 So let's go ahead and get started. So good afternoon. Welcome to the 3pm public portion of the closed litigation session of the January 8th, 2019 meeting of the City Council. In this part of the meeting, the City Council will receive public testimony thereafter the council members will move to the courtyard conference room for the closed session. I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member, it's Crone. Present. Lever. Present. Myers. Present. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. Before we open public comment, I have a brief announcement. The city attorney will provide a report on items listed on the closed session agenda at the beginning of the 3.30pm session. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to any items listed on the closed session agenda at this time? Seeing none or hearing none, I will adjourn this portion of the meeting to the courtyard conference room where the council will go into its closed session. Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to our 3.30 portion of the January 8th, 2019 meeting of the City Council. I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member, it's Crone. Here. Lever. Here. Myers. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. And if the clerk could please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I am going to the United States of America. To the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. I've got to think about that one. This time, we'll have some introduction of some new employees of the City of Santa Cruz. And I'd like to start with our Human Resources Director, Lisa Murphy, who will be introducing Katie Cote, Administrative Assistant too. Katie? Good afternoon. I'd like to introduce Katie Cote. She is our new AA2 working in our benefits division. Read a little bit about Katie. Katie's a Bay Area native who's made her home in Santa Cruz for the past 18 years. She's a background in finance and customer service, and looks forward to growing in the Human Resources Department for many years. She enjoys raising her two boys on the beautiful Santa Cruz beaches in our parks and finding time to get outside and play as much as possible. Her favorite indoor hobbies include board games and trivia nights. You're on my team. Yeah, Katie always tries to spread her energy and cheer. I asked her what's a piece of trivia. She used to be her high school mascot, the American high school eagle. And another success story, Katie was a temp and we hired her as a permanent. So that's a great success and a great win. And we're very happy to have her jump right in. As you know, benefits touch each and every one of you. So, be nice, I guess she's got the keys to the city, great. So thank you, welcome Katie. Thank you, welcome Katie. Katie and I sometimes pass each other when we're doing our kid drop off at school, so congratulations and welcome. At this time, I'd like to invite up our Deputy Director of Libraries, Janis O'Driscoll, who will introduce Catherine Upton, Librarian, too. Good afternoon, it is such a pleasure to introduce Catherine to you because Catherine actually worked for us a long time ago in early literacy work. She helped us develop one of our most important early literacy programs, Read To Me. And she worked on kits. She worked with daycare providers. She worked on training, and she got this program launched and is still going today. And she kind of wandered off and became the school librarian for Baymont School for several years. And in the meantime, we were able to hire her for some special projects. One of the most exciting ones was when we began a project where we're training volunteers in the community to do story times to preschools. And so Catherine developed the curriculum and did the training for all of those volunteers and it's very successful, also still going. Well, we managed to attract her back to the library and she is now back in the permanent staff. She's currently assigned to the downtown branch and she will be doing story times and answering questions and all of the things that you would expect. But she's also going to take over a very important steam program at the library at the downtown branch and steam just to remind you, science, technology, environment, arts and mathematics. And so Catherine will be working with school-aged children and developing those programs for them. She's also going to be helping us keep the content current on the kids page of the Santa Cruz Public Library's website. So please join me in welcoming back Catherine Upton. Welcome back, Catherine. At this time, I'd like to invite up our director of economic development, Bonnie Lipscomb, who will be introducing David McCormick, development manager. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council. I'm so excited actually to introduce David to you today. This has been a long time coming. David's our new asset manager, property manager for the city. And some of you may know we've had this position vacant for a while. We've had numerous folks in our staff part-time sort of pulling together some of our asset management, property management. So we're really excited to have a designated person filling this role. David has a wealth of experience, and I'll get to that in just a second. But first, just a little background, his wife is named Catherine. He has two children, Mikaela, Mika, who's five, and his son, who is 16 months, Jackson. And he's lived in Santa Cruz over the last five years, most recently, and he lives on the east side. Most recently, he's worked for the city of San Jose in their parks and rec department. He has a lot of GIS background, so I'm really excited what he's going to do with our asset management portfolio. And we're talking about an interactive map. So I think that'll be really useful for our community. He graduated from San Jose State with an urban planning, urban development and design degree. He did grow up on the east coast in Vermont and Massachusetts. But his wife's family is actually from the Santa Cruz-Aftos area. And the interesting fun fact that I learned is that David's wife's family goes back five generations in Santa Cruz. And their family owned and ran the historic Garibaldi Hotel, or the Garibaldi Villa Hotel. That was off River Street. So some of you've seen some of those historic photos from the late 1890s, 1900. It's very beautiful and kind of a fun connection. David's going to be responsible, as I said, for property management. This includes our portfolio currently over 70, 80 properties in the city, including the wharf management, some of other properties. Acquisition development, property maintenance, and hopefully soon also the tannery commercial leasing. So we're going to have a lot on his plate. He's really hit the ground running. So excited to have him here. His favorite thing about Santa Cruz is the creativity and energy. I asked him what his favorite thing in his month's sort of long of working here at the city. And he said it's the positivity. It's sort of the good energy at the city and obviously no commute over the hill and being able to walk downtown. So you will welcome David and a round of applause for David for being part of our team. Welcome, David. And I would like to now invite up Parks and Rec Director Tony Elliott to introduce Isaac Steinbrook, a facility as a attendant. Hi, Tony. All right, good afternoon. My name is Tony Elliott, Director of Parks and Recreation. It is my pleasure to introduce Isaac Steinbrook today. I just had the opportunity to meet Isaac a couple hours ago, to be honest. And I realized that Isaac's reputation really is huge within the city. I think half of the chamber hall in here is filled with Parks and Rec folks. Who really love and respect and appreciate Isaac. Isaac actually started as a volunteer with Parks and Recreation at the age of 12. At Loudon Nelson, and has worked with seniors primarily. And is known really for his customer service, professionalism. Isaac went to high school at Santa Cruz High. He's currently going to Cambrio College, studying for degree in computer science. So I think it's fair to say, and I wish the whole Loudon crew could come up here and speak as well. But I think it's fair to say there's a contingent of our seniors. They're tech savvy and largely because of Isaac and the work and leadership that he's displayed. And so he will continue that work in a part-time role at Loudon Nelson, working with seniors, but working with this great team of Parks and Recreation. So on behalf of this team behind us, the cheering squad, please help me welcome Isaac to the team. That's wonderful, welcome Isaac. Okay, so at this time we will have a presentation from our police chief, Andy Mills, who will be introducing the police department volunteers. I also have two employees that I'll introduce first if that's okay, Mayor. Absolutely. So if Lori and Jody would come on up, please. They're shy, they said chief, we want to make sure that we're not talking, okay? But anybody who works in city government knows that who actually runs the organizations are the A2 and A3s. And we've been so fortunate to hire two A2s to help the chief's office. One works for Dan Flippo, the other works for myself, and they are busy all day long. And so I'd like to introduce to you first Lori Hageman. Lori came to California from Ohio, Michigan, but she's been here for 32 years, so I guess she's kind of a native. And lives in Boulder Creek, yeah, this is Lori over here. She's spent the last 25 years in administration and management, including having multiple employees, like eight or ten at one point, in the healthcare field. So she really understands healthcare benefits, which is another huge asset for us as an organization. I do have a question, who are you root for when Michigan plays Ohio? Michigan, you said? I'm a native. Okay, we'll have to argue this for the next five years. On her downtime, she enjoys the outdoor and helping raise her grandchildren who come over and visit her frequently. And so welcome, glad to have you. Welcome. And Jody Malloy came to us from Connecticut, where she worked as an executive assistant to the senior levels of corporate management in the New York area for over 20 years. This included more than 10 years as the executive assistant to the CEO of a multi-billion dollar Fortune 500 company that was traded in the New York Stock Exchange. I'm kind of looking for insider tips, but she's not giving them up. This included handling shareholders and board members and people who are constantly complaining about things, so she should fit right in. And Jody and her husband live in Santa Cruz and have four children, including two fur babies and two horses. And she goes down and visits them quite frequently. This time, it's been a little bit muddy, huh? Yes. Okay, so anyways, we're very thankful to have both of them. They've just been hit the ground running and can't wait to see what they can do in the future. So thank you, ladies. Welcome. Now if I can get all of our volunteers to come up. So what do you do when you have a really busy police department that don't have enough cops to go around? You find volunteers, and yeah, and so we're so thankful that this is just about half of the first class. And so we actually have 25 total volunteers, and they're responsible for a variety of things. One of which is walking the downtown area, helping people find restaurants and places to go. And then educating people as to what you can and cannot do, like you can't smoke downtown and we're happy to point that out, nor can you skateboard in the sidewalks and do other things that they can point out. But most importantly, what they're doing is they're creating a great visual presence. Not only the downtown area, but the beaches and the parks as well as we roll this thing out. And ultimately, they'll also be calling on senior citizens who are shut-ins and making sure that they're taken care of and that if there are needs that they can refer them to adult protective services and do invocation home checks. So they have a variety of things that they will be able to do as we continue to grow in this program. So if it's okay, I'd like to introduce them to you in no particular order. But if I can say this while I'm introducing them, where did Beth and Caitlyn, where are you at? Come up here, go and hide in the back. So three people really made this happen. And I just want to really recognize them for their unbelievable efforts. Joyce Blotchke was charged with putting this together and she just did a fantastic job. And we hired Beth as a part-time person who spent full time working on this project. And Beth did a fantastic job getting people backgrounded and going through the process. And then when all else failed, Caitlyn, who you can see is with child. We actually were looking for a uniform that could work and so she came up with this. Caitlyn put all the curriculum together. Everybody was trained for over a week with a variety of tools. She put the curriculum together. It was very thoughtful, including the next stages, so that when she does go out and maternity leave, she can continue with training. She came up to me a week ago and said, hey, I really own this project now, so I don't want to leave it. And so she has just done a stellar job helping put this together. I know that everybody feels that way because I've had multiple people come up to me and tell me how much they appreciate it. So I'm going to introduce that, volunteers to you. And if you would, volunteers, just step forward or wave your hand so people know who it is. Sydney Falcone, Haley Richmond, Veronica Charoche. How do they do, Veronica? Not good. Joe Netro, George Stagney, Thurman, you know, Margie Way. I'll get out of the way so you can actually see Margie. Colin Miller, Maggie Ramirez, Kyle Wave. Everybody knows this guy, JD Satello. JD? Where is he at? Yeah, I decided that. Ryan Perelis, Monica Young, Diane Lamone. How do they do, Diane? Actually, I can call it Diane. It's Diane. David Gianni. Giannini. Right behind you. Yeah. Jim Carreher. And Jake Dimetsch. So this is our volunteer crew. You'll see them out and around. And I would just, by the way, like to thank AT&T for paying for the uniforms that didn't come out of the police budget. And so community members have even stepped forward to help us. And we look for some great things. We're actually getting ready to start a couple of crime criminogenic experiments so we can measure to see how effective they are with this group. And we'll announce that in the future. So thank you so much for the time. Thank you, Chief Mills. And I just want to thank all the volunteers for being here today and for just choosing to spend your time supporting our city. There's a lot of volunteer opportunities. And I appreciate you choosing Santa Cruz and doing this. So thank you so much. I see Councilman Brownhouse. I'm really happy to see this. This is great. Thank you all for volunteering. This is really, how long is a typical shift? Right now there are two-hour shifts, multiple shifts sometimes a day. But we're going to expand that into three and four-hour shifts so we can get more bang for our buck out of them. How many days have they been out there so far? Have they already been out? Yeah, they've been out for about a month. I thought I've seen those. And the typical thing, what comes up most that you are asking someone to do or do they ask for directions or is it cigarettes? What I have done is gone into some businesses and just said how I can introduce myself. That helps. It's also helpful for us to be around when people that look like they're in need come up to us and say, gosh, can you help me with this something? Do you know you're like that? So we contacted Chris, who works at the office at the library there and could match up somebody that was in need with her. So we're just feet on the street. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Mathews. This is the first class. And what's your anticipated schedule for those who might be interested in the future? I assume you want to have an application period. We go through an application period. We also have to go through a rigorous background because they still are in the police facility. And we want to make sure that people have the highest caliber. You can see that we really have a high caliber of folk here. So it does take a little bit of time. So we would anticipate in the spring we'd like to do another class and see if we can take this up to 50 and then continue to expand from there. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions? I just have one. Are you guys doing evenings shifts as well or is it daytime primarily or one of the hours? Yeah, mostly it's daytime right now. We're trying to keep them out in the daylight. Yeah. Good. Good. Thank you so much, everybody. Thank you so much. So I have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting. So I'm excited to invite everyone to the historic groundbreaking for the first segment of the coastal rails rail. So please come and celebrate with the city and county officials and the community members at the west base of the San Lorenzo River railroad trestle bridge at 12.15 p.m. this Thursday, January 10th. And I'll wait just a second to continue. I'll just repeat the time again. So there will be a groundbreaking on this Thursday, January 10th at 12.15 p.m. The lunch hour ceremony will be followed by a party with free refreshments and giveaways and there is going to be free parking and a bike ballet. So for more information, please visit the city of Santa Cruz dot com and I hope to see you all there. Today's meeting is also broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website. The city of Santa Cruz dot com. I want to thank Jennifer Cameron, who is our technician for both this afternoon and evening sessions and thank her again for her work. So all of our city council members can be emailed at the city of city council at city of Santa Cruz dot com. And if you would like to communicate with us about an agenda item, we'd like to receive your email by Monday at 5 p.m. before our council meeting. This provides us with an opportunity to review your email and include it with the rest of our agenda packet. Please do bear in mind that all items of correspondence with the city and city council constitute a public record and are generally subject to disclosure upon request by any member of the public. Accordingly, if you have any sensitive information or private information that you do not wish to be made public, you should not include that information in your correspondence. Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left. And it is my job to keep the meeting running without disruption. And we ask you to respect your fellow citizens when you are inside and outside our council chambers. At this time, I'd like to ask if there are any statements of disqualification amongst the council. Seeing none, City Clerk, are there any additions or deletions to our agenda? No, there are not. Quick oral communications announcement. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda. Oral communications will generally occur at the conclusion of the afternoon business around 5.30pm, but may occur before or after 5.30pm depending on the meeting. At this time, I'd like to ask our city attorney to provide a report on closed session. Yes, thank you. Mayor Watkins, members of the city council, there were two items on this afternoon's closed session agenda, which began at 3pm in the courtyard conference room. First item was a liability claim, the claim of Wendell Turner Burgess. There was no reportable action on that claim, however it is listed as item 8 on your consent agenda. Second item was a conference with labor negotiators. The council received a report from its chief negotiator, Lisa Murphy, concerning the SEIU Local 521. There was no reportable action. Thank you. At this time, we usually have a city manager report, but is my understanding at this time we will not, okay? Thank you. So at this point in the meeting, we'll move on to our consent agenda. And those are items 2 through 10 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'd like to pull an item? I'll just start by saying I plan to pull item number three myself. Are there any additional items that would be pulled? Council member Cooke. Item number two, the minutes from the last meeting. Item number two. Item nine. Sorry, council member Matthews. Yes, I'd like to pull five and six. Six, and I was going to pull six. I was going to pull six as well. Okay. So I see that we will be pulling items two, three, five, six, and nine. Is that correct? Okay. Are there any council members who wish to only comment on any of the items that were not pulled at this time? Sure, no problem. The items that were pulled from consent are items two, three, five, six, and nine. Are there any council members who wish to only comment on any of the other items? Not at this time. Are there any members of the public who would like to request an item be pulled or to speak to an item on our consent agenda with the exceptions of items two, three, five, six, and nine? That would be the time to do so. And you will be given two minutes. Thank you very much. Mayor Watkins, council members, Gillian Greenside, and I'm really here just to appreciate item number four. It's been a long time coming. That is the televising of the Santa Cruz Planning Commission meeting. For the past three or four years, myself and actually my late husband, John, spoke to this, although he hated speaking at the microphone. But he thought it very important that the Planning Commission meetings be more available to the public since so many important decisions are made there. And it was he who brought it to my attention that we're the only city that doesn't make our Planning Commission meetings available in that way. And I was even surprised when we visited his family in Vallejo to see on the television that all of their commissions are televised, parks and recreation, et cetera. So we've asked for many years and there hasn't been any progress. So I can only say with the new council, this is very heartening and I want to just express appreciation. That's of course assuming that it will be voted to go in. And I hope it will be on community television because I think that is the most available for the community. So thank you very much. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to speak to the council on the consent agenda besides items two, three, five, six and nine? Seeing none, I'm now looking for a motion on the remaining items of consent which are two, seven, eight, ten and eleven. Actually not two. I'm sorry, four, seven, eight, ten and eleven. I'll move the consent agenda. Second. Okay. That was motioned by Council Member Matthews, seconded by Council Member Brown. Any further questions or deliberations? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. So now we are moving on to the polled items and so we'll start with item number two, which I believe is polled by Council Member Cron. Thank you, Mayor. I emailed Bonnie about it and I might have gotten an email back, but I'm not receiving emails, right? Someone's wrong with my machine. But this has to do with item number 27 from the last meeting and it was the reading of final adoption of ordinance amending chapter 221.03. A municipal code pertaining to relocation assistance for displaced tenants. And I was just wondering, I just thought there was all the people who spoke 31 expressed concern and I thought there was a four and against or speaking in favor of the motion or speaking against the motion. I thought we were going to separate it out like that. And I do. And I did respond to your email, but that particular item, there were people in support of the idea, but they shared concerns. That's why they fell under expressed concern because they weren't 100% for the item as it was. Okay, I'll move item number two. Okay. Is there any member of the public who'd like to speak to that item? Thank you, Mayor, Council Members. That last meeting was very long and I don't usually look at the minutes, but I did for this agenda. And I totally appreciate it's a hard job to do minutes and for that particular meeting. However, I was in many years ago, minutes were much more detailed and reading minutes who's got a sense of the dialogue. I understand that might be cumbersome, but the next iteration for Council was for and against. And it seemed to me, looking at all of the items, it was very hard to tell how many were for, how many were against. I think the category was expressed concerns. I spoke strongly in favor of one of those items or not strongly. I spoke in favor of it. So I think if that is the usual formula for and against, that would be helpful. And just lastly, on the oral communications, I think the minutes for those who read them gives a sense of what happens at Council and the public record is important. And under oral communications, I spoke and if it could, I don't think it would take a lot more to give a little bit more flavor. What I spoke to was the fact that on the wharf, the shops leave their doors wide open on a freezing day with the heaters full blasting. And I brought that as a concern, but the capture of it was, Green Sites spoke about shops and restaurants on the wharf. And thank the outgoing Councilors. So I just think to be able to capture just a little bit more accurately of what he's brought forward to you would be ultimately in the public good. But I do appreciate that was a difficult and long meeting. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to address the Council on this item? Okay. Seeing none, I'll return it back to our Council for Action and Deliberation. Oh, you moved approval, Chris. Is that correct? I'll move the item. Okay, so that was moved by Council Member Cron, seconded by Council Member Matthews. A question by Council Member Myers. I assume that for the new members we can't, we'll have to abstain for the majority until the 7pm session. I'll turn it over to our city attorney to respond. That has been a custom of Council Members in the past, but it's not a legal requirement. The approval of the minutes is the Council's official certification that those are the minutes of the meeting. It's not an attestation by Council Members that they reviewed it and made sure everything was accurately set. So, in my view, current Council Members can approve the minutes from the last Council. Okay. Thank you. And then, thank you. Just to address the concern of the community member, is it feasible, Bonnie, or to include or expand the detail in the minutes so that if someone weren't to just reference it, they would be able to get a stronger understanding of the decisions that were made in the conversations or concerns expressed? Our minutes are specifically action minutes, not verbatim or not summary minutes. They're action minutes. So that's part of a charter, actually. And just from what she was mentioning that there was description that she spoke about businesses on the wharf. So that seems pretty specific. Is there a reason that her specific complaint wasn't or issue with the businesses on the wharf weren't included in the minutes? No, there's no specific reason. It was an action. It was just a summarization of the people speaking. Okay. That's why we record the meetings. That's why people can go back to the video also. So that's why we do this action minutes because there is an option to watch the video. Council Member Cronin? Yeah, I would just say it's pretty difficult watching the video a lot of times and finding exactly where you want to find. And I'll just say for the record, I think having summary minutes would be, would do the city a lot more justice in terms of finding out what people actually spoke. Here's 31 people who spoke and I don't know what they said for that one item. The other thing about this is just the way it's been done for a while. But I'm going to say it'd be great to turn that around because it's hard to watch the video. Okay, great. Any other comments at this time? So we have a motion by Council Member Cronin and a second by Council Member Mathews. Is that correct? Okay. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. I was just going to point out that the minutes as they're currently prepared are pursuant to the council's policy manual. So we're the council to direct further elaboration on comments from either council members or members of the public in the minutes that would require an amendment to that personnel manual or the procedures manual. Thank you. Okay. So that passed unanimously. So item number three is the item that I pulled and I just wanted to provide an overview of the process. Traditionally the mayor as long as I've been on council and I'm not sure how much longer before my time is tasked at the beginning of the year to hear input from our council members. I'll ask seven, including myself, and to weigh and balance their input and a number of considerations, time commitment and travel availability, experience, et cetera. And then bring before the council a recommendation. And so that's what you have before you here today. And I just wanted to kind of provide that context so that you and the community are aware of how the process goes. What the sort of facilitator role that the mayor plays in that process and any questions that may be amongst the council or the community in regards to that. Are there any questions from the council at this time? About the process? For me or on the item in general. And then are there any members of the community who would like to address the council on item number three? Seeing none. We'll return for action and deliberation. Is there a motion to move the item? Some questions. Question? I just have a more, it's a statement and a question I guess. So after reviewing and I totally understand the process and the historic presidents that exist because of it. But when looking at some of the suggestions and nominations for considerations that were made. I find concern in some of the structure and also the selections that have been made because of a lack of representation. As well as, and I spoke, we got a chance to meet and talk about it briefly, but I noticed that on the document that's online still is still the same. So I'm not sure if any of those things are changed or not, but if not, then especially with regards to the public safety committee that have council members, there's Matthews and Crone on there doesn't provide any representation of lower income and or diverse representation from socioeconomic backgrounds in the decisions or conversation around public safety and Santa Cruz. And after speaking with the police chief and his vision of the direction that he'd like to see Santa Cruz public safety go, it seems like there should be some more representation there. As well as in some of the other committees or groups that were put together. So I just want to express my concern and ambivalence in moving forward with these suggestions, especially with the public safety error or lack there of representation. I want to share council member Glover's comments as well as, you know, the words you just said, you know, what it's been done in the past, there's been a fairer distribution of these tasks. I would say that a lot of these committees are really unknown to the public for one thing. Looking at them there's 12 primary ones that I think probably have the most interest and people want to be on as far as council members. One is the ad hoc committee on budget, the metro, the bus board, the public safety committee, the downtown management committee, the community programs committee, the RTC, visit Santa Cruz, which does public relations for the city and for businesses, marketing basically tourism, the farmers market, the long range development plan advisory to UCSC, the library, LAFCO and homelessness. And I just see with these 12 it just seems like there's a better distribution process. You know, I know the council member Glover didn't get any of his choices that he put in for and I received one. And yeah, I would just like to hear from other council members about, you know, having a fuller conversation about these committees. If I may just briefly and then I'll see if other council members want to respond. I certainly understand that when you express interest in an item or serving in a certain way as a member of one of these external agencies or committees that there is the possibility that there won't be an opportunity for everybody to serve. For example, if I have five requests for an opening of two positions, certainly three people won't get their request met. And so again, I just want to let you know that when considering these recommendations before you today was a huge variety of factors that I tried to balance. So I recognize that there's been times in the past where I didn't get the items that I wanted to serve on. And so I empathize with the disappointment, I guess I would say, knowing that that's partially what the setup is for if you're not able to meet the needs based on the allotted slots, essentially. Other council members wanting to speak? Well, I'll just say that the mayor does have a task to balance the, or consider the desires of individual council members, the range of options and also concerns for continuity on some commissions or assignments. And I didn't get everything I asked for and was surprised at a couple of others. So there I think we're all in that situation. But my experience is over the years that by and large the assignments, people rise to the occasion and or they learn new things. And it, to my mind, has in the long run worked well. I definitely understand the issue that has been raised here. I'd be prepared just to move this. And I think it's also important to acknowledge the prerogative of the mayor to do this. Obviously it has to be confirmed by council. But just to get this discussion moving forward, I am going to move confirmation of the assignments that are made in this item. I'll second that motion. So motion by Matthew, seconded by myself. Council Member Brown. I mean, I think it's worth just weighing in here to say that. And I know we had the conversation that I too was concerned about the spread in terms of those designations. I'm perfectly fine with the commission appointments I got. I understand continuity in addition to all of the other factors that you've considered. And I appreciate the challenging task of doing this. It's not fun. I know more I've heard. But I do think that at some point we ought to really be looking at how we are all represented and have opportunities to serve and represent the city on these various boards and commissions. It's been a serious learning experience for me. I'm looking forward to carrying on with some and taking on new ones. But I just want to say that I do think that certain council members have been a bit left out here. And I'd like to make sure that we find a way to address that. So just put it out there. I'll just add that there will be city ad hoc committees come up and come and go throughout the year as work kind of comes about. So there will be opportunities for more ways for us to collaborate and serve in that regard. And I had something else now I forgot. So I'll go ahead and move to the chair. I think that this is this is really serious. And I would I would like to make a substitute motion to table this item until our next meeting and have some time for further discussions and for their discussions to go on among council members as well as the public as well. Because they've been interested some of the folks who who I know who do read the agendas. So I will I will make a substitute motion to take this up to table this right now and take it up January 22nd. There's motion on the floor. Is there a second? They seem none. Can I say something as I enter into my decision or whatever I decide to move? My understanding is that the motion on the floor will die without discussion. If there's not a second, it could be reiterated afterwards. I'm I don't know if I follow what you're you're correct that the motion dies for lack of a second. But it could be reintroduced if council member Glover can make a comment and then the motion could be resurrected. Okay. So this item as mundane as it may seem to people that aren't behind the scenes and thinking about the totality of what's going on is essentially a. Symbol or it's setting the stage for our working relationship together as council members over the next four years, two to four years for some of us who knows how much longer. The concern I have is that if we're not willing or able to work through some kind of a compromising situation where people across the dais feel that their perspectives will be represented. And that their preferences have been taken into account through the appointment process. Then I fear that it will cascade into a culture of difficulty when trying to reach compromise on other areas of focus. And especially when looking at the public safety committee that is made up of all white people all over the age of 50 who all I've to my knowledge own property in Santa Cruz. That is impossible to get a diverse perspective of representation on how we can reform and change our public safety system so it works better in Santa Cruz. So to have a motion made to push it through and seconded when you understand the concern and you've heard from multiple of your fellow members expressing that the structure and makeup is not sound from our perspective. It is concerning and disappointing to me for this to be one of our first things that we're dealing with. So I will second the motion for Council Member Crohn's alternative motion to table this discussion for two weeks so that we can work through this and ideally find a way to come out the other side closer as opposed to farther away. Any discussion? We're now discussing on the substitute motion. Yes. Yes, I'm going to vote against that. Again, I thoroughly understand your concern and I didn't even ask for public safety. So there it's not a conspiracy. That's the one I was surprised to find myself on. And I told the mayor I'm happy to serve where appointed but an alternative would be to confirm this list but anticipate that there may be opportunities to change the alignment to tweak it rather than putting the whole thing in abeyance. A lot of these outside commissions particularly are gearing up for their January meetings and so forth and need to move forward. So I'd like to confirm globally but understand the concerns and there's always the opportunity to make a shift at a subsequent meeting in the very near future if that sounds amenable. That's fine. And if it's specifically to public safety and there's the consensus amongst council. Excuse me. I will acknowledge you. Point of order. When you table something, you vote on it without discussion, I believe. That is correct. Council member Crohn pointed that out to me and I'm just reading the rule. Okay. It requires that all discussion of the item under consideration at the time of the motion be halted immediately without further discussion. So I think there's been a motion in a second. You want to vote on the motion to table. So we're voting on the substitute motion to table the item. Without discussion at this time. Okay. All those in favor to table the item to the January 22nd meeting please say aye. Aye. That is no. All those voting no say aye. I would say no. Excuse me. No. Okay. So that fails for the lack of votes with council members. Council member Crohn, Glever, Brown voting in favor. Council members Matthews, vice mayor Cummings, council member Meyers and myself voting against. So we'll go back to the original motion which was made by council member Matthews, seconded by me to pass this and. Can I comment or ask a question? Sure. So at a later point in time if council members are able to discuss their interest in possibly switching between different committees or agencies. That could be tweaked. Then we can make those changes in the future. And we could. Yes. That's true. Absolutely. I would in fact amend my motion to be that we adopt the assignments that are put forward in this agenda report with the understanding that there may be tweaks in the near future. Absolutely. And I'd be happy if there is consent official word tweak. I was going to say. And if there is consensus among the council to reorganize public safety, we can make that the first task of the mayor. And then so that's the motion and I would just say for those council members who do have some further comments to communicate those with the mayor so that those weeks can be done at the next meeting. And then we can go forward through the year with the assignments in place. One second. Well, there's public comment. I'll just make a quick comment while Nicholas is coming up. Mr. Whitehead. With the tweak caveat, I would be prepared to move ahead. I do want to make sure that we read this. Okay. Certainly public comment. Didn't we already, didn't we, did we not, we did public comment. We did not do public comment. Excuse me. Are there, is there any member of the public who would like to speak to this item? You'll be given two minutes. I need two minutes. I would suggest that the public safety committee become a commission. And that would address the issues that Council Member Glover spoke to. I think that what goes on there isn't helpful for the community. It's a kind of safetyism focus on a lot of negatives. And it would be useful to have a broader representation of commission and televised. Any other members of the public who'd like to address the council on this item? Seeing none, we'll move it back to deliberation and action. And just for clarification, I, the motion is to pass what was before us today, knowing that it can be modified and tweaked as needed. But for my clarification of understanding of the council's will, the first request is to look at the public safety makeup. Is that correct? Okay. Council Member Cron. Could we get clarification on the, on the Metro Board? How many representatives do we have and how many? Not clear to me. Two from the city. It was Cynthia Chase and myself. Here it says alternate. So do we have one or do we have two? Maybe I'll look to staff to maybe respond to that. I believe we have two. Two? Yes. Okay. So where's that go on the list here? So the. It looked like there was an alternate. It says alternate. So perhaps that's not necessarily accurate. We would need to remove alternate that those are the two appointments. That's right. That's okay. Well, I'm, I'm disappointed that there's at least two sevenths of us who have brought this to your attention and you will not change it, which is kind of really interesting to me as far as collegiality, getting off on the right foot beginning of the year. I'm just pretty, pretty disappointed that there's not any changes that you, you, you would, you would make. It's disappointing. I'll just respond by saying it is the role of the mayor to hear input from the council and propose recommendations to the full council. These were the recommendations with balancing the various factors that I mentioned earlier that I've brought to the council for approval that does not preclude the council from doing whatever they may want to do with that. If that's the will of the council to change it, that's the will of the council to change it. So it, so it was my responsibility to prepare this and bring it forward to you. And that's what I have done balancing again that we're a seven government, seven member governing body from various sectors and have various input and considerations and, and making those appointments based on that. So that's where we're at. If there's the will to change it or do anything different, that's, that's the will of the council. I will say for the record too that council member Glover received none of the requests he made as far as I know. And I received one and some of the folks on this list received four and five of the request they made. Any other discussion at this time? I will say that this process has been incredibly disappointing. Not only in the response to the concerns that have been expressed, but also in the decision breakdown. It was disappointed in some, some of those that made the decisions that they did just to be completely honest and transparent. However, the fact that I received zero. Now it's okay to say, sure, not everyone gets what they want, but to receive zero out of the list that was provided of appointments speaks to me in a way that is discouraging and uncomfortable. So I hope that we can work towards figuring out ways to remedy and address that in a positive manner because I do not feel represented in the slightest by these decisions. I would like to hear from the mayor exactly what went into your decision making and who was consulted. You said that it was experience. You said to me anyway, and I wrote it down, availability and interest. And I was never asked about my availability on any of these issues. I don't know if other folks were. But how did you make these decisions actually? Who made the decisions and how were they made? Because it doesn't seem to me that I think we're making the case for experience. I can make a case for a lot of these boards and commissions. I don't really understand. I mean, I think from what I've already said, it's the balancing of those different factors essentially. And some folks did let me know their availability or unavailability if you will. And taking in all of those, that input is sort of how I tried to balance these recommendations to come before the council. Agree with them or not agree with them. That was what I was tasked to do. And if there is the will of the council for me to revisit the recommendation for public safety as the first modification, I'm happy to do that. Or if there is a potential shift on how you would like to proceed with this in the future, that's up to the council as well. But that's what I was asked to do. That's what I did. And that's what's before you today. And by the time that was made public with having heard the concerns, that was what I had already presented to the community at this time. So that's where we're at at this point. So if there's not any additional further discussion, would we like to move the item? I was just going to mention that now knowing that the Metro consists of two city council members, one of whom is not an alternate. I'm wondering if that might be taken into consideration to. Absolutely. Okay. So the motion is to pass this with tasking the mayor to revisit the Metro and public safety appointments by the 22nd. Okay. At this point is there's not any additional comments. We'll go ahead and vote on the item. Can we also strike the word alternate from the Santa Cruz and Metropolitan District Board? We actually have two council members who