With regard to the effort, the time required and the potential expense, I'd like to very briefly share a cautionary tale and also some encouragement. I joined the city's water commission about 10 years ago as the effort to help develop desal was coming to fruition. In a meeting with the then department director, I asked if the public truly understood and was engaged in the desalination project. I was told that there had been plenty of opportunities for comment through prior formal processes and it would be far too expensive and take too long to engage in new outreach. A few months later, the efforts of an organized community group and public reaction to potential construction of facilities on West Cliff resulted in a vote on an amendment to the city charter, putting desalination on the back burner and the establishment of a citizen advisory committee after thousands of dollars had been spent taking us down the path towards desalination. That's the cautionary part of my tale. Now the encouragement. The plan that was developed through the citizen advisory committee from the community, true authentic outreach by the current department director and her staff, have resulted in a sustainable path forward for the water supply of Santa Cruz that has broad community support. As a member affiliated with Save Santa Cruz and a number of the other interest groups identified by staff, I encourage you to take the time to develop a plan for housing, especially affordable housing that can absolutely be supported by the community. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker. Members, my name is Kirby Wilkins. I represent Coastal Havens Families on Golf Club Drive. That is building residences for disabled family members. That's in process right now. And when I looked at your list of land use strategies, number three, add additional capacity to Golf Club Drive is the only item on here that has no supporting rationale. So my question is, why is it on here? There's no way to look at this and know why it was added to this list. So that's my question. And I think all of us on Golf Club would appreciate knowing why it's there. I think that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next speaker. Hello, I'm Nate Alex, dot Kennedy at gmail.com. And if you want to call me three, four, six, nine, eight, eight, eight. And beyond that, what I got to say is the land, the dirt in Santa Cruz is worth an excessive amount like New York City amount. And yet we don't have any really tall buildings anywhere in the town, you know, aside from maybe 1010 Pacific and they're limited to five stories when what we need to do just to bring the cost of housing down by having more than enough housing for everybody that wants to be here. And we need to make it so that buildings like that can go at least 10 stories without even needing any special permits or anything. And I would love, love, love, love to see a few skyscrapers come up in this town. We're talking 50 to even 100 stories high. One of those towers would be able to fit half the population of Santa Cruz just like that. Suddenly there'd be so many beds open that we wouldn't be stuck paying a couple grand a month just to have a tiny little studio to call home. And also, no, I need to stick with the subject. That's right. But I think the thing to do is, you know, just zoning ordinances all over town. We need to at least double how high people can build because when people start building double high, we have twice as much space available for people to stay at. So, and I know a lot of people even drew himself have been against big growth in this town, but that's not something I agree with. I think Santa Cruz is now a population of about 50,000 people roughly. I would love to see Santa Cruz become a town of at least 200,000 people. And the only way that we're going to have housing to fit that to fit four times the population is to be able to build bigger. Vote Tom 2020. Before you approach, Mike, is there anyone else who would like to speak on this item? Okay, so you'll be our last speaker. Thank you. Good afternoon, council members. I just wanted to encourage you all to be thinking about the objective standards and really working quickly to move forward with the process of engaging with the community on developing those. I think we all realize that those standards are going to play a big role in what are our neighborhoods in our communities look like. And I think it's really important that we keep the eye on the prize on the objective standards and not sort of let that go by the wayside because as projects come online in the meantime, if we don't have objective standards, there's nothing we can do to stop bad projects from happening. I'm just encouraging you all to keep focused on the objective standards as far as densities and where development should go. I think I speak for a lot of affordable housing advocates when I say that it doesn't necessarily matter where just that we need that density. There's lots of issues with the capital of where like how something's going to be funded and whether or not development projects really are supporting affordable housing, but if we don't have the right sort of zoning in place to allow any kind of housing to be built, it's not going to matter if it's affordable or not because it's not going to get built anyway. So just keep on doing what you're doing and I hope that the community realizes that we can't reduce the density that's already in our general plan. We just have to accommodate it in the city somehow. Thank you. All right, we'll have our last speaker and come forward on this item. Good afternoon. I'm Scott Graham. The problem I see here is that as you go around town engaging the community with like wanting to put more density in different areas, there's going to be a lot of resistance to moving the density from the corridors plan to other places. And what it's going to, to me what's going to happen in the long run is we're going to go back to the corridors plan. That's going to as a default because nobody else is going to want the density in their neighborhoods. And so we're going to have resistance from all, you know, the people that originally resisted the corridors plan and the people that you're trying to move some of that density into are going to resist. And so then where do we put anything? And so to me, that's the big problem that needs to be ironed out here is how can we get density in multiple places that the community will actually agree to? Because right now I see that there's going to be resistance everywhere. Thank you. Bring it back to the council for action and deliberation. I think all we're doing is accepting at this point. Yeah, I actually have a motion. I have a question. So I don't think I'll interfere. I do think Scott nailed the issue before us. I'm really particularly interested in moving forward on the objective standards. And my impression is once we get the approval from the state, the funds will be released and you get going on that. Is that a correct statement? Yeah. Yeah. Our first step will be to release the RFP and start reviewing proposals. And just ballpark, what do you see as the timeframe for that? So what I've been laying out is that we would have, we would release the RFP and we would give people about, you know, between 20 and 30 days to respond. So depending on, you know, if the RFP can go out in February, then, you know, we'll get proposals back, you know, in beginning to mid-March. And then review the proposals and conduct interviews within a month of that. Maybe even within three weeks of that so that then we would be sort of starting our initial community out. We would be beginning our initial phase of the project in May or June. And so, you know, public outreach in the summer is sometimes a little tricky. So I think our real big push on community engagement would happen in the fall. We would probably do some focus groups and, you know, really flesh out that community engagement strategy and sort of do the objective analysis that would be required during the summer months. And then really begin our push on community engagement around these objective standards in the fall. And for the attachment three, which is the potentially affected interest, were you considering that for the outreach for the design standards or this was for the reallocation of density? So this was initially, so this list we are planning to refine just a little bit and then include with the RFP about the objective standards. Okay. And there would be a lot of overlap, you know, in a different project, but yes. Okay. That was just a question. I do think this will answer a lot of questions for us. And just going around to other communities and seeing what a well-designed building does with increased density, with its use in all kinds of different areas. That tells us what we can do with good standards. And that's what we've been missing. So I am excited to move forward with this. I think it's almost a precursor to accepting a level of change in the community. A well-designed contemporary building, I don't mean style, but in this day, compared to the kind of stuff from the 60s, you know, there's really no comparison. I just wanted to clarify timeline. And it sounds like although the realignment of density in other locations is a very long-term and challenging project, the design guidelines, design standards, sounds to be nothing simple in Santa Cruz, but more straightforward. Is that your understanding? That certainly are feeling about it, yeah. So, yeah, thank you for the report. And I agree with Council Member Matthews with respect. And Mr. Graham, you really did hit the nail on the head that we will face challenges with increased density in any part of our town. And that is something that we need to think about very carefully and really engage the community in those conversations. And I'm heartened to hear that there may be some ways to develop objective standards that do allow for us to maintain some local authority around design. And so thank you for the work you've done to kind of figure out how ways that we can move forward. So I look forward to hearing more about that. With respect to the piece, you know, this is also a monthly report on the general plan and zoning ordinance reconciliation effort as per the motion that was made, the direction that was given about the corridor's plan. So I would like to, because, you know, with all due respect and appreciation to staff, this is a pretty complicated, you know, but there's a lot of complications and a lot of complexity here. You know, I really appreciate your efforts to respond to the Council direction. I think that in many ways this report raises more questions. And I don't think that those are questions that we can kind of even begin to discuss here deliberate on and I know that's not the intention today. But I do think it would be helpful for us to get some help as we move through this process. And so I would like to make a motion that and I sent it to Bonnie. I'm sorry it didn't go through one that my council email so and I just saw that so I sent it to you just now from a different. So I do have a motion that is intended to accept the monthly staff report on the general plan and zoning ordinance reconciliation effort. And to send this to refer the report to the planning commission with a request that they provide recommendations to the council regarding options for moving forward with the reconciliation process. I think it's important to to ask our advisory bodies who while they're primarily planning commission is primarily about looking at projects. I think they do have a role to play in helping us with our land use and planning policy. And so I'd like to send it there and see if we can maybe they can provide some kind of additional help looking at the options looking at the you know the material that you've laid out asking questions there and then bringing up something that maybe provides a little more structure for our conversation. Second and I have a couple questions to. So we have a motion made by Council Member Brown seconded by Council Member Cron I also have a couple questions with regards to the motion and then also with regards to one of the public comments and I'm actually next on stack so I guess I'll go ahead. One of the questions I had the gentleman brought up of all the you know some of these different areas that are being expressed. There's additional capacity to golf club drive and just looking at a map and kind of thinking about this idea that we're going to increase density along our corridors golf club drive kind of seems like it's you know like it doesn't really fit that it doesn't look like the criteria it seems like for some of the other areas so like so Cal water mission some of these really active areas and golf club drive is you know kind of off highway nine kind of going up towards Poggan up and it's kind of offset in this you know it's it's not an area that even currently has much density to it and so I'm kind of wondering why that would be an area. Consider for increased density especially because there's other areas in town like for example many people have criticized having increased density in neighborhoods and this seems like an area that would fall into that such a category so could you just kind of elaborate on that a little bit. So first of all we are not recommending anything on this list I mean in fact there are probably some things on this list that I think are terrible ideas. And these are ideas that we have heard. So I mean really all if you want to look at alternatives if you're talking about changing the pattern we have. You could change it in a lot of different ways ways that I might recommend ways that I might not recommend. And so you know golf club drive is one option as is annexing new land you know I mean this really was just was a brain dump of options. When we go out to the community if we go out to the community with this question I am sure we will have even more options. So that's really kind of where you know where all of this you know pick any of these and we could talk about pros and cons there are certainly pros and cons on golf club drive. There are pros and cons to eliminating single family zoning you know I mean really every one of these is a little bit none of them come with a recommendation I guess is what I'm trying to say yeah. And then the next question I had was for my colleagues because months ago we kind of voted on you know proving staff's direction to come up with objective design standards. I'm just wondering and just want to be clear that this won't inhibit staff's ability to continue to work on these objective design standards is my understanding of the motion. I'm not asked my motion doesn't ask staff to do anything aside from agendize the report they've already produced for the planning commission so there will be some work associated with staffing that commission and you know following up and delivering recommendations to us but that's not my intention. And then my follow up question is whether is that at the next planning commission meeting or when I'm just asking I didn't place a date on that partially because I wanted to I mean I suppose I could say at the earliest possible planning commission meeting. I don't want to. Create a. Constrain a deadline in and not not give an opportunity for that to be a productive process and discussion at the planning commission. I just say that because I know that last year there were a number of. And commission meetings that were canceled and they were sequential and so I wouldn't want to see meetings get canceled when there's an item from council that's been directed to the planning commission and so I just want to that's why I want to clarification. Thank you. So I would add at the next the next possible planning commission where time permits. Second. Council Member Glover and then I still have council member. All sounds good. I just wanted to clarify a statement made by someone during the public comment section of Mr. Kennedy. I am not against growth or density. I am against non affordable housing developments that prioritize people that are not from Santa Cruz or that aren't that are not making it for people that work here. So I just want to clarify that for anyone that's listening or the caught that I support denser housing. In fact, in certain parts of the community to maximize our public transportation systems and so that we can make sure we're developing affordable housing. So just put it on the record. Council Member Crow. The question for Lee is, um, officer, uh, Mr. Willins said talked about number three, additional capacity to golf club drive area plan. He said that's something that was didn't belong here or seemed strange to be on here. Where was he going with that? You know, I mean, you'll have to ask him where he was going with it. None of the things, none of the items on this list are given any sort of justification. Right. You know, none of them are given any, any judgment. Um, this is simply a list of ways that land use patterns could be adjusted. Um, I don't know, you know, we haven't even made here any guess about how much additional capacity could be added to golf club drive. I, I haven't done the math. I haven't, you know, we haven't looked at, you know, this is a preliminary list of options. So as you look at this list, Ms. Russell talked about not adding density to the Seabright area. Is there things here that contemplate that? Yeah, there are some, there are some of the things that talk about, you know, looking at, you know, one of the industrial parcels. There are some industrial parcels in the Seabright area. So that's number 10. There are several that sort of call out specific roadways. Redesignate parcels along existing transit routes or routes where transit service could easily be expanded. That's number two. It mentioned Seabright. See what else here. There are probably a few that contemplate up zoning neighborhoods, you know, where we have RL zoning and a lot of Seabright going up to RM. Oh yeah, and then, and then the final one on the list, number 23, adjust all residential and mixed use development standards to rely only on FAR rather than density standards. That would apply sort of citywide and that would impact Seabright and many other neighborhoods. Thank you. And number 10, redesignate existing industrial parcels along Delaware, Harvey West and Hall Street, which has happened to be in Seabright too. But it reminded me of like that. I think it was the French project. Didn't we, didn't this council approve a big project out there for housing and where is that at? Seabright? No, no, no, this is on the website. Yeah, so the Delaware edition included 400,000 square feet of commercial and industrial uses and going by memory around 225 residential units, some of which are in live work units. Others which were allowed as standalone projects. And there was a proposal to construct 167 of those and they were ready to pick up their building permit. They have not picked up that building permit. They didn't see the market conditions as acceptable. That's where that particular project is at. And as with the other items on this list, there are significant issues associated with everyone. And certainly that is the case with our job producing lands. Makes me think like, okay, so here's 167 units, permits there not being utilized. So what are we doing here? What do we think we're doing to create more opportunities for people to build housing on the west side if somebody's ready to go and they're not, are they trying to sell those permits? They're not trying to sell those to my knowledge. They completed the plumbing electrical structural mechanical building. They were ready to build and did not see the economic conditions as ripe for taking that risk and investing, you know, multiple tens of millions of dollars. That surprised you? I have very rarely seen other than outside of the economic downturn, the Great Recession in the late 2000s. I haven't seen people get to that, developers get to that stage and pull the plug. So they have, my understanding is a number of owners and it sounds like there was some disagreement among some of the others. So yes, it does surprise me that they got to that stage and didn't proceed. Council members Brown, Watkins and then Vice Mayor Myers. I just, I just want to underscore the point that our staff made about this being kind of a laundry list. And, you know, I think one of the main reason that I'm asking that we send this to the Planning Commission is that I don't believe that it's the Councils. It would be irresponsible of us to start having conversations about, you know, moving density around like pieces on a chessboard. You know, I mean, I think that this is, and then any time we have, you know, we start listing possibilities and the public reads that then there is a tendency to think, okay, this is on the table for a decision. And so that is a challenge, but I think that, you know, my goal here is to ask our Planning Commission to help us by taking this brain dump, as you suggested, and, you know, helping us organize it and structure the discussion, make some recommendations to us about how to, how to do that, including, you know, priorities for, you know, I'm not suggesting that they go move the chess pieces around at their meeting instead, but, you know, prioritizing what makes sense based upon a more thorough review to them and also recommending to us how we might go about doing some meaningful community outreach and engagement with stakeholders to try to help guide that decision-making. Council Member Watkins. I appreciate the clarification that Council Member Brown just made in regards to the recommendation because I was kind of confused on that in terms of what is being proposed or sort of analyzed by staff and then to move forward. My understanding, as I read it, is to move forward as originally charted as having an objective housing standards go through with RFP process. And if I hear you correctly, Council Member Brown, the ultimate place that would inform the next stage of it would be the community engagement components, but it would first be vetted through the Planning Commission. Is that correct? Because when I read it, it sort of sounded to me like that. That's pretty much the only thing. It would require, there's no other recommendations in here in terms of the reconciliation, other than that, whatever it would be would require massive amounts of community engagement. Does that sound accurate in terms of simplifying your report? Or do you recommend other components? No, that's accurate. So you're sort of using the Planning Commission as a sort of a sounding board for some of the potential recommendations prior to the community engagement? Again, I think, if I could, just yes, but mostly to give them an opportunity to look at this report, ask additional questions, get additional information as appropriate from staff. So there will be some staff time involved in order to help structure a process for the Council to move forward in directing. If we're going to actually direct staff to do things that are going to take a lot of staff time, I think it would be nice to have some input from the Planning Commission about how to structure that and how to kind of streamline that and use that time most efficiently and efficaciously. Does that answer your question? Yeah, no, I'm just curious. Is that the norm? I mean, I guess maybe I'm just curious about the process. Is that the standard course of action that usually occurs with these types of things? Because what I read is that the community engagement process will naturally unfold, and I think it would take years essentially to do. This would be a multi-year project, at least realistically, no less than three years between the review and then the CEQA, and frankly it will probably take more than that. I think all of these typically set off with that. The typical process would be to engage the Planning Commission and City Council oftentimes during these processes. There's actually a task force or a steering committee that includes both members of the Planning Commission and City Council, but subsets of them along with a larger community group that those ideas are then bounced off of. In various jurisdictions, they've ranged in about 20 to 35 members on that, so it's a large diverse group. And there are significant amounts of community outreach that occur outside of that, but then those individuals serve on sort of steering committee or task force. And those individuals then provide feedback on specific policy recommendations, and those are then brought to the Planning Commission and the City Council with sort of initial public engagement to sort of set the framework for here are the rules that are in place, like SB 330, for example, and setting those ground rules. And then with that understanding, start testing things like the vision that the general plan has, then the guiding principles for the general plan, then the goals and policies. And that's really different from a full general plan update because really what it sounds like the Council is, some of the Council are potentially heading towards, is looking at revisions to the maps. And the maps are informed by the goals and policies, the vision, the guiding principles. And so it's really sort of taking a step back and understanding which of those are really the issues, which are the concerns. And then based on what those concerns are, we would then start looking at, okay, based on those concerns, how would we potentially modify the maps to create those concerns, or to address those concerns? How would we write new policies that would generate different patterns? Different land use patterns on the maps. And so that iterative process occurs together in tandem with a significant amount of community outreach because during each step, we want the community to really weigh in and provide feedback. So, you know, we might have a list like this, and then as we have that steering committee as one potential option, not the only option, but as one potential option, that steering committee could say, all right, we're heading towards these policies. And based on revising those policies to say something different than what they are now, we would say, well, numbers, I'm going to throw numbers out there. Three, four and five aren't good matches for where we're heading, but six, seven and eight are. So that's sort of how the process would unfold. Thank you. I guess maybe if I could get clarification, is that the interest of the maker of the motion to sort of start that process in motion to get that process moving in that direction at this time? By making this referral, my interest is in hearing from the planning commission about what they believe would be useful steps in the process and what it would take. So I don't want to, you know, I don't feel equipped to say, yeah, this is, you know, let's do this at three-year process with, you know, X number of community engagement meetings with these stakeholders. I would like some more in-depth review of that and some recommendations to us. If that's what the planning commission tells us it's going to take, then that's a decision that council would make at that time. But that's not my intention right now. Vice Mayor Myers. Thanks for the presentation. Yeah, I'm looking at the word recommendation and I'm just kind of wanting to maybe put a little bit, maybe provide a little bit more direction if we could to. The commission. And so I'm kind of wondering, because we're asking, we're kind of asking them to answer a big question, because we're sort of talking about a couple of things. One is, as staff has outlined, basically, in a sense reopening a portion or doing a major general plan amendment. We're also asking, or having them consider sort of telegraphing to the community what may or may not be coming without really having a process in place to really understand how the community and neighborhoods fit into this conversation. So, and so we've already had a few people come here today looking at this list and saying, oh my God, you know, it's my neighborhood. We're also though, recognizing that there's a reconciliation needed in terms of sort of the vision our neighborhoods are struggling with some of the things that we have that we were moving towards and a recognition that taking the time to have more conversations and really look at process is probably worthwhile because we may end up in a place where developments are sued or worse the general plan is, you know, and a lot, you know, so there's other methods that people can come out with that I think we want to try to not avoid. So I guess Council Member Brown, if you would consider when we say recommendations, maybe we just use a few examples. Opportunities and constraints would be one thing that I would be interested in. The other is timeline, potentially projected expenses or costs. And then also really kind of getting at the, this issue of sort of what could be perceived as some instability in terms of how, what are communities doing with regards to development in the future. Because I think that does have bearing on some of our other goals around housing and job creation and some of the other things that we're also trying to bite off at the same time. So those are just a few recommendations that I would just offer to see if you could give some examples so that the Planning Commission has a little bit more direction in terms of how they could potentially look at this information. So, I could. So, yeah, I mean, I hear you, you know, I struggled a little bit with this as well. Part of the issue that I'm trying to kind of muddle through here is that, you know, I don't doubt that the Planning Commission will take this, you know, equally seriously. I mean, they will be very deliberate about what kinds of recommendations they might make to us if putting some, and so I don't want to limit it. And I also don't want to kind of force them to think about things, for example, costs. I don't think that's necessarily, I mean, that's not their wheelhouse, I think, to come up with what it might cost the council, but I would leave that to staff rather than asking the Planning Commission to give us recommendations about that or, you know, like a budget limit or I don't know exactly what you're kind of thinking about, but it seems like that might be pushing them into a space that is not, wouldn't necessarily help us. With respect to opportunities and constraints, I think I know what you're getting at, but I just am wondering if you could say a little bit more about opportunities and constraints for picking particular locations or like what kind, maybe a little more direction about that. I just want to keep us on staff. So, Council Member Matthews. Can I just clarify, is that a friendly amendment that was not accepted yet? I'm just trying to, I mean, I'll accept a friendly amendment to flash out the recommendation, what we mean by recommendations, but I'm not totally sure exactly what those would be without having a little more. Second. That would have accepted that friendly amendment as well. Yeah, I don't know. It would be Council Member Cram. You asked her a question. I thought she was going to respond. So when we get back around to it, I'll flush that out. So are you, do you want to consider the friendly amendment? Excuse me, I'll consider it once I hear back from Donna after a few other people. Next is Council Member Matthews. This is a huge assignment to throw at the Planning Commission. It's phrased as discussing the laundry list of possibilities for zoning and general plan reconciliation, but it's been told to us and any of us who looks at this and thinks out the scenario realizes it is going to be long and contentious and involve a lot of outreach and staff time and several years. And it feels to me, although it's being told as just moving around the density possibilities, the analogy was made to a chess game. It's just moving one chess piece. It sounds to me like it really is functionally a general plan endeavor. And I was glad that Planning Director mentioned the general plan because there are lots of components to that. And I am concerned that if we're only talking about the housing capacity in various parts of the city where we're losing track, you've said it would all have to at least be overlaid with the existing general plan to see how it aligns or not. But I do have concern that the complexity of this is being handed to the Planning Commission. If such a deep project is being concerned, envisioned, I think it should have a larger group like the general plan group. Next number of years ago, when was it? No, 1995, whenever it was. You know, that was several years. It was a very broad group and it was focused on the totality of what the community saw for its vision, not simply some zoning changes. So I'm just going to make that as a comment, an opportunity that we could be looking at is how do we realize our housing goals kind of generally shared in the community, in the abstract, not in the particular