sit on the Metro Board. That's right. And we'll strike the word alternate from that. Okay. At this time we'll take a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Nay. That passes with council member Brown, council member Matthews, council member Myers, vice mayor Cummings and myself voting yes. And council member Crone, council member Glover voting no. So the next item that was pulled is item number five. And I don't recall who pulled that item, was it council member Matthews? I did. This is a proposal to change the time and structure for oral communications. And I personally will speak against this. I wanted to hand out to the council, this is the actually the part of the Brown Act that talks about the purpose of oral communications. And you'll notice it's Xerox on the back of a precinct sheet, something that's familiar to all of you. But basically the fundamental purpose of oral communications as written in the government statute is to give an opportunity for the public to address the body on an item that's not on the regular agenda. And is within the subject matter of the jurisdiction. We kind of stray far afield of that sometimes. The government code also says that the local agency can adopt reasonable regulations limiting the amount of time allocated in total and for the individual speaker. And I think it's quite fair to say that there's an active engagement in oral communications here in Santa Cruz. It is correct, as was stated in the staff report that at one point it was in the evening, was moved at another point to late afternoon. And there's always a balancing act of those people who have demands of family, demands of work, etc. But my main reason for preferring it at the end of the day at 5.30 is it does accommodate those who have, that is for staying with the current plan. It accommodates those who have a regular daytime work schedule they can get here and they can get home and have the evening with their family. But of equal importance, the items that we have scheduled at 7 PM tend to be our great big items. It's a big public hearing on an ordinance, on a development proposal, people come. Those meetings are often involve complicated staff presentations but also a great deal of public interest. And typically, or often I would say, the experience of public oral communications is contentious, chaotic, and has over time been discouraging to the public. The general public that comes and wants to engage in the substance of an item and is frankly turned off of engagement with the public process as a result of the oral communications experience. So it takes up a half an hour of the evening time non-productively and in fact can often be a negative experience. So for that reason, my preference would be to keep it at the afternoon hour. If the decision is to go forward with this, there's some language that just doesn't make sense in the proposed language. Like it says, if oral communications, let's see, if the afternoon business concludes earlier than 7 PM, the council shall recess. Well that makes no sense if we're doing it at 7. I think the language isn't even consistent here and the language here says that oral communications will occur around 7 PM. If an agenda item is still in progress at 7 PM, the item will be concluded. Well, there again, that makes no sense. So I think at the very least, if the desire of the majority is to restructure the oral communications to 7 PM, this language needs to be cleaned up. Another thought would be if the desire is to go to 7 PM, that oral communications be at 7 and business starts at 7.30. That way people know, am I coming for oral communications or am I coming for the business section? So that's just another thought. Also, I think it's very important, items that are shown redlined as 5, I guess, on occasions when the speakers remain to address the council after 30 minutes of oral communications. Quite a long series of options extending maybe the comment period for another 45 minutes or a total of 45 minutes. I personally think those should be stricken. I think the idea, as the Brown Act anticipates, we set reasonable limits for the public to come and address us. And the public can communicate with the council in many other different ways as we all know with email, with private meetings and so forth. This is one opportunity, but it's really not to drive the whole evening. So I think it's important to leave to the mayor's discretion the management of the meeting. That is the discretion of the amount of time setting aside a maximum of half an hour and adjusting the commentary time as the circumstances dictate. So those are my comments. Others will weigh in accordingly. I'd personally like to keep it at 5.30. And if it goes to 7, to clean up the language and leave the timing to the mayor's discretion. Are there any other comments before I open it up to the public to comment at the time? It's something that's slipped in the last four or five years, oral communication. I see it as one of the essences of a democracy where we open the podium and we hear from the public on items not on our agenda. It's been extremely important, at least to folks that I've spoken to in the community. And it would be interesting to look at when oral communication actually started, meaning when it was at 5 or 5.30, it's been a floating time. It rarely begins at that time. And it's very difficult. People have often been frustrated. They leave. It started as late after 6. People can't guarantee what time it's going to begin. In addition, I don't know if 5.30 is not a lot of people are sitting on 17 when it's 5.30. And also the fact that they could be home and watching it too at a fixed time has been important in the history of Santa Cruz. So I agree with Council Member Matthews that we should advertise oral communications at 7 p.m. and then 7.30 regular business. And as far as the time allotted, if it's an issue that just happened that week or day in Santa Cruz and people are really urgently want to talk about it, I would definitely have the Mayor exercise her discretion in extending it to 45 minutes. It just gives it that. But 30 minutes, I think, is a good amount of time to listen to the public every two weeks. And if there's less than 10 people in the room who want to address the Council, I would like to see it at three minutes. And that's why I was in here. Thank you, Mayor. Are there any other comments? Councillor Brown. So I guess I'll just weigh in for a moment. I've been clear since I've been on the Council that I believe that 7 p.m. is an appropriate time for oral communications. I really appreciate the idea of having time certain. I agree with Council Member Matthews that if we're going to do it this way, doing it time certain at 7 p.m. and then having our business meetings begin at 7.30 is a good idea to eliminate that limbo that people sit in. And with the 5.30, out or around 5.30, it's been that way and it's been frustrating I think for people. So I really support this because of the time certain. I am really okay with this being up to the discretion of Mayor whether or not to extend the oral communications period based upon demand from the public. What I see oral communications is for is an opportunity to address us on items not on the agenda. Now that in our experience has been liberally used by regular commenters, communicators. It also has been an opportunity for members of the public to bring items to our attention that maybe have just come up. Items that we are not aware of in a way that really, that we hear it, right? So getting an email about something is different than somebody showing up and saying this is happening in my neighborhood or this has come up. And it provides an opportunity for us to hear from those folks and then hopefully agendize something and or get it addressed through staff. So I really want to make that as accessible to the public as possible. So I'm going to support this. I am really okay with the proposed changes and I think it's fine to have it be the discretion of the mayor about whether or not we extend it if there really is a major issue that people want to come and weigh in on that we haven't agendized. And so those are my general comments about the proposal as it is. Any additional comments at this time? I'll just weigh in. I agree that we should advertise at the 730, the 7 and 730 periods so that people who want to come from one or the other shouldn't have very clear ability to do so and know that it will be honored. Additional comments? Before we open up to public comment, I'll just say this is something we've brought, that's been brought before the council a couple of times. We made the modification to the 530. And one of the things that I felt good about when changing it from 5pm to 530 is that it does allow for that window of time when people are commuting home to get here in 5,530. And if thinking about who can access oral communications, one of the things that I've brought up in the past is that 530 for a working parent is actually a lot easier than a 7pm time when you're trying to prepare dinner and deal with the child kind of experience. So in terms of who that change in timeline and timing meets that need, I'm not quite sure who we're modifying for that. But I'm hearing sort of two things, which one is the assurance of a time certain so that the community is aware that we'll have an oral communication period and then a proposal for a change. I do share concerns that with the 7pm item like we have this evening that when you start oral communications at 7, it really does push back what will be often a very intensive long conversation. So there is sort of that personal concern around the 7pm time. And I know also that we have three new council members who haven't necessarily experienced oral communications at this point. So my preference would be to postpone this item and have the new council have a sense of what that could be. We could potentially discuss maybe of a time certain of 530, which would be a different discussion. But in terms of changing it to 7, I don't support that at this time. But at this point before I open it up, I'll bring it back to council, but I'll open it up to the community to weigh in and you'll be given two minutes. Mayor and council members, Gillian Greensight. For the first 30 odd years of my involvement with City Council, oral communications was always at 7. And the big items of weight and importance were always in the evening. And both of those changed so that oral communications was a floating time. And most of the big items were in the daytime. And often there was no evening meeting. In the earlier days, after oral communications, sometimes council went to midnight, rarely, but sometimes even longer. Hard for you and staff, but important, I think. The problem with the earlier time when it was shifted to the afternoon was that it was crammed in with the important items. So I had a big item and sometimes in the middle of it, you stopped it, had oral communications and picked it up again. And it was an item near and dear to my heart and all of the council members were distracted. And I'm going, oh no, it might have been something I paid $500 for, like a tree appeal. So that floating time has been very non-public friendly. So my perspective, it would be good to have it at 7. I see one problem, though, with your trying to advertise 7 o'clock oral communications, which I think would be great. And a fixed time for your business, hoping now that more business will be in the evening, is that if there's two people for oral communications in eight minutes or four minutes, you could start your business. But if you've advertised it for 7.30, that's going to be a problem. So I think you have to wrestle with that a bit. But I really feel going back to 7 a fixed time. I know sometimes it can be tedious, repetitive, but it also, I think, traditionally was a much better public process. So hoping to see that. And I apologize. I have to go. Thank you very much. Is there any other speakers who'd like to speak to this item? Okay. Please come forward. You'll be given two minutes. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. Such a great city council. Thank you for all your service. I want to support the 7 o'clock time certain oral communications. I think it would just work out better for working families and community members. I think the oral communications as it is, and it's already been stated that it's been all over the map. So I want to support that. And then it makes sense to start business at 7.30. I know that families, I mean, people are still on the road. I mean, many of us have the luxury of having, being workers here in the city. But there are many people on the road at 5, 5.30, 6, 6.30. And even though I do know that it is hard for families, I think that 7 o'clock works. I think it's hard for families anyway. I just think it's just tough having kids in the town the way it is with all the traffic and all. So I really wanted you to think about people who have to commute. So many people commuting, the commuting time is off the charts, and that 5, 5.30 is really not possible anymore, given the traffic. And if you really want people to show up and be part of government, I think we need to make this change. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members of the public? You'll be given two minutes. Namaste. And bula-bula. Bula-bula-bula. Bally-bally. Shoutouts to IIT and Marshall Systems. I have previously, under two minute comment periods, focused on predictions. Because it has a way of injecting the threads that are being shared and offered into the bowl of content in a somewhat wieldy documentary process. I just want to, could you pause the, I just want to let you know that we're discussing oral communications in the time. Right. And as Congress, excuse me, as council member Brown indicated. These two minute periods are really up to the interlocutor to optimize in a way that doesn't waste anyone's time. And I often try to keep it short anyway. And this brings up the collateral topic of congestion. And my, my, the bullet I want to share on congestion is that I anticipate a bond measure in the future. Again, Agent Orange is offering a prediction about the future. In this case, a bond measure, which will be between $400 million and $1.1 billion with potential sweet spots at $775 million or $883 million. Where these would facilitate the congestion relieving plan, the low hanging fruit that was identified by a recent study. Where shoulders on the highways, Highway 1 for example, for say four or five mile stretch, which can be optical fiber project enhanced. These can be superconducting metal levitating tracks the way Japan and China have not been depriving their citizens of speed rail. So it's possible to have a 21st century technology project in our humble little county. But. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. If there aren't any other members of the public who'd like to speak to this item, we'll bring it back to the council for action in deliberation. I'm going to actually acknowledge council member Glover for first. Thank you. I think our job as council members should be to make democracy more accessible and not less accessible. And from what I've heard from the community, both here and in communication outside is that oral communications, especially the way the city council structured it has made it so the democracy is not accessible. So I think we should be doing everything that we can to maximize the access people have to come and speak with us and make it so it's as expected as possible so that people can get here. Whether or not that results in us having as was suggested as a possible scenario, a gap of open time. If there aren't enough people to fill the solid and secured space in that situation, we could recess for a couple minutes as I'm sure we wouldn't mind getting up and going to the bathroom until we restarted our original original business at 730. And I do want to express some concern because with all due respect, Mayor, I think what I heard you say was that for parents with small children, it's easier at 530. And if that's the case, you don't know why we would move the time. Did I miss, hear you? You did. So I said, I don't know the intention of moving the time, but if we're thinking about accessibility, coming from being a parent of small children, actually 530 is better for me. And for a lot of the working people that I know, who then could stop by on their way home prior to going home, kind of engaging in dinner preparation, et cetera, before coming back for oral communications. So that was my statement. Right. I'm just concerned that with that perspective, because even in that one, it sounds like you said you don't understand why we would change it or something. It's the other people outside of the parental groups and outside of the people that are privileged enough to live in a family unit in Santa Cruz and be off work and home by 530. So there's students that are involved in those kinds of things where they're getting out of campus and out of school. There's people that are working in service jobs that are forced to be in Watsonville or come back this way. There are people that are coming from over the hill. And all of these other reasons why moving the time to a later date, even though it may not directly benefit people with small families from your perspective, thinking about the larger community outside of just that group. And it's very concerning, I would say, for that energy from my perspective to come. And I really, really hope that as we think about this and contemplate the value of changing it and providing a set time, we think outside of our own privilege and outside of our own lives and outside of the circles of people that we hang out with and to the people at the very bottom of our socioeconomic ladder that find it difficult to participate in the timelines that have been expressed. Okay, I appreciate your perspective. And I'll just for clarification reiterate that I heard that I don't know who we're trying to change this time to meet the needs of, but that was my experience. Until I do understand who we're not able to access it feels sort of arbitrary to me to change the time. But what I did hear was that there was concern and what I've heard from the community is concern around the moving time of 530 before or after depending on the agenda. And that I feel is, I have heard that concern, that it's more about the time certain. Are there any other council members- Can I respond to that? One second. Are there any other council members who'd like to speak to this item at this time or comment? Okay, go ahead. I would just say that in saying that changing the time to a later date seems arbitrary. I'm concerned that it illustrates a severe disconnect between the reality of life of low income people and what's represented on the perspective of the dais. Sure. And if there's data to substantiate that I'd be happy to revisit that at 7pm. So at this point would be the opportunity for action and deliberation. It was my preference to postpone this item and this change based on the fact that there hasn't even been one opportunity for all communications amongst the new council at this point, as well as we'll be revisiting how we do our council procedures and norms in a future time anyhow. Council Member Matthews and then Council Member Cummings, Vice Mayor Cummings. I'm going to be really honest here. My preference was to table this and give a time for new council members to have some experience. But I see that every single item is coming forth as a litmus test on where we fall on some spectrum. And as I said in December, that is the last dynamic I want to reinforce or perpetuate. So I am actually going to move that we may pass a modified language for this that would move oral communications to 7. It can always be changed in the future, but I would change the language. I think frankly it was just kind of sloppy here. Oral communications will be held at the beginning of the evening session, which will occur on or about 7pm. Strike all arrest. If oral communications concludes earlier than 7.30, council shall recess and reconvene at 7.30 and begin the business portion of the meeting to begin the business portion of the meeting. 30 minutes will be allotted. No individual will be allowed to speak for more than three minutes. Strike the next two items. No individual may speak more than once during oral communications and all the rest as shown. I would like to have the star, the asterisk at the bottom. Time limits may be increased or decreased at the mayor's discretion. Actually have a number attached to it. So that would be my motion. Second that. Is there further discussion? Vice mayor? No, my question was around the language. Okay. Go ahead. Who, I'm trying to figure out who put this policy statement here. Because that wasn't anything that the language that I, the three council members brought this forward or is in the discussion. I don't know where the policy statement came from so I didn't. Are you talking about the asterisk? You just where it says city council meeting oral communications policy statement. This is our council policy. I'm not, I don't have it in front of me, but this is an existing policy. It's an existing council policy. So it's an amendment to the existing policy. So that's been the one that's been in place. Okay, I'm sorry. What you see is a red line version. Okay, it was without the red lines. There was a red line version included. Next page. Sorry. Okay. Yes. Got it. I appreciate taking out the adder around 7pm because that time certain at 7pm is really, I think, helpful. But I'm going to go ahead and join you in voting yes on this. I think it's more than time has come. I'm just going to ask the city clerk if she caught all of the proposed revisions. Okay. So there's a motion by, oh, is there a further discussion? This is a statement pertaining to some of those mentioned earlier on this issue. Okay. Yeah. So it was just mentioned that this, every issue is turning into a litmus test to find out where we fall in the spectrum. I would say that every issue that comes before us as a city council is a litmus test to find out where we fall in the spectrum. And it is my duty to bring up every time when I feel that this body is not taking into consideration a certain portion of our community. Okay. So at this point we're going to vote on the item. I have a question too. Because I do also want to see improved communications amongst council members. I can interject here. As it relates to this item right now we're voting on the oral commission at 7pm. I think we have an opportunity. Because council member made a comment about wanting to see things improve. And we started that first agenda item and there wasn't no movement on boards and commissions. Okay. We already put it on the side. So now, but I am very much appreciative of the council member moving this item. I just want to put that out there. Great. Okay. At this point we'll go ahead and take the vote on the item. All those in favor of the motion made by council member Matthews with the modified language seconded by council member Myers. Please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Myself. So that passes beyond, that passes with council member Brown, council member Myer, I'm sorry, council member Matthews, council member Cron, Glover, Myers and vice mayor Cummings voting yes and myself voting no. Okay. So the next item is item number six. Which was the charter amendment committee. And I don't recall who that poop hold that item. Cynthia too. Oh, council members? Yes. I don't support the item, the suggestion to add five additional members. I think there was a great deal of thought given into the formation of this committee. It's an open application period with both individual and at large appointments. And I would say most importantly that committee has been seated. They've begun their work. They're, to my understanding, cohesive. They've had discussions that are not highly politicized but are focused on the issues that were presented before them. So I would like to just have that committee continue on its work understanding that there will be a lot of community interest in this community engagement. The committee that's been appointed will come forward with recommendations or not. And they will come to us for decisions. So this is the council that will ultimately make the decisions on whatever the result is of that committee that already is appointed and functioning. Any additional comments at this time? From what I understood from talking to our staff is that they haven't, they've had two meetings so far. The third meeting is January 30th. They haven't begun talking about, directly about the issues that we've tasked the group with. And in just in terms of fairness and parity, my sense is that if I was coming on the council I would like to also have someone, an appointment to this body. And this body is, I see it as really important or the potential for important work. There's a powerhouse of experienced people on there. I do think it is lacking more student voices. I know there's one student on there. And I'd just like to see us have a more robust discussion that actually represents many sectors of Santa Cruz. Right now I don't know if it's, everything's involved in that or everyone's involved, every voice. As a newly elected member, I actually would prefer that the committee continue its work at its existing makeup and size. While I always would appreciate having a voice into some of these kinds of things, I want to just acknowledge that the process is underway. There's qualified people on the committee. Adding five additional people brings the total to 18, which I believe is an excessively large committee. And so I'm going to speak for myself in this situation and be firm that it looks like from the process that was completed to seat people on this committee there was directly appointed folks from council members and then six at large appointed members. Again, through application and letter of interest process. And I'd like to honor the committee process and keep it moving and don't see a need to make this change. Any other comments before we open it up to the public? Thanks, Mayor Cummings. I know that this committee was formed during the previous city council and I have one of the questions that I've had regarding this and wanted to open up for discussion was whether or not the issues and items that are being discussed by this committee is actually reflective of the desires of the current city council as well. I do also feel like having representation on a committee that's going to be looking at direct elect mayors, district elections, compensation among other items. I feel that it would be good for some of the new members to have representation, especially given the fact that they've only had two meetings. I think that if it was further along in the process where if they were towards the end of their recommendations, I would maybe feel that it wouldn't be appropriate for us to include new members. But given the fact that they've only had two meetings, I think that this is an early enough stage to where if the council or members of the council feel that they would want to have representation that this would be a good time. And I'd also, again, as I mentioned before, would like to open up the discussion as to what the committee is actually addressing in terms of these different items. Okay, Council Member Brown. I agree with Vice Mayor Cummings. Well, let's just reiterate that this was a committee established by previous council. And at the time, there was a laundry list of items for that committee to discuss or to take up and consider. And I do think that we're at a place now with the new council members being seated. And from the conversations I've had with actual committee members, it's not entirely clear what our objectives are here. So I do think it's worth having that conversation. I also, you know, I signed on to this agenda report because I do believe that new council members should have representation, whether they feel like they want it or not or need it or not. I just think that actually is, you know, actually part of the democratic process. But I am willing to, you know, I just would like to see what people think if they're council members who feel like they don't have enough information, maybe the unclear mandate, you know, I mean, how do we proceed in light of that? I think that this is an opportunity to do that. I'll weigh in briefly and then I'll turn it over to Council Member Cron. One of the things that gave me pause when we originally brought this item forward was the fact that we were going to be having a new council pretty closely after we decided to move forward with it. But it was unanimously approved by the current council at the time to move forward with that structure regardless of that change. So I'm hesitant to switch that up knowing that we kind of made an informed decision at that time, knowing that the council would be changing, the makeup of the council would be changing. I do agree that it feels difficult if we're going to add members or ask folks to spend, volunteer to spend their time, and our staff to spend their time, that we want to have a clear purpose and expectation of outcome. And for me, that would come probably first before even changing the makeup of the committee. So that would be sort of what I'm hearing and I agree with in terms of what challenges sort of present themselves with this specific committee. Council Member Cron, and then I'll open it up to the public. Thanks. I'm just wondering if it's appropriate to ask Ms. Hemard to come forward and just give us a summary. I heard Vice Mayor Cummings might have had some questions there, and maybe we can just have some information exchanged about what's taking place so far with the committee. Thank you, Casey, and maybe we'll just have a brief summary about this item. Hi, Casey Hemard, Principal Management Analyst in the City Manager's Office. The committee has had about six hours of meetings. They've spent a lot of time getting to understand each other, try to understand the Council's intentions in the direction that was given, and those recordings of those six hours of meetings are available on our website, as well as our minutes and everything. And there was considerable work put into getting us to this point. They've developed a work plan. They finalized by-laws. And it's, Council Member Cron is correct. We've not gotten into the substantive part of the direction. We were planning to start that on January 30th. But considerable work has gone into it up to this point. Thank you, Casey. Are there any questions this time? Seeing none, we'll open it up to the public to see if there's any comments, and you'll be given two minutes to address the Council on this item. Happy New Year, Council. My name is Elise Kasby, and I'm just a generalist activist in the public interest. I just wanted to say, for my time, I'd like to ask a question at the Council, and that is a brief summary of what exactly is, if you could just, you know, just a short summary of what exactly is the Charter Amendment Committee so that the public might have a greater understanding, and I'd like to ask if I could stop my time there and then have it restored after you answer? No, I'm sorry. At this point, we're just going to open it up for a public comment, and then we'll revisit the Council, revisit the item, at which time we can ask staff potentially to come up and briefly cover what this is. Okay. So, I think my question illustrates what is a more typical position in the public, and that is that given the lives that we lead these days, it's extremely difficult to be able to keep on top of Council business. Even if you have a personal laptop and a smartphone and a stable place to live, you can still have a difficult time finding out what's really happening in our city government. So now I just heard some things, and I attend a fair amount of city council meetings. Government is my passion and interest. The policy and city participation that is citizen participation in our government is my complete goal and objective. So, I don't understand what this committee is almost at all at this moment. I admit I did not look into the agenda in advance, partly because I was in Sacramento yesterday lobbying Governor Newsom, the new governor, for a green new deal. So, I just want to say that I'm not even somebody who has a terribly busy life compared to a lot of people. It seems that this Charter Amendment might be absolutely crucial to the lives of our citizen in terms of jurisdictions, power and responsibility that is held by representatives. So, I just want to say that I would hope that this would go through a thorough vetting by the public and the council. And please don't vote fully on this today. Thank you. Speaker, please. Good evening, Mayor Watkins and members of the City Council. Congratulations to the new faces I see on the City Council. My name is Case of Kumar. I am a senior at UC Santa Cruz and I serve on the Charter Amendment committee. I'm here tonight to talk a little bit about my perspective. I think a lot of the substantive conversation regarding the logistics of this committee have already been had. I'd like to reiterate that there has been time taken to both get to know each other on the 13-person committee of which I'm the youngest. But there's also been time taken to start to discuss the items. And I think that what's been highlighted to me in discussion of those items is I at no point have had this feeling of, well, this person is saying this because they were appointed by so-and-so council member. And I don't believe anyone has thought that way about myself. For the council members who are returning, you'll remember that I went through the general process to be appointed to this committee. And in doing so, I was asked questions about both my qualification and the manner that I approached the committee in. And I responded that I wanted to do it in an academic manner. I believe I've so far lived up to that. Yes, the brunt of the work begins at this upcoming meeting. And at this point, I'm hoping that I can meet with the new City Council members, Council Member Glover, Myers and Cummings, before we make a decision about needing more, as we're calling it right now, more representation. I believe that I can fairly represent all three of your views in a way that will bring them to the table for conversation in a larger context. I don't see it as a very partisan battle about, or even partisan in Santa Cruz terms, battle about what's going to pass and what's not going to pass. There is a room of people, 13 people who are just discussing the issues. Thank you so much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. And you'll be given two minutes. It was Dave Willis. First, I wanted to say when the guy was saying something, that's the first information I've had pertaining to a committee. Like the lady came up, she said a lot of words, but she didn't say nothing. I didn't hear nothing. What exactly is the work? What is the committee? We need clarity. And if you are a member, then you are a member. You're in. You should be entitled to all of whatever the protections, whatever the good things about this is. Period. You being new has nothing to do with it. You're in. You're a member. Full power. Retourities, whatever come with that. Period. So whatever this committee is, like the lady was saying something, I didn't hear nothing. What work is it? I need to hear something. Not just a lot of words. I'm not here for that. Oh, and it's good seeing you new people. You look good to me. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who you'd like to address the account? Are there any additional members of the public in the audience who would like to address the council on item number six, the charter committee? Okay. You'll be our last speaker and you'll be given two minutes. On the charter committee? Okay. We haven't done oral communications steps. This is on the charter committee. And oral communications will start at 530. Yeah. Sorry. No problem. Yeah. Addressing the council on the charter amendment committee and you'll be given two minutes on that. Great. Thank you. So, bullet, bullet. So, Agent Orange in this case wants to address a D word directly and that is the diversity word. I was very heartened by what council member Glover was trying to express and also council member Myers did this issue of what's an optimal number for a committee size. I believe the overarching principles here are diversity scores, metrics, best practices. If anyone needs help on downloading a good PDF document in this category, I would go to GAO. If anyone needs help with GAO, please contact Homeland Security Secretary Kirsten Nielsen and just ask for the barn owl truck and we will optimize that for you even though we might be inbound to Houston, Texas, support the border National Guard action of 100,000 deployment by hopefully Friday midnight or Saturday midnight after tours to Orlando and New Orleans. Just to wrap up in my remaining 59 minutes, a second. It can be helpful to take a deep breath at Buzz Lightyear Lightspeed. I believe Santa Cruz will have great pride in delivering a caravan of products to the Texas portion of the National Guard and the deployment near the border with support from Air National Guard 138th Air Lift Wing, 147th Attack Wing which has the MQ-9 Reaper Squadron, the 149th Fighter Wing, the Texas Air National Guard headquarters which is at Camp Maybury in Austin and the Air Component Command of course which has embedded units in San Antonio, Austin, Fort Worth, Garland, Houston and La Porte which also has a naval air station. The bottom line is I believe that the experience at the border will be a great giant big soft green blanket. Thank you. And I'll just remind members of the public if there's an item before us then the comments will need to be specific to that item and you'll be given two minutes. I believe we have no more members of the public who are interested in speaking unless you are, sir, in terms of the Charter Committee item. Okay, and you'll be our last speaker. Are there any additional members of the public who'd like to speak to this item? Okay, look, I lived in South Africa. Okay, my name's Nicholas Whitehead. I lived in South Africa. My parents took extreme risks so that everybody could be represented there. When I was in London, England, it was the Irish who weren't represented and we were killing them and jailing them and I was bitter about that. When I came to America, I heard Dr. Luther King and I saw his successor. In my opinion, Jesse Jackson, Reverend Jesse Jackson was not a troublemaker. He wanted a positive future for this nation. So please do the right thing here in our little town. Build the rainbow, will you? Put these people on the required committee. All right, so we'll now close the public comment portion of the meeting. I mean of the item and we'll go ahead and bring it back to the council for action and deliberation. Council Member Gulliver. So while I can appreciate the hesitation by some council members to add an additional five members, which would be the two at large nominations, I do agree with fellow council members that it is important, at least from my perspective, that we incorporate or allow for new council members to have one appointee to represent their position and or people that they feel are up to the task. A great example. I appreciate Kasev coming up to speak. However, if you, my friend, are the youngest person on the committee, then we need to really mix things up a little bit. I'm not sure how old you are. I don't know if I can ask questions, right? I can't ask questions. I don't know how old you are, but the, and I haven't, I personally haven't seen the committee, but I do know that from your statement that you believe that you would represent my position based off of that statement and following your political work over the last six months or so, six months to eight months, I don't believe that we share the same values when it comes to certain aspects of the community. So with that, and with that knowledge, I think it's incredibly important that as Mr. Willis said, that we have severe intention in our representation and make sure to give the opportunity for people to make those appointments and also to answer the, or to make a statement as to why it's so important, this charter committee is going to be looking at items like determining if the mayor is elected directly through elections instead of it being appointed by the city council. That's incredibly important. Whether or not we're going to break the city up into district elections so that each different area will have to do that. Some people say it's great. Some people say it will disproportionately impact people of color. So we need to seriously be thinking about that with the representation of who's on the body. Other things are compensation in the size of the council, full-time versus part-time pay and participation in our allocations. And then we get into the other aspects of things like ranked choice voting, which will completely transition the way that we do voting here in Santa Cruz and look at other aspects of ways to support the city manager's office and polling of the community. So these are incredibly essential issues that are going to be dealt with in these committees and to not have a representative that can echo and or represent my personal values as a council member I think would do us a disservice as a community. Reminders? And then Council Member Cron. I just want to make sure we're clear on sort of what this committee will be doing and then our role as the city council in terms of the final outcomes out of the committee because I think we may be a little bit, I think we're giving a lot of power to this committee right now and so the role of the committee is really to be advisory to the city council. The city council ultimately will make the decision based on the recommendations coming from the committee and I would imagine we might have at least one or two briefings from the committee. Usually I know when I've served on committee there's usually a couple of times when the work comes forward I don't know exactly Casey without seeing their work plan but I would assume that there will be bits or parts of things that are brought forward to us. Certainly we have a lot of representation on our council thankfully from all different perspectives and I think it will be our job ultimately to take the information brought by the committee and discuss the things that I think are of interest for example to Council Member Glover and maybe others here at the dais. So I think that committees can be a lot, it can be time consuming. We have assigned staff to them. There are efficiencies in terms of maintaining a committee that's a good working committee that's doing the charge. We certainly will receive I'm sure the work plan and the bylaws either as an information item. So I think it's incumbent upon the new members to engage with committee members, look at the materials, quaint ourselves with what's going on and try to make this committee as efficient as possible. These are important questions to our community. It's important to do the work and get it done. And again, I think there's efficiencies in the amount of people involved and I think there's transparency in terms of how we can potentially understand more and learn as the committee's going. So again, I just want to make sure that everyone's clear that this will come back to us as a body and that we will be engaged in our roles as council members. Yeah, I also agree with council member Myers about ultimately this will come back to the city council. So it's not really about a group of people making decisions for us, but I think enlarging the committee will be diversifying the committee and saying that I want to move this recommendation motion to add five additional members to the charter amendment committee with one member of each appointed by council members member Glover and Myers and two at large nominations made by a majority vote of the city council. Is there a second to that motion? Second. So that was a motion by council member Crone seconded by council member Glover. Casey, did you want to add anything? I'm sorry, I just saw you standing. I wondered if you if you want to add what I heard from council member Brown in terms of the committee feeling not necessarily clear in their ask. I just I wanted to clarify a couple things. And that in reviewing the direction that was provided to the committee from the council direction and then also watching the video of the when the council gave the direction multiple times. It wasn't it's not terribly clear. So the members of the committee looked at that and also and the understanding that the committee came to was that it was an initial review. They are conducting an initial review of these to recommend to the council whether or not they should look into these specific topics. And with relation to particular slant or bias. My observation as a staffer is that they are making a very concerted effort to bring in independent folks or people who are not employed the city to try and inform them as they're studying these matters. And as a staffer, I'm I actually like that because I don't want to be perceived as trying to push anything in a particular way. And so that they're really making an effort at trying to to maintain, you know, some independence. And and I will say my observation also is that they're not people who are going to be convinced or twist have their arms twisted to do something. Everybody's pretty vocal about their perspective. That being said, you all have a council and we're here to serve you. So I think I saw council member Matthew. Yes. Just for the information of the audience, those members who weren't familiar with this, it has been restated. This is a suggestion proposal to modify the composition of a committee that's already been established. This was an initiative by then Mayor David Tarazas in in August to establish a charter committee as I think most of you know who watch politics. There's been lots of interest for years. There should be district elections. There should not be district elections. There should be a directly elected mayor. There should not. How long should that term be, etc. Those those questions have been out there for years. And so the idea of this was to establish a citizen committee to investigate those ideas and report back to the council. Either yes, we think it's a good idea to propose a change in this way or no, leave it alone. That's entirely up in the air. So as a result of that, there was a study session and it came back and as has been explained already at previous