constraints. I will just mention transit, everyone's saying sure, put the density on the transit. Donna and I sit on the metro. Our transit system here in Little Old Santa Cruz County is realistically doing its best to hold on, but it's not going to move millions. So I just put that out there as what in fact are we asking the Planning Commission to do. So perhaps what we need from them is some discussion with our planning staff. What's the scope of this thing? And then bring it back to us because if it is going to be multiple years and that kind of a budget, we do have to approve that. That is a lot of money to this kind of a project. So I've got Council Member Watkins, Council Member Meyers and then Council Member Brown. I think I was just, if I remember correctly, did you say that the general plan, if we're looking at 2030 general plan planning, did you say that the first one took seven years? Do I remember that correctly? Yeah. So in terms of timing, I'm wondering if there's sort of a conversation around interim. If the beginning of the planning and outreach for the next general plan iteration occurs in three years from now or begins in three years from now. We would probably begin in 2025. Okay. Okay. So I don't know in terms of just timing in terms of this more robust kind of change. And then I wonder if the new committee that's formed on housing would be, and I think it's going to be consulting with a couple of the planning commissioners, would be the place to have a conversation around this at this time to kind of flesh out some of these details before not having more specifics going to the Planning Commission. I mean, as a possible alternative. Yes, Mayor Myers. So I'll give you some examples. I think, I mean, if we're going to keep working on the motion. So I think a couple of things. So, you know, when I think about opportunities constraints, a lot of that does have to do with the complexity basically of what we're looking at. So, you know, an opportunity may be that, you know, we've had more evaluation. We've had more community feedback. So we do start to see maybe we've seen some job generation. I'm not saying we're going to build, you know, we're not going to do this in Harvey West. But okay, we have a growing cannabis industry, for example, in a place. So, you know, land use changes with economic economic drivers. So things may be be different now. So I think what I'm trying to get at is we're in a housing emergency. And but yet at the same time, we're sort of starting to look at really rewriting our general plan around where we're going to have dense development housing. And so that's to me is a big thing. And so when I think about opportunities constraints, I'm thinking about things like, okay, with this process, you know, how many people will basically sort of sit and wait and see where the chess pieces land. And by doing the process, will that mean that our housing generation continues to sort of slow, you know, how do we plan for that? Is there some immediate things that potentially could move forward? So that's the kind of thing that I think when you when you're talking about something this significant, I think I'd like to make sure the planning commission is thinking in a holistic way, not procedurally per se, or even timeline per se, but sort of sort of globally really understanding the request from us. That's all I think that's really what I'm trying to get at is that with the way it's worded now, it could look very procedural. You know, you could do this, this and this, and that's our recommendation, but I think that, you know, as an advisory committee, I'd like to, I'd like to draw a little more out of them on that with the guidance of staff. Because this is a fairly significant, I mean, this is a significant thing that we might proceed down and we want to make sure we are pretty clear on the ramifications more globally to the community. I don't know if that helps at all. I tried to capture it as timeline opportunities and constraints, and then I had this, you know, the term sort of the stability of our ability to initiate and keep consistent housing production over this period of time. I guess this housing I think is one of the big things that I'd like to know. Does that help at all? Thank you. My understanding is that these are also just examples for consideration, not that they have to tackle each one of these issues individually. I'm not talking about the sites in that list. I'm talking about the overall process that was in the staff report, which is really along the larger question and many of the folks in the community are reflecting and coming up with some compelling ideas. And that's that more global question of not just asking the Planning Commission to look at these sites, but to actually really think back through what people have offered in terms of, okay, we should be building here, we should be over here, we should be matching up to transit. Those are, to me, more global than looking at, you know, a list of 30 places. Okay, so maybe I'm not understanding your comment. I think there's a scale here that I think I just feel like this is a bigger ask of the Planning Commission, maybe I'm not understanding completely. Well, I think that adding those in will make it a bigger ask. I mean, and which is okay with me, you know, my intent just as the staff report does not ask us to contemplate, deliberate on those sites. I'm not suggesting that sending it to the Planning Commission is in any way intended to ask them to prioritize among those sites. The idea is to ask for recommendations and, you know, I would, I mean, I think adding recommendations regarding opportunities and constraints related to the local economy or local economic drivers and the environment for development. One, two, timeline for the process and three, community engagement. Like, is it okay to leave it brought just community engagement opportunities and engagement opportunities because I don't want to, you know, I mean, they may say, well, you know, have some meetings across the city or, you know, or let, you know, here's a group of stakeholders that we think are useful to talk about this issue or that issue. And if that can help us narrow this down and actually make some recommendations that kind of answer a lot of those questions sooner than a general plan update, that would be okay with me. I have to say, I'll just say personally, I think a lot of this could be achieved without a general plan update. I believe that, you know, I've looked at the possibilities. I do not want to bring them out here to have a conversation about them because that's not what we've been asked to do today. I look forward to having that conversation. Maybe we could agendize it for the housing task force related to the FARs, you know, and the different densities. There are ways that this could happen with overlay districts in particular spaces, all kinds of ways. And I just don't think that this is the space to have that conversation right now. We have a long agenda and people are waiting to talk on other items. But I'll just say we're about almost an hour behind on time. And I would just ask whether that could be listed as what you've listed could be some of the examples that are provided so that the recommendations aren't specifically focused on those three points, that those are examples of potential areas for providing recommendation. So providing recommendations, including but not limited to opportunities and constraints related to the local economy and environment for development, timeline, and community engagement opportunities. Does that capture? Yeah. Thank you. So are you withdrawing your friendly amendment then? She just included those examples. I just amended my, I've amended the motion based upon Vice Mayor Meyers request. Okay, with my second. Okay. So, is there any further discussion? No. All right. So we're, the motion is to accept the report and refer the report to the planning commission. So the monthly report on the general plan and zoning ordinance reconciliation effort and refer the report to the planning commission with request. They provide recommendations to the city council regarding options for moving forward with the reconciliation process, including but not limited to opportunities and constraints for local economy, timeline, and community engagement. That motion was made by Council Member Brown. Housing environment. And development environment for housing development. Environment housing development. Okay. That motion was made by Council Member Brown, seconded by Council Member Cron. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Okay. Moving on to our next item for general business, City Beach Public Access Policy and 2020 Beach Management Plan. And the presentation will be done by Noah Downing, Parks Planner. We only have two hours until we have to stop. So there's no way we're getting chinchin or whatever. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council members and members of the public. The item before you tonight is a two part item. Staff will be asking that the City Council adopt a resolution approving the City Beach's public access policy as well as endorse the 2020 Beach Management Plan. So as part of this presentation, I'll be going into the background of both those items and the reasons why they were enacted, the purpose behind them, as well as the recommendation. So the purpose of the Beach Management Plan is to protect natural resources, provide for public safety and maximize recreation of the beach. It identifies ongoing uses and activities considered development by the California Coastal Commission. So things like beach grooming, volleyball courts, our junior lifeguard program are all considered in there. And receiving one permit for all of them allows us to clearly communicate with the Coastal Commission, streamlines and our agency processing. It also helps prevent misunderstandings. We consider it a best management practice. We're one of a few California agencies that maintains the Beach Management Plan. It's a long standing document of more than 25 years and it's updated every three to five years. In terms of the permit process, we don't typically bring it before the Parks and Rec Commission and City Council. It covers routine maintenance and use activities and is located within the original Coastal Commission jurisdiction. And moving to the City Beach's public access policy. In 2012, there was an uptick in illegal activity and nuisance related impacts. So in 2013, the city adopted a nighttime beach access restriction policy on Cal Beach. There was disagreement about whether or not it required a permit. The city followed some guidance from 1994 related to setting hours on the beach. And declared a nuisance and it was overall exempt from the California Coastal Act. Throughout the years, there's been extensions of that. In 2014, the California Coastal Commission requested that the nighttime beach access restrictions be included in the 2014 Beach Management Plan update. So we did so and those policy has expired and that expired in November 2019. In 2019, the City Council adopted similar nighttime beach access restrictions on Main Beach for six months and that will expire this March. So what are the nighttime beach access restrictions? Essentially, the dry sand is open one hour before sunrise to midnight, but there's limited access from midnight to an hour before sunrise. Or beach goers that are allowed to cross the dry sand to reach the wet sand portion of the beach, but no other activities are allowed on the dry sand. The wet sand and ocean are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And wet sand is sand that is wet from the wash of waves or tidal action. Some examples of the concerns from nighttime activities. In this photograph here, you see that there's potential fire concerns related to the timber structure. This is underneath the wharf. This photo shows someone camping really close to the tide line. Additional concerns raised from staff is when you do beach grooming activities in the early morning or when it's dark or foggy, it's definitely a concern when you're operating heavy equipment. There's been slippages of the adjacent hillside during nighttime that has been prone to people hanging out and enjoying the evening. You can't see the notice during nighttime hours. There's been commercial storage of bender items on the beach. So there's just different variety of issues that occur. During last August, there was some camping activities. There was a spike during that timeframe. Bacteria, I don't want to say it's directly related to people camping there. I do think it's notable though because it was a significant spike that happened to correlate to the timeframe. Additionally, there's concerns with needles on the beach. We keep a log of the needles that are collected from Parks and Rec staff. These are needles in these tables which are found within the curfew area. But some of them were found in kelp, could have washed ashore, could have been washed down from the San Lorenzo River. But there are needles that are found on the beach or around the trash cans on the beach. In terms of nighttime enforcement, it is a difficult area to enforce. Essentially, it's 33 acres. It's a large, dark area. There's limited staffing resources to be able to walk or patrol. You would probably require two police officers to make sure they're safe. Police officers need to be close to their patrol car just in case they get a call that they could respond to an emergency. The beach access policy has been an effective tool to help enforcement efforts, among others. Switching back to the 2020 Beach Management Plan update process. In November, there was a Coastal Commission meeting scheduled to adopt the Beach Management Plan. There was a notice received on one of the concerns that was raised with just public noticing and making sure other members of the community were aware. So city staff talked with Coastal Commission staff and we recommended going before the Parks and Rec Commission as well as City Council to allow additional opportunities. And we sent out notices to around 500 members of the communities as well as mail notices. So as I mentioned earlier, the Cal Beach nighttime access restrictions expired in November 2019. Some other modifications to the Beach Management Plan that we are proposing this round is in response to concerns raised by the Coastal Commission. The language allowing for the Santa Cruz Sea site company Beach Deck and volleyball courts has been removed. I guess their concerns is allowing one business to have a certain portion of the beach. As part of that agreement, it allows for public use and it is something that some members of the community really appreciate. We are asking for an extended season for beach grooming. In the past 2014 Beach Management Plan, beach grooming occurred from May through September. We're asking for April through October. Really just the additional month on either side is on an as-and-even basis. He added the potential for a junior lifeguard program to have support features. If you look at some of the state programs, they have storage containers on the beach. We've worked on agreement with the dream and were able to store some of the items underneath the hotel. If for some reason that agreement needed to change, we would need some short term storage opportunities for things like paddle boards and other larger equipment. Also as part of it, we're asking for two additional volleyball courts on main beach that would go from 16 to 18. That would be located within the same existing footprint as they've always been located. It is something where the volleyball players, there was a survey about two years ago and it's something that everyone agreed would be a great fit. So as part of the 2020 Beach Management Plan, we are proposing beach hours. Essentially, we're providing language which would allow for the use of the Santa Cruz medicinal code and council policy 7.1 to allow for the director of parks and recreation to set hours. We would mirror those hours to what the beach access policy has been for the past years. We would have minimum open hours and that would just be for one hour before sunrise to midnight. We would have the maximum closed hours, which midnight to an hour before sunrise, but access would still be allowed for members of the community to cross the dry sand in the wet sand and water would remain open. In comparison to other agencies and jurisdictions, we really feel that this is allowing for more public access. And say Seabright Beach, which just the state closes at 10 p.m. until sunrise, Ais Beach, as well as Natural Bridges. There's other local communities, say the city of Monterey, Half Moon Bay. It's not uncommon for jurisdictions to have closed hours and so this is an attempt to try to allow for us to have certain control over the beach but allow and maximize the public benefit as well. So we went before the Parks and Rec Commission January 6 and they recommended to adopt the city beach's public access policy as well as endorse 2020 Beach Management Plan. They did raise some questions and concerns such as dogs on the beach, currently pets aren't allowed on the beach and so we've relayed that. Those concerns to the police department, they have relayed those to the rangers who will be looking for that. Lighting spillover impacts from adjacent areas and that's something that we're, in terms of our projects, we're going to be working on to control spillover impacts and noise levels from beach concerts. Working with the Planning Commission and Seaside Company just to make sure that the noise levels are consistent with the municipal code. Safety concerns from the height of the berm at the river mouth. This is done through a separate permit but we did hear back from Fire and Marine Safety and relayed the responses back to the Parks and Rec Commission. But those have been heavily analyzed and looked at and we've also added more emphasis on birds to the beach management plan which is in the purview. There was concerns about water quality from drainage onto the beach. So what would these two actions accomplish or what are we asking tonight? So we're asking for the city council to adopt the city beach's public access policy which is essentially just a stop-gap measure to ensure that Cal Beach has restrictions for the next couple of months until we get to the Colsa Commission meeting and allow them the opportunity to hopefully vote on the beach management plan adopt it and then we would be able to order the municipal code set our own hours and follow our council policy in doing so. We believe that the endorsement of the plan by the city council would go a long way in this process to help show the Colsa Commission that this is something the community needs. And mention that and so just to conclude we recommend that the city council adopt a resolution approving the city beach's public access policy and endorse the 2020 beach management plan and that concludes staff's presentation. We do have staff from the police department as well as city attorney's office and parks and recreation to help answer questions. Thank you for the presentation. Is there any member of the city council who would like to ask any questions at this point in time? I actually have some questions. Oh, okay. Council member Weber first. Thank you. Do you have, and I don't think it was in the agenda packet, but do you have any data that shows the Cal Beach effectiveness of the restricted access? It is part of the agenda packet and this was required as part of a condition of approval on the 2014 beach management plan update. But yes, there is some data. I could just read off some stats. And which document is this you're looking at? This is the nighttime beach restrictions summary report for Maine and Cal beaches. And this would be page four under Cal Beach. So the calls for service during curfew hours nearly tripled from 2011 to 2013, from 36 to 98, 135. After 2013, calls for service during curfew hours steadily declined from a peak of 135 in 2013 to 65 in 2018. And during 2013 and 2014 calls for service during nighttime hours spiked contributing to approximately one-third of all calls during the entire 24-hour day for specifically Cal Beach. And one thing to point out is the beach restriction time period is typically what calls for service should be at its lowest point in the day. Additionally, from 2011 to its peak in 2014, the number of police hours spent addressing calls for service during the beach restriction time period grew from 9 to 47 hours per week at its peak before dropping back down at 31, 19, 18, and 20 for years 2015, 16, 17, and 18. And I know that, thank you, by the way, I know that this was something that came up during the last time we talked about the beach access because the calls for service didn't necessarily denote illegal behavior. It was some of the calls were just from people that didn't like to see the people on the beach or thought that they had been there for too long or so on and so forth. I mean, granted, restricting access to a beach and then making it harder for people to be there will reduce in the calls, but do we have crime statistics as far as the impact of the curfew on the beach and whether or not that's had any kind of an impact? I was looking for, I don't know if it's in here. It's hours of time a day when they got there, number of calls inside and outside of the curfew period, total number of bookings during curfew time. And so, I mean, looking at 2019 for that graph on page seven. So the overall, so on page seven, the overall number of bookings decreased significantly after the restrictions were put in place from 2013 to 18 on average nearly one third of bookings per year have occurred during the nighttime restriction hours for Cal Beach. Yeah, and where those bookings for, you know, and so it gets into the question of what were the bookings for and, you know, was it for intoxication or was it drug use or was it camping. So there's a lot of questions that kind of come up from that with regards to the effectiveness of it and then also with us talking about main beach as well and the extension over to that area. So it's just hard to make a decision based off or at least to understand its effectiveness just based off of, I mean, this is just maybe my subjective observation of it, but kind of vague numbers. I mean, it gives the general overview, but it doesn't really provide much detail as to like before the curfew there were this many arrests for paraphernalia and drug use compared to this many that were there afterwards. And I don't know if we have that data from any of the, from the, that would associate or justify the work. Good afternoon, Mayor Cummings, Council. Bernie Escoli from the Police Department. It's difficult to capture some of the information you're asking because you have to realize that a lot of the violations of the law are occurring in the middle of the night. But we're not made aware of those issues until seven or eight in the morning when the leftover debris is on our beaches. Because there's not a lot of people out there. There's not a lot of people awake at two, three in the morning to report those incidents. With this tool, it automatically allows us the legal standing to go down onto the beach and make contact with people to observe what they're doing. Without this tool, then we have to get into walking down there and having the right resources to discover what is actually going on. But most of the time, for example, the photo that was shown underneath the wharf. That's something that we won't observe more than likely until the next day when staff comes in and observes the significant damage, vandalism, fire dangers and such. So, I guess it's difficult to answer your question because no, I don't have the specific crime data, but also keep in mind that we're not made aware of the violations until outside of the curfew hours, if that makes sense. Yeah, it just seems that there's a greater penalization for the larger community because of the actions of a few if we're restricting access to the beach during a specific period of time. Because there might be in the middle of night sometimes people that go down and do unsavory things. But that makes it so that no one else, regardless of their actions on the beach are allowed to be on the beach. It just seems rather unfair, but that, anyway, thank you. I appreciate that, thank you. I just had a question with reference to the Seaside Company deck and volleyball courts. Could you elaborate on that a little bit more? Yeah, so we've had an agreement, geez, I want to say before the 90s. We're essentially, seasonally, the Seaside Company sets up a temporary deck right below their colonnade that has seating as well as access improvements. And there's some volleyball courts that are installed as well. And so the Seaside Company rents those for events. But then also allows for public access. And there's a certain amount of percentage of time that would be allowed for the public to access it. So to some, that's a benefit to be able to kind of have a picnic off at the beach, except be able to sit at a picnic table. And from the Coastal Commission stand, so it's a business using a certain portion of the beach for a certain amount of time beyond what members of the public can use. Yeah, I'm just curious if there's any argument to be made for the public benefit. Because it seems like any member of the public could go and use that deck and there's no restriction on like you have to have purchased your food here in order to have access to this. There's just certain, so during certain portions of the time it would be closed off for the Santa Cruz Seaside Company events and then there would be certain portions of time where it'd be open for just members of the general public. Any other comments? Seeing none, I'll open up the public comment on this item. And so if you'd like to comment, please line up to my left and you'll have two minutes. Hello, I'm Nathan Kennedy and one of the groups I've worked with extensively for the use over the years is downtown streets team. We go around, we clean up needles and cigarette butts all throughout the day. And what I gotta say is as far as the beach goes, we need to remove the pet restriction so people can bring their dogs, but at the same time, the reason those dogs aren't allowed is because there's too much dog poop ending up in the sand. And thus what I think we should do, legitimize having dogs, but make the fine for not cleaning up after your dog way more excessive than it is even now. Same thing with the cigarettes, same thing with intravenous drug use. What we do really need is some drop boxes, legitimate drop boxes that are on the beach or at least right off the beach that are to drop off your sharps. If you are using them and shouldn't be, we still need to have a place where people can properly dispose of them. We find them all the time and we're the ones that are dealing with the disposing of them and dealing with the disposal of needles is very stressful. I can't find a better word than that. But basically we need sharps containers to legitimately get rid of sharps all around the beach. All around town actually. We should have it right next to an ashtray right before you get on the beach. And even put a big bat sign directly on the ashtray. No smoking with the ordinance number and everything, fine amount, all that. But we need to make it so that when people are illegitimately smoking, shooting up whatever they have a way to get rid of their garbage. That and the final thing I want to say is I want to make a retraction to comments made earlier about Drew Glover. And what it was, it's stuff I've heard through the grapevine through other people for a while, I apologize that I wasn't able to do some fact checking first. And last but not least, Tom 2020. Thank you. Next speaker. Is there any other member of the public who'd like to address the council on this item? Okay, please. Surge. Okay, and four. All right, so those, the next four people will be our last speakers. Thank you council members. My name is Chris Reyes. I'm from the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk Santa Cruz Seaside Company. I wanted to just add a little context to the beach deck issue. And but first, thanks staff for their work on the beach management plan. It seems like a pretty simple document, but there's a lot of interested parties involved in that. It takes a lot of work to navigate this through it. We start talking with them, you know, well in advance. And so I just appreciate their work getting us to this point. We've had that beach deck in place for, I think over 20 years and it's always been authorized and part of the beach management plan. It sits at ground level right in front of the coconut grove. And the use agreement that we've had in place since the beginning with the city and the Coastal Commission is that we're able to use it for private events, 40% of the time and open to the public 60% of the time when the deck is in place, which is basically roughly May to the end of October. And so we were hoping to be able to continue that. Coastal expressed a lot of concerns. We don't sell anything on the deck. There's no rides on the deck. There's no concessions, private groups rent the deck. And so we worked with Coastal on this when they expressed concerns and wanted to get rid of it. We were able to crunch the data of usage over the last two years and show that we're only using it about 33% of the days that we are allowed to use it. And then in increments of time, looking at that data, because when we use the deck for private event, we close it at about 1030, open it up at about 2.30, 3 o'clock when the event is over, and it's open to the public before and after. We're able to show Coastal Commission data that the deck is actually available to the public about 90% of the time that it's in place because the events that we have are so short. And they just ultimately felt that they didn't want any private usage of anything covering Sandy Beach. And so we weren't able to work through that. We offered to make changes to the hours. We offered to do more on the notification side. We put signs up when the deck is not in use by us. It says open to the public. You can come down there any day and see people having picnics and what not on the deck. We clean the deck. We provide security for the deck throughout the day. So that's the context. I just wanted to share that. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'll have our next speaker. I didn't know it was suit day. Sorry. Thanks for all the work. And absolutely I couldn't get through that 426 page report either. And I absolutely understand that people sleeping on the beach like has an effect on commerce and tourism completely understand that and sort of agree. My issue is that I'd like you to consider is that the Coastal Commission says that it can be limited for public health and safety issues to and also gives freedom for controlling public nuisances. But defining anybody sleeping as a public nuisance seems challenging in court. The safety issues were just completely not shown for the clearing of the open beach. You're talking about underneath and not having fires or something. OK. Then say no fires and suffering. But those people on the beach the needle count was actually lower than. And I believe Tony Elliott at one Parks and Rec meeting said that they were mostly in the trash cans and over by the levy which had nothing to do with people on the tents. And the fecal coliform numbers you would need more than one year to compare the numbers. And you could open the bathrooms too. Again not saying that the beach is our best place for it. But to just blanket stay say public nuisance and public health and safety lets you do anything with homeless moving them around and continuing to play whack-a-mole. It's not really helping our public discourse. Thanks. Next speaker. I'm Elise Caspi and I'm speaking today as a citizen more than an activist. I find the entire setup down at the beach to be our cake. Kind of out of the Eiffel Tower Parisian spectacle type of economy of the 1800s. I think that it is completely backwards for our current times in terms of environmental stewardship public access and really considering our beach and where the ocean meets the land is an incredible resource for millions of people who come to visit Santa Cruz over time. I think that we need to get away from an exploitation extraction use of the beach where we have you know thousands upon thousands of tourists coming to a very small area with you know huge parking lots paving over toxic waste being dumped, cars and SUVs being allowed to drive unawares. This is archaic, it's distasteful to me and I think we could do much better. To have a really nurturing and nourishing point of view not an expletative one but one of where we really value in church our beach area. I'm horrified by the cars driving on to the wharf at this day and age. I find that egregious and to compare that site to some sleeping people who are generally sleeping there because our economy and our elites and our government are so incapable of providing living wage jobs and affordable or low income housing. I find it a fetish an obsessive fetish and to get into this idea of demarcating dry sand from wet sand and to have more heavy policing of an area. Well, that's fine. I'll probably be leaving because it reminds me of New Jersey where I came from. Yucky. Okay, next speaker. There, I just wanted to mention that I'm concerned about this beach management plan, particularly the curfew issue from a public access perspective. The California Coastal Act states that the legislature finds and declares that the basic goals of the state for the coastal zone are to maximize public access to and along the coast and maximize public recreational opportunities in the coastal zone consistent with sound resource conservation principles and constitutionally protected rights of private property owners. I'm not aware if after, if this curfew goes into place, if there would be any beach in the city of Santa Cruz that would be open after midnight on the dry sand portion of the beach, to me that's really concerning if there aren't any publicly accessible late night beaches. Regardless of the use, I think there are legitimate uses at any time of day for recreation. If we're trying to use the curfew as a tool to mitigate some of the problems that we have with unwanted behavior or sleeping on the beach, things like that, there are lots of ways that we could mitigate the illegal behavior, like with increasing patrols of the beach, and then someone mentioned increasing our number of sharps containers for problems like needle disposal, keeping the bathrooms open, and as far as people sleeping on the beach having an alternative place in the city where people are allowed to sleep, I think the summer people ended up gravitating to the beach because there wasn't a law preventing them from being there, and if we had this curfew, obviously that changes. So it just is moving people somewhere else. So if we don't have a place for people to go, people are going to find somewhere to be regardless of where. You'll be our last speaker. Good afternoon, Scott Graham. Having followed the cases of Malibu Beach and Martins Beach, in those court cases, they always mention the mean high tide as being the line where the public has access at all times, and it's not the wet or dry sand that they talk about. It's the mean high tide line. And so I think what needs to happen here is the city needs to find out from the Coastal Commission or from the Lands Commission where the mean high tide line is, and you're not going to be able to restrict what people do from that mean high tide line down to the water as far as their public access, because that's guaranteed by state law that people have public access to the beach below the mean high tide line, not just the wet sand, not to stay off the dry sand, because some of that dry sand during various times of the year are below the mean high tide. And so to tell somebody, well, you're on the dry sand, so you're getting a ticket is ridiculous, unless they're above the mean high tide line, according to state law, they're allowed to be below the mean high tide line at all times. Thank you. I could bring it back to Council for Action and Deliberation. That's more of a math issue. There's a great deal of both precedent and effort that's gone into the consideration of beach curfews in recent years and the inclusion in this plan. And I just want to point out in our hard copy, this is the correspondence about the beach, largely about the beach curfew issue, and it's almost entirely in favor of continuing the very limited curfew, reminding that the beaches are largely an economic driver for our local economy and widely enjoyed by residents of the community. There was a great deal of thought given to this, and I believe there is a good conversation with Coastal Commission, and I, for that reason, think it's important to both approve the public access policy and endorse the beach management plan. So I'm going to go ahead and make that motion. Motion made by Council Member Matthews. Is there a second? Seconded by Council Member Watkins. Council Member Glover. Thank you. I made, and the last time we talked about this, I think I made my first perspective abundantly clear with regards to my thoughts on the restriction of beach access and not to disregard the stack of paper that Council Member Matthews just showed with regards to correspondence, but also I think it's kind of problematic in the way that the problem was presented in general and in the fact that we, as a city, which we talked about last time, also created the problem. So I would love to support this item if I was guaranteed that the individuals, especially those experiencing homelessness that would be directly affected by this continued curfew, which essentially criminalizes them from being on the beach or having access to it at any specific time, were guaranteed shelter in some way or another. We had an actual plan in order to make sure that they would be able to have a place to sleep. We've been having this conversation at least since I've been in office in Seoul for the last year. And long before that, and I find it very difficult that we continuously, as well as including some of the ordinance suggestions that will be coming before us eventually from the police department, continuously make our public spaces less and less accessible for the poorest and most vulnerable in our community and instead shift to criminalization, penalization, curfews and different kinds of ways to, as it's put, detour certain behaviors, but in reality keep poor people from specific spaces in our community. So it's disappointing that this is back before us again, and we haven't made any progress on solving that shelter issue. I just wanted to ask the city manager, what is the plan? I don't think anyone up here wants the beach to be a sleeping zone or a camping zone. Yet, there's hundreds of people every night that need a place to sleep. What are we doing? Well, as you know, homelessness is a major issue throughout California. And I don't think there's any overnight solution to it. But as far as what the city is doing is working with our partners at the county, particularly now when there's been an opportunity to be more proactive on some of these issues. As it relates to having more resources, the state has provided more resources to focus on trying to address some of these issues. So it involves what I've talked about on a number of occasions, which is to expand our shelter capacity. We're working with that on the county. Also, the county is interested in revising their system whereby individuals can go through the sheltering system and be provided with assistance to get into housing. So not just having a housing system of individuals, but a system where people can make themselves get the services that they need to move on and get into permanent housing. So those are all reforms that are more longer term. In the meantime, with respect to some of the more short term, we are in the process of acquiring property to establish navigation centers. The county has a goal and the recommendations from consultants that were hired to look at our system is to create navigation centers throughout the county. So that there are places where people can access services, both day and sheltering services. So that's a long term plan. So in the meantime, again, we address the situations as needed based on the conditions that are taking place in the beach areas, a different area, for example, than some of the other areas. And the city does need tools to be able to respond to different circumstances. So these are some of the tools to address the particular circumstances on the beach and there are other tools that are needed to address the other situations throughout the city. One more question from, I guess, Tony or Noah. This body doesn't have to act on anything right now, but the Coastal Commission is going to take it up anyway? Or are they waiting for us? No, we have the meeting scheduled. This is an opportunity for outreach. It's also an opportunity for us to present this to you. And if the city council approves it as written in the beach management plan, under our municipal code and council policy, we would essentially move forward or Tony establish those new times. And then if conditions change or there's a desire from the city council to review it, that's something that we could revisit that at the local level. So in a sense, it allows for that flexibility over time. If there are recommendations moving forward over that five year period or new conditions arise, which allow us to ease those restrictions, that's something that we can just have that discussion here without returning back to the Coastal Commission. Thank you. And I just wanted to say for the record, I agree with Council Member Matthews that the beach area is an important economic engine for this community. And again, I don't think anyone up here thinks it should be a giant campsite 24-7 or even half of that time. But I don't think we're doing a very good job in finding places for folks to sleep. But I'm not going to support this motion not because of that, but because I would like to hear from the Coastal Commission first what they say about this report. And then I think that it would be better for us to act then. That's Member Brown. So I just want to make a couple of comments. We went through this conversation in the fall and at the time I said it, and so I won't repeat, but I just want to kind of very quickly say, I too am dismayed that the recommendations that come before us to help to try to manage the issues that arise because of our unhoused population are, you know, primarily, entirely punitive. And I recognize that we need tools to address and manage issues as they arise. But I believe the city has failed. We have collectively failed for decades now and we are failing every time we are at this dais when we do not have any proposals for alternatives, safe spaces for people, places where people can actually be. And until we address that issue, we are going to continue to get recommendations about limiting access to spaces in the city. And I do not support that approach. I will not support that approach moving forward. In this case, I do believe that, you know, we also have a responsibility to do what we can to kind of to manage the issue. What's the word I'm looking for? To ensure that there is some, you know, quality of, you know, access and use for the broader population. And yes, it is an income generating area. Whatever we all think about that individually, that is the case. And we ought not to be, you know, making decisions based upon whether or not we approve of those activities. I think we should be making our decision based upon what is best for the community at large. So in this case, I do, I will support the recommendation. But I want to make it clear with that caveat that I do not support this approach as a general approach to the issues that we're dealing with. Any other comments? I'd like to repeat the motion which is that the city council adopt a resolution approving the city beach public access policy and endorse the 2020 beach management plan. The motion was made by council member Matthews seconded by council member Watkins. All those in favor please say aye. I like for Drew. Yeah, I think he made it clear that he wasn't going to support it as well. So maybe that can be a note. And so I'll just call the vote. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. And for the record, I would like to hear what the Coastal Commission says about the report. So that is council members Watkins, Matthews, Brown, Vice Mayor Myers, Mayor Cummings. I know council member Crone and council member Glover absent, however having expressed not being in favor. All right, moving on to the next item of general business. This is item number 23, request to direct staff to draft the city policy regarding Santa Cruz Police Department's use of surveillance technology. And I'll just give a minute for folks to kind of get resettled before we start this item. Okay, I'm happy to start this item off. So on October 25th, I participated on a facial recognition and surveillance panel hosted by the ACLU. With Lee Hepner, A to San Francisco Supervisor Aaron Peskin, Matt Cagle, ACLU Northern California. Tracy Rosenberg, Executive Director, Media Alliance. And around 40 members of the community had attended this panel discussion. And they expressed a desire to have some policy implemented to restrict the use of facial recognition and predictive policing. And to have a more transparent policy around surveillance as it relates to law enforcement within the city of Santa Cruz. And so council member Glover and Crone also expressed interest in working on this item. And the ACLU had drafted policy that had been implemented in other communities which I provided to the police chief back in December. On January 6th, council member Glover, myself, Chief Mills, met to discuss ordinance language that had been proposed. And to identify areas of concern and find areas of agreement within this policy. This was also sent to the city attorney's office on January 13th. And he proposed a few areas of concern that he offered to discuss with the council members who brought this item forward. Considering the amount of time that had been dedicated to reviewing this ordinance and the additional time needed for input. And how that would likely exceed the eight hours, which if council members are to bring items to staff. If they exceed eight hours, we need approval by the council. We are bringing this item forward today. Additionally, since at the last council meeting we implemented a policy around placing items on the agenda and this was the first time we tried using that policy. And personally, I was away in DC at the US Conference of Mayors. And there were some issues between communication and staff and council members were putting this item on the agenda. And so when the item was placed on the agenda, a number of community members had reached out to us, for example. Because the item that's proposed are the recommendations that council member Glover, myself, and Chief Mills had agreed on, however, a red line version had not been proposed. And so some of the members of the ACLU, they had noticed that some language was missing and they actually wanted to have a broader discussion around some of the language that was removed and the policy in general. However, today, we are here to discuss this item and the motion for this would be to, well, I won't repeat the motion. I won't say the motion because I don't have a motion, but the recommendation that it has been provided was to direct staff to draft a city policy that would increase oversight of the Santa Cruz Police Department's acquisition and deployment of predictive policing and live facial recognition technology for the purposes of investigating crimes within our community. And so I'd like to open the floor to any council members who would like to speak towards the item or if they have any questions. All right, seeing none, I'll open the floor. I think I do have one, and thank you for bringing this forward and spending the amount of time. I know that you've collectively put into this. I just want to ask, for the purpose of investigating crimes, and this is just an honest question, I don't know the answer to it. What is the possibility for existing technology or future for assisting in the identity of victims? So maybe we can just, as there's a discussion, include that. Sure, and one thing that I'd like to clarify is that through discussions that Council Member Gleller and I had with the police chief, this was something that was brought forward to our attention is that the police for law enforcement purposes actually do use this technology to find victims and identify victims. One of the big concerns is around live facial recognition technology. So live videos that are identifying people in real time and how the technology that currently exists is very biased. And so this policy, and in addition to that, predictive policing has also proven to be very biased. And so the intention of this policy or ordinance, however it's to come forward, is really to limit the use of those technologies until they're proven to reduce or eliminate bias around the way that they're used. The police have indicated that they do use facial recognition technology for photos of potentially missing children or around, sorry, the word escapes me. But trafficking, yeah, correct. And so this wouldn't inhibit their ability to use this technology for the purposes of trafficking. And so that's why we were also more encouraged to bring this forward at this time with that information. Council Member Gleller. Thank you, and just to provide some clarity because some people that are either watching or listening or maybe even us on this body when they hear that the live facial recognition is bias, what does that mean? And there are studies that have come out and published by the New York Times, for example, that shows that algorithms that are associated with live facial recognition software falsely identify African American and Asian faces 10 to 100 times more than Caucasian faces. So there's an incredibly high rate of misidentification, especially of black and brown identified people within the systems of live facial recognition. So it's problematic to say the least, sure. I just have a question on the item in the packet, excuse me. So the most, or the recommendation is to direct staff to draft a city policy. So, and then include it in the packet though as an ordinance. And is that the, that's the intent, is the ordinance? We have, so kind of as this, and this is also kind of fitting in with the new policy that we had adopted. There's been discussion whether this should be a policy or an ordinance, and that is a question that's up for debate. And also for review by the city attorney. And I'll just say that this is the, as this being the first time we've used the council policy 6.9 for putting items on the agenda. One of the things that we've been realizing is that there's a lot, there's still a lot of areas to be worked out with this policy. And it was, there's some difficulty with, do we put this on in the form that it's currently in, but then recommend policy or ordinance? It was really difficult to see what was the best way to put this on the agenda. And so I actually personally have expressed that I think that we need to take that, the policy that we passed around setting agenda items, we need to, I think we need some more time to reconsider what it looks like in terms of staff time, what it looks like in terms of how items go on. And so I just wanted to express that as well, because it was difficult. Thank you, yeah, and I just want to maybe clarify for people who may be following at home or have the. So when we say draft a city policy, that would be a new city council policy, that would be a council policy then. Is there a policy, possibly an ordinance, yes, correct. Thank you. Is there any other questions at this time? Seeing none, I'll open it up to a public comment and I see that there was a member of the ACLU who reached out to me and requested four minutes, so I will allow that. We're going to tag team. The ACLU Santa Cruz wishes to thank Mayor Cummings for his interest in facial recognition and for bringing forward the ordinance crafted by the ACLU in Northern California. However, on behalf of the 30 social justice and civil rights groups prepared to speak in support of the surveillance oversight in Santa Cruz, we will not be able to support the watered down draft version provided in the packet. And we insist that the draft goes forward in this referral to be the original draft submitted by the ACLU and Oakland Privacy. But the staff be instructed to meet with the ACLU and other privacy advocates to discuss potential changes in the language in order to fully understand their impacts prior to return to council. These surveillance oversight ordinances are not new. They are used in dozens of cities, countries, and transit districts worldwide including 7 in the Bay Area, Oakland, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Palo Alto, and Barth to name a few. They are proven and tested models for surveillance oversight. We want Santa Cruz to start from a proven model that works, not a hasty improvisation. The starting point should be the original draft provided and sudden revisions, and the sudden revisions among other problems. I would just like to interject a personal point. All of the laws in discussion about this is based on the African American Asian problem with identification. The issue is surveillance state intrusion into your personal being. So the ACLU has written a model ordinance to cover these kinds of issues. And we are concerned that the draft ordinance that it sounds like you, Mayor Cummings, and Drew Glover, and Mills worked on together, really doesn't do any justice to the model ordinance written by the ACLU. And we insist that you go back to the original language from the ACLU and Oakland Privacy. The problems with the revisions that have been suggested, there's a number of them. Number one, it does not contain a meaningful description of what surveillance technology is and what is included in the oversight framework and what is not. It does not restrict to the emergency use of surveillance technology to the particular incident that is the emergency, and that creates a giant loophole. It does not prevent the use of facial recognition software by an outside party or vendor on behalf of the city. And so in that regard, it doesn't ban the use of facial recognition technology at all. And it does not provide the community with an ability to respond to non-compliance. Basically, any enforcement has been removed from the ordinance itself. We need to make sure that it's not just, that even if our current staff are following the procedures down the road, there might be some future city employee or city council that doesn't, and there's no remedy for that. And we also think that the ordinance should apply to all city departments, not just the police. And so really, the ACLU has written this ordinance that is in practice all around the state. It's supported by a lot of community groups. If you move away from that ordinance, you're getting into all kinds of murky area. Surveillance is a big deal, and it's a technology that the framers have no, they didn't know about facial recognition technology, and so we really need civil rights scholars and people who actually understand the law around this. And it's the police state that's at risk here, but also really serious issues with discrimination. And we want to make sure that the policy is in accordance with the ACLU model draft. Any other member of the public who would like to address us on this issue? You'll have two minutes. Good evening, I'm Scott Graham. In the fall of 89, I was here when the earthquake hit. About two and a half weeks later, I flew to Germany, and the Berlin Wall came down. While I was there, after a certain time period, Americans were allowed to go into East Germany, East Berlin. And so I had to go through checkpoint Charlie. That was the only place I was as an American. I was allowed to enter East Germany. But the first thing I noticed when I got to the east side of the wall was that all the surveillance cameras were broken. People had thrown rocks at them and they were just dangling from the street lights. And the Stasi, which was the secret police, but they weren't quite so secret, spied on everybody in East Germany. And so the first thing that East Germans did was get rid of those cameras. So they weren't being spied on continuously. And here we are in this day and age, going headlong into being surveilled continuously. We're putting devices in our houses supposedly to help us manage our house and get information, but Alexa is actually spying on us. And police all over the country are asking citizens that have personal surveillance cameras around their houses or around their businesses to allow the police to have access to those cameras. And so we're going into the same kind of situation that East Germans were relieved to get out of, all in the name of safety. And safety is not necessarily freedom. Thank you. Next speaker. So requested direct staff to draft a city policy regarding Santa Cruz Police Department's use of surveillance technology. I don't think there's much we can do about the control of surveillance. My first and only trip to Europe in 1986, one of my managers opened up an envelope and he was really upset because they got him a speeding ticket for going 90 miles an hour and with the technology back then. You could clearly see his face. He was upset that he got caught. So that's technology that's been more than 30 years old. There's a lot of technology that's more than 100 years old. This thing tracks everything I do. The only thing for sure that I know it's not doing is I have the front camera taped over. Besides that, tracking me is doing everything well beyond facial recognition. Thanks. Next speaker. Not a lawyer, not a lawyer. Just wondering on the wording, would it also cover the cameras that were put on West Cliff that were the public works put up some cameras for Santa Cruz neighbors and it was watching parking and stuff? It would cover that kind of thing too. And the exigent circumstances that's referred to, that there can be surveillance in exigent circumstances and it has to be kept. I think that needs to be defined a little bit better. It's sort of fake. Thanks. I'm just going to ask if there's any other person who'd like to speak to us on this item after the person who's about to speak. And seeing none, you'll be our last speaker. Basically, I would like to ask that the council consider the ACLU's recommendations. I did go to hear a workshop presented by the ACLU at the Resource Center for Nonviolence on this, and it seems like they have a deep and really close history of examining these laws and the use of surveillance by bodies like the police. And I think that their recommendations are to be listened to and followed with a lot of respect and to just really take what they're saying in hand. I personally can't really get into the details of this issue because it's an issue that to me we're so far down the road. What I want to speak to is the constitutional right to freedom. The pursuit of happiness, freedom. These are the things that I'm constantly seeing on these agendas that are being shut down like the last issue. The beach represents freedom. It's a place where we all go because the expanse of seeing that ocean with the beach, it means freedom. And to be able to go to the beach and enjoy oneself without fear or to have to have a lot of money or whatever is important. Similarly, to be able to live life, just to be able to live without being constantly surveilled, particularly nervous about the whole facial recognition technology. And I really wish that I could speak to that. Combine the bias issues here and the predictive policing issues here. Chief Mills at MLK Day at Loud Nelson said that he is basically they're revising or they're going to actually dump their predictive policing because it's so biased. And so I just really want to ask that people consider, why are we really getting into all this surveillance? Is it really preventing crimes? Thank you. And so I'll bring it back to Council for Action Deleration and Council Member Cron. Thank you, Mayor. In the interest of time, I think that we, I would love to have seen a red line version as well. And it doesn't, the two don't match up. And it seems like there was some confusion here. I would make a motion that we send this to the Public Safety Committee and that Chief Mills and our city attorney also be involved in reviewing this ordinance and that it come back to the city council no later than the second meeting in February. Second, can I just really quickly ask a question of my motion maker? Would you include in that consideration of the stricken language that the ACLU is asking? Yeah, I would expect that we would look at the Oakland and San Francisco ordinances as well. And they see what the ACLU language was originally that gave it to us. We have Council Member Watkins. The agenda report, it specifies that this would involve community outreach. That the timeline would be approximately three to six weeks. And that there would be sort of an assessment of various policy options. I'm wondering how that's different than how the motion on the floor is different than the recommendation before us. Or the intention behind the agenda creators. Do you see variation in terms of what was sort of generally outlined in the motion before us? In regards to the process that's been kind of established in your agenda report versus what you're suggesting now? Because I think it sounds to me quite similar. Or maybe I'm Mr. I wanted to include the Public Safety Committee. And I wanted to make sure that the original language that the ACLU put forward gets re-evaluated with what's in front of us. I'm assuming that came up, came to us from staff. I guess just for clarification, if I may, that it has it listed that it would include going to the Public Safety Committee. And that it would research how the ordinance could influence the impact. So I think it covers that, right? Okay, I'm just, sorry. Senator Mathews. And given that, my only concern is timing. Getting to public safety, getting a gender report, giving adequate time for community input. And then getting back to us for a good, solid report and discussion. The timeline here refers to three to six weeks. I don't know when public safety is scheduled to meet, etc., etc. So there again, I think to say, at the earliest feasible meeting gives a sense, but it'll lock us into an unachievable. With the same manager. If I may, I think when we worked on putting this together, I think that consideration was given to going to the Public Safety Commission. And the timeline reflects being able to do that, the three to six weeks reflects being able to do that as well. And again, I think the intent wasn't to put forward a particular proposal of one sort or another at this time. It was to essentially put forward the council approval to move forward with bringing something together and what that process would be. And that doesn't exclude or preclude the ACLU's version or anything like that. So I just want to be clear, that was just, the intent here was to simply bring it forward for your consideration and your direction, and then it'll come back to you based on the input from the Public Safety Committee and the public within this time frame. It's member Crone, and then I have Glover, Brown, and then I'll add myself to stack. I'm okay, I'd leave it up to the mayor to schedule the time on the agenda that it comes back. I don't know if you have an idea of when you'd like to see it come back. So is that a question to me? In the motion, well, the first question is, when is the next Public Safety Committee meeting? So we were going to have it between now and the end of February. With an email I received from Chief High Duke. He says that the 26th or 27th of February, based on our schedules. So that would be the goal, which is approximately four weeks, which falls into the three to six week timeline. And that would provide enough time for public input, not only to have the department heads look at it and provide their feedback, but also for people to come and participate in that Public Safety Committee meeting to give their feedback, as well as potentially get the input from the ACLU. So mine, when you said, if I'm correct, that the 27th or 28th of February? 