council meetings. Each of the existing council members at that time made one direct appointment and there were some at large members. So the proposal coming back is in light of the recent election to add three more directly elected members and some more at large members. So just just for your information, that's that's the question before us. And I appreciate the confusion because I was at that meeting and it started out with kind of a discrete list of things to study and then everything in the kitchen soup kitchen sink got thrown in. So that list grew and grew and I imagine that one of the first jobs of the committee will be to refine that and say the most important things to study are the following. But I also appreciate Donna's comment that very often when there are commissions that they come back and report to council and basically say here's where we are. Is this what you had in mind something like that so particularly given the nature of this some priority items and then kind of everyone's wish list. I think probably be a good idea to clarify this is going to be a challenge. Having said all that, I would like to propose an amendment that adds additional direct appointments. I guess the amendment would be deleting the two at large just add the three direct appointments but delete the two additional at large. So if that's an agreeable amendment, we could move forward. Is that a friendly amendment to the issue? Yeah. Well, it's proposed as an amendment. It's not because it is we are talking about politics and it wasn't incredible. I mean, I work with David on crafting this. We've spent a couple months talking about it and coming up with various things and we don't necessarily share the same politics. And I ran into the other day totally understands to why new council members and you know, we want to add more members to the, you know, it started out like this and you know, you move it like that and you get more voices. I think it's real important to have more voices in a group like this because the city charter is a kitchen sink. If you look at the city charter, it is filled with stuff. So it's not unusual for maybe this group to be waiting through the kitchen sink. Are there any additional comments by council members by some air coming? I know this has been mentioned a couple of times, but it does seem like that one of the things that I think might be important is that we look at what we're actually directing this committee to address and whether or not that reflects the desires of the current city council, given the fact that this committee was formed in August and many of the items that are being discussed on this committee might not reflect what is the will and the interest of the current city council. So I don't know if there's any way to suggest that we postpone this discussion and this vote until a later date. But if that's possible, that would be our privilege. I have to agree. That would be the appropriate way to do what council member or vice mayor Cummings is suggesting because that looking at the scope of what the committee analyzes is not part of the agenda this evening. So if that's the council's, if that's the pleasure of the council, then it would be appropriate to bring it back. Thank you, Mr. Condati. I have to say and then I'll acknowledge you. I agree. I think we are asking people to volunteer their time and want to make sure they have clarity of purpose. And we can revisit that and then relook at the structure at that time would be my preference. So I agree with you at this point. So council member Matthews. Would the motion then be I'll just suggest to defer expanding the committee but agendize for a future meeting clarification of the charge of the committee. Yeah. In addition to consideration of the additional of additional members. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, council member Brown. I missed what I wasn't fully. It was to postpone action on additional members and have an agenda eyes for a future meeting, a clarification of the charge. Okay, I'm so sorry to postpone action on the addition of new members to the charter amendment committee and to agendize for a future council meeting clarification of the charge for this committee. I would suggest also as well, you did mention membership. I was going to recommend that that the makeup of the committee be brought back as general consideration because it just seems a little odd to me to have a committee composed of 15 members appointed by the council as a whole and three pointed by appointed by individual council members. So you might want to consider the structure of the committee as a whole as part of that discussion. Okay. Thank you for that. Councilmember Cron. The point of information, the committee, there's seven appointments and there's six at large. That would be 13. This would be three more appointments. If that's the case, then I certainly, you know, withdraw my comment. And the reason I brought this other folks forward quickly is because I understood that there's a meeting on January 30th. We are interviewing folks January 15th. If this is, you know, not clear, it's there's a lot of interest anyway amongst the community in these issues. And as council member Matthew said for years, people have talked about district elections or direct election of mayor and there's been a lot of recent interest in ranked choice voting. So I think there are clear issues for this committee to take on and discuss that, you know, the council would not really be able to entertain here in the council. I mean, somebody's looking into it. The committee's in task force and commissions are about bringing stuff to the council. That's, you know, bubbling over and not necessarily finished, but they've done a lot of research and looked into it. And that's why I think it's real important to get people on there right now because the next meeting is January 30th. Okay. Are you, if I may, for clarification, are you suggesting that this be postponed to the 22nd or to ask maybe that the committee postponed their meeting until we get further clarification? It could be. You know, this doesn't have a clock ticking on it. Right. And if I may. Yes. Perhaps what I'm hearing is that we could potentially ask that we cancel the upcoming January 30th meeting while the city council has an opportunity to revisit the purpose of that committee as well as its membership and then re-engage with the committee members based on that clarification. Yeah, it's so moved that language. And I think that that's really important. But I would like to see it come back on the 22nd postpone that meeting on the 30th. But I still don't know about, well, I guess it doesn't matter on our 15th and 22nd interviews and appointments. We can still appoint to this committee separately from that schedule. So yeah, I will move that language that you just said if it comes back to us. And I like what Vice Mayor Cummings wants to get, you know, up to speed up to, you know, I also would want to know more about this committee. So my understanding is then you'll be withdrawing your motion at the time which was to move the item as presented. And would that also withdraw your second and what you're now moving is what I originally recommended. Did you catch that language Bonnie or would you like me to repeat that? You can't make the motion. I know. So I mean, that's the language I would use that we continue the item to January 22nd that we postponed the meeting for January, that's scheduled for January 30th for the Charter Review Committee. And at that time we make a decision about whether to add members or not or to change the charge of the committee. If I may just add, and then I'm sorry, I'll turn to you. If January 22nd turns out to be a very full agenda, if the will of the council could be that at the earliest time it could be agendized to give it adequate timing, would you be open to it being potentially later? If it turns out that we have a number of items already coming back, which I already know is the inclusionary housing item. I mean, I'm sorry, the ADU item. So I think I just want to be careful before committing that that would be agendized. But I would just maybe ask that the council prefer it be agendized on the 22nd or at earliest potential availability. Is that okay? Well, it's an item that can go on the afternoon if we have the ADU at night. I mean, I don't know what else is on that agenda. Me either. So that's why I'm kind of reluctant to commit. Okay, Council Member Matthews. I'm sorry, Council Member Weissmeyer coming and then Council Member Weissmeyer. Mayor, do we have a second? I will second that. I was going to make the suggestion that we actually provide more time for council to actually kind of identify what are some of the topics that we want to have this committee address. And the fact that myself, Council Member Myers and Glover will be away in Sacramento for a training from the 16th to the 19th that wouldn't provide us with time to actually be engaged in this process of trying to identify. What are some of these topics that we would like the committee to address? And so I would actually suggest that we meet and we bring this up at a later time. Would the first meeting in February be okay? At the earliest, I would suggest either the first meeting or the second in February. And then we postpone. We'll just work at trying to agendize it in February. Say it early as feasible time. Early as feasible time. Ideally sometime in February. Are there any additional input or comments at this point from Council Members? Council Member Matthews. Is what's going to be discussed at that meeting going to be both the scope and charge of the committee and its composition? That's my understanding, correct? Is that what everyone's understanding is? Review scope and charge and see if we want to add anything. What needs to be. Well, that's included. Council Member Brown do you have any questions? The way Council Member Matthews originally put it, review scope and charge. I mean that was what you said and that's my understanding. Okay, so we have a motion on the floor by Council Member Crohn seconded by myself. Do you need any further clarification on that motion at this time at clerk? Okay, at this point I will turn it to a vote. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, that passes unanimously. And we are now at 5.30. Excuse me, at this point we will be breaking for oral communications. Let me just find that on my list. So I will just make a brief statement about oral communications and allow those who've been asked to have additional time come before the council first. So the oral communications is the time. Okay. I'll go ahead and let you, I'm going to go ahead and, you'll have your chance for oral communications. Okay, I want to, please excuse me. Okay. Use that cap. All right, I just want to let you know that one second. I'm going to make a few statements and then we'll have a chance to hear from the community. So oral communications is a time for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda. If you could please hold the conversation. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who wish to address the council? And please line up to the left as you see. And you will each be given two minutes to speak unless you've been asked, you've asked for additional time. And we request that you sign in so that we're able to capture the spelling of your name accurately. However, I want to also let you know that that is not required. At this point, I will ask that those who've asked for additional time, they will get their four minutes. I will have Serge Cagno from Stepping Up Santa Cruz come forward to have his four minutes. Are we shooting to be out of here by when I ordered dinner? Hey, my name is Serge Cagno. I met some of you before. I want to talk about homeless stuff for a minute. When you have a public safety commission and I hear for a lot of those topics, there seems to be an implication, you know, violence and safety. Sorry, I'll talk louder. Putting homelessness on that list, it feels a little like that's a safety issue towards the community. It's a safety issue towards the homeless people, which feels a little different. It's more of a social service issue. You had a citizen's task force at one point and you had a report on that. I would suggest the idea of having an ongoing task force or an ongoing citizen's group that's able to give feedback and to brainstorm, to come up with ways to solve the problems that balance it for public safety and police issues, but also for the social service level of issues. You have a lot of stuff going on at the Ross camp. You have a lot of stuff going on in town. Right now it's the city manager's office that is trying to solve those problems and putting a lot of effort in in the parks department. And that's not really their mandate or their specialty. This year is the least number of services for winter shelter that we've had. And I understand there's lots of politics in that, but there's no services in the city of Santa Cruz, which is half of the services that were before. And it hurts me that it's not a topic for today either. The rains happen and there are a lot of people that I know that I see downtown and they ask me what's happening for winter shelter. And I say, oh, I can send an e-mail to try to get you a reservation because there's not even an intake spot that you can go to and get out of the rain and talk to them. You can go sit at Coral and Lime kill at 6.15 where there's nowhere to sit, nowhere to get out of the rain, no bathrooms. And you can hope that they're going to pick you up. But you can also, if you have stuff, you're going to have to go to Brent Adams storage place, drop your stuff off, and then you're going to have to go and sit there in the dark and hope that someone picks you up. And if they don't, you're going to have to go back and get your stuff. I'm just asking that there becomes you allow more people to get past the opaqueness of how decisions get made for shelters in Santa Cruz, in the city of Santa Cruz. And to me, it's an immediate problem. It's winter shelter, but it's also the Ross camp talking about brainstorming, talking about getting other people in who without the politics are trying to solve the same problems. You solve somebody on a social service point of view. You're also solving it on the discarded trash and all that kind of stuff issue too. Yeah, so that's my main point of just trying to get that conversation going because it's raining. And this is not something that we should have to try to solve later and their bumps in the road are starting. This didn't start in November 15th, like it started for the last few years. We're late in the game right now. There's also quite a lot of money. There's 10 million coming in and it's your city manager who is represented on the HAP executive committee and how those programs get decided for the city, how the site gets decided and all that stuff. Having that be a more transparent process of people trying to brainstorm and solve the problems. Just putting that out there, thanks. Thank you. I'd like to now invite up Phil Posner from Conscious in Action. You'll be given four minutes as you've requested in advance. City Manager Martin Bernal and old city council members and new city council members. I'm Phil Posner. I want to thank you for allowing we members of Conscious in Action and others to address you regarding the issues of homelessness as it relates to individuals who have to sleep in their cars or vans. The continuing lack of bathrooms for the homeless and the desperate need for a real campsite instead of the present mess of tents, tarps and mud that currently exists by the Ross parking lot called the Ross camp. I ask for your empathy. I know that you're good people. I know that you must see the mess by the Ross camp. Can you imagine yourself sleeping in the mud and during the rain, etc.? We are also here to announce that this Thursday at 130 Conscious in Action and Huff are sponsoring a rally to bring individuals together who are surviving in vehicles to show their, to share their experiences, how to survive, and to meet with chief mills who have graciously consented to be present to answer questions and concerns. The flyer says, are you being pressured or threatened to move your vehicle more frequently than the legal resting period of 72 hours? Are house neighbors declaring that you don't have a right to park on public streets? Is your attempt to sleep in a van or a car, not in one of our nice houses, being interrupted by pounding, shouting, or banging in the dead of night? Is your family or loved one being made to feel unwelcome when you have parked for less than the legal period of 72 hours? Lastly, unsuccessful with the previous council. We are also asking that one of you on this new council, either today or at the next council meeting, move to appoint a task force that will discuss and formulate a realistic proposal that will address homelessness, bathrooms, security, maintenance, etc., in the city of Santa Cruz. We will bring to the table a list of suggestions that we believe will help the task force implement the plan, but we want to listen to everybody concerned. We are suggesting that such a task force would consist of representatives of the council, parks and rec, the police department, the city manager's office, the homeless community, the association of faith communities, our conscience and action group. And I know that Steve Pleich and my son Micah and others have agreed to accomplish to work on this. To accomplish this, we believe the task force should be given a realistic timeframe to meet and bring a proposal to you for your approval. As I have previously said, as has police chief Mills, with empathy and compassion, I believe together we can do this. Help alleviate the present suffering of so many that comprise the homeless community in our city of Santa Cruz. Thank you. An additional person who asks for time is Mr. Robert Norris. You'll be given up to four minutes. Members of the community and city council. A new council majority, but the same staff, the same city manager, the same city attorney, the same restrictive rules of procedure and decorum, the same anti-homeless laws unchanged. Increased police power with gray-shirted volunteers. The same unconstitutional curbside punishment powers by police and rangers who can issue stay away orders at will for the most minor infractions weeks before a court even hears the case. We have the same city council grounds and the library across the street forbidden to enter at night, unless there's a meeting going on. In what was a blatant administrative action taken without public notice, public comment, or public vote. Done to eliminate homeless protesters and more recently homeless survival sleepers outside City Hall two years ago. And to spare the city manager and his minions, as well as the city council, the public shame of seeing its lack of services and punitive laws in full squalid array outside these chambers. We have the same restrictive curfews at night in the parks, the Pogonip and the Levy making criminals of those who seek shelter to rest and sleep in a city that has legal shelter for less than 20% of its homeless. We have the same parking bans targeting homeless people in Cynthia Matthews permit parking plague. Which denies the entire community parking spaces at night to cater to the prejudices and fears of the privilege in the neighborhoods. And we still have closed bathrooms locked at night. There are no open bathrooms at night. There are three ill lit porta potties not accessible to disabled people. The Loudon Nelson bathrooms are still closed. I'm speaking to Mr. Elliott who runs parks and rec and to the city council. The Loudon Nelson bathrooms are still closed to those favored except to those favored by Isethrae staff as properly documented program participants. Grant Street Park I'm told is still closed. The plans for any meaningful shelter other than the Ross camp and the camps homeless people themselves have set up throughout the town has been babbled about extensively by this council. Housing, housing, housing, chitter, chatter, chitter, chatter all day long. But abandoned after complaints from neighborhood biggest I'm talking about the car park and of course the campground that we had. We have no city funded facilities for laundry for storage for showers for most folks outside but lots of money coming in mind you. Endless talk about housing. And the council at the council hear appointments being rushed through ignoring recommendations by one of the more liberal members of the new majority. The regional rules have been contorted in the last few decades to target dissident activists and journalists here and in so doing the general public. The public has the right to demand a full discussion of one of the many important agenda items on the consent agenda which has been now reserved solely to privileged council members. Except for your two minute little bit at the beginning. The strange consent public hearings category has been added to extend the cutback of public comment time to public hearings. Rules threatening those putting an audio recorder here. It's against your rules to have this audio recorder here. That officer over there has on the past had me arrested not this particular in gentlemen but another one for having this recorder sitting right here. So I'm going to pass this speech around which is twice as long. I don't have time to give it all. I should be giving groups five minutes. That's what was previously the reality three minutes and five minutes until it was cut back by the Matthews Rotkin councils of earlier years. So it's the community that has to change this. It's not going to be the council unless it's well pressured by the community. We've already seen council getting out voted. Thank you. And you've had your foot. Thank you very much. And please try not to interrupt me even if I'm going over by a sentence. Okay. Thank you very much. And at this point, I'd like to get a sense of all those that are in the audience who are interested in testifying or speaking before us during oral communications. Are there any additional folks who are in the sitting down? Okay, sir. In the jacket in the back, you will be our last speaker. I'm sorry. Okay. Okay. You'll be the last speaker. And I will be giving you 90 seconds. And the reason being is we have a 7 p.m. agenda item as well as one additional item from our earlier agenda. So you'll be given 90 seconds. Go ahead. And if you can, please, if you feel interested, no pressure, but you're welcome to sign in for accuracy. I should be less than 90 seconds. My name is Eric Gardberg. Good evening, council. As a new council, you have a choice. There's a fork in the road. You're on the fork of divisiveness or conciliation and true problem solving around rank control and just cause eviction. You can respect the will of the voters and engage all stakeholders. If you could pause. This is actually for items that are not. I'm not addressing the item at 7 o'clock. I'm talking in general terms. Okay. I'll go ahead and let you continue. But if you're going to go into that. I'm not going into it. Go ahead. So this is around general terms about how you're going to handle this as a council. And if you respect the vote of the people and you engage all stakeholders in sincere dialogue, there are people of goodwill on all sides. Or