26th or 27th. 26th or 27th of February, so then the earliest it could come back would be the first meeting in March. It falls within the time frame, so, okay. And, did you have any other comment, because you were next on staff? It was just to make sure that we, if it was kind of a statement or a question to the maker of the motion, is just to make sure that if there are any other necessary or affected department heads that might need to look at it to make sure that we give them authorization to spend time looking at it. So I don't know, I don't know how big of a deal it is, but directing the police chief and city attorney in any other affected department to review the red line version of the surveillance ordinance as necessary. And send the red line version of the ordinance to the Public Safety Committee meeting to prioritize it at its next meeting in February for discussion and action. So that we can take action on it in the committee. And then also, there was a request from the ACLU, and I don't know if you want to include this, but also instruct staff to meet and confer with the ACLU and associated organizations to address their concerns. I would take that as a friendly amendment if that's okay with- Second. If that is going to be a friendly amendment to the main motion, then I'm going to have to ask that you restate what the current motion then is on the floor. Current motion on the floor was to- Well, I mean the current motion with the amendments, because it seems like there's a lot of overlap between the two. So if we just repeat the motion. What he said is fine. That's, you know, I'd agree with that motion if you want to make that the motion that's- So would you like to withdraw your motion and then have Council Member Glover restate? Okay, I'll make, I'll leave it to you with John. Okay, so I'll make the motion, thank you. I'll make the motion to direct the police chief, city attorney, and any other affected department head to review the red line version of the surveillance ordinance as necessary and send the red line version of the ordinance to the Public Safety Committee to prioritize it for the next meeting in February for discussion and action. In addition, instruct staff to meet and confer with the ACLU and associated organizations to address their concerns. I'm waiting to see if the clerk was able to capture that. I did. I tried to have that cadence. Can I just clarify, are we still seeing come back, bring back to Council at the first meeting of March? First meeting, yeah. I'm not sure if it matters, but reports are due on the 27th of February. I guess to the makers of the motion, they'd be able to draft the report in time for the 27th of this meeting, it was on the 26th. Yeah, let me just pull this up really quick. I know we're out of time, let's go like this and then go here, 27th, which is Thursday. Mayor, I think just to clarify too, the three to six weeks time frame was based off of just looking at the police department. So if we're going to include other departments, which it sounds like that motion is leading towards, we may need more than three to six weeks to consider how it impacts the other departments. So I just wanted to throw that on the table. Thank you. And sir, go ahead and we'll just respond to that. I think that this ordinance specifically is just looking at the police department and then later on, if we wanted to expand it to other departments, that was just because of the new council policy for staff time, if for some reason there was another department that for some reason was identified as needing to be brought into the conversation. We wouldn't have any conflict with making sure there was direction from the council on allowing them to participate and spend staff time on the analysis. Okay, cool. Council Member Brown, myself and then Council Member Matthews. Thank you. Yeah, so a couple of things. First, I thank you, Martin, for helping to clarify that this was not about bringing a particular policy forward. Although it was a little confusing to me, I think, and members of the public who contacted me because there is an ordinance included in the agenda with the agenda item. And it is a different ordinance than the one that community members originally brought. So it appears that the plan is to use this one. So that being the case, there will be some discussion about bringing an ordinance to us for a first reading or a policy that makes me feel more comfortable. And then secondly, so I seconded the motion and I support including the additional language regarding Department Head review, but not asking specifically that those Department Heads be included in the loop. And Council Member Glover has raised a challenge that is related, but I want to finish with this piece of the agenda item and also talk about the way this council policy that we adopted at our last meeting affects the way we do business here. And so I'll, if I could, raise that afterwards. I think that there's some challenges with it. This is the first time as Mayor Cummings suggests that it's been utilized. And I'm not sure that the way it's being interpreted and operationalized here is really getting at answering the question or concern that we raised, that council members raised when we referred this originally, which was about helping us understand how to get an item on the agenda. Not thinking about kind of having to have the foresight to decide at every turn. What we need to put in a motion to ensure that there isn't a delay and staff is going to come back and say, well, this is going to take more time. So there's that kind of, I mean, it feels like it's just over complicating what was a pretty simple request. And so I'd like to try to address that after we finish here. I know it's not, that's not specifically the agenda item, but because it's referenced in this agenda report, I'd like to just try to resolve that. Okay, Council Member Matthews. I'm simply concerned about the timeframe if the Public Safety Committee is meeting on a certain date and the staff report is due the next date. I think I'd prefer to have more time to be thorough on the agenda report that comes to us. So that is put it off to the subsequent meeting or say such and such a date or the next meeting as feasible. I think rushing an agenda report on a topic that's this laden with issues doesn't do us a service. Thank you, I can understand your concern, Council Member Matthews. However, I did just check with my colleagues here and we are able to meet for a Public Safety Committee meeting. Not on the 26th, unfortunately, but on the 27th. Now I understand that that is the same day as the agenda item is due. But if everything is completed ahead of time with regard to the agenda item, except for the report back from the Public Safety Committee experience and recommendations that come from the Public Safety Committee, then a quality agenda report can be created by those that are the ones that brought it forward. And still be able to meet that timeline that we're anticipating. It's completely feasible and since I don't believe, and I don't want to assume, but I don't believe that it will affect you in any way, since you're not involved with any of the committees or any of the process, then I believe that we will be able to accomplish the goal. Are there any other comments at this time? Seeing none. Wondering if the clerk could repeat the motion, just so the public is clear. Try what I got. Okay. Direct, the chief of police and the city attorney to review the red line surveillance ordinance as necessary and send the red line ordinance to the Public Safety Committee to prioritize it for the next, this part change, to the next meeting in February for a discussion and direct staff to meet with the ACLU. And then return back in the first meeting in March. And we'll just again, if possible, because I just want to be completely transparent. If possible, that's fine. I think that that provides some flexibility as well in case the report doesn't get done in time. Again, just want to be honest. First meeting in March, if possible. All right, we'll go call vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Oh, and then before, yeah. So I'll go to councilmember Brown to address the other concern. So I said this when we adopted the policy. I kind of cautiously agreed to sign on because much work had been done to try to give us something that we could use as a guide. However, given the experience with this particular agenda item, and kind of the way that I see this policy, at least in the early stage, being implemented or operationalized, I'm not, like I said, I'm not sure it really addresses our concern. For example, we're not actually getting information to help us understand how much time, aside from more than eight hours, who will be involved? It's just not sufficient information to help us make decisions for prioritizing, I feel. So, I mean, if we're gonna do this this way, I would want to know how much time, how long it's gonna take, the anticipated timelines, which staff are gonna be assigned, not the individual people necessarily, but as an analyst, as an engineer, depending on what the issue is. And it just seems like we're making it so complicated that it's gonna be difficult if we really go down this road. I'd like to make a motion that we rescind this policy 6.9, council policy 6.9, and direct staff and perhaps the mayor and vice mayor to consider alternative ways of addressing the agenda, agendizing issue. Not, not. You might want to consider making a motion to agendize that for consideration at a future meeting. I meant to ask you about that, so can we agendize for the next council meeting consideration of council policy 6.9? We're sending council policy 6. I'll second that. Councilor Matthews. To that, I actually thought it worked relatively well here. I took the intention to be that, is the council interested in investing such and such chunk of time in this issue? And clearly we are. And so we've kicked it to the next step with a collective approval of that issue. So I think it's actually worked pretty well. I would say if you do want to consider it, reconsider it. Maybe just say at a future agenda. Because we have all these things piling upon us. So that's just my opinion on it. And I'll just weigh in. I've personally found it a little difficult. I do think that when it comes to, for example, items that may come forward. So if there is a council request, for example, if a council member would like to have all the data on any facial recognition, for example, that's been used in the past two to three years. I think that that's something that we need to fall under a policy like this. Or I think that it will be appropriate for council members to bring that as an agenda report for consideration rather than making a motion, for example, at a meeting. I think that was kind of the intention of this policy. But having worked on creating this agenda item, it proved to be much more difficult. And I think that we do need to have a policy like this because we can get more buy-in to something before we move it forward. I just think that it would be good if we had a little bit more time to really understand some of the intricacies of this policy before we move it forward. Because as council member Brown mentioned, there's often, or when it came to this policy and actually the next item, there are recommendations for staff and to not work on other policy to work on other related business for the department. But it's unclear because there wasn't any information provided as to, well, why does that person have to stop working on this? How much time is this going to take? So it just seems like there's still a few holes that need to be filled in this policy before it can be adopted and implemented in a way that is productive. So I realized that this agenda item is a good opportunity to discuss the context in which the policy is applied. But the policy itself is really a different subject. And so that really should be a different agenda item. To cease conversation. Right, so I think the motion to agendize it for consideration at the next meeting or at a future meeting is perfectly appropriate. But discussing how the policies implemented as part of this discussion I think is going a little far field of what the specific agenda item is. So I'm going to just stick with agendizing this for the next meeting for, so to agendize council policy 6.9. For consideration of revisions. So we can have that conversation. Well, I mean, so we can, I can say rescind, but you know, you want to ultimately revise, right? And that's the, I mean, I agree that we should have something in place. And I'm just not clear this is what we need. So rescind or revise? Rescind and or revise. Council policy 6.9. I'll second that. Is there any further comment? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That's unanimously. And so that moves us on to our next item, which is item number 24, which is the evaluation of the potential use of project labor agreements, community workforce agreements or other approaches for city construction projects to produce long term community workforce and local business benefits. So, I also brought this item forward with council members, Crohn and Glover, and just to provide some background on this item. On June 24th, 2019, I attended the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council dinner and had the opportunity to sit with representatives from the OE3 Building Trades Union. We had a discussion around project labor agreements and how they've benefited many local communities. During the fall, I followed up with the building trades and was able to meet with Manny Panero, CEO of the Monterey and Santa Cruz County Building Trades, to discuss community workforce agreements in further detail. Manny was able to provide me with a draft for consideration, which was circulated to the city manager, the city attorney Tony Condati, Rosemary Menard, and Mark Dettel on December 10th of 2019. The water department and public works were pointed out as being the departments that would be most affected by these agreements in the city. I met with Mark Dettel on January 9th, 2020, and many of the other department heads who expressed concern about the agreements. I met with those other department heads on January 17th. It appeared that there are legitimate concerns around emergency projects, projects that require technical expertise, that may warrant some exceptions to this kind of policy. The one thing that both groups were able to agree on is that we would like to help build and sustain a viable local trade workforce, and that these types of agreements have the potential to be beneficial for supporting those efforts within our community. Again, this was another item where we implemented our new council policy. And so it came forward in a way that was a little bit difficult in terms of putting together our agenda report. And again, just also making the point that it would be good if we could review this policy before we implemented any further. And so with that, the initial recommendation was to direct staff to conduct an analysis of the potential for using a project labor agreement, community workforce agreement. Or other applicable approaches to increase community benefit for the local skilled trades and construction workers and produce other long term community benefits as part of the completion of city construction projects. And with that, I'll hand it over to my other colleagues who worked on this. If there's anything else you'd like to add to this. I know that there's some gentlemen in the audience today that have been really waiting and they probably really enjoyed this meeting because it's been a real humdinger, but I'd love to hear from them and so I'll hold my comment. Okay, is there any other council member who'd like to say anything at this time? Just workforce agreements in general are incredibly important in every way that we can support the unions in our community and ensure at the same time local employment is crucial. So we'll talk more about that afterwards, but I'd love to hear from the community about their thoughts on the topic. Are there any other council members who would like to have any questions at this time? Okay, I'd like to invite up Manny Pinero for four minutes. CEO of the Monterey and Santa Cruz County Building Trades to give a short four minute presentation on this. Good afternoon, honorable mayor, honorable council members and your staff here in the community of Santa Cruz. I'm Manny Pinero, CEO, Monterey, Santa Cruz County and Building Trades. I have something here I just want to share to leave with you to get this going because I think there's going to be some great discussions. In the audience, you're going to be hearing from Nicole Gehring. She's from the ABC, the Association of Billing Contractors for quite some time in some ways we're alike. The fact that both of us are both from the construction industry, but for very different reasons. I believe in the opportunity for local people to be able to make a living wage that gives them dignity to thrive within their community of Santa Cruz. While they make great profits for the companies, they work for also the being done with skilled and trained people that live right here in your community and take great pride in what they do in your community. Nicole works for the ABC Association Building Contractors, which only represents 0.03%, that's 0.03% of construction companies throughout the whole entire United States, all 50 states. And with this, it lowers standards of wages so the companies that pay salary that can make more profits off the backs of underpaid workers they represent. In the city council meeting 2019, Eric Christiansen, also an ABC representative, brought so much repeated negativity that the Antioch City, City of Antioch Council, asked him not to return less he could find more positive messages to bring to the community and to the council. I know a lot of you, council members, go unappreciated. But I guarantee that passing the PLA, also community workforce agreement, will not go unappreciated by the members of this community. I thank you for your time. All right, I'd like to invite up any other member of the public. You'll have two minutes to discuss this item. Good afternoon, Mayor, council members and staff. I'm Ron Cheshire. I'm a former CEO of the Monterey Santa Cruz Building Trades. And I'm now director of education and training. Project labor agreements have become quite the thing in the state of California. One week ago, well actually on the 22nd, six days ago, we submitted a $900,000 proposal to the state of California. On behalf of the counties of Monterey, Santa Cruz, and San Benito County. What the proposal to the state was was for SB1 funds in regards to transportation. Now the city may be getting some of those funds in the future, but several of the public entities around the three county area will be getting those. The state encouraged public entities to enter into project labor agreements with the various building trades. Because number one, there is a need for skilled trained qualified individuals in the industry. There's going to be work upcoming. One of these days our representatives federally will decide to rebuild this country. And there will be a lot of infrastructure work also. Two is the fact that work in the state of California in regards to the infrastructure needs trained skilled qualified individuals to be working for companies that can competitively compete for contracts, okay? Now, project labor agreements aren't new. They've been around for quite a long time. And because my time is limited up here, I will say that we are more than amenable to sitting down, providing any information to the council in regards to this in the pet. I guess that's it, so we'll be happy to work with you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor Cummings and members of Santa Cruz City Council. I am Nicole Gehring. I am the Vice President of Community and Government Relations for the Associated Builders and Contractors Northern California Chapter. We've got over 500 members who are committed to safety, quality, and skilled and trained workforce in the industry. We've got a large number of members who are working here in the community who would like to continue to do so. These types of agreements will disenfranchise them, and you will be displacing people potentially making them homeless if they're not able to work on projects. Their community, or they're going to have to drive out of the community and try to find other places to work. I'm pleased that you're going to take the four to six months to take a look at this. You're reprioritizing what I read, some other of your high priorities in order to take a look at this. There are other approaches, there are workforce development plans you can put together. There's ways to do it and be inclusive so you can include the entire diverse construction industry. We don't need to do the one size fits all agreement, the standard PLA that was put before you that actually precludes the local community here from working. And any apprentices here who are not part of union construction apprenticeship programs. We also operate apprenticeship programs and we also have pre-apprenticeship. And we have worked with homeless committees and we've put homeless people to work and we don't want to see them disenfranchised. We work with the Salvation Army, we work with parole and probation in many communities. And we would love to be able to continue to do that and do that here as well to build your workforce. The project labor agreements in this area, they've all been delayed. Anywhere from one and a half to three years, they've all had increased prices. There's a number of different prices. I can give you the names of the projects if you want them, but in the shortness of time. All the ones that have been done in this area have been delayed and increased price. So that's something else to consider or they've received one bid and they've been 62% over the estimate and canceled. Look forward to working with you and including local stakeholders to make this an agreement for everyone. Thank you. Good afternoon. Apologize if this is choppy or short. I was at school this morning at 6 AM, got out at three in Castleville and got here as quickly as I could to attend this meeting. My name is David Rourcamper, I was born at Dominican Hospital here in town, I'm born and raised. My wife was born and raised, I went to school here in town, I work here in town very gratefully. I am a second year apprentice, HVAC technician for Sheet Metal Local 104. As is very well known, it is hard to live here in town. The cost of living is very expensive. I did not move here, I was born here and working in the local community, I realized I needed to do more for my community and more for my future family. This community work agreement or PLA would make it possible to live, work and raise my future family here. My brothers and sisters and I in all the building trades will thank you to provide us with the utmost quality of work that we can provide for you here in Santa Cruz. That's about it, so thank you. Next speaker. Hello, my name is Saban Couples, I'm with IBEW Local 234, which is the electricians union for Santa Cruz County. I'm here to speak in favor of the city of Santa Cruz moving forward, implementing a community workforce agreement. I'm native here to Santa Cruz, I grew up less than five miles away from this building. And I was fortunate enough to have gone through our local five year IBEW electrical apprenticeship program. It's given me the training, the skills and the knowledge to become a professional journeyman electrician that I am today. There are many like me in this community that would love and would be proud of the opportunity to work on local projects. Contributing to the growth of our community is not only something we can personally be proud of, but also something that we can show to our children and generations to come. Local residents working on local projects puts money straight back into our local economy as well. This is why I urge you to implement a community workforce agreement. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Good afternoon, Mayor and Vice Mayor, Council members. My name is Jesse Bristow with Swanson Billers and just like to highlight that we don't really bid public projects. So we don't really have a race in the source. We just wanted to kind of provide some insight as being a construction developer for 32 years here. We have so much volume that we're an open shop. So we hire union subcontractors and non-union subcontractors. And so about four years ago, I think there was an economic study of union labor. I think 16% was commercial projects, 16% were union. And then about 2% to 3% were residential. So just really highlights that there's a small labor pool when it comes to union shops. As I mentioned, they need more training, they need more work. And maybe that's an incentive for you to do the PLA to create that. But because the pool is so small here, you'll actually be pulling from union shops over the hill. And technically it wouldn't be local. I don't believe there's any union wood framers here. But we just want to highlight that it's going to be an added cost. So to take that into consideration, because 90% of your mom and pop shops here for electrical contractors, all of them, they're non-union. And historically, it's non-union. So you're actually competing with unions over the hill and the unions that exist here. So just something to take into consideration because we want to be building it. But it beats a contract that the city would be pursuing and something they should consider. So, thank you. Speaker. Afternoon, Mayor and Council members. Stephen Cry, training coordinator of plumbers and steamfitters local 62 Santa Cruz and Monterey counties. I come before you today in support of the proposed recommendation of directing staff to conduct an analysis of project labor and community workforce agreements. As a training coordinator and former apprentice, I've seen firsthand how these agreements, benefit apprenticeship programs and the underserved portion of our communities. These agreements offer opportunities for local residents to work in the same area as they live. So not to have to travel two to three hours a day to earn a living wage. In return, their dollars are spent locally supporting the local economy. Not only do residents reinvest their dollars in the local community, these residents receive highly skilled training. So they're not a burden on city services and social programs. There are many more examples of the benefits of project labor and community workforce agreements. But with only two minutes, I can't fit them all in. Currently I have 26 apprentices in my program. Thank you for your time today, and I hope you'll support this motion. Yeah, thanks speaker. Here council members, my name is Alec Sandoval. I'm a union member, and these guys probably said it all. But I'm here to testify that I'm a local. I was raised here, and the union put me to work. I tried college, and that didn't work out for him, and not everyone is cut out for college. And someone still has to build our buildings, and the trades have a great program of putting our local young men to work. You have to live in this area to join our local. So everybody here is from this area. We all spend our money here by our cars, our houses. I'm here to represent also with the at risk youth. I started getting into trouble, and a good hard days work took all my energy from me and gave me some positive to do. There's a lot more out there like me representing the local people. Thank you. Next speaker. Good evening council, my name is Aaron Burns. I'm with the operating engineers. I'm in support of this community workforce agreement. Creates a level playing field for contractors while promoting local hire and apprenticeship programs. Next speaker. Good evening mayor, city council, staff. My name is Mark Plubell. I'm a regional representative for the heat and frost insulators, local 16 in Northern California. I don't live here locally like Nicole Gehring in her constituents, but I do have members that live in this area, and I'm here to talk for them. I'm here to urge you to complete the study on community workforce agreements and ultimately enter into one with the building trades. These are cousins of project labor agreements or project stabilization agreements. But with more benefits, such as local workforce hire, help us to hard hats, including disadvantaged and disenfranchised residents to work in apprenticeship programs which leads to careers with benefits and pensions. They do not cost more than projects without agreements. And you're going to hear that claim and they're going to show unsubstantiated proof of that. If you have any questions, please contact any of us from the building trades. We can answer your questions. Some specific examples of projects that really went well where the Brentwood Civic Center, PLA, they built the Civic Center in the downed economy. The mayor caught a lot of flak for putting a PLA on that. It had so much money left over, they built a parking structure. I live in that area, that's why I know all about this one. There's a famous tale of two libraries, Gilroy under a PLA, on time, on budget. Palo Alto, non-union with no PLA over budget, over by two years on time over the due date. The owner had to bring the union mechanicals and finish the contracts in to finish the job. There's the John Swett High School in Crockett. The ABC used to claim the unions did under a PLA, but until they found out their non-union contractors did it, put windows in backwards, cost structural damage due to the leaking of water. They don't make that claim that we did that one anymore. I just want to say and thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor and Vice Mayor and Council Members Glenn Schaller from the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council. O'Reilly O'Gonzalez from the Watsonville City Council and a retiree from the Laborers was here earlier, wanted to speak and had to go. One of the things he wanted to point out is that Watsonville, of course, is on their fifth project within their city under their ordinance. Anyone to suggest that you could move forward? As you probably know, community workforce agreements are the best way to guarantee local employment. Anyone can fill a local job, only local folks can be locally employed. And that is something that's very important. We, of course, have had a successful, a number of successful projects under project labor agreements, including our Public Safety Center. You all received a letter from the sheriff about that. And Barry Swenson Builder represented earlier was actually the non-union general contractor for that project, which belies the claim that non-union folks can't be involved in PLAs. So as we have pointed out, and as you understand and has been proven in Watsonville, community workforce agreements are the best way to increase participation by local folks in apprenticeship programs, something which has not been happening in the city of Santa Cruz as much as in other cities. And so I hope we move forward. So doing an analysis and then eventual negotiations with the building trades, making sure that staff and council members are educated and learn more about this and hear more about the benefits and some concerns, let's move forward. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Thank you, Mayor and council members. My name is Susan Andrews. I'm a mechanical contractor. I'm a woman-owned business. I've been in business for over 15 years. My technicians have stayed with me for over the whole time I've been there. I pay them well, they're happy. They could join a union if they wanted to, some have and come back and said they don't work for me. Unions work for some people and they don't work for a lot of your community construction workers because when they join the union to do a public works project, what happens after that? Unless you can guarantee that until they vest like five years on their pension, that they're going to have public work to do, where are they going to go to do the work? Your economy does not support all prevailing wage work. You need your open shop contractors. On these projects, you need the open shop contractors. There's a lot of specialty work my techs would do that you would want me on that project. So you need both union and non-union contractors. Project labor agreements discriminate against non-union shops by their core workforce agreement. They tell me I can't bring my own employees out there. They think they're dispatching to me employees that I can work with when I've never worked with them. So I go out on a job and I dispatch people I've never seen. Who would do that? Who would bid that? It doesn't work. I can't go out there successfully. I know what my guys can do. I have no clue what these guys can do and you're pulling them out of your local workforce. How are they being trained and where are they going to go after and where do they have to go to train for all these trades? So you just have to really be aware of how this is going to impact your community when you say you're almost forcing unionization on to these workers. Thank you. Yeah, next speaker. Good evening, American Indian Council staff. I'm Mark Veneno, I'm with the Shea Matter Workers Union. I negotiated the first 10 PLAs in Santa Clara County. I've heard all the arguments over and over again. I heard the myths, the myths, facts, whatever they want to bring. What this does is this puts community workforce agreement, puts local people to work, gives them a career, gives them an opportunity. It raises the bar on projects. This does not include, exclude, open shops or union shops or whatever. But it's agreement that puts local people to work together. And you know as well as I do, if you spend $1, $7 is always rotated. So you can imagine what the money that you're losing, what the money that you're putting together for people to work here. And it's expensive to live here. As far as people coming from out of the area, like the lady from me, she doesn't even have her company here. She comes from another area and brings her workforce in to take work from people. We had two jobs in Monterey. And one of the jobs was that a guy from LA, RAW Robertson came in and took the work away from the Shea Matter Workers. They brought their own people in. I've investigated them right now because they violated the DAS law and the Bavarian wage law. If you have public works contracts with the PLA or a community workforce agreement, it polices itself. Thank you. Any other member of the public who would like to speak on this item? Seeing none, I just want to make an announcement and I apologize for not making this announcement earlier. One of the city council members needs to leave at 5.30. And so we're going to postpone the committee appointments for anyone who may be watching, commission appointments, my apologies. Anyone who may be here watching, we're going to postpone those until after our evening item. And so with that, I'll bring back this item for action and deliberation, council member Glover. Thank you, and I want to thank everyone that came to speak to share their perspectives, both people that are for and against the proposed action that we're talking about tonight. There were some things that really stuck out to me. I mean, first of all, we have to acknowledge that reunions exist for a reason, they are there to provide protection for workers, but also to provide a voice for them in situations like this, where there's policy being decided on that will directly affect the livelihood and the ability of workers to work locally. Something that someone said, college isn't for everyone. I really appreciated that statement, because it's very true that there's a whole population of people out there that either don't go to college, don't have the resources to go to college, don't want to go to college. But also what's important for us to acknowledge is the severe lack of trade workers in general in the United States. How people are going to college but coming out and not being able to find jobs while high-paying jobs sit empty because people haven't gone to trade school. And even locally here, the ROP department and local organizations like the Second Saturday Network are working to connect high school age youth with opportunities to move into the trade. So anything that we can do in my opinion that can encourage people to shift and start looking at trade work as a potential solution, especially if they can stay locally and be paid well for their work, is something that we should be prioritizing. This is what that I have a motion that I would like to put forward. I would like to motion to direct staff to work with the Monterey and Santa Cruz County Building and Construction Trade Councils to draft a community workforce agreement and bring back a draft for consideration by the first meeting in April. Second that? And can I just follow that up? Yeah, with the context of the timeline, because I know that someone had mentioned the four to six month timeline in April's two months away, but it's my understanding that the staff has had a chance to review the document for a couple months now, which brings us to at least a four month mark throughout the suggested timeline. But anyway. I was going to make a similar comment that kind of as I pointed out earlier, I provided these workforce agreements to, or a draft that was provided by the Monterey, Santa Cruz Building Council to the department heads, the city manager, the city attorney. And that was early December and some of those analyses having had discussions with the department heads have been initiated. And so, and having spoken with Manny Pinero from the Monterey and Santa Cruz County Building Trades, one of the things that we had discussed is that this has been done in other communities. And so the building trades can actually come in with the city and negotiate and work with them based on some of the knowledge that they have. Some of the constraints that have been seen in other cities to really get us to overcome what may be some of these barriers. I also want to point out that many of these workforce agreements and project labor agreements have thresholds. So for example, in Watsonville, these don't kick in until projects are over $500,000. So some of the concerns that have been raised that the smaller mom and pop businesses in Santa Cruz that are non-union wouldn't have an opportunity to participate and be able to bid on some projects. These kick in over thresholds and I think one of the things that we're interested in having happen is determining what that threshold is. What are some exceptional projects if there's technical skills that maybe fall outside of the unions? So that we can figure out what is the project labor agreements or community workforce agreements that are appropriate for this community. And so that's one of the reasons why I'm seconding this. And I also think that should there need to be more time, the department heads and the city manager's office could come back to council for further direction. Should there not be an agreement met or, but our intention is that a project labor agreement draft will be brought. Or a community workforce agreement draft will be brought back at that first meeting in April. So, is there any, okay? So council member Matthews, Brown, and then the city manager. This is, as many people will understand, not an area in which I have deep knowledge. I am generally supportive of moving ahead, but was much more comfortable with the language in the recommendation that we were given, which was to direct staff to conduct an analysis of the potential for using a project labor agreement. Community workforce agreement or other applicable approaches to increase community benefits for local skilled trades, et cetera, et cetera. Because it's an area that I'm not familiar with, I am interested in knowing. And I understand from, I will say, rather superficial conversation with various people that there are variations on this theme. And I think you have alluded to this as well. So I would like to see the language again. I think at the very least, as I recall the language, just to work with the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council, I would think at least to say, and other community stakeholders, whatever they may be. And I personally am interested in knowing more about the variations on the theme, the thresholds, and so forth. And I don't know what the vehicle for that would be, rather than just having something delivered in a final form. So I am more interested in getting some background. And certainly some of that will be with individuals who have spoken here. But to me, that feels like a more complete process. And I'll speak to that when the time comes. And so I'll get Council Member Brown and then City Manager Martin Bernal. And then I have comments to make in response. I have a question or comment at some point as well too. Okay. Staff wants to, I mean, I'm not sure. Sure, I just want to comment on the idea of the timing here. Because it's true that in December we're going to be aware of it. But I want to remind the council that the policy that was adopted was an amendment to operationalize what policy we've had for years. Which has always been that if anything takes over eight hours of time, it has to go to council. We've had that policy for years. So this idea that we've been spending the last two months working on it would be a violation of our policy in the first place. So that simply isn't correct. Yes, we got information about it. We did some preliminary work on it. The department heads have identified issues and concerns around it. And felt that this is our honest assessment of what we believe it would take to do a comprehensive and adequate analysis to bring something back to you. That's what's here. But again, staff is not holding this off or somehow was trying to keep this from moving forward in any sort of slower pace. Because that simply is not correct and true. So I just want to point that out. City attorney. Well, I just want to point out that the draft agreement that's in your packet was provided by the labor group that met with the mayor and based on the research that I've done and that staff has done some extensive, some significant research into this topic prior to this evening. A typical project labor agreement or community workforce agreement has many elements that are subject to negotiation and agreement. And as I look at this one, it contains a lot of elements that I think would be considerable favorable to the unions and not as favorable to the city. And as an example, one is paragraph 13.4 outlines an arbitration process for disputes. And it lists the three arbitrators among whom the parties will select. I don't know who these arbitrators are, they're listed by name here. And so I think the city should weigh in on the dispute resolution process as part of the negotiations. Another is paragraph 18.3 states that the agreement will remain in effect for five years but prior to the expiration of the five year period, the parties will meet and negotiate potential changes. But if no agreement is reached, then the agreement will automatically be renewed another five years. I don't see a provision that authorizes either party to terminate. So it looks like it's intended to be in effect in perpetuity unless both parties agree that it should be terminated. That's something that I think staff would like to weigh in on as to whether or not that's a good idea for the city. So I take the motion language or at least I'm interpreting it to mean that staff will work toward bringing back a recommendation as to the various elements of an agreement that staff is recommending the council consider as part of that agreement. Is that a fair statement of the council's direction? If I can reply. Please. So two things that I want to reply to some of the comments that have been raised. One is that the reason why this motion is made and it's very general is because it doesn't preclude staff from doing any sort of analysis to see what would work best for this community. Secondly, what was brought to our attention from the building trades was a draft of here's what bare bones, what this could look like, bring it and the reason why I brought it to the city was to say what are some concerns that you have with this and the reason why the direction is for our staff to work with the building trades is to actually initiate this negotiating process. If I mean the direction could have been for staff to look over this draft project labor agreement and bring us back any considerations or issues that you might find with it. But one of the things we think would be more productive is to directly have the staff engage with the union leaders and engage with other members of the community, conduct whatever analyses they need and then bring back something because we don't want to make, we don't want to provide to specific direction and leave out any piece of this process. We want to leave it general but make, but ensure that our staff is negotiating with the unions so that we can determine what is best for our community. And then I have Council Member Brown, Vice Mayor Myers and then Council Matthews on staff. Thank you for clarifying that. Yeah, I would just concur with Mayor Cummings' understanding or idea that the goal here, it seems to me, and this is what I want to support, is to have the staff analysis and discussion happen with the building and construction trades and other interested parties rather than two tracks independently which disagree and bring us to, you know, we'll pick the staff recommendation or pick the labor, the union's recommendation because my hope is that we can bring something forward that works for everybody. I believe that is what project labor agreements do. And so I'm looking, I'm thrilled that this is coming our way. I'm thrilled that it will be coming back. You know, I think having it come back in April would be, you know, let's, I think that's enough time to at the minimum get the people, people in the room to have the conversation and bring us back something that we can then make a decision about how to move forward with respect. And I just want to say a couple of things about the effect on workers, the potential effect on workers and local workers versus out, you know, out of town. The idea that this somehow hamstrings workers who may not want to join unions. I just, I can't say that that is an argument that resonates with me. I mean, I have actually spent some time because you may notice that we have some construction going on in our community. And I talk with workers who are here as subcontractors working on, you know, various elements of construction projects and none of them live in Santa Cruz. You know, I don't go out advocating union membership, although I'd like to. But I do ask them how they feel about, you know, are you interested in being in union? Is, you know, is your employer a union employer? And nobody tells me no, I, you know, never. I, you know, I, I don't have a good experience with a union. On, everybody says, yeah, I'd love to be in a union. The point of unions is to give workers a voice on the job, to give workers a say in the conditions of their, their work. And so to suggest that somehow the union is hamstringing workers, it just doesn't make sense to me. I mean, there, there isn't a fundamental power dynamic with the employer, employee relationship, and unions are a way to help balance that power relation. So that's just something that I believe. I've seen that in practice in terms of jeopardizing, you know, local workers. I think that, you know, we had, that's why we have local apprenticeship programs. I have worked with the local apprenticeship programs. We, I worked with a nonprofit that was intended, you know, we had a program and, and it continues to help women, low income women, who are interested in moving into non-traditional employment, move into apprenticeship programs in the building trades. And that's a great partnership. Those are local people. And they're local people whose wages will increase with, you know, as a result of being in those, having those relationships. So I'm thrilled this is happening. You know, I, I wish it had happened 20 years ago. And here we are today. I look forward to something coming our way in April. That's my vice mayor Meyers. Is there, could we, is there a copy of the motion that we're? I'd like to see it as well. I don't, I don't, we don't have a copy of the motion, is there? No, it's a Bonnie. You can get it ready. Done and done. Great, thank you. Okay, so comment? Yeah, if that's okay. Yeah, I was really, I'm really excited about this. And I'm trying to understand a little bit now about what's being proposed. So my understanding is we are going to go forward and negotiate this agreement. And who will be doing the negotiation for this, for the city? It'll be the city attorney's office working with my office. And any departments? Yes, yeah, the, the impacted departments are water and public works primarily. And if an agreement is reached, then that agreement would come back or council approval. I guess the thing that I feel like is getting lost potentially, and I'm not saying that we can't reach an agreement, but I was interested in seeing the work done in the analysis proposed in the original motion. Because it also speaks to the possibility of other applicable approaches. So I think that this is a critical question for our community because these are good paying jobs for local people and we have a shrinking set of people who do this kind of work. I feel like I'm losing the flexibility in what I originally read and was very much interested in supporting. So I'll just say that, and I'm a little disappointed that given sort of what was laid out here and look like a very positive way to move forward on an item that could really benefit our community. We're now going right into negotiating an agreement. So beyond that though, I am curious if as part of this motion, we have Santa Cruz County's Building and Construction Trade Council and I just want to make sure that that is a broad enough net in terms of negotiating an actual agreement. I'm not clear if it is or if it isn't. So I'm just trying to get a sense from the motion makers if you could give me a little more background on that. Can you repeat the last speech of that? So we've identified Monterey Santa Cruz County's Building and Trade Construction Trade Council. I'm just wondering, I want to make sure that that's the broadest net that we need to have at the table to actually go into negotiating an agreement. Is there any thoughts or comments on that? I see lots of nodding. I do believe that that is a wide enough net in order to enter into the negotiation process. I'll also mention, as I mentioned before, that any analyses that need to be done, we're not precluding staff from doing those. There's obviously going to be the need to do some analyses in order to enter into any form of labor negotiation. There will need to be outreach, but what we're trying to do with this motion is that leaving it broad in general does not preclude them. We made it specific to say which people, members of the community, reach out to what type of some analyses need to be done. We could be missing something. And so by directing them to enter into work with the Building Trades and Construction Trades Council, to work with them to bring back a draft, the idea is that the staff will be able to do whatever analyses necessary to understand what's going to be the best fit for the city of Santa Cruz. I have another question, follow-up question. The original agenda item estimated a cost of 25,000 to 40,000. So now we're going to have attorneys sitting at it, we're going to have attorneys and basically all of our lead staff, city manager, city attorney, department heads. Do we expect that to be the same range or just trying to get a sense? I'm looking at, I think you guys would know more soon. I apologize, but I was in a sidebar conversation and you were asking your questions. I'm just trying to get a sense. The original agenda report proposed, it identified a range of 25 to $40,000 for the analysis and attorney fees. And I'm just wondering now that we're going into more of a negotiation approach, I just want to have some clear understanding of what that looks like. And I know a lot of these agreements exist already, I know there's just curious. Right, I believe the thought of this was that we would hire a consultant to do some labor analysis and Rosemary, you want to comment on that. In terms of looking at some of the data that we wanted to collect, the thought was that we could do some level of analysis and also some costs related to the attorneys. So that's what that was anticipated, the cost would be for that. The evening, so in some of the initial work that I was doing, I came across a document prepared by a consulting firm called Beacon Economics for the Santa Cruz County Workforce Development Board. And it was a report that was published in 2019, I think in probably roughly about a year ago. It was a state of the workforce analysis for Santa Cruz County. And so I have been aware and looking, reading through that report that the local construction workforce of the kind that would be working on these projects is a question. It certainly wasn't one of the high points in that particular report. So I've been talking with them about a drill down into seeing what exactly the local construction workforce is, including some of its demographics. And then thinking also about some conversations with the workforce development board here locally to try to talk about what are those opportunities for creating some of these outcomes that I think we're all in support of, which are more local jobs that engage the workforce that we will be using on a number of the major kinds of construction projects. Certainly at the water department and over the city on a going forward basis. So that's the kind of technical analysis work I was looking at. And then also I think clearly there are a number of legal issues in these kinds of documents to understand and engage with. And so some specialized legal help might be appropriate also. I have a question for Director Menard. So in your estimation, are you are suggesting that that analysis ought to be done before we make decisions about moving forward with a project labor agreement? I think that understanding kind of where we stand right now with the local workforce really helps us to understand what are the kinds of things that we would benefit from building into a project labor agreement that would support us moving in the direction of getting the kind of local workforce we would really like to have. So it's sort of information that is necessary to define problems that you would use as part of the negotiating process. So here's a problem. We're looking for a solution to this problem. How can we come to something that works there? Can I clarify my question? So just to clarify, I guess I'm asking, are you suggesting that we contract with Beacon Economics to conduct such an analysis or that we look at the analysis that already exists? No, I've already talked to them about a possible scope that would drill down into the local workforce information. So I don't have that yet. But to me, it helps us, as I said, define the nature of the issues that we would really want to take action on in a positive way. That I think something like this or whatever strategies come forward, something like this would really help us to produce an outcome that we could all be in support of, which I think there are many opportunities there, I think. I was just really honestly, it's an open question, trying to clarify. Yeah. On some more Matthews. That is exactly the process that I understood to be put before us here. And that's a process and an outcome that I can readily support. I feel that what's been put before us now is, here it says draft, what people are saying in conversation is shoot to negotiation. And I am frankly just not comfortable with that. I would hope there could be some consideration to rephrase the item. I can suggest a substitute motion if the need be. I kind of don't think it would get four votes, but however many we need. But I am really disappointed and even in some of the labor people I talked with, I did not get the impression that what we were going to be presented with was an up or down vote on a short turnaround negotiation. I got the impression that what we were talking about was an exploration of the potential of various forms of agreement and how they would fit in with our circumstances in this community. So that is the approach that I continue to support. Councilmember Glover, what do you want to? Well, I guess I would just say, I'm not sure that these are entirely different approaches. I think that what we're talking about is asking or directing our staff to work directly with the Monterey, Santa Cruz County Building and Construction Trades Council to draft a community workforce agreement proposal to bring it back to us for consideration. It doesn't preclude any other conversations from happening. It doesn't preclude us from saying in April, okay, now we hear some of the key questions that haven't been answered and we'll continue to get more information before we proceed. It's not saying we are going to adopt something at our first meeting in April without any further consideration. So I guess I'm not sure how it's, they're so fundamentally different. Thank you, Councilor Brown. That's exactly what I was going to say. The request for staff to come back with a negotiated draft in no way precludes them from coming back with alternative recommendations through their analysis or other conversations that they may have had with different, whoever they felt it would be necessary that fit into the conversation within the departments in the city. So I can understand your, I guess I don't really understand the confusion personally and disappointment, unfortunately, I guess is a part of politics, right? I was disappointed about a bunch of different things and we don't all have to agree on everything every time, but at the same time, I think that this is very much in line with the initial intent of the agenda report and what we brought forward before you. So, I want to say the same thing and I just want to add, the train is leaving the station and we're in an era where we've got somebody running for President of the United States who actually really cares about union and talks openly about increasing union membership. That to me is really exciting and if this council can represent and reflect the community, because I know that that certain person also is very, people are supportive of him. I think that being from a union family, I feel like I'm just living the life being able to represent folks who think unions are important. I think a project labor agreement now is shifting to a community workforce agreement and I think that's a great way to go and that you're going to ensure local hiring from that. So I'm just like, yeah, let's move on. Unions make a community better and they raise the quality of life in those communities. And I would like to call the question. Second. Okay. We had a question called by Council Member Cron. Seconded by Council Member Glover. Let me just get one clarification. I have a note that since Council Member Matthews added or requested possibly to add other community stakeholders, was that a friendly amendment or were you just was a request? You can decide if it's going to be. Yeah, I've been with thoughts. I'm open to as much conversation as possible. So I wanted to slow down the opportunity for the city to. Problem motion. Yeah. Okay. I'll withdraw the question so we can speak to that. Okay. And I'd just like to say that again, there's nothing that precludes our staff from reaching out to other members of the community, other stakeholders. There's nothing precluded in them from doing any analysis. The idea is that at the end of the day that they'll work with the labor council sorry, the county building and construction trades council to come up with a draft agreement and bring that to us in April. There's nothing stopping the council from the staff from doing anything that would allow them to get to the best possible project labor agreement or community workforce agreement that there could be for the city of Santa Cruz. And so if I may, does the timeline that's spelled out in this motion give adequate time for our staff to do the kind of background research that the water department director described? She's shaking her head no. I believe they said they're bringing in a consultant for that research. She's shaking her head no. They can't do it by the first time first meeting. I mean, I think when staff looked at this and again anticipated a process in helping to craft the report, it was to hire a consultant to do some analysis as the water director described and then get through a process of yes, reaching out and having discussions with the various stakeholders and then bringing something back that would and that would take four to six months. That was our estimate for doing that. A professional recommendation and estimate. I also want to mention that earlier today, when this motion was made, we also said to try to bring back something at the first meeting in April and if something could not be brought back at that first meeting in April, then the staff could provide us with the report. But what we would like to see is that this is moving forward because it could be that maybe that analysis might take longer. It could also be that there are, with working with the building and construction trade union, that there are areas that staff maybe, they might come to their attention that okay, it makes sense for your city to have a threshold of here rather than, you know, not having any communication at all between the two groups because it might be that this could be expedited should there be able to be, should there be conversations between the two groups. And so that's kind of where I think that the intention of this motion was going. Can I provide an update? And in the interest of camaraderie, then I'll accept that friendly amendment to include the language of other stakeholders. I set with this, I approve of the second. And there was one more thing that was in there, but we're going to take a break in just a second, I know. I can ask for one clarification. Sure. Yeah. Not to interrupt the train. Go ahead. Jar loose. Motion says community workforce agreement. Is that meant interchangeably with project labor agreement or is that exclusively the direction? It's interchangeable with project labor agreements. Yeah. And then just with that intention of the timeline associated with it, I would I would love to see as much due diligence going into it to make it so that we could see at least some kind of a draft or get a robust update by the first meeting in April and not, oh, we don't have anything to show. Just a report and we had a bunch talking. So I could at least having some kind of a document that shows the timeline and the process that you've gotten to that thus far by that first meeting in April if not a complete draft that we can look at. I think we can probably even do a kind of a timeline for you before that as an employee. So you have a sense of that. And then a formal update in April. Yes, Councilman Myers. I just want to publicly state, I'm not hesitant about exploring this with any of our union colleagues in Santa Cruz or beyond into the Monterey Bay. And I just want to be very clear about that. I am very supportive. I just want to I'm working off a document that was given to us on Thursday evening. And we now have a motion that we're just trying to digest. There's interchangeable language still being discussed. So again, just trying to do my due diligence as a City Council member and making sure I understand what I'm voting on before I vote. And so I just want to state that and also state that I think this is incredibly exciting and thank you for the Council members who brought it forward. I do the one note I would like to and again this is kind of a little bit flipped around now but I do know that a lot of our projects are have timelines associated with them because they're either funded by state funding or grants, et cetera. And so I guess that's just one thing I'd like to kind of flag is that we just heard of a project this evening earlier today. I can't remember the price tag on it but it was significant. So I think we want to just make sure that as we get into the discussions about all this that public projects do have sometimes very short timelines, public time, everything gets together. And so we want to be aware of that especially when we're talking about some of the infrastructure projects we have coming down the pipeline. So that's it, thanks. Okay, is there any further discussion? Seeing none, I'll take this to a vote and it would be to direct staffs to work with the Monterey, Santa Cruz County Building Trades and Construction Trades Council, draft a community workforce agreement and bring back a draft for consideration by the first meeting in April and there were some amendments for including broader public participation, any analyses that the staff needs to do and should it need more time to bring back either draft updates as needed? Just to repeat my question about the project labor agreement just to clarify that that's part of it. Community workforce agreement and project labor agreement are synonymous. But if I may here again you say and there are various other amendments such as blah, blah, blah, and we are not seeing what those amendments are. Okay, sure. The amendments were to bring in other stakeholders which was the amendment that you asked for and loosening up that hard April timeline that made it so that it would come back if available, if not then with certain timelines and check-ins and then the amendment that requested by the city attorney which synonymized essentially the, yeah right, I don't know what that's word, the workforce agreements and the PLAs. So those are all of it and then that language right there. And if I could ask for one more phrase to be included and this in no way precludes staff providing additional background information and analysis. That I think that that's that's been said to us that's implicit yeah I mean they will do that so no I'm not going to accept that we can just move forward with the vote. I think it keeps it cleaner and we were trying to be as clear as possible with this to allow as much flexibility as possible with the staff with what they needed to do so great. My sense is that it includes bringing back a report on all the different analyses that have been done, updates. But if I could if you assume that what's the harm of putting that in there because what this gives very explicit direction to return with an agreement. With a draft. I'm and I'm I'm okay with bringing back the results of analyses as well if we if the intent because I think that that's the intention is to bring back like within the staff reports that they would