you can engage in tokenism and ramp through your own program. I'm going to go ahead and pause. This seems very specific to the EV item. It's not. I'm not talking about one thing because that's what's happening at 7 is a temporary interim ordinance, right? I'm not sure what you're addressing then. What are you speaking to? I'm talking about in general. You've been talking about you want to have a dialogue around rank control and just cause eviction, right? I'm not talking about whether you should approve item number one at 7 o'clock. I'm talking about what you're going to do in general. Are you going to engage the community? You can go ahead and pause. Mr. Condati, my understanding is that if we're going to have oral communications, it's items that are not on the agenda. A just cause, a process associated with just cause is on our agenda for this evening. So which case I would say that your comments aren't necessarily appropriate for the oral communications portion of our agenda. If you'd like to return and speak then, happy to accommodate you then. I would just point out that there's also a discussion this evening on the process moving forward for considering additional public engagement and discussions concerning additional tenant protection. And that starts at 7 p.m. So you're saying that I am addressing something that's on the 7 o'clock? That's right. Thank you. Next speaker please. You'll have 90 seconds. I'll try to be fast. I've never done this before. My name's Alicia Kool. Alicia, thank you for coming and welcome. And if you can just please bring the microphone to- I am one of the people that they're speaking of that I do live in my RV. I have experienced things like this when I have not been parked for 72 hours. I do feel like it's a push to get homeless people out of the area, even though it is our legal right to park. I'm here to request for you to consider a safe parking program. I would volunteer myself to manage that program. I do see parking signs all over the place, permit parking, no parking, midnight to 6 a.m. I feel like Delaware would be a perfect spot to allow people to park. It's industrial, it wouldn't bother anybody. And I would just like your assurance to make sure that people who have been parked for less than 72 hours aren't getting harassed. There was some talk about the Ross Street shelter. And I feel like people who are housed in their vehicles, it doesn't do any benefit to harass them. It's like why would you want them to lose their vehicle? Giving them tickets and stuff like that just pushes them towards a tent in the Ross Street shelter. I feel like the push should be to help those people and not force them into a worse situation. And that's all. Thank you. Thank you. Nicholas Whitehead again. I would point out that the previous speaker, Alicia does have serious management experience. So she'd be a good one for that. We're approaching the time of year when we mark the existence of a truly great American spirit, Dr. Martin Luther King. We honor his existence and eternal existence. City Council, I have no doubt that each one of you is a noble human being. A sincere representative who hears the voice of your constituents. I have no doubt you wish to serve the needs of our future Santa Cruz. It will take the utmost care and mutual respect to achieve a workable harmony. Everything you say and do or neglect to do will rebound throughout our community. Please always show respect for divergent views, philosophies and inspirations. Above all, like a good doctor, do no harm. Try to overcome the divisions. We need harmony, not dissension. We know that on all the major issues you will have to form committees, subcommittees, subdivisions of your total. Thank you for your remarks. And you're welcome to submit them if you would like the council to receive them. No, let me finish this. No, we have- Making it unusual, please. I understand. Well, I shan't be back. I shan't be back. And we'd have the next speaker for 90 seconds. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome, council members. And thank you, Mayor Watkins. My name is Denise Ellarick and I'm here with Mayor Mary Mason. Anyway, we're very excited. And I'm very excited to hear you talk about health and wellness in all policies. And we're with the community prevention partners and SafeRx Coalition of Santa Cruz County. And we're very excited about a survey that we'll be releasing on January 29th. And we'd love to follow up with an email and invite all of you to share this information with your constituents on the social media page. And it involves drug storage and disposal policies and sharps disposal policies and what people's habits are. And we want to collect more data. We have data from a couple of years ago. And so we want to collect some more data so that we can learn more. And one of the things that came out of that data was the extended producers ordinance, which you all signed on for. Which is highly successful and the survey will have links to the 52 disposal places for people to drop off their prescriptions and narcotics and sharps. And we're going to be going to all the other cities in the county. Capitola, I don't have to list them all. And we would like to return in March or April with a follow up to this. But it's a very exciting time. And we know that youth have reported in surveys that they have easy access to storage of narcotics in their medicine cabinets. But we know that number is going down. Youth are using fewer prescriptions. And we think that part of it is decreasing access. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. You'll be getting an e-mail from us. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming. Next speaker. And those that may have came in late and want to remind you or let you know that we're finishing up oral communications. Our last speaker is on the left. And we will then return to our general business and reconvene at 7pm for our evening session. You'll be given 90 seconds. Go ahead. My name is Dave Willis. I just wanted to say, like pertaining to commissions or whatever, Ms. Myers was saying what she was saying. If it's that minimal of getting somebody on the committee, then you should definitely, it should be that easy to do it. To let somebody pick they own, they should have a person they're representing in itself. And also, I'm from a city of Geisters, which means that Mayor Daley was a mayor when I was coming up. And the way to keep people out of making decisions is to, okay, let's create this so that they can't get on that committee and this committee and we keep them down. That's dangerous. Don't do that. You got votes to be here. You've earned the right to be here. So you should have everything that you should have. And I want to say, try to keep your sanity and be strong and do what you know, feel, think is right. And hopefully, you'll be all right. Thanks. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Can I say one thing really quickly before the timer starts? Nope, you're given 90 seconds like everybody else. Good try. My son and I have lived at the tannery for five years and have walked the levee hundreds of times. I and all the parents that I've spoken to at the tannery can no longer let our kids walk there alone. I'm going to describe the handful of times that I've walked by the camp in my experience as well as my sons. A month or so ago, my son who was 13 and three of his friends wanted to walk to Java Junction alone in the day as they've done many times. I love watching them as they prepare to venture off on their own, how excited and empowered they get before their journey. I hesitated this time because of the camp. As I said, it was new and they had not yet walked by themselves. There were four of them, it was daytime, so I allowed them to go. When they returned, they were all visibly shaken and afraid. They explained to me that when they passed the camp on their way to Java Junction, they encountered an angry woman clearly out of her mind screaming, kicking a bike and shouting the N-word. One of the friends was black and this did not make him feel safe. She also screamed, you're going to just let these four kids walk through here. On their return trip, they had to walk by a man swinging around a machete right next to their path. This really frightened them. I'm going to skip my experiences that were also scary and go to the conclusion. Many kids from the tannery walk or bike along this path and some take it to school. The children now cannot go anywhere by foot or bike alone without crossing the huge freeway intersection. Many people not just from the tannery use this path on their daily commute. This camp location does not seem like an appropriate long-term solution. The city has directly participated in creating this camp by providing resources, bathrooms, et cetera. Yet they are not taking the appropriate steps to regulate what they have created, thereby creating a public safety hazard. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next speaker and you'll be given 90 seconds as well. Thank you. Good evening. Coral Brune. I'm very glad to be here to address number one, the Ross camp. And possibly I would like to second the idea of task forces or similar. I feel in my time living in Santa Cruz, I've been in several different roles. So I would like to offer my expertise in roles to just make some observations. I also now live at the tannery. I have for five or six years this January. It's been a different change every year. The same levy path, the same structure at the Ross and Pet Smart and businesses there at that particular place. I'm an adult, but sometimes I ride my bike, I walk. I don't always and I'm wasting a lot of time here. I would just like to say that I'd like to suggest that kids walk in groups with parents with an adult. Also that if we work together, we can get to some kind of an agreement and find an improvement. Because the camp could be improved and there are a lot of drug inflicted people which we shouldn't treat as criminals. Some of them singly could be and I think we should talk to them about that. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. And then I'll just remind those that are in the audience that we are concluding our oral communications. I see that you came in last. We have closed it after the woman before you and we'll reconvene at 7pm. You're always welcome to reach out to the council by email. Go ahead and you'll have 90 seconds. Yes, hi. My name is Linda Kover and I'm also a resident of the Tannery Art Center. I want to say quickly, we also had the River Street camp last year and there were absolutely no complaints about that camp. I volunteered over there. I consider that a really successful camp. I know it was a lot of money. You don't need to spend that much money. You didn't need to do all those services but showers and bathrooms are important. Now I want to address the Ross camp. Immediately before you get ready for that River Street camp that I want you to do, immediately you need to address that there's a huge overflow of people on the levee that make it unsafe for our families to go by. They need to be off the levee. And you can do that simply just like they did in San Lorenzo Park by having a fence that goes from Ross to the highway. And people would be behind that fence and people will be able to access the levee. The bathrooms are still there. You needed to go to the bathrooms at San Lorenzo Park by going up on the walkway. So that would not change. The bathrooms are available. That's not a humanitarian place for people to be for a long term. Right now I'm trying to address both communities, the tannery and the Ross community. Thank you. I want to also just remind those that have walked in that oral communications will be closing after the person who is in the stripes. And we will reconvene our session at 7pm and you can always reach out to the council by email. So we are no longer accepting folks to line up for oral communications. Yes, that's right. And you'll be given 90 seconds. My name is Elise Kasby. I'm going to talk fast. I think the public comment is one of the most important, if not the most important time on the agenda. As much time as possible should be given free to hear from the public. To restrict to a half an hour, which I believe you all just voted for when you just voted for the oral communications on the agenda previously. My understanding is that you limited it to 30 minutes. I think that's dangerous for democracy. I also want to say that I think it's time that we got a new city manager. My understanding is that Martine Bernal has fulfilled this position for an extraordinarily long period of time. We are going to have anything like a new paradigm with input from the citizens and actually have decisions being made by the council and by citizens informed committees and bodies. I think we need to recognize that we have a city staff that is extremely accustomed to running the city. I would like to talk about the library at this time. The public voted for Measure S. It was fun to build a new library. After that, the city staff said about stacking a hand-picked library committee to go along with their recommendation to combine a library garage with the public library. This is not what the public voted for. Also, I'd like to say that thousands upon thousands of books are being dumpstered and the public needs to know that. They are donating their books thinking that they're going to be preserved, at least the ones that are reasonably worth preserving and they're being dumpstered. That's our cultural heritage. Thank you very much. Next speaker. You'll have 90 seconds as well. Hi, my name is Gary Ingram. I'm a tannery resident also. Until I wasn't aware of this kind of problem until I moved into the tannery and we found that there was so much in the way of homeless people and on the camp. So I've been accosted myself a few times to the point where people were, I thought, going to hit me and I just kind of walked away. But it's a problem for everybody at the tannery who lives there. We have people, one person showed up three weeks ago, slumped over his cart, overdosed on heroin in our parking lot. We need to do something better. We need to get them into the other camps or do something because we're having to run the gauntlet now. We need people at the tannery to go to town. That's the way we go to get our groceries. And it's difficult. It's difficult for the kids. It's difficult for all of us. Thank you. And you will be our last speaker. Thank you. Hi, I'm Cynthia Berger with Santa Cruz Tenth Association and I'd just like to talk to you about the nine plus million dollars that's coming into the city that will be fed through the HAP. It's probably homelessness and probably homelessness prevention. And I often hear people at this podium make a lot of claims that are unsubstantiated. And I think that we need to start collecting much better data about renters and that includes people living in their RVs so that I would like to rep to, I don't know if the people in the HAP are just going to keep doing what they've been doing, but I think that you should take a look at these groups, as they do. For example, rental assistance has been extremely low compared to what people actually need. And it's been very difficult to access, to get access to. And I think you might need to get some new people into, you should talk to Stephen McKay, who is a sociologist and they know how to collect data. I'm sure you have staff that do as well. I also think that, you know, the city sold land in Scotts Valley for eight million dollars. And I think some of that money should go towards homelessness prevention as well. I know that the economic development department has their idea for what that should be spent on. But I would like for you to consider using some of that to help out the renters here. I know that, you know, some of you really don't care. A renter is just someone who can be replaced by someone else. Thank you. Okay. So that will now conclude our portion of oral communications. And we'll return back to our consent agenda item for the last item that was pulled, which is item number nine. And I'm not, was that you, Councillor? Can we ask staff to get back to us on a few of these items that people brought up? Is there really no intake spot? There's a continuing lack of bathrooms. There's no bathroom open at night anywhere in the city. Could we please hear about that? If that is in fact true. And then also it seems like I hope staff is in contact or could be in contact with the tannery arts people because it seems like there's a big problem going on. I know Council Member Glover visited. And I can tell from the head now that staff is definitely going to be in contact with tannery and that item will be forthcoming to the council. Okay. So item number nine, did you want to, did you pull item number nine? I did not. I'm sorry. Council Member Brown. Okay. Council Member Brown, apologies. So my intention in pulling this when I did, I wasn't anticipating it coming up this late, is not to pose this or to belabor it. But what I do want to do is make another try at getting some information about the parking deficiency program. You know, it seems to me that we, you know, and I supported this, this change. So I don't have a lot of questions. Thank you, Claire, for being here. But what I would like to see is the, a little bit more information on the, you know, the impact. So, you know, so here's some questions that I like to get answered. And if I could, I mean, I don't know if I need to move this because since I have asked the questions and have not had them answered in the past, I feel like I need to formalize it. So I'm going to move the item with a request that staff get back to us with the following information. And hopefully somebody will second it. We can have the discussion and move through this quickly. So, you know, I would like to know, you know, what the money from the deficiency fee, you know, what the money is, sorry, the overall, I want to make this clear, Bonnie, for you. So, you know, I mean, essentially I'm trying to get at, you know, income and expenditures from the parking, parking deficiency fees. How the change impacts specifically downtown employees who are now absorbing what I consider to be an absorption of the cost because they're now going to be needing to pay for permits rather than the businesses. So if businesses are no longer paying for that parking, then who will? It seems to me that's being covered through metering and the increase in the hourly rates. But I'd like a little bit more information on the overall, the parking deficiency fee, reductions, impacts. So where the money is coming from overall, and I mean, I know that the money is intended to pay off bonds and for a new garage and ostensibly for enforcement, but I just would like to get an overall financial picture. And so if I'm hearing you correct. So does that, does that make sense? Yeah, and I can answer all that. And you know, I just would like to see that in writing. We just haven't received it and I've asked and so it doesn't have to happen tonight. Okay. So if I can, if I may, what I'm hearing is interest in moving the item and then having the staff respond and writing to the questions that you pose. Is that correct? Just, you know, if we could agendize it and have that. I would like to second it, but do we need the information before the item is passed? I don't think so. Okay. I mean, I've already, I mean, maybe you do, but I mean, I'm not opposed to doing this. I just want some information. And can we also add to that, what can the money be used for? Is there, is there within a, you know, what is the, what are the parameters? So yeah, I will move that. So, okay. I will second it rather. There is a motion by Council Member Brown, second by Council Member Crone, Council Member Matthews. Just briefly, the parking deficiency fees are only a part of the overall budget of the parking district. And so I don't know if you want a bigger picture. Okay. And that, that might be suitable for a one on one or a smaller group meeting with some staff who want to see the big picture of the parking district finances, income and expenditure. Well, you know, I'm, I'm real okay with doing it one on one, but I actually think that this, because the council is asked to make these decisions, you know, I think it is worth the entire council and for the general public to have that overview. So I'd like it to come back to the full council. Okay. So we have a motion and a second. Any additional comments? I'd like to see if any members of the public are here or interested in speaking to item number nine on our consent agenda. Okay. Seeing none, I will, did you have a comment? Just to echo council member Brown's statement about public involvement. While it's fantastic that we as council members have the ability to reach out to staff and have one on one and get the information that we need when we need it potentially, but it sounds like council member Brown's been having some trouble there. I think that it does the greater community a disservice by making it non transparent and making it more difficult for them to be able to understand all of the diverse applications of the parking funds and how the parking district operates. So I support making as much information public as possible. Okay. Are there any additional comments at this time? Okay. Seeing none. We'll go ahead and call the vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, that passes unanimously. At this time, we will be recessing for our 7 p.m. evening session. Oh, do we have something? Am I missing something? The item 11, which is the calendar. Just a note, there are no changes to the calendar. Thank you. Okay. Item 11, there's no changes to the calendar. Okay, so we will now recess and reconvene here at 7 p.m. for our evening session. Great. Time to go on, coach. City council meeting. I just want to let folks know that we are over capacity. And so we're going to have to ask that if some of you could please either move outside or to the overflow room in the Tony Hill room at the Civic Center, it would be very much appreciated. Mr. Vice Mayor, could we get the TV on out there for folks? And maybe some chairs too would be really good to have out there. We don't have time for chairs. And it's cold. Thanks. Is there any ability to move to the Civic Auditorium? No, but can the council meeting move to the Civic Auditorium? We've heard this a lot in the past, and I hope that we do this in the future. We make amends. I did mention to the city manager, he's not here, but a couple of days ago, and he was going to look into it. But maybe something's scheduled over there tonight. We appreciate your compliance with that, knowing that we cannot have the chambers two full. And we'll go ahead and postpone beginning until we're able to meet the safety standards necessary to continue. They could sit there. Yeah. On this wall, we're going to have to go outside, please. We're not against the wall. It was 10 out of 7. Everyone on standing currently needs to be on the floor. Each one of those pews holds 10. Any more than that? Any more than that? It wasn't a very contentious decision. Lynn Renshaw. Can you hear me outside? He's got a scale jacket outside. As they called your name. You're going to jump in here. I gave you one. Oh, I got you. All right, I think we're good to go. I'm going to go ahead and call to order at this time. It's the prior. Our 7 p.m. session. So good evening, everybody. I appreciate your understanding. We do have, as mentioned, overflow capacity at the Tony Hill room. So if you're interested in going there, as you can see, our chambers are full. I want to welcome you to our 7 p.m. session of the January 8th, 2019 City Council. And I would like to ask the clerk to now please call roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member, it's Crone. Here. Clever. Here. Myers. Here. Brown. Here. Matthews. Here. Vice Mayor Cummings. Here. And Mayor Watkins. Here. And the next agenda is general business. And just want to remind the community that the order of the the order of this evening is we will hear a staff presentation. And that will be followed by questions from four staff from the Council. And then we will have an opportunity for public comment at which time we will return to the Council for action and deliberation. And the rules of decorum are on the left, my left, in terms of how my job is to maintain order and consistency and flow within this evening's proceedings. I want to also let you know that generally if there is disruption to the meeting that the mayor will give a warning, which I will. And if there is continual disruption by individual that I am able to acknowledge, then I will ask our Sergeant of Arms to please remove that individual. So it goes by warning and then removal. And the level of decorum and expectation of decorum is that to be consistent with those who are observing in our outside area as well as those in the Tony Hill room. So we will ask that you maintain the same level of decorum as if participating in the meeting as if in chambers as you would if you were here and we could see you. So I will consistently ask that you and respectfully ask that you adhere to those decorum policies. So at this time, I will go ahead and ask our staff to present the item. Thank you, Mayor and Council Members. I'm Lee Butler. I'm the Planning and Community Development Director. And I'll be presenting jointly today with Assistant City Manager Tina Schull and also with our city attorney, Tony Cundadi. You're all well aware of the many efforts that the city has been undertaking to address the city's housing crisis. We had 99 recommendations that came from a outreach effort. Maybe you just hold just one second while we get the sound figured out. Thank you. I think we're good. Okay. So we had 99 recommendations that came out of a very extensive outreach effort that were presented to the Council in December of 2017. And then prioritization effort was undertaken by three Council Members as the Housing Blueprint Subcommittee that included a check-in with Council, multiple meetings of that group, community outreach meeting, and then a set of prioritized recommendations that came forward on the June 12, 2018 agenda for the Council. That we are currently just really at the beginning of implementing because there are so many different recommendations. But this is one of the things that has been addressed as part of the city's efforts. One of the many things that the city is doing to address the housing crisis is looking at the potential for just cause eviction criteria. So a little bit of the history of that here in our city. Back in February, the city adopted the February of last year. The city adopted the interim just cause eviction ordinance. And that timeline was tied to Measure M. And as you know, Measure M contained its own just cause eviction provisions. And the interim ordinance was set to expire either upon the effective date of the Measure M provisions or upon the Council certification that Measure M had failed. And so on December 11th, the Council certified the results that Measure M failed and the interim just cause eviction ordinance expired at that point in time. As part of the December 11th Council direction, the Council voted to have staff come back with two items on tonight's agenda. And that's what we're here to talk about. The first is a community process to discuss just cause eviction. And that was couched at the time as a process to evaluate the procedures for implementing a task force. And Assistant City Manager Tina Shaw will talk about that as one of the options that the Council can pursue. But really we're looking for some direction in terms of the outcomes and goals. And then the second part of that Council direction was to come back with an interim ordinance. And our city attorney, Tony Condati, will brief you on that ordinance. But essentially it mirrors what was in place as the interim just cause eviction ordinance with a couple of exceptions that we'll talk about. Because there wasn't an opportunity to discuss the items at the December 11th meeting, this is now the Council's opportunity to have that discussion. It wasn't on the agenda at that point in time. And so Council now has the opportunity to provide direction and to undertake the first reading of an interim ordinance should the Council choose to do so. So at this point I'll turn it over to Tina Shaw. Good evening Mayor Watkins, Council members, community members. I hope our audio settles down. I apologize for that. Yeah, yeah. And we are working on it. Thank you. But you can hear us okay. It's just the feedback sound. Thank you. Thank you. So thanks for that set up, Lee. I'm here to talk about the community portion or community process portion of the agenda item. They're presented jointly for you this evening because they influence one another. So your decisions on one may influence the other. So that's why they're jointly presented. So we were directed, as Lee mentioned, the Council didn't have a chance to discuss this amongst yourselves because it wasn't agendized. So you weren't able to provide a lot of in-depth discussion at that time. So we came back with what we had met as staff before the winter closure of City Hall and talked through what are various processes, task forces, et cetera. What are we trying to accomplish in this? And we realized that we wanted to come back to you to get some clarity around some key issues. And as you may have seen in the staff report, there are a few areas and they're here on the slide in particular where we would like Council to discuss and provide guidance because what you'd like to get out of these areas will help us develop the best tailored process for you. The first is goals, is discussing what would you hope to achieve from this process. Having a very clear goal statement really helps with the scope of whatever process you come up with, be it a task force or something else. But it also helps the participants be very clear about what you're asking them to do and it helps us in the design process and to know was it, was something, was the goal accomplished at the end. So here's some possibilities we came up with just to kind of throw ideas out there. The first is you could ask this task force or process to develop consensus around specific tenant protection policies or an ordinance even. So you could have them go and do the actual work of trying to craft a policy or discrete specific recommendations that could come from some consensus basis represent a wide array of viewpoints that that could be presented to you as a policy action to take. Another goal could be coming up with a set of values and priorities that you can consider in any sort of future housing policy discussion. A third goal could be improving communication around opposing viewpoints. This has been a very charged issue and that could be an objective as well is to find a place to mediate between interests and have an opportunity to have not only that conversation but ongoing conversations. And another goal could be just gathering more information and stories. I think you've heard a lot through the voices in housing in 2017 but there's many more, there's so much learning to still to be done. So this could be a goal as well. So those are presented just as potential ideas you could explore but we look forward to hearing what you would like to achieve through this process. The next is what outcomes do you want to see from this process and specifically what sort of work product. Are you hoping again to have information so you get as the slide says just a collection of information to help you in the future as you work through things. Do you want specific policy recommendations? Are you looking for some data driven report? There's many different ways that a process can include and typically there is some product backed back to the governing body. And so any specificity around that is very helpful. As you saw in the examples that were appended to this report there were reports back to the city council with the public safety task force. There is a report with recommendations with the housing report. There is a report with the 99 recommendations that Lee referenced. But again it's tied to your goals. If you don't want a product, if you don't want recommendations that will influence what sort of information or report you want to see back to you. Then my apologies. A third element where we see council input is on the level of community involvement. There are a variety of different community processes and mechanisms and they've got varying levels of community involvement. Do you want community members involved in every aspect of this? Do you want a smaller subset of people to work through this? Really it can influence what this looks like in a profound way. And also this process, I didn't get to this yet, but this process also drives timeline and cost. And so we need all those basic foundational ingredients to be able to come up with here's a recommended process and here's the cost of doing that and the timeline of doing that. So I will say that what was contemplated in December was think about a task force for three months. And our experience of task forces is that that's a very aggressive timeline and I know that was presented just the urgency of the issue and wanting to be responsive and responsive to all the community members here in the audience who really want some action on this. And there's been a lot of discussion and policy communication and outreach ideas you saw in the beginning of this report, but three months is very aggressive. If you think about the steps of a task force I can walk through that very quickly. You first have to decide well your goals and your scope so we know what you're asking the individuals to do. Then you have the application and selection process. So do you put out an application and that is published and there's some application period of time, I would say at least two weeks in order for people to be able to respond and applications come flooding in I think. And then who selects that? Do you have the mayor make those appointments? Does it come back to the city council? So just that piece of it can take some time. And then once you get going you have conversations of is this a facilitated process? What's the work plan for the process? So to fit in with the three month that was originally suggested again I think responding to the urgency of the matter that would have something coming back to you at your request. So I think that a lot can be done with there's a will. And if that was the case you would need to have your task force if that's the way you go in place I would say by early February. And that might allow if scheduling aligns perfectly and people are willing to meet on a pretty aggressive timeline and thinking about just time to prepare information in between meetings maybe two meetings each in February and March to bring back a proposal. So that was a request to bring back a proposal and that was the best kind of back of the envelope just working backwards through time what that might look like again not having a sense of the scale and the scope and etc. But in thinking through that there's also other mechanisms that the council could think about again driven by your goals. And I'll go through this quickly as well I know you're eager to hear from the community. So a few that we came up with to present are on this next slide. I'm going to start with the staff report. These are three different ideas we wanted to present this is what something else might look like that the council may wish to consider you could have mediation where you have a smaller focus group of individuals get together professionally facilitated and negotiations and they really work through some interest and then you have a sort of negotiated settlement at the end of that. Typically that can take four to that fits within that timeline that was discussed. You can see the cons of it is that it's typically closed to the public. It's hard to have a mediation between groups with hundreds of people there in the room with you. So that's one possibility. Another one is public survey. And this could be the benefits of this is just gathering broad base of data and information, getting a sense where the community is and how maybe people respond to different policy ideas. So that could be a mechanism and it would help you in a very clear and transparent way identify possibilities and areas of agreement and disagreement in the community. Then you have the typical drawbacks, the survey instruments, how is it administered? What's the survey bias? Are we actually paying a professional surveyor to do it? In which case we're talking at least tens of thousands of dollars to do this as opposed to a survey monkey. But that has lots of survey bias involved in that. So I know there are statisticians up there, so you understand that's even better than I. But that's a possibility as well. And then there's a discussion circle idea, and this is something that I haven't seen done in the city. But this is another technique where the product of this is to make sure a lot of voices are heard. And there's a sense of coming to understanding between opposing interests when you might have a time of low trust. And you don't have a facilitator, it's really community facilitated. It's literally a large circle of people. Everyone gets to go to the center and speak their mind. And people just take turns throughout the entire evening until everyone has a chance to speak. And that doesn't necessarily come up with a policy agreement. I guess I suppose it could if everyone has a chance to keep talking and talking and talking. But it's really a chance that's a very community led effort. So I wanted to present those, and I won't go through all the details. You can see them here and there in the report. Just to say that depending on what the council wishes to do, we can tailor a lot of things for you. And the way tonight can go, if you have something in mind, you can direct us to go do it tonight. If you wanted us to take your input and come up with alternatives at your next meeting, we can do that as well. So I want to present that. So with that, that concludes the part I wanted to outline. Again, I know there'll be more discussion after public comment, so I wanted to get through this quickly. And I'll turn it over to the city attorney to talk through the interim ordinance. So I'm going to go briefly through the substantive provisions of the ordinance. And just as a preface, they are substantively virtually identical to the emergency just cause eviction ordinance that the city council adopted on February 13th of 2018. With a couple of exceptions, including one inadvertent omission that I will go over. The first thing that I'd like to say about the ordinance, however, is that it's not being brought forward as an emergency measure. It's contemplated that this would be subject to a first reading, second reading, and have an effective date, 30 days after the second reading. Assuming that it gets majority approval of the council. Secondly, the ordinance has an expiration date of 90 days from the date of its enactment. And lastly, to address the concern that tenants might be preemptively terminated and evicted from their residences while this ordinance is being contemplated or before its effective date, section seven of the ordinance has a provision stating that it will take effect 30 days following its final adoption. However, it shall apply retroactively to any notice of termination of tenancy with an effective date on or after December 11th, 2018. And any unlawful detainer action brought pursuant to a notice of termination with an effective date on or after December 11th, 2018 that is still pending as of the effective date of the ordinance. In other words, it's conceivable that an eviction proceeding could be commenced and an unlawful detainer action could be brought, tried, and a judgment entered during that pending period and this ordinance would not capture that circumstance. So there may be a handful of cases that this ordinance does not cover that are adjudicated before this ordinance fully takes effect. So I will briefly go over the ordinance that the city council adopted in February. As I said, there was an inadvertent omission and I'm going to point that out. And council member Brown had us requested that the council consider reinserting that provision into this ordinance for your consideration tonight. The essential provisions of the ordinance are that it prohibits a landlord from taking any action to terminate a lawful tenancy, including making a demand for possession of a rental unit, threatening to terminate a tenancy orally or in writing, or serving a notice to quit, or a notice to terminate or bringing an action to recover possession except for specified grounds. So unless one of these grounds are present then it prohibits a tenancy from being terminated by the landlord. First, failure to pay rent would be a ground for terminating a tenancy under this ordinance. Secondly, the breach of a material term of a rental housing agreement would constitute the basis. So if a tenant is violating some provision of a rental agreement, then that would be the basis for termination. There's an exception to that rule, however, if the breach is solely the obligation to surrender possession of the unit on proper notice as required by law. So essentially, the expiration of a rental agreement would not be the valid basis for terminating a tenancy under this ordinance. That is typically associated, is a creature that's typically associated with a rent control ordinance that's designed to protect tenants from having their tenancies preemptively terminated at the end of a lease, merely for the pretext of increasing the rent. This ordinance does not contain a rent control provision, but it does nevertheless carry forward that same provision. The ordinance goes on to say that notwithstanding any contrary provision in the ordinance, a landlord shall not take action to terminate a tenancy based on the tenant's sub-lease of the rental unit if the following requirements were met. One, the unit continues to constitute the tenant's primary residence. Two, the sub-lessee replaces one or more departed tenants under the rental housing agreement on a one for one basis. Or three, the landlord has unreasonably withheld the right to sub-lease following written request by the tenant. And then if the landlord fails to respond within 14 days of receipt of the tenant's written request, the tenant's request shall be deemed approved by the landlord. The ordinance goes on to say a reasonable refusal of the tenant's written request may be based on, but is not limited to the grounds that the tenant has replaced one or more departed tenants with short-term sub-lessores. The grounds that the total number of occupants in a rental unit exceeds the maximum number of occupants permissible in under Section 503B of the Uniform Housing Code, which I believe is one tenant per 50 square feet of square footage of the rental unit. There are additional grounds that are prohibited for being the basis for a termination. The landlord may not terminate a tenancy as the result of the addition to the rental unit of a family member such as a child, foster child, stepchild, ward, parent, grandparent, et cetera. Another ground for termination is that the tenant has continued after being provided notice by the landlord to cease to permit a nuisance in or about the unit or to cause substantial damage to the rental unit or the unit's appurtenances or the common areas of the property. Number four, if the tenant's conduct is so disorderly as to constitute violations of state and federal criminal law that destroy the peace, quiet comfort or safety of the landlord or other tenants of the property. Number five, the failure to give access after the tenant has been provided with notice to provide access by the landlord and if the tenant refuses to grant reasonable access as required by state or local law, then that would be grounds for termination. Number six would be necessary and substantial repairs requiring a temporary vacancy where the landlord has obtained all necessary permits from the city and provided written notice to the tenant that it needs to make repairs and that the repairs are such that they necessitate a vacancy of the unit for a period of at least 30 days. Number seven, that the owner seeks to move into the unit and use the unit in good faith for use in occupancy as a primary residence by the landlord or the landlord's close relative such as a child, foster child, stepchild, ward parent, et cetera. However, no eviction may take place under the landlord move-in provision if the same landlord or the enumerated relative already occupies a unit on the property or there's another vacancy on the property. Another provision, the landlord may not evict a tenant for the owner move-in purposes if the tenant has resided in the unit for at least five years or the tenant is at least 62 years old or is disabled or certified as being terminally ill by the tenant's treating physician. However, those would not be the basis to prohibit the landlord from moving into the unit if the landlord has those same conditions, i.e. is either 62 years old or has a disability or is or a terminal illness. Lastly is an exception under the Ellis Act which is a provision of state law that basically prohibits the city from restricting a landlord's ability to cease using the entire property as a rental. So if there is a duplex that the landlord intends to have occupied by owners exclusively then that would be a provision that would enable the termination. There are other provisions regarding retaliatory evictions and I will talk about the exemption. On the February 2018 ordinance the council at the meeting added an additional exemption which is set forth on the screen above you. The reason why I said that this omission was inadvertent in the version that went into the packet is that for that meeting the version that was in the agenda packet did not have the exemption. It was added by the council by motion at the time of the hearing. So the exemption was a rental unit which constitutes the landlord's sole rental property and the following categories of rental units if the landlord lives on site in either the same residence a duplex or a single family residence with an accessory dwelling unit. So that is language that's proposed to be included back into the ordinance for your consideration at the time that it's introduced this evening. Again, this is not an emergency ordinance so it would not take immediate effect this evening. It would come back for a second reading and go into effect 30 days after it's finally adopted. And