bring back any sort of analyses that are done outreach within that report. I haven't I haven't seen us go into such detail over what comes back on report over a motion and so in general when we receive reports on any motion that this council makes an ask for a report back there's a report that has analyses associated with it so that was my that was why we were trying to keep the motion simple because that's the expectation councilor Brown. I see a motion thank you Bonnie for typing that up I see the motion I would like us to move forward and so now I'm going to call the question on this motion project where subbing XXX for labor agreements. Second. I'll motion to call the question by council member Brown seconded by council member Glover all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Excuse me. I oppose none. Council member Watkins absent and then I'll move forward with the motion that's on the floor. So all those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. That motion passes unanimously with council member Watkins absent. If I could I would like to go on the record that I vote for this because I am supportive of the direction I have reservations about the process that's been outlined. I just yeah and I'd like to go on the record as well I think what's inherent in it what's the difference between these two processes is we are going to basically be ending up with an agreement which you know I ultimately we all wanted that but the process of going of what we've outlined in this motion is different than what was originally recommended so I just want to go on record these are different different things. And also if I could I want to ask my friends from the labor movement who are out here to please not demonize me. I think we share a common goal. Thank you. And again I think that there are council members who have expressed I mean there's some frustration around the new policy and I'm hoping that in future meetings we can get around some of those frustrations and make sure that what is proposed is more clearly laid out. And we're going to adjourn until the until a public comment at 7 p.m. We're all communications. Okay so well now you got to let us know. I think you just sent out another message and be like due to some campaign financing. Welcome to our 7 p.m. session for the January 28 2020 meeting of the city council. I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you mayor. Council member is Watkins. Here. Matthews. Here. Brown. Here. Lever. Here. Crown. Here. Vice mayor Meyers. Here. And mayor Cummings. Here. More communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda. Are there any members of the public who would wish to address the council? If so please line up to my left. You will each have two minutes to speak. We request that you sign in to ensure correct spelling of your name in the meeting minutes. However it is not required. Out of respect of other members of the public, many of whom are not accustomed to speaking in public. Ask members of the public to please refrain from clapping, cheering, booing, hissing or other similar types of behavior that might discourage all members of the public from stepping to the microphone to have their views heard. We had member of the public reach out for extra time for four minutes on behalf of Huff and I'd actually like to start with that member of the public please. We'll have four minutes and we'll have public comment go till no later than 7.35. There are more than a thousand in the houseless community who will face harsh winter weather as all of us know. They need the right to shelter themselves in order to survive. This means protective tents not to be torn down by the police during the day, survival gear not to be seized by parks and rec blankets, snatchers, food and medicine not to be snatched and dumped by whatever city agencies. Needlemania fear pushing has become a loud talking point for police chief Andy Mills in the back as he makes the rounds beating the drums for escalating police powers and presence. Yet we see no increased drug treatment appropriations nor sharps containers placement nor heaven help us safe injection centers. Needle rattling is really a pretext for harsher and more dangerous social control but rent profiteering and unlivable wages are our real enemies. They create sidewalks lined with tents and sleepers huddled in doorways. Militarized police enforcement, massive police presence at minor infractions, intimidation by armed forces policy. The nearly pristine beach tents last fall were falsely smeared as some kind of homeless menace. We saw a ridiculous cowl beach thing pass with only one descending vote this afternoon for the next five years audacious and absurd and abusive. We lost community space and liberty. Mills new rousing right wing organizing of bigot neighborhood groups flips the narrative. It's those poor privileged folks living in seaside homes who are the victims. The folks shivering and drenched outside their million dollar homes are the evil aggressors. Must it be the police and the city manager who unilaterally declare and implement policy? Mills and Bernal have done this for two years first at the San Lorenzo Campground in 2017 and then at Camp Ross in 2018. They took action because City Council and its Bernal O'Hara Brain Trust would not. The winter shelter situation this year is a joke in spite of hundreds of thousands of dollars pouring in. Council won't provide Brent Adams storage, warming center, shower and laundry program with halfway adequate funding. Council failed last year to authorize campgrounds, safe sleeping zones or open vacant buildings for the majority of those outside. At the same time it's funded and enabled police and ranger abuse against homeless folks on their property. Meanwhile they chatter about non-affordable affordable housing and ignore the need for landlord data to define the depth of the profiteering swamp we are in. Earlier today we heard the mayor declare a new policy here at City Council. He will no longer allow the council meeting calendar to allow for new agenda items. How else do you get past a reactionary mayor and city manager who ignore agenda proposals and staff reports from council members to say nothing of the public as we were faced with last year? Apparently Mayor Cummings' answer is to hog-tie council procedures so that banned items can't be placed on subsequent council meetings by a direct vote as has been the case during the council meeting calendar segment and of course I would love to be corrected on that. In Berkeley community members like Andrea Henson has worked with the where can we go encampments along the freeway. She and others have provided community support to the resistance effort standing off Caltrans. We have Mill Seven Point Plan which the Santa Hughes Union will be dissecting tomorrow at its forum 430 at the Resource Center for Nonviolence at 612 Ocean. I invite the community to come. We invite you to come also and on your own time support encampments directly. Don't wait for last year's rise in deaths to be repeated or communicable diseases to spread. Thank you. Next member of the public you'll have two minutes. Good evening. My name is James Ewing Whitman. I love to do research and I love to be in service. I guess I'm here because I'm concerned about my own safety and everybody else's safety. So it might be easiest if I just start out by reading a quote. Animal experiments reported in open literature have demonstrated the use of low level microwave signals to produce death by heart spasm or neurological pathways resulting from breaking the blood brain barrier effects known blood cardiovascular system cells central nervous system digestive system glands metabolism reproduction visual systems. Another quote and I'll tell you who it's by biological effects of electromagnetic radiation radio waves microwaves. There's a study that was released in 1976 by the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy about the biological effects of electromagnetic frequencies. So I'm kind of moved to talk because dozens of citizens have stood here and talked about their physical concerns from the existing effects of the wireless that we're using right now. And one of my favorite places which is very close to the clock tower has a new array antenna system that the military's been using for over a hundred years. I've gone down to the building department. I talked to public works. I took pictures of the 34 pictures I looked at. Only one was about the electrical but it exactly describes what this weapons technology is actually using. There's sets of three and there's sets of eight. That's exactly what that one has. So I think this is affecting everybody's safety and you know there's a brand new 25 million dollar building that was built within 100 yards and they could sue the city. I'm hoping there's a better remedy than that. Thank you. Appreciate it. Next speaker. Good evening. I come here as a community member. First of all I'm grateful for many many people in this town who have helped me throughout the years. My childhood and adolescence were a struggle as were many people's. So I've spent the last year gathering ideas for positive solutions for homelessness. I surveyed my neighbors and my friends and everybody that I talked to had a brilliant idea and anybody that you ask the question what's a positive solution for homelessness. Everybody comes up with something brilliant. Last week I got one idea that really really stood out. It was like whoa this is huge. It's simple. It's subtle and it's kind of like counterintuitive. It's sort of like a journalist's philosophical view of like how do we do this? In looking at history this type of thing seems to be what has consistently brought communities out of despair. Since I've already used up most of my time I guess I will have to bring it to you next time in two weeks. I think you'll really like it. I guess I'll just give a short summary. It has to do with the definition of good leadership and since each of you are leading this small town you're in a perfect position to do it so I hope you like it and yeah sorry I couldn't just get it out right now but I'll just come back next week. Thank you. Santa Cruz has changed the world many times with sports, political reform, police management reform, sanctuary, protecting water. Next speaker. I decided to come speak to you all tonight because I'm going to have to wrap up six years of coming to a lot of city council meetings and speaking. I just can't afford to do it anymore. I actually have to find ways of getting more income so I'm sort of coming to say hopefully goodbye. It's a bit of an addiction. I want to speak tonight having seen a movie called Lincoln by Steven Spielberg. It was a really interesting movie for me about President Lincoln making sure that the 13th amendment made it through. I believe it was the Senate. Sorry I didn't know that but it's Congress. It was definitely Congress and it was just to me a fascinating film about politics and I was inspired to say to our city council and to the public that's out there listening tonight that I believe that we are in a civil war. It's a different kind of war. It's not the usual war where there's a front line. It's not the kind of war that's going on in some other countries right now. But it is a war and it is very real in that there are casualties and there are wounded. And I think the war is an economic war predominantly but it is really truly about violence on one side and it is about safety and well-being on the other. It is also about nature and habitat and having our spaceship Earth as one activist Jim Bell rest in peace in San Diego used to talk about spaceship Earth being our support system our life support system. So I just want to urge the public to get involved in our government while we still can, while we have free speech, while we are able to still come together and meet legally please use our freedoms and please look into the war against the working class and the poor. Thank you. Hello I'm the Vice President of the California Homeless Union Santa Cruz Chapter and I'm here today with the message from multiple members of the community housed in and housed, schooled and unschooled. The citizens of this community, citizens of this community feel that if they haven't been able to rely on those that govern Santa Cruz to provide affordable housing that it is past time for them to provide their own housing and we are seeing other cities where there's tiny housing popping up on public property and Santa Cruz will follow suit. The city of Roswell, New Mexico voted to change their zoning code to include tiny housing you know with it within their codes. So so pretty soon I guess we're going to be seeing tiny housing popping up in Santa Cruz is what I've been hearing. That's pretty much it. I had a lot of things I wanted to talk about tonight. I want to just say one word Kobe. I don't want to give up 24 seconds of my two minutes but Kobe was big time for many many people. I was listening to the Vice Mayor today talking to the audience that actually views this on TV and I'd like to take a page out of her playbook but not announce that I'm an out lesbian or 34 years. Santa Cruz together just filed their last quarter 460 campaign finance documents and I'd like to read just a few numbers. Andrew Carson $2,000, Walker Street properties $5,000, Dorothy Elther $2,000, Al Ramadan on the 31st of December $10,000 to fund the recall. I don't want to be owned by Al Ramadan whoever he is. Expenditures Dan Coglund $8920, John Walker $74.87, Michael Fish $36.58 even though he lives in Olympia Washington, David Bond $46.65 although he lives in Sacramento, James Hinton $2160 although he lives in Napa. In the last three months of last year Santa Cruz together spent $29,096 gathering signatures for the all volunteer grassroots campaign to fund the recall. Think about it. Next speaker. Mayor Cummings, Council good to see you all. So some of you may remember this Justin Martin the homeless coordinating committee it's 2017 the 20 recommendations a two by two came out of this that you're a member of. We know that you're going to different places in the Bay Area looking at novel programs and now we have the catch doing a lot of investigating of homeless programs for instance. They're recommending put maybe a shipping container in a parking lot and bringing a Palo Alto shower trailer with with a laundry over and there they do about 20 loads. I want to discuss something that's profoundly revolutionary and transformative. Footbridge services center right at the footbridge. It includes day and night storage. We have 200 almost 300 people on our shelves now going on 900 people that we've served so far. Discrete individuals laundry weekly. We're doing 50 loads every week. We're serving more than 150 people with laundry. If you can just imagine how difficult that is and what the organizational component shower Sunday. We didn't now do a shower trailer also on Sundays. We just did 30 showers in three hours. Actually I'm sorry shoot 30 showers in four hours so that shower laundry storage and available achievable goals. Casework programs so I want to hand these out to you may recall that these were things that were mentioned in these recommendations yet never completed even though we got progress reports from the city manager's office that they had been completed. We're talking about charging stations. We have a charging station. People can leave their stuff overnight. Now these are scalable programs. Nobody gets turned away. We always want to get you to reflect on that. What does it mean when their tax dollar tax paid tax dollar paid programs that leave people out? These programs do not. So I just want to hand these out to you and really consider what it means to have these programs. These are things that we take for granted on our own lives. Thank you. You know I talk about you the way that I do it's because of the work that you do. You know that right? I mean it's like the work that others have done. That's why I talk about them the way what the work that they have done but I was reading about on Facebook how you did some research on sleeping outside and you know you're going to the store buying your sleeping bag and researching where to go to sleep and the reasons why and all that and you know I want to commend you about you know your dedication and your activism on the behalf of Santa Cruz and maybe this chamber but you know I want to commend you on that you know and just went out man it just went out my head. Oh it's feeling better in here so I'm hoping that some good work will be done. I'm looking to that and I'm kind of watching you on channel 25 to you know because I'll be watching the business you do but it seems like to me people be trying to talk and sound intellectual and I just hear blah blah blah so I'm looking at it like if there's business being conducted in here on behalf of us we the people that of Santa Cruz then you all need to speak English you know talk right I don't know if that you know what I mean when I say that but I'm not impressed with how smart you think you are and you're trying to improve how smart you are that don't impress me people talking about I'm gonna look into this that do it do it before you come in here so that way it's done not like well I'm gonna do that it makes no sense to me do the business. I am Keith and so at the Little Red Church at the coffee house this Monday as happens often people come up and they talk show their tickets or they talk about their their vehicle was towed and wanted to know where they're gonna sleep next and so young woman I would say maybe in her late 20s who's living in an old Winnebago she came with what turned out was 12 tickets that she had and the the cheap ones are $48 and she works full-time and she moves her RV around around town to try to keep from getting tickets but she sometimes gets three tickets in a day and she was trying to raise money to fix the crack in her window which she gets tickets for that's often she gets tickets for that and this is very very common that we have people that come to us who explain it will tell us this story that I just told you and then a month later we'll say well I now I'm living in a doorway or I'm now living in the Pogonip and that's a shame that people that are working in our town are actually being forced into doorways through policies of this city and I think we should be ashamed of ourselves for allowing that to to happen and so we are also continuing to propose that a self-managed survival camp is in the works it's ready to go and my I would be great to get your endorsement as a city council but if you can't endorse actual solutions then I encourage you to get out of the way and to leave us alone to solve our own problems so thank you very much speaker I go by the name of Eagle and I'm here I've been houseless for two years but I'm better than some because I have a little 30 year old motorhome to live in but my question is where do I go you know I've been in a vehicle for the last two years and only talked to the police twice and they were more than kind they're really very very decent people my question is where I'm parked up there I don't park in front of people's houses I you know because I did live and I've not always been out in a vehicle and I would want somebody out there sleeping in front of my house so I give them that respect I'm up there on Delaware and there's signs up and down the road saying don't park from midnight to six so I was on Swinton and I got a green slit so I moved because I want to abide by the law I don't want to cause no problems but my question is there's old trailers and stuff and I'm not here to rat anybody out or hate on anybody I'm not trying to be intellectual you know but there's old trailers out there and then park forever and there's signs out so I'm saying to myself should I park out there no I'm not sure but that's my question is there's signs all over Santa Cruz says don't park from midnight to six but there's people parking everywhere how's that work when the police need to make a quarter they're gonna go out and swoop on these people I'm not here to rat anybody off or make it rough for people but I know people tell me sign up for this facing I'm gonna and when I'm denied I'm gonna bring it back and and I'm gonna do everything I can to make sure that uh that uh that Chris and Drew don't get thrown off because I'm a big supporter and Bernie and those two guys are more like Bernie than anybody thank you for your time hi there everybody thanks for your time and on a personal note uh to Drew Gleaver uh I'm Ryan Fry's ex roommate and I'm sure he would say what's up if he had the time to come in here um as a as a previous resident of Santa Cruz I know a lot of people here in town make a lot of noise about the needle programs and syringe exchanges I was under the impression that this was a common period about that but uh if it's general then I'll make it specific the evidence is overwhelming that syringe distribution programs and needle exchanges work I was on the board of an international drug policy reform non-profit for several years and the research is overwhelming that in the same way that we take time to shower so that we don't lose time uh with skin funguses later uh social welfare programs work and this is in the this is a principle found in every basic economics textbook everywhere so please keep trying to keep people alive long enough to get them into rehabilitation programs thanks for your uh for your work and your support of those programs if uh if you're there if you're not please get on our level uh and also I support decriminalized Santa Cruz and by the principles uh the same principles of harm reduction I support reinserting the language to protect personal cultivation of entheogenic plants and fungi no that's our next item so well this is anything that's not on the anything it's not that all right well uh whether you can put it in the record or not uh there's uh there's my opinion by the same principles as I've already explained thanks for your time speaker hello city council my name is Raul Urenia before I go ahead and begin my comment I would like to know how much time I have two minutes two minutes okay I'm a person with a disability I would request time and I have I have ADHD and just so I can get my comment across I believe I have that right under the Americans with Disabilities Act if you would agree yes okay excellent my name is Raul Urenia I am a student here at UC Santa Cruz positive one second so he asked for time and a half so three minutes the I believe the title something well when I get disability accommodations at school it is time and a half under federal regulation because of my specific disability ADHD so I believe I'm entitled to time and a half if you would agree no yes you got it yeah so three minutes and a half no no I'm doing my math wrong sorry see I have a disability there it is okay okay let's go ahead my name is Raul Urenia I'm a student at UC Santa Cruz I'm in my fifth year studying economics and mathematics I am very well aware of the trends that are happening in Santa Cruz as a result of gentrification I'm very aware of the people who are being pushed out to make way for Silicon Valley expansion and the way that we're treating this I know the calculations that you guys are making it is an issue of public finance it is an issue fundamentally like some like the gentleman who just spoke right now said it is an issue issue of fundamental economics and I will tell you why because it does go back to my economics one teachings you know economics one and two my basic micro and macro economics that economics is not a science about money it's a science about resources right natural or unnatural resources food that is produced from either the earth or by our own human hands this is about how we're sharing it I don't think we're sharing the progress that we're making it and on quite honestly if that is the case I don't think we are even making progress why are we here why are we pursuing technology why do we send kids to school and why is it that we think it is okay to send kids to school knowing that they are homeless I come from Calexico originally it's on the border with Mexicali and Calexico and I know you guys have been hearing a lot about the place I live because of the national election but I'm going to tell you right now that in my town just like in my birthplace Salinas right now 30% of students in the K through 12 system are homeless that it's unacceptable that is unacceptable and it's a dumb calculation because if we want to develop and progress shouldn't we want everyone included with that progress so we can all move forward together I believe that's what Bernie's proposing and so I just want you when you make your decisions regarding homelessness regarding the criminalization of mushrooms that is about to come up tie it back to homelessness the other thing about economics is that like you just tried to shut someone up about interconnection it's my time so is that relevant to three minutes got it okay you guys get the message thank you before you speak is there anyone else who would like to address the city council for oral communications okay saying none you'll be our last speaker pat kiddle Santa Cruz this town is supposed to be eco-centric and supposed to be eco utopia but I'm finding that it's drifting further and further from that kind of vision with the passing of the decades it used to be a far more eco-centric vision that we had now it's being steered towards increasingly human concerns at the expense of non-humans I mean how many people can we squeeze into a given place before things just we run out of everything that it's going to take to support the people yeah we can criticize rich people or white people or whoever you want to criticize for having some kind of an advantage over everybody else but the fact is when well just take Kobe Bryant he got he was flying around Los Angeles in a helicopter because he wanted to avoid traffic well he's a black guy and if a white guy did that and crashed I mean risking everybody underneath him just so he can fly around at his own convenience and not have to deal with the commoners down there in the traffic jam if it was a white guy we wouldn't have nearly as much sympathy in the media wouldn't be making nearly a folk hero out of women we'd be talking about your responsibility we'd be talking about over consumption so what I'm asking is all of us humans have a responsibility to try to be kinder to non-humans and I would like to see us start that process well I don't mean start we're doing it but I would like to see us increase that process by recognizing that we are already vastly overpopulated thank you thank you okay that ends world communications and so we'll move on to our evening item and we will later return to our commission appointments this item is scheduled from 7 30 to 8 30 we have half hour of public comment on this item and so and this item is a resolution regarding adult personal use and personal possession of ethnogenic psychoactive plants and fungi to provide the viewers with some background on november 10th 2019 the city council by motion directed the public safety committee to review the resolution declaring that the investigation and arrest of individuals involved with the adult possession use or cultivation of psychoactive plants and fungi listed on the federal schedule one list for personal adult use and clinical research be amongst the lowest priorities for the city of santa crews on december 2nd 2019 public safety committee accepted public comment on the proposed resolution the committee referred the resolution for further edits to council member mires and to bring a revised version back to council at the next available city council meeting the resolution was edited after further review of the city of denver resolution and the city of oakland ordinance and in response to clarification for santa crews police department about the resolution's intent the revised ordinance is provided for city council action the resolution was also revised to recognize the need for harm reduction and education for youth and families about drug prevention are there any questions from our fellow council members at this time on this item seeing none there was an individual dr ali fiducia from maps who has four minutes for public comment if any of the member of the public would like to comment on this item i'd ask that you please line up to my left and you will be given unless you um unless you contact the city in advance you'll be given two minutes and as i mentioned before we'll have half an hour of public comment on this item and given that we're starting a little bit late um public comment will end at eight ten so um i'd like to invite up uh dr ali fiducia from maps for four minutes hi good evening i'm ali fiducia and i've recently just uh taken a new position at project new day which is a locally uh founded non-profit foundation that's going to be focusing on using psychedelics to treat addiction and other mental health disorders and i'm a drug pharmacologist and i've been uh studying psychedelics and mdma assisted psychotherapy since 2004 and um other substance use disorders as well and uh what i can say about these substances is that they're not addictive we have a lot of research not only from the current clinical trials that are happening across many universities in the united states but also from the historical use indigenous people have been using uh psychoactive plants and fungi for thousands of years and um there are also churches now that allow the use in sacramental um context for ayahuasca and um berzell as well as some churches here in the us so we have a good understanding of when these substances are taken with careful preparation and uh with good intention that they can be safely um taken within a community setting and i think there is reason to have caution around ever medicalizing psychedelics i think there will be a place for that for people that have uh diagnosed mental health conditions to go and have a course of treatment but um these treatments are going to be quite expensive and i've heard anywhere in the neighborhood of 10 000 to 30 000 for one course of treatment and so really we have an opportunity here in the community for people to be um seeking out these experiences and using them to help promote their own health and well-being as well to help them overcome um PTSD substance use disorders there's also research going on now into the neuro genitive neuro genitive effects of psilocybin and so there's clinical trials now looking at if this could be a compound that's useful for parkinson's disease or Alzheimer's and so really we don't even know the full potential yet but what we do know is that uh the safety profile is good for when taken with good consideration and i can say at maps you know before the phase three study even started a few months ago that there was over 20 000 people on a wait list i think that number is much higher now here that we have a whole website just trying to collect the interests of people that are um wanting seeking this treatment and the FDA did just pass expanded access but only for 50 people so um with that you know we have the potential here to really um help promote the education the safe use um i did see in the resolution that it's uh recommended that this would be under supervision with trained medical providers however this isn't feasible at this time because the licensing boards that oversee um mental health professionals uh are not caught up to speed yet with uh what is happening with the research or how to have oversight over people that may be um overseeing these type of um experiences for people so i think there is uh some change in that text that could be in consultation with trained people and um you know there's other people that could go through training to be able to help people adequately understand what the contraindicated medical conditions may be or contraindicated medications because that is an important factor too for the safety and with that we're going to be doing a lot of work with Project New Day here in the community to help promote education and harm reduction as well as wherever we can as this moves forward to help people actually receive treatments with psychedelic substances as a way to for forming community groups for people during after care so not even necessarily during the experiences of psychedelics but after there's um you know a lot of research that's known that you can help promote long-term recovery by having a supportive community around um around and just freedom to be able to talk and discuss what's coming up with people so yeah thank you for your time all right thank you very much next week um representatives from decriminalized Santa Cruz reached out as well for four minutes so you'll have up to four minutes um should you need that full time you can also split that time with other members but just to let you know you have up to four minutes all right hello Santa Cruz City Council my name is Sean Cutler I am the co-founder of decriminalized Santa Cruz along with Julian Hodge and I am an officer in UC Santa Cruz students for sensible drug policy Santa Cruz City Council must pass the resolution decriminalizing personal usage possession and importantly cultivation of entheogenic plants and fungi because the drug war is immoral I also say that we we absolutely need to have the word cultivation placed back into the third line of the first therefore be it resolved for reasons of respecting indigenous practices and for allowing people to peacefully develop relationships with these plants in their own homes I think it is extremely important that we put that one word cultivation back into the back into the resolution because we love all of the edits but we would really like the word cultivation to be placed back into the third line of the first therefore be it resolved additionally the war on drugs is a war on us the war on drugs was not created to preserve public safety public health or to protect children rather it was created intentionally to imprison minorities peace activists and imprison those who opposed the united states military industrial complex in the 1960s as drugs became symbols of youthful rebellion social upheaval and political dissent the government halted scientific research to evaluate their medical safety and efficacy in june 1971 president nixon declared a war on drugs he dramatically increased the size and presence of federal drug control agencies and pushed through measures such as mandatory sentencing and no knock warrants a top nixon aide john erlichman later admitted the following you want to know what this was really all about the nixon campaign in 1968 and the nixon white house after that had two enemies the anti-war left and black people we knew we could not make it illegal to be either against the war or illegal to be black but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin and then criminalizing both heavily we could disrupt those communities we could arrest their leaders raid their homes break up their meetings and vilify them night after night on the evening news did we know we were lying about the drugs of course we did i'd also like to add that uh portugal in 2001 decriminalized all all drugs and the number of people and in portugal the number of people voluntarily entering treatment has increased significantly incarceration for drug-related offenses has decreased and rates of problematic drug use has have fallen so in a moment when the united states is facing an overdose crisis learning from portugal's accomplishments is especially timely and valuable thank you city council the last minute is there a minute left on your time okay sure go ahead all right thank you there's one minute left on their time thank you um yeah i'm julian hodge i'm one of the co-founders of decriminalized santa cruz i'm also the president of students for sensible drug policy by uc santa cruz we're currently the number one ranked chapter in the world with students for sensible drug policy i am so glad to be here today my eight months working on this resolution i've met so many amazing people with amazing stories about how entheogenic plants and fungi have saved their lives and as organizations like maps work to increase access to those who need it we look to our city council in the meantime to help us i want to thank the members of city council that helped make this resolution a reality and of course please please add the cultivation back into the resolution but thank you for working on this this time we're going to open up the public comment um i'm i'm sorry i only had t-creme as one um dr aleph adusia from maps as one and there was a representative i'm not sure if they're they came tonight from veterans okay so if the representative from veterans would like to come up you will also have four minutes but i i'm sorry i i understand i understand but i understand let me explain myself please thank you so the representative from the veterans can come forward you'll have up to four minutes hi everyone thank you for having me tonight everyone can take a moment and think about where you were on your 19th birthday for me that was easy i was on flight from four cars in colorado to kunar province afghanistan uh during my two tours in afghanistan i was in roughly 180 firefights three explosions lost friends saw innocent afghani civilians dead the transition back home from afghanistan was difficult for me i was prescribed initially perc set painkillers for pain in some of the injuries that i sustained uh when my prescription ended i was still in both physical and emotional pain so i started seeking out opiates on my own i was in and out of multiple different rehabs inpatient outpatient i tried physical therapy uh counseling i was in psych wards i was suicidal and eventually i tried psychedelic assisted therapy which i'll talk more on in a moment uh april 13th 2019 my best friend decided to take his life immediately following his suicide a lot of my repressed ptsd resurfaced i was getting panic attacks very very frequently to the point where i felt like i was having a heart attack uh having to go to the hospital multiple times a week my experience with psychedelic assisted therapy kind of happened upon chance in some of the psychedelic assisted therapy sessions it really let me dive back into some of the traumas like i was getting to revisit them like a movie playing before me like a movie of my life and just watch some of the events unfold before me and and a question like how could i have reacted differently what would i have done uh and the answer to a lot of those questions were the same thing and kind of figuring out like i didn't necessarily do anything wrong and it was just presented uh like life had dealt me a kind of messed up hand and that made it a lot easier to let go of some of that extra baggage that i was holding on to uh this leads me to working with project new day and getting to participate in group sessions and community meetings and helping other individuals so i think there's a huge potential to what the sticky criminalization of a plant-based medicine has the potential to help the society so thank you so much we're going to open up the public comment each person will have two minutes and just to be clear because this item has come before the city council previously it's also gone to the public safety committee for more input and now it's coming back for its last hearing this uh we're only allowing half an hour of public comment so public comment regardless of your in line will end at 8 10 and i just want that to be clear okay so you may start there um athonia capelli um hello mayor comings welcome um so i'm gonna go pretty fast here so i actually brought um some um i'm hoping this will show up on camera because i'm gonna be using some kind of larger words here and i want them to be clear so i'm here today to urge city council to lead the country in demolishing the failed war on drugs by decriminalizing schedule one psychedelics otherwise known as entheogenic plants we need to do these three things decriminalize possession decriminalize cultivation and decriminalize consumption my fellow activists envision these philosophies we aim to reduce arrests carried out under the inhumane war on drugs further we need to commute the sentences for nonviolent psychedelic drug use we must demand equitable access to psychedelic plants to make sure disenfranchised communities can seek healing and will not be left out we need to empower individuals to have access to their own medicines thereby reducing their dependence on the pharmaceutical industry decriminalize fungi and open paths to those seeking to stimulate creativity and ingenuity by way of micro dosing we encourage those seeking to use psychedelics to g g g grow gather and gift we encourage activists to work with city councils in forward-thinking cities such as minneapolis seattle portland san joseh chicago new york and la and enact decriminalization now we urge our california lawmakers to rise to the challenge and decriminalize psychedelics throughout the state in 2020 i'm gonna hold on i'm gonna please ask that you all hold your applause the longer you applaud the less time there are for people to speak and so please continue all right that was my fault okay um this measure that you all have worked on so hard for the last eight months will give those struggling with depression and mental anguish the peace of mind to seek out psychedelic treatment your time is i'm gonna cut your time when other methods are proven to be ineffective thanks thank you okay next member hi my name is tylo lewis i'm a resident of santa cruz for those of you who were not present or don't know i testified before the public safety committee i'm here in support of decriminalizing plan and fungal entheogens uh i can speak from personal experience that uh my experience with solosib and mushrooms changed my life in a extremely profound way i've spent more of my life in therapy than i haven't i suffered from major depressive disorder from generalized anxiety disorder and i've also suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder uh i tried normal talk therapy and i wasn't having success with that i tried group therapy that didn't work i tried ssri's like prozac and that didn't work either uh but after i had my first experience with solosibin i experienced so much symptom relief that it was like i finally found the healing that i had been looking for the entire time um i like i told the committee before the public safety committee i used to be addicted to cigarettes or nicotine i used to be addicted to alcohol but through my experience i was able to use that um as a way to reflect on all of my bad habits and the way i was treating my body and the way i saw myself you know with respect to my society but just how i treat my own body and i was able to kick the habit of nicotine addiction i no longer abuse alcohol um i have a much more healthy relationship with other drugs and medicines and i know um that some people are worried about the safety profile or the potential for abuse but i know that the potential for abuse is very low especially when you compare it with drugs that are legally available on pacific avenue like alcohol and tobacco or ssr eyes so thank you for listening hello hello again um before i begin my calling before the uh clock starts a procedural question about time um i heard the mayor said um we would not be given more than two minutes unless we had prior uh consent of the board um you had just says that is that is that true of of uh the three minutes that i'm entitled to or is that or am i right still going to be respected i would like to ask just a question i would like to know if i'm going to get three minutes i'll i'll give you three minutes on this one no you're not going to give me it is my right as a person with a disability because and i'm and i'm pointing this out because you have you have a problem with representation obviously you are only only you don't give us 30 minutes we are going to take 30 minutes of the time that we put you here to listen to okay sounds good i don't speak for any tribe i am criollo i'm a white mixed mexican and in uc santa truce it's my fifth year i have a disability reading is hard for me but certain things are not hard for me to read i'm going to lay down for you in a couple words i only i have a very very simple comment to make that you guys have been hearing over and over again and i'm going to synthesize it in a couple sentences you the city of santa truce california does not do not have the authority to regulate a native plant on its native soil you do not have the authority to regulate native people on their land why do you think your homes continue to rise in value i'm an economist why do you think your homes have value because the people that were once here the people that were raped and colonized and killed off this native land that you now want to regulate took care of this land and took care of the people every person on this land like you guys can't seem to fucking do sorry to do with your homeless friends that don't have a roof over the heads i would ask for empathy and representation and actually i'm not going to ask for it i'm going to take it because it is mine and it was always mine to begin with i have one last thing to say that was the bulk of the argument you've heard it over and over and over again and it is the truth it's painful it's painful to see how we've forgotten where we come from and who we are mr coming zero black man denying representation to native peoples on their land and trying to regulate what they can and can't consume on their land these i can assure these people know more about these plants than we have ever discovered they know more about these lands and these hills than we have discovered respect my mommies my indigenous mommies they were strong people their memory lives on they have not died themselves they are hanging on are you going what what what role are you going to have in this make the conscious choice and don't decriminalize something simply stop criminalizing people doing native things on the native land thank you thank you all right next speaker my name is grace seppy and i believe that decriminalizing antigens would be greatly beneficial to the health and liberty for the people of santa cruise since i was 13 i've been in and out of intensive psychiatric programs for severe ptsd alcohol and substance abuse and a previous suicide attempt i was prescribed a cocktail of psychotropic medications such as antidepressants anti-anxiety anti-psychotics mood stabilizers mood stabilizers and sleeping pills because of psychedelic medicine i'm glad to say i'm healthy happy healthy and thriving when i was 19 i took my first therapeutic dose of psilocybin mushrooms initially my psychedelic experience was incredibly difficult but healing is not supposed to be fun or easy as my challenging experience was reaching its climax a friend implanted the seed of hope for a prosperous life my life shifted from an all-consuming existential despair to an open-minded existential curiosity psilocybin mushrooms and love saved my life that day it has been four years since my psilocybin journey and four years since i've needed any psychiatric medication in 2017 i attended the psychedelic science conference in oakland and i discovered the research that supported my healing experience with entheogens since i have since then i have dedicated my life to psychedelic science last june i graduated cum laude from uc santa cruise with my bachelor's in psychology and i plan to pursue my doctorate in clinical psychology to research practice and profess on the healing potential of entheogenic medicines the war on drugs has been a failure that has ruined lives filled prisons and caused an unnecessary fortune as a constituent of santa cruise i asked my city council to decriminalize decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi for adult personal use possession and cultivation i emphasized the word cultivation to be put back in the resolution so that every community member can pursue their own personal development with the protection of the law with the passing of this resolution santa cruise will be the second city to support our human rights to cognitive liberty and the pursuit of happiness and i appreciate your consideration hi i'm tall uh my name is kelly mccormick and i came here um as a phd i have a phd in cognitive science so i came here mostly to underscore the points being made by other people that we really do um have increasing evidence that entheogens are not drugs of addiction and on the contrary they're even they are extremely powerful tools helping people recover from addiction as well as anxiety and intractable depression so these are things that have a huge potential to heal uh individuals and i believe society um and in decriminalizing or ideally legalizing these things uh we would be giving people tools to heal uh and really pursue their happiness and their best selves um the only people i can think of who would not benefit from increased um access would be the pharmaceutical companies because a lot of these treatments work after a single treatment um so things like addiction uh and end-of-life anxiety can resolve with a single treatment of some of these entheogens that's it hi thank you so much before you again for those of you have signs in the audience please lower them so that you're not blocking the view of people behind you because everybody would like to see thank you i appreciate it hi my name is william goss i'm a resident of the city of santa cruz and lived in the county for over six years i'm the mycology director of the california psilocybin decriminalization initiative 2020 campaign i'm also a mycology graduate of uc davis a santa cruz mountain naturalist and outdoor educator member of the santa cruz fungus federation a grower supervisor with years of industry experience at the continent's largest organic mushroom production facility and i teach mushroom cultivation classes here in santa cruz and around northern california i'm here to support the decriminalization nature resolution with the addition of cultivation during my time at monorail mushrooms i authored dozens of standard operating procedures on the food safe efficient and sustainable cultivation of fungi it's easy and simple and straightforward dosage of mushroom and plant medicine can and should cost pennies the same as the portabella as i was growing with monorail mushrooms to make them available to everyone who wants it with the addition of cultivation to the resolution we will avoid a black market and with potentially unsafe products and an inaccessible privatized medical system that patents natural products making them more expensive for people who need it most at the end of the day we need to ask ourselves should anyone go to jail for plants or mushrooms thank you for your time i'm jackie orman i'm a student at university of santa cruz and a member of students for sensible drug policy um so the decriminalization of entheogenic plants and fungi would be a huge step forward for healing many illnesses even those that could be life-threatening such as depression and addiction this could save lives like it did mine and make it incredibly safer for people to heal and substantially improve their quality of life additionally in regard to safety i would much appreciate if the word cultivation be placed back into the resolution to ensure personal cultivation is explicitly decriminalized which should promote a safe way of having the entheogenic plants and and or fungi for oneself thank you thank you before i commence i would like to ask um procedures is it possible since i was originally told that as a member as if i'm representing an organization i would get four minutes may i get three and a half no unfortunately groups who requested more time had to request that that time in advance those groups reached out to me um two days ago for more time and so i apologize but i can't give you more time so you're gonna you're gonna have two minutes yep you have two minutes two minutes i'm Kathleen Purcell vice chair of the libertarian party of santa cruz county which has endorsed this resolution along with the word cultivation being placed back into the fourth line of the resolution to ensure that personal cultivation is explicitly decriminalized libertarian party is based on the principle of non-aggression intrinsic to this is compassion and humanitarianism both of which are relevant to this resolution if your perception of libertarianism differs from this you may have understandably been the victim of a misinformation campaign designed specifically by big money interests who want to undermine your individual liberty while they retain or increase their power and control if this is the case i recommend you go directly to the source that is google the libertarian party itself rather than defer to second party narratives that erroneously define it libertarians do not believe that crimes that have no victim that is so-called victims crimes should be considered crimes however for the sake of argument let's assume that one comes from the other perspective that is of an activity causes anyone any kind of harm it should be a crime so in the interest of determining if there is any harm from using plant-based entheogens i'll quote what our own federal government says this is from the national institutes of health nih.gov the national center of biotechnology information which comes from the u.s. national library of medicine after many controlled studies over many years concludes that classic serotonergic psychedelics are not known to cause damage to the brain or other organs of the body or cause withdrawal symptoms elicit addiction or compulsive use or cause breast defects or genetic damage i'm not going to go through all of these since i have a limited time i've already spoken to this public safety committee on this so i have these iterated here and there is absolutely no harm no harm i will quote again the nih conclusion we did not find use of psychedelics as being an independent risk factor for mental health problems so the obvious takeaway is that if there is no harm there has been no crime we must decriminalize thank you all right uh so there's not much i could come up here and say that can't be said better by any of these people but um yeah so uh we know that these uh molecules these substances are like safe especially when compared to illegal things like alcohol or like a lot of uh pharmaceuticals um and it's uh important that these are decriminalized because the criminalization of these substances goes against our human right to interface with nature and uh i also believe it's really important to add the word cultivation back into the bill because uh that is another part of our human right to be able to do this and uh i can cede the rest of my time to whoever needs it thank you next speaker hello and i'm valerie corral and i'm not speaking on behalf of wamm but i'm the uh one of the co-founders of wamm and over the uh 27 years of our work in this community we have represented access to whole plant medicines and they are not limited of course it is our duty and our obligation to renew our relationship with nature and to remember that we are in service of not only one another but we are in part of a bigger and much more complex aspect so in the division of the division of us and nature there's a problem and i want to speak specifically so much has been said tonight i need not echo it but in the mid 90s when we were riding prop 215 there was a massive standoff around cultivation and so for two months i fought to bring cultivation into prop 215 the reason being is that if we do not have our hands on personal access we defer the control to others we defer it to our dealers we defer it to pharmaceutical industry we defer it to the uh corporate state who will provide it to us and we are struggling with new laws around cannabis that we want to look at that we've already gone through this we want to look at how it has affected our communities and our access to providing simple and complete medicines that take it out of the hands of those who would otherwise control it and allow direct access so i speak truly and completely to the support of cultivation because i think it is necessary so look to prop 215 thank you before you begin i just want to point out that it's 8 10 and we were supposed to be done by now however i want to look in line just to see um you gentlemen in the hat who's speaking and on the hat are you planning on speaking on this item is there anybody who's currently standing in that line who's planning on speaking on this item so i'll give each of you one minute just so that we can speed this time up so please hello city council my name is justice url i'm a lifelong resident of santa cruz a ucsc graduate in sciences and a technology entrepreneur i was six years old the first time i got a bloody nose from my mom this time is for hiding my homework as i didn't have anyone at home to help me with it including my dad who is drinking or absent for most of my childhood this environment of abuse and neglect caused complex ptsd that led to depression and anxiety in adult life that i've been managing for 17 years with no help from western medicine as a startup founder i could not yet afford health care though even when i had health insurance the answer to my condition was addictive chemicals and with worse side effects than i started with such as suicide a risk i was unwilling to take i studied these naturally occurring plant medicines diligently for over a year to ensure that the science behind them was as safe and accurate as reported in my studies i discovered a medical journal that published that alcohol was the most harmful drug more so than heroin or crack and yet found i think my time was cut in half yeah we we reduced everybody's to a minute because we were going to stop at 810 and we've given everybody else i thought it was right after me yeah no problem no problem um psychedelics have greatly helped alleviate my depression thank you thank you for accommodating extra time for everyone i really appreciate that and can i pause you for one sec i'm going to remind people in the audience if you have signs please keep them low so that you're not blocking the vision of the people behind you thank you okay thank you my name is ellie black i'm a lifetime sanikers native it is absolutely imperative that the word cultivation be placed back into the resolution to ensure personal cultivation is explicitly decriminalized without this word much of the power and purpose of this resolution is diminished essentially forcing those seeking healing to resort back to acquiring the substances via illegal or unsafe avenues likely putting money and profit back into the equation and further perpetuating perpetuating the very stigmatization and persecution this resolution is seeking to eliminate failure to failure to decriminalize personal cultivation could have the unintended consequence of an influx of individuals coming to our area to provide the substances we are not allowed to provide for ourselves those individuals profit driven not motivated by health or safety we could not be assured that these substances are pure authentic and free of any number of dangerous additives thank you it's been a real pleasure working with all of you and everyone in the room on this issue it's uh it's one of the reasons i'm proud to be from sanikers and you know still be lucky enough to remain here um since i only have a minute i want to talk about one thing um in particular and it's been you know on all of our discussions and that's how we do some sort of educational campaign for safe use and particularly prevention for youth access in i do cannabis politics i've been blessed to participate in the you know youth access prevention you know campaigns and best practices with the cannabis industry it's been instrumental and to you know being able to be out in the open and have these discussions to include this piece um i think that's a good idea to reach out to organizations like community prevention partners that i'm a part of and other organizations in the room and maybe come back in six months with some sort of safe use prevention strategy and personal cultivation of course thank you my name is william sump and plant medicine has saved my life uh at a dark point in my life a friend uh brought me to a shepebo style ceremony and uh that process planted the seed of love in my heart reconnected me with my son and uh those around me and so i just want to thank all of you here tonight for your leadership and helping to guide the community to this resolution thanks for the extra time uh i just wanted to say as a resident uh as a husband and as a father of a beautiful little girl i'm strongly in support of the initiative to decriminalize and theogenic plants and fungi i think there's massive potential for benefits to our culture to our town to our society uh in terms of medical benefits has been stated by a lot of those here who worked on it maps and have to have explained how these can be really beneficial for people suffering from ptsd anxiety end of life worries things like that but also spiritual benefits uh even people that are otherwise healthy that are looking to better their lives um i just think that there's lots of benefits here so uh thank you for uh consideration i also support the addition of cultivation for personal adult use as well thank you hello my name is erin newson i'm a united states marine corps combat veteran i started in the marine corps from 2002 to 2008 when i got back from afghanistan i came back with some chronic pain issues and some post traumatic stress issues um i found that uh cannabis really helped with alleviate a lot of the symptoms that i was uh facing with the pharmaceuticals that i was getting from the va uh when i got back i i helped found the sanifers veterans alliance um we helped with local veteran issues specifically with safe access to medical cannabis specifically as a means to move away from more dangerous pharmaceuticals um we're finding that cannabis is a great palliative care uh the day-to-day use for uh reducing symptoms like anxiety and depression uh but if we want to treat the root of mental health issues that we face in our community then we desperately need access to these stronger plants and mushrooms um i want to emphasize that cultivation is the first step in creating opportunities for healing um to provide a path for safe access to these medicines is amongst the most important social services that you guys can provide thank you very much all right and before you speak the gentleman who's sitting right there with his hand up you'll be our last speaker on this item okay wonderful thank you for the extra time and thank you for your leadership um being the third third city that'll vote this in i'm confident that'll happen i wanted to just recognize all the different ways that members of the audience here have spoken to the ways that these medicines have helped them and also recognize that today with the opioid crisis causing 133 deaths a day nationwide with suicide up 30 from depression and we can continue going through the list what we're really talking about is a common source for all of these visible statistics and symptoms and that common cause is suffering inside our subconscious and unconscious mind that our conscious mind intentionally keeps us away from and what's happening with these extremely powerful products of the universe is a loosening of the mental knots that allow us to go back to those places with empathy and compassion for ourselves and to heal and to remember what we've always known which we are all one so you'll be our last speaker on this item good evening i'm scott graham um there was a famous professor here at ucsc he taught in the psychology department uh creativity his name is frank barron and he started out at harvard and the early 60s and was part of the group of psychedelic acts activists there and him and tim larry and richard alpert knew that there was something out there they had been studying uh ancient civilizations and they knew that there was these substances but they hadn't found any of them yet frank and his wife went to mexico on vacation and he was able to locate a bruja that gave him some magic mushrooms he after experiencing them he's senate telegram to tim and richard and said hey i think we found found what we're looking for i'm gonna bring this item back for action deliberation councilmember glover thank you thank you mayor and thank you to all the people that came out to speak tonight all the letters that were written and all the work that's gone into fine-tuning and making the resolution what it is today so uh i am pleased to make a motion um i'd like to motion to adopt the red line version of the resolution in our packet with the reincorporation of the word cultivation into the title of the resolution to read individuals 21 years of age and older involved with the adult personal use and personal possession and personal cultivation of entheogenic psychoactive plants and so on um in addition add the word cultivation into the first now therefore be it resolved to read solely for the personal use personal possession and cultivation and so on and also to direct staff to return in six months with a report and a safe use and prevention education strategy in collaboration with local organizations like community prevention partners and new day or in the new day organization second i'd like to um ask for a friendly amendment which would be to change um to address one of the whereas clauses um it says whereas use of ethanogenic plants and fungi can also can be also be deleterious for individuals and use requires harm reduction strategies and oversight by trained medical professionals for personal safety um i've heard from members of the public that um and just kind of reading through that i think one of the things with that um we want to consider with that is the improper use or overconsumption and so i'd like to amend that um to say whereas improper use or overconsumption of ethanogenic plants and fungi can result in negative effects use requires harm reduction strategies and education to ensure safe practice safe consumption practices so accepted i have another proposed addition in the before be it further resolved which actually reflects one of the whereases but i would suggest be it further resolved that the sanctuary city council support further medical research on the short and long term effects of the use of ethanogenic plants and incorporate evolving scientific medical knowledge on the subject into city policy and practice sorry where is that it's an it's an addition it's an addition yeah it kind of it builds on the um i think the second whereas the talks about medical research it just say we support further research on this time absolutely i'm good with that um i would the one thing i would push back on i think that i know that we um want our city staff to work with santa cruz community partners on educational resources i would say to bring it back um as soon as feasible that way if it can come before six months or if there's other things that we're putting out that needs to come after six months that we're you know encouraging our staff to work with community partners on harm reduction strategies but we're not having such a firm fixed timeline i like that um the idea that will come back sooner than six months and that'd be great but at the same time if uh i know staff is doing a lot of work on a lot of important issues so if we can provide that flexibility i think it's the responsible thing to do so so absolutely the language would be um you could restate your motion and then incorporate the language around rather than six months yeah so and to direct staff to return at the earliest convenience with a report and a safe use and prevention education strategy in collaboration with local organizations and so on i mean can you just mean rather than the local organizations like community prevention partners and the new day organization if i may um my understanding is the community prevention partners has a federal grant in which they identify very specific items that they're working on in terms of their work plan and i don't believe this is one of those items so i do think we want to before we put this on them we want to consult with them in terms of what's feasible for their work plan one and two i do want to just if i if i may um i just really want to reiterate the importance of really acknowledging the youth impact i was at a and it was reported on recently um that a student was like you know eager and excited about learning about the decriminalization of these substances and that is not the message we want to send to our youth so whether it be cpp or other strategies or means that we're going to go about looking at social norming campaigns and really reiterating to our youth this is not a message to them to start using this is acknowledging the folks that i felt were very vulnerable and sharing their stories around some of the healing benefits this is not for our kids and and i i whatever that looks like as as it relates to our relationship with city schools and monitoring use and acceptance of use or working with the university in the same regard as well as the impacts that it has with our law enforcement that we're really proactively looking at social norming for our youth to ensure that that this is not impacting their acceptance and use of it as well as the safe storage and lockup of it so that our youth can't access it otherwise if there's an adult in their house that may be accessing it so i can put that into some form of a recommendation but just really want to strongly make that point at this moment that's more matthew's and then i'm going to and building on that i think the language that's been given to us is that staff come back with a plan and the language implied that we would then carry out that education plan whereas we have community partners who really do that's what they do so i think that's the direction you're going would be to support the efforts of community partners for education and harm reduction so i think that's the what you're saying let the people who do it do it well i'll just if i could clarify if i may well the community prevention partners is actually a they're a collaborative that's federally funded is my understanding and it's run out of i i believe it's run out of the united way but i i don't know for sure um and they have very specific things that they're working on their work plan opioid cannabis alcohol access for youth so before we have them create a plan for us i think we want to consult with them in regards to what they can inform us but i don't think that this is in their work plan so i just i mean i just want to be clear about before we put this expectation on them that aside i want to um just sort of reiterate that we do need to have an education plan we need to work with our education partners and this could be in the form of a friendly amendment if that makes the most sense um and consult with city schools and the university in terms of acceptance and use rates and then also return back with a plan around um how we're preventing it getting into the hands of youth but also looking at social norming campaigns as well as safe storage for those that may be consuming it as adults in the household can i just respond to that really sure um yeah so that's what i think intentionally why included the kind of broad category of collaborations with local organizations because that provides for that wiggle room and if community prevention partners is available and able to participate in whatever role based on the work plan and that's great otherwise i'm sure that through our connections with as a city as well as some of the people doing the work currently in the community they can help work with us to create that use prevention and education strategy because i think we can all agree that we want to make sure that it's being done responsibly and by adults okay remember matthews myself vice mayor mires and then council member brown i just want to be realistic about what kind of a education prevention strategy we the city are going to carry out so i think to say that we support efforts along these lines is probably more realistic it's what we do on a whole lot of other health things we don't conduct them we support them absolutely i don't think in here or in the motion it even insinuates that the city would be the one doing it it's to come back with a report on the partnership and or the collaboration that was done with the community partners in creating the prevention and education strategy there's nothing in here about the city enacting that education plan so i mean i'm next on stack and i'll speak to that um by using the language of collaborate with these organizations within the community you are stating that the city will be working with those organizations i think what our colleagues are saying is that if the city is stating that they are supporting the efforts of organizations in our community they're trying to work towards education and prevention and i'd also say removing any name of any group that the city will support the work of education um and um other preventative measures with organizations in the community you're actually making it more broad and um also it's not putting um any work on our staff to come up with those educational resources what it's saying is that we as a city are supporting all types of education to potentially to sum it up keep this out of the hands of children and to educate our population on safe practices share some friendly amendment language with me how do you want to have totally happy i love i love it uh so how do we want to phrase it i think the phrasing would be um first part of its adoption with the amendments and um support and and support organizations who are working on harm reduction safe use in prevention education safe use of prevention in the in the city of santa cruz sounds good second on board all right cool be able to capture that at all i think i can probably write this down yes i mean vice vice mayor mires council member brown and then council member walkins yeah i just want to i i if possible i know we have a communications consultant um i mean i know that i was contacted by a number of parents so i think this um understanding of what we're doing tonight is really important um for parents and um folks who are trying to understand kind of what this means for the community so i would request um not as part of the motion i don't think i needed as part of the motion but could we please um actually do a press release describing what this is exactly um and make sure that gets widely distributed to all bay area national newspapers and also um if we can just please um somehow put this up on our website in a way that parents have easy access to really understand what exactly this is because um i talked to both parents and i've talked to physicians um and many people just want to understand what we're doing um and there's there is um just a need to understand what this means for the youth in the community so we could you know make an effort to really make this very clear to folks when they look on our website what it is we're doing and and and do that outreach through through communications thanks to member brown uh yeah i just wanted to make a quick comment uh thanking uh members of the community who have come out for all of the work you've done and um you know bringing us uh the information that we need to make this kind of decision um you know i think the evidence is clear i'm looking forward to seeing evolving uh research uh results because i think it's only gonna confirm and you know amplify the um you know what we've already seen in the data um and personal personal experiences as described by some folks here in the room um very eloquently uh i'm very happy to be including cultivation back into this because um for some of the reasons or met for the reasons that were um raised by members of the public i think that when we talk about um you know self-determination and access um it's critical that people have the ability to grow their plants and not rely on um outside you know dealers and or in much less you know bioprospecting that goes on uh for the pharmaceutical industry and so i'm really pleased to um to be doing this tonight okay um councilmember walkins and then i have a comment as well i i just want to um maybe see if it could be accepted as a friendly amendment or added to the further direction that we work with the uc um partners as well as the city schools partners to monitor impact and um perceptions of use as acceptable as well as use rates for youth who are under the age of 21 using so we want to see as we make this decision if there is a change in youth acceptance and use as a result of this change or not but looking at the data we can work with our community our education partners to do so i mean i would ask if they're currently collecting that data yeah you could collect the data through the healthy kids survey for locally or in some sort of informal type of survey or anecdotally and probably similar with the university i'd say but you want to have a i mean you do collect kind of we do collect youth substance abuse acceptance use and acceptance rates but we want to make sure that we're in communication with them moving forward if there's an impact one way or another i just want to make sure it doesn't disproportionately skew the data if we start tracking it more intensively than we have in the past which then could make the numbers disproportionate so you know as long as it's already going on and it's just getting a report back on any perceived changes based off of the already existing reporting then that makes sense but if you're trying to add additional tracking which could offset the numbers then you could have unreliable data i guess i would say i think we just want to work with our community partners who work with youth on the ongoing basis to see if they're experiencing an impact of the decision and that could be um with a new question that they may ask if it's not already be collected and or anecdotally and i don't i don't know if it necessarily means that we're trying to pry for it but we want to make sure that we're consulting them and the impact that they might be seeing in the schools as a result of the decision i don't think it was an official it was a bit a bit vague and when you say we i don't think you mean we the city council we don't collect data on youth substance abuse there are various health surveys that do etc so i'm trying to think of actual language be it further resolved that the city um welcome information from community health partners on and educators and educators on use youth exposure and use of ethnogenic i mean is that what you're going for yeah and attitudes for yeah exposure use and attitudes uh about um use of ethnogenic substances and those kinds of surveys are regularly conducted on young people in the community by external agencies and so that it would just be be it further resolve the city welcomes information from health and education partners sure i'm just a big fan of data but go ahead sorry man i would just like to say that um one of the good things about that is that um there's a lot of stigma around people who use different types of drugs and or these substances plant substances and so understanding if there's a shift in mentality from you know people thinking about this as something that's for party situations or recreational and then um youth understanding that this is not something that is this is something serious that's used to treat illnesses i think that there is a benefit of you know as we're trying to restructure the narrative around these types of substances that for very long have been used um to kind of demonize people who use them and also um there's been a culture around them of um lack of respect and more recreational use that if we can get the narrative to shift towards what i think many people in this room want which is for these substances to be used to treat serious illnesses and serious emotional um i don't want to say diseases but traumatic experiences what have you that i think that it's good that we have this information and i also think that it might help us as we move forward understand how we can change the narrative around what these types of plants and fungi are used for i can get down with that accepted seconder um i also wanted to make one comment um briefly on the cultivation aspect and one of the reasons why i'm very much in support of adding that back in is because with possession and use being inserted without cultivation that actually encourages the black market because there's nowhere else to get it except from the black market um additionally i think that one of the other aspects that comes along with it is that people know exactly what they're taking and so they don't have to worry about anything potentially being laced is it real is it fake if people are are cultivating it themselves they know exactly what they're producing they know exactly what they're taking and so i think that that's really important as people are understanding what they're getting themselves into as we know with cannabis there's different strands and those different strands have different kinds of effects if people are able to cultivate what they know has the appropriate effects on themselves then they can create a situation where they might not go buy something on the street from someone and then it actually has a negative impact on them so that's one of the reasons why i'm also encouraging that we incorporate cultivation back in because not only does it reduce the potential for more black market but it also is in fact a way to reduce harm on oneself so i just want to put that out there um so i guess i'd like to bring it back to see if there's any further questions or comments by council members on this item just make a comment on on the change um the cultivation change in looking at some of the other wording in the other two ordinances um both of those um sort of used personal use and possession with with that referring to cultivation so it was not an intention to try to get cultivation out of the language it just that personal use and possession um was defined in some of the other ordinances to include cultivation so i just want to clarify that it wasn't an attempt to try to take that out but to uh that just what happened i'll also add that i'll also add that i wasn't i also when i was reading over it was interpreting that possession could also be cultivation but i wasn't sure and so just to clarify but thank you um councilmember crown thank you um the only thing i want to say is that um you know you all have been a model of planting a political seed and um you first approached the city council and then um you went and did your research then you went through the public safety committee then you came back to the council i just want to applaud all of you for just sticking this out and going through a process and and like listening to your stories is incredibly moving you know it's just like wow and i think i think the council gets it and i think some of the things that we're doing here up here is just making sure that you know our community is going to embrace this and and not and i think you've helped that a lot by by setting that that path so thank you very much there aren't any further comments um i'm hoping that we can kind of like to go over what the motion was possible um so the motion is to um adopt the resolution declaring that the investigation and the rest of individuals 21 years of age are in older involved with the adult personal use and personal possession and cultivation of ethnogenic plants and fungi listed on the federal one schedule so federal schedule one list be amongst the lowest priorities for the city of Santa Cruz um there were amendments to add back in cultivation um there was language and amendment added in um around the improper use or consumption of ethnogenic plants and fungi um that can result in negative effects and the use requires harm reduction strategies and education to ensure safe consumption practices and there were also amendments to support harm reduction and prevention amongst youth in Santa Cruz and work with UC and education partners um for monitoring impacts amongst youth then there was an additional be it resolved well i had a couple one kind of tax on it i had one supporting um additional medical research and um when i can give the language devani and um another uh that we uh welcome information from community health and education partners etc i have that language as well okay and that motion was in um the motion it was a report back in six months but it was changed to one feasible right correct okay that motion was made by council member Glover seconded by council member Brown all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that passes unanimously we're going to take a minute to uh for those of you who wish to stay for our last item you're more than happy to stay we're going to take about three minutes to allow the chambers not staying for the evening item please exit the building at this time very much appreciated last item on this evening's agenda will be our advisory body appointments and reappointments before we begin i will make a few announcements for each commission i will begin by calling for nominations from each council member starting from my left but we'll rotate the council member giving the first nomination only new nominations should be called so if a council member has already nominated an applicant and that nomination should not be called again at the end of the nomination selection period the city clerk administrator will take a roll call vote to determine appointments or reappointments the clerk will then tally those choices and determine a majority vote the nominee who gets the majority of votes is appointed or reappointed before we begin i'd like to call on members of the public who would like to speak on any commission reappointments or appointments now is the time for member of the public to comment on agenda item 25 through 34 is there any member of the public who would like to speak on this item seeing absolutely none next on our agenda our agenda is item number 25 advisory appointment and reappointments we will begin with the arts commission if i can request sure go through it slowly i have a question sure i you know i can't think this has ever come up before but is it's okay if we change it we go around and we can change our vote i mean i assume that's okay you change your vote just just let's say it's gone around and you say oh i'd rather vote for i mean i assume that's okay we did that last year what i remember what happens is he'll make his so the arts commission has um three three appointments so you would name three nominees and if you have anything anyone different you would name those people but you would not repeat other i understand that but i'm i'm thinking rather than do a whole another round if we see it's three three i mean this happens someone could just say before we do another round oh i just rather change my vote so and so does that mess you up i guess i'm not understanding what the question is we could just see how it goes okay maybe we could start the arts and see yeah and see how it goes yeah i don't know that it'll happen if we should it occurred to me that's all all right well i will start with councilmember glover this round on the first nominee nominees for arts commission christopher car mary cope and john ralls arts commission right yes i think you just do one you do one you can do three you can do three you can do up to three there are three openings great sure you get those can you repeat those we were trying to go slowly christopher car mary cop cope it's cop cop and john ralls uh judy grunstra and luke layman evan byers linda cover cover and maryland cooch i don't have any addition i think to add i think we've covered i don't have any i'm sorry yeah you skipped me so i thought you'd come back to you at the end i don't have any addition i'm sure and i'm Matthews no additions additions no additions okay this will return for action votes the votes so i guess we vote for three we vote for three kind of putting dots next to them but can we read off the names of all the people that were nominated so the nominees are evan byers christopher car linda cover judy grunstra mary cop cope maryland lucas leman and john ralls that's almost everyone um i'm gonna stick with my nominations christopher car mary cop and john ralls uh grunstra cop and uh layman i'm gonna go with um buyer cover and cooch i'm gonna vote buyers cover and cooch as well car judy grunstra and mary cop buyers cover and cooched i'm gonna go with buyers cover and cooched as well okay um based on those votes it appears that the appointments will be buyers with four votes cover with four votes and cooch with four votes so it fires over and cooch yeah um actually you would actually now have to go through and do a revote on who gets the shorter of the term of the terms or if you want to do it by consensus or can they draw two you have two terms ending in 2024 and one ending in 2023 do you want to do a vote sure we can take a vote between evan buyers linda cover and maryland cooched am i saying that right cooch okay so i can't make a motion so um it's two terms there's two two terms ending in 2024 and one term ending in 2023 so two four-year terms and one three-year term yeah the three-year term is a completion of a vacancy they're all good no so the other option they draw straws okay turn to the fates up next commission for the prevention of violence against women there is one vacancy council member matthews nomination with the term expiring january 1st 2021 yes and i did um contact beth ermann i'd like to have to nominate her as my um appointee and i know that has to be confirmed by council and i did um i will contact all the others and appreciate their interests as well because candidates had very different things to offer and i've been in contact with the chair letting her know the and sharing the applications because i always think there's the opportunity to engage volunteers as well with cpba w anyway beth ermann is my nominee could we vote to confirm that my consensus so everyone census looks like it looks like that's accepted on consensus um next is um there's one possible reappointment and or appointment and one appointment both with terms expiring in january 1st 2024 um for the downtown commission may i please have nominations starting with council member crone indibrennan you get to uh joe ferrara what's gonna go with joe i'd also like to um go with daniel nelson i don't have any new uh some other matthews nothing to add nothing clever ryan altis so starting with council member crone um your two nominations brennan and ferrara i'm gonna go with ferrara and nelson i'm gonna go with ferrara and brennan brennan ferrara um ferrara and nelson ferrara and nelson brennan and ferrara yeah so it looks like the two appointments will be for indibrennan and joe ferrara with both terms expiring as of january 1st 2024 next we have equal oppo equal employment opportunity opportunity committee there's one vacancy with the term expiring as of june 30th 2022 may i please have nominations starting with vice mayor mires dancing degdon i'm no additional people to add i suggest by consensus no addition no addition okay so it looks like um by consensus we have nancy degnan as the appointment for equal employment opportunity committee on next up we have the historic preservation commission there are two possible reappointments and or appointments both with terms expiring as of january 1st 2024 may i please have nominations starting with council member brown denise diego and albert narrith nothing to add nothing to add is there anyone who would like to add an additional person so david suback i guess we will um starting with council member brown vote on the historic preservation commission appointments denise diego and albert narrith and if i could just say for the record um david suback application was uh very impressive and david if you're out there listening uh that he will apply again because i think additional expertise to the but we are reappointed we are making reappointments i agree i'll say david has served on hbc in the past he's very knowledgeable in this field but the two um current commissioners are extremely knowledgeable and um so i'm happy to vote for both of them for reappointment as well same same well i nominated david but i'm going to not block consensus well then i will take that as consensus on the historic preservation commission and so the appointments will go to denise diego and albert narrith up next uh we have parks and recreation commission there's one possible reappointment or appointment with the term expiration of january 1st 2024 um may i please have a nomination starting with council member matthews jam brown for reappointment is there anyone who would like to okay so it looks like consensus jam brown will be reappointed to the parks and recreation commission next we have planning commission there are two possible reappointments and or appointments both which terms expire in as of january 1st 2024 may i please have a nomination starting with council member walkins um let's see greg pepping for reappointment and william schultz council member glover kandace brown and cindy dawson brown and dawson not voting yet we're just no no new nominations no new nominations oh sorry no one knew no one knew for me john maxwell no one knew for me okay okay so it looks like uh we have brown dawson maxwell pepping and schultz is that confirmed okay so we will um take it to a vote starting with council member walkins pepping and schultz council member glover brown and dawson okay council member crown brown and dawson sorry hold on vice mayor mires pepping and schultz um dawson and maxwell brown and dawson yes um pepping and schultz looks like there's a majority for cindy dawson for one of the appointments so we'll have to um circle back for the additional appointment that's still yeah so you would vote on the three on kandace brown john maxwell greg pepping and william schultz just for the three did we only vote for the people i got threes the three-way you would they're sorry there was um the nominees we'll we'll vote on the four nominees went to lower with the that didn't qualify got it oh i see we're just voting for one now right so it's kandace brown john maxwell greg pepping and william schultz and we can start again with more walkins greg for reappointment greg pepping all right who who was this greg pepping brown i'm gonna go with pepping both maxwell try to move us towards four here so i'll go with maxwell pepping oh pepping yeah looks like that has narrowed us down to three with schultz schultz didn't receive any votes on that one so is that person eliminated then yeah so i guess we can start again with we have to vote again we have to keep going until we get yeah okay so it's kandace brown john maxwell greg pepping i guess we can start again with okay walkins i don't think we have the votes for pepping so i'll go with maxwell i'll go with maxwell maxwell well i will too i'd love to give a vote to greg i see the writing on the wall here so yeah maxwell so that final two appointments will be cindy dawson and john maxwell for planning commission so the next next up we have sister cities committee there are three possible reappointments and or appointments all with terms expirations as of january 1st 2024 may i please have the nomination starting with council member glover my turn again uh jed park harrigan sister cities yeah the last names oh sorry about your reading full names i thought that was one person my attempt to shortcut time failed did you catch that i'm gonna go with duffy also i have zero additions so four nominees are duffy jed park and peregrine and we can start um with um voting starting with my left with council member glover jed park peregrine jed park peregrine i'm gonna go duffy jed and peregrine and go with duffy jed and peregrine as well peregrine duffy jed and peregrine duffy jed and peregrine it looks like the appointments will go to duffy jed and peregrine for the sister cities committee next our agenda will be um transportation and public work submission there are three possible appointments all with the term expiring as of january 1st 2024 may i please have nominations starting with council member krone yes um um kandace brown ron goodman and um jonathan colman i'm gonna go with samantha vrooman daniel nelson and ron goodman it's already been sorry it's all right yeah have any new to add nope okay um council member glover any new additions how kelly you can start with voting with council member krone uh colman goodman smith mires go with um vrooman nelson who is the third one uh goodman it goes brown colman goodman brown colman sorry can you hold on brown colman and goodman um nelson and vrooman we'll get another one i guess okay uh goodman vrooman colman brown colman goodman based on those results it looks like the three appointments for transportation and public works commission will be kandace brown jonathan colman and ron goodman and then our last but not least there'll be one possible appointment possible reappointment or appointment and one appointment both with terms expiring as of january 1st 2024 to the water commission and we will start with vice mayor mires reappointment of angfer it's diana alfaro alihandro paramo additions no additions how kelly because that's more crone no additions okay um we'll bring it back to a vote starting with vice mayor mires uh doug angfer and diana alfaro doug angfer alihandro paramo doug angfer and alihandro paramo angfer and alfaro angfer and alfaro angfer and paramo angfer and paramo based on those results it looks like the two appointments to water commission will be a reappointment of doug angfer and appointment of alihandro paramo okay that brings our meeting to a close and so thank you all for joining us tonight and um councilmember walkins has something to say i won't keep us much longer but i do want to just sort of plan to see that as we start to look for more parity in our commissions that we embrace that moving forward potentially in the next round or starting to think about gender diversity on our commission appointments it's eventually going to be a state mandate and i think we can be ahead of the curve so i just want to make that statement and i just like to say for the record my appreciation and thanks for all the members of our community who apply to be on these commissions and i encourage those who didn't get accepted this time to attempt to apply again in the future for these commissions so thank you you're here yeah thanks for getting us out of here uh reasonable time 9 15