the ordinance also has a provision that calls for its expiration after 90 days from the effective date. I'm happy to answer any questions or respond to any council member comments and that concludes my report. Thank you for your report and thank you staff for your report. At this time I'd like to ask the council if they have any questions of staff before we open it up to public comment. There's no relocation assistance in this ordinance, right? That is correct. That is the next item on your agenda. Okay, that's what I thought. Additional questions for staff? Vice Mayor Cummings? I have a question regarding nuisance and number three of the ordinance. And was wondering if nuisance would be able to be extended to neighbors and adjacent properties? The council certainly could add language to that effect this evening prior to its introduction. And then it would be incorporated into the ordinance to be brought back for the second reading at the next meeting. That's the pleasure of the council. That's member Glover. I was having a conversation earlier today with someone and we were talking about the ability for people or landlords to remove tenants and the validity of a lease. And so here under the breach of lease under number two, when it says that it's a violation of any material terms in the rental housing agreement, can you specify the spectrum of what those material agreements could include? That landlord could specify in their lease that, is there like a limit or an example? Well, it really varies depending on the tenant, but the landlord could include specific restrictions on, for instance, modifying the interior of the building to puncture walls or to change paint or carpeting, damaging the unit. Those sorts of things or routinely, assuming that it's included in the lease, routinely parking in a space that's not designated to exclude others that would have the right to use that space. Those sorts of things. And would something like the express concern that they brought up was if they had moved the tenant and they turned out to be someone that kept terrible care of the property and they used the term whether they were a hoarder. So what if they were filling the space up so that it damaged the interior and also their kind of stuff. So could there be a provision in the lease that says you have to keep the property up to a certain standard? Yeah, and I think that there certainly can. And then the question is under this ordinance whether or not the tenant that is messy or brings a lot of miscellaneous material onto the property. Whether or not it's substantial enough to constitute a nuisance. And the standard there is not really entirely clear. It's basically whether or not it's objectively unreasonable to a reasonable person. So it's not entirely clear and it's not clear how that would play out in the courts, but that's the standard. And there are a lot of cases that have addressed different conditions that constitute a nuisance. Hoarding would certainly be one. Thank you. Senator Myers. I just have a question about second four, the enforcement procedures. So my understanding of how this is written is that the city really, this would be a discretionary action by the city at this, the way it's drafted here. Yes, it does not compel the city to take affirmative action to enforce the ordinance. For this interim period, it's contemplated that a tenant would basically have the ability to hold up the requirements of this ordinance where a landlord seek to evict that tenant under circumstances that are not allowed by the ordinance. And then a court in adjudicating that matter would have the ordinance and would be required to make a determination as to whether or not the eviction is permitted under the ordinance. That's the same way that a just cause eviction ordinance that's accompanied in a rent control matter is utilized. I would also point out that a tenant who raises a violation of the ordinance either by bringing a civil action, an affirmative civil action against the landlord or in a defense to an unlawful detainer provision and prevails would be entitled to recover reasonable attorneys fees and costs. And that is to basically incent attorneys that take cases on a contingency fee basis to take a case from a tenant. Whereas in the absence of a potential attorney's fees recovery, a lot of attorneys that don't specifically represent tenants in residential unlawful detainer matters. Just wouldn't take it on because tenants typically have trouble paying for lawyer's fees. Thank you. It's Mayor Cummings. I had a question around the timeline. So if this is retroactively implemented for, let's say, December 11th, within that 90 day period be up around the beginning of March? No. The expiration measures from the effective date and the effective date is a defined term in the ordinance as being 30 days from final adoption. So it gives you 30 days, assuming that you adopted at your January 22nd meeting. It gives you 90 days from that date. Thank you. And Mayor, if I could just point out that the 90 days stemmed from the direction from the council to come up with a solution within 90 days. So it is within the purview of the council to modify that interim period should you choose to do so. Are there any additional questions from council members at this time? Okay. Seeing none, this would be when, this is the portion when we'll be opening up the item to public comment. And before we do, I just prepared a few comments and then Vice Mayor Cummings and I will read over some of the council adopted policy protocol around decorum. I will just briefly state that I have been on council throughout numerous meetings and have witnessed the divisiveness of this item. And one thing I do know that everybody here really does share a common value and commitment and love of Santa Cruz and have earnestly disagreed on how the best pathway is in terms of moving forward, in terms of policy action, but do share a love of our community, a love of our city. And we're each other's neighbors, we see each other on the streets in the grocery stores. And I just want to remind you all and us that we are in this together. And it is our job to hear from you and then to do the best we can in deciding the best course of action at this time. And we can disagree, we may not agree with what each other has to say. But everybody has a right to be here without threat or experience of discomfort. And we have a right to listen to them and we don't have to agree. So that is what I will aspire to as I preside over this meeting this evening and respectfully ask the community to also rise to that as well. And I do want to just also say that the council has previously adopted rules of procedure for conduct for city council business and not often do we read those before these types of divisive meetings. But I'd like to take an opportunity to do that right now. And I'll start with the first, which is to be respectful and that is to treat each other with respect. Even when, and especially when there is a disagreement. And last question here. I also encourage people to engage in open and honest communication. So be direct, straightforward and transparent with each other. To be honest and truthful, to act with integrity and authenticity and to be ethical. To address difficult issues, confront challenging topics directly, avoid talking around them or not talking about them at all. To find areas of common ground, to seek areas of agreement, identify shared interests, values and positions. Be open to different perspectives, keep an open mind, be willing to change your views with new information, data, etc. To give benefit of the doubt, freely give credit for good intentions and avoid ascribing bad intentions. Roll model good leadership, be professional, adhere to standards of civility, and demonstrate effective leadership for the community. Be considerate of each other's time. Manage expectations about responsiveness and availability. Recognizing the time limitations and constraints of our colleagues and our community. So I appreciate you listening to that. So I'll just remind the community that this time is now the time for public comment on this item. I'd like to get a sense of how many people here are interested in speaking to the item. If you can help me count. There's ten additional. I've got at least 35. Okay, okay. What I'll do is I will allow for a minute and a half so that everyone has an opportunity to speak up to a minute and a half. I know that there's going to be likely over potentially hundreds of 100 or so who want to speak to and want to make sure everybody has a chance to have their voice heard. And then I'll just remind you to please refrain from disrupting the speaker at their time to speak and address the council, you will have your time as well. If there is a disruption and I am able to observe who made that disruption, I will give a verbal warning and then ask our Sergeant of Arms to please remove that individual if the disruptions continue. And if there is a type of disruption that's happening, we will take a recess and pause in order for us to reconvene and do business. Okay, I had heard from, and I think I include everybody, but I heard from Lynn Rinshaw from Santa Cruz Together requesting additional time in advance. Gail Jack, affordable housing now, also requesting additional time in advance. And Fawze, I'm sorry, I don't have your last name. Remind me your last name. It's Fizula. Okay, excuse me. Okay, and you're representing movement for housing justice, correct? And I believe those are the three folks who contacted me in advance requesting four minutes. And I have acknowledged their request and we'll start by asking Lynn Rinshaw to come forward. And she'll have four minutes as she represents Santa Cruz Together. Okay, so Lynn Rinshaw, SantaCruiseTogether.com. As you are well aware, Measure M was overwhelmingly defeated by city voters 62% to 38%, basically two to one. 70% of the votes for city council members went to candidates opposed to Measure M. The interim just cause eviction ordinance includes the worst part of Measure M. Passing Measure M provisions is an insult to the vast majority of voters that opposed it. This new city council is losing public confidence before the very first meeting. Santa Cruz Together conducted professional polling that found very high awareness and the following objections to Measure M. 78% of voters objected to allowing renters to move in other renters without the owner's permission, even beyond the number on a lease agreement. 74% were opposed to making it difficult to evict problem renters. 72% opposed making leased end dates unenforceable. Homeowners should be aware that this ordinance says if their home has been rented for more than five years, they may not be able to move back into it again. Excuse me, Lynn, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Bonnie, are we okay? This is obviously impatently unjust and possibly illegal. Do not force just cause eviction provisions, essentially Measure M, on the city voters who rejected them. Ignoring the majority vote while discussing a community input process is disingenuous. If the council is willing to ignore the city majority, why should we believe that you care about community input? Rent increases can be limited without overreaching eviction laws. For example, Los Gatos successfully uses a mediation service to limit rent increases. Passing Measure M will lead to further loss of rental housing, which will cause rent increases to accelerate since rents are unlimited on 75% of the rental housing stock. Remember, California state law, Costa Hawkins mandates that rent and rent increases are always unlimited on houses, condos, and newer apartments. Also, rents are unlimited on apartments for every future renter. You are not going to be able to hide these facts from the electorate. If you pass the equivalent of Measure M, you are willfully ignoring the sound research and evidence that shows this policy will make the affordable housing shortage worse. A few of you express interest in adopting evidence-based policies, but unwillingness to study how this policy will impact the number of rentals and rent is telling. Policies like Measure M ultimately displace hundreds and thousands of renters, a sustainable solution is one that doesn't drive people away from renting their property. You will continue to hear more and more stories about people losing their rental houses. If the city council passes the Measure M equivalent, then you will be responsible for the evictions that occur as houses are sold to owner occupants. And remember, the California Ellis Act is the superseding state law that lets homeowners evict renters when withdrawing from the rental market. The local city council cannot prevent such Ellis Act rental withdrawals. The council should honor the majority vote and reconsider passing Measure M provisions tonight. No moaners that want to be able to choose what to do with their houses should join our newsletter at SantaCruiseTogether.com. Thank you. Excuse me. Okay, I'd like to now ask Fawz to come up and you'll be given four minutes as well. Thank you, council members. Just to kind of address the statistics that were just mentioned, I think it would be helpful to see the survey and make that publicly available so we can check the credibility of that survey. I'd be very interested in seeing that. Anyways, hello council members. My name is Faisal. I go by Fawz and I want to thank the council for agreeing to put this incredibly crucial item on the agenda tonight. I wanted to start by addressing some of the things that have been said against this item. For starters, Measure M's defeat is not a mandate against tenant protections. Voters in the city of Santa Cruz voted by a majority of 53% for Proposition 10 in 2018. The statewide initiative to strengthen and create more effective rent control in cities that have it. The fact that city voters supported Prop 10 and voted against Measure M means that voters actually support some form of rent control and tenant protections, but were hesitant about M. This is actually a mandate for not against enacting some form of rent control and just cause eviction policies. But it is also a mandate for the council and the community to go back to the drawing board and do it differently. This is, oh, sorry, Measure M's defeat also does not imply that the council is going against the will of the voters. The ordinance does not measure M, the ordinance does not include rent control, it does not include a rent control board, and the just cause eviction protections are written differently than in Measure M. This vote tonight does not defy the will of the voters. In fact, during our time in the 2018 campaign, as we were knocking on doors and talking with voters, many people that we spoke to who were against Measure M personally told us that they support some of form of rent control and tenant protections. This ordinance is a temporary and very necessary placeholder for a permanent ordinance in the future that we can all be happy with as we begin creating the community conversation on this issue. Tonight, the movement for housing justice urges members of this council to pass a temporary just cause eviction protections. Since the certification of the elections last November, already many tenants are facing evictions, either directly or through skyrocketing rent increases. We all know we are living in a housing dystopia in Santa Cruz and it will only get worse. While the intentions of the council were good in enacting an exorbitant rent increase ordinance, sadly the loopholes and lack of teeth in the ordinance have done little to nothing to actually protect renters in this community. Let's not forget who these people are. Renters are your friends, your families, your neighbors. They are your waiters, they are your librarians and baristas, your park rangers and maintenance workers, your teachers who teach your children and nurses who take care of the ill in our community. These are the people who make the city the lovable and beautiful place that we all cherish. They are taking care of us, but we are not taking care of them. During my time as a temporary city employee, I discovered that over half of our city workforce cannot afford to live in the same city it serves. That is incredibly, incredibly disappointing. As city workers are entering negotiations, a pay increase will mean absolutely nothing without equally providing protections from price gouging rents and unfair evictions. If we don't act soon, we could be living in a town completely barren of all those people who make Santa Cruz the place we know and love. It is unfortunate that many of our local well-intentioned homeowners and mom and pop landlords have bought into the vicious and misleading propaganda from the California Appartments Association and the Association Realtors. Two of the biggest multi-billion dollar wealthy special interests trying to rig our local government in favor of their pocketbooks. These special interests have advanced the division or a community for their own personal gain. This is why I hope that tonight the City Council, in addition to bringing back temporary just cause eviction protections, will also consider the formation of a tenants protections task force so that we can create the community conversation and education that we so desperately need. This is not just something that's supported by the movement for housing justice. This is also supported by the many homeowners and mom and pop landlords who are sympathetic to tenants rights but are disappointed that the former city council did not take initiative on the issue and create that community conversation. But in the meantime, we're going to need something to in place to protect renters. After all, if we lose our renters, then who are we creating tenant protections for? And for all those who are against this, who are in our community, who are against measure M. Thank you very much. I'm sorry, your time is up. Okay, thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Okay, now I invite up Gail, and Gail, thank you. Okay, thank you. Gail will be representing affordable housing now. And Gail, you'll be given four minutes. Thank you. Thank you very much, and I'd like to welcome the new members on the council. I'm speaking tonight on behalf of affordable housing now. We're a coalition of organizations and community members who have been working together for now over three years to increase affordable housing options for people who live and work in the city and throughout Santa Cruz County. In August of 2015, we encouraged the city council to make some real changes to housing policy in order to help residents who are being priced out of their homes. Two of the ten suggestions we made at that time are being addressed today. I quote, implement a rent stabilization measure similar to Bay Area communities such as Richmond, Redwood City, San Francisco, etc. And secondly, expand tenant eviction protection through the implementation of a rent review task force made up of community members and city staff. Again, last November, we urged the council to make changes in the proposed ordinance by lowering the trigger rent increase rate, and increasing the amount of tenants relocation assistance in the event of eviction. We believe that the temporary ordinance your council is considering tonight is fair and balanced and can be acceptable for all parties concerned. It is an ordinance that we can support. Affordable Housing now also supports the suggestion to convene some sort of community outreach process on rent stabilization and tenant protections. However, some of the techniques suggested by staff seem lacking in innovation. If you are really committed to community participation in this process, the task force kind of committee with the facilitator should be convened principally with tenant, landlord, and others from the community with a small number of staff. It should be made clear by the council as well what their goals and missions are for this group and exactly how the outcomes of the group's deliberations will be utilized. And I just had a thought about how you find members of the task force. You could have a nomination process from the community. You could have five people from tenants, five people, whatever numbers you decide and get nominations and from those nominations from the community, you guys decide who will be on that group. Thank you so much. Thank you. We'll now move on, that is the end of all of the requested additional time. So each member of the community will have 90 seconds to speak before the council. And just a reminder, we have a right to hear everybody's perspective, agree with them or not, we will listen and then we will move on to the next speaker. So, sir, you are next, go ahead. Welcome, City Council. And you have lots of decisions to make, obviously, on just cause evictions. What do you call it? Sub-leasing that isn't approved by the landlords and stuff. And what I want to bring up, when you're making the rules for these decisions, I just remember that we're in a severe housing shortage. The problem is we don't have enough rentals. So in my opinion, I think we should preserve the existing rentals, encourage conversions to rentals like ADU units, encourage building new rental housing. So when you make these decisions, think about what you're doing to the supply. And when we talk about the supply of housing, also remember Chris Cronin mentioned at the last meeting that UC Santa Cruz has 20,000 students, the only house half of them on campus, the other half are taking up a lot of rentals in Santa Cruz. And I believe you said they're planning on going up to 30,000. So what is this doing to the availability of housing? I don't know what the city council can do about that, hopefully you can do something about that. Also, I heard that there's 8,000 single family homes that are being rentals. The more you lean on the landlords, you're going to force them or put them in the position of they're going to sell them to the homeowners. So that would pull those units off the market. You can only pull half of them off the market. That's 4,000 less rentals. And then there's 20,000 rentals, I believe total, and there's 5,000 for the pre-1996 rentals. So anyway, my message is think about the rental supply and how your decisions are going to affect landlords and whether they keep them or sell them. Thank you. Okay, next speaker here. Can we take more from that side and more from this side? There's, we will line up on that side. Yeah, okay, let me go ahead and clarify. If you're interested in speaking, please line up to my left and we will have each person have 90 seconds to speak. Speak, okay. You just speed that line around. Okay, so they should- This is the line. This is the line, apologies. Okay, so you are in line. I'm sorry, I didn't realize it wrapped around this way. We will get to you as we get through everybody, okay? Okay, so at this time, we'll allow for you to have your 90 seconds. Linda Robinson, I'm a landlord and I just wanted to say that I have worked 33 years in this community. Overtime, double time, just got off a 12 hour shift in order to purchase a home. And I'm a great landlord and I don't see any problem with rent control being a monetary amount every month. But I can't fathom you telling me that I can't move back into my home that I'm planning on retiring in. Or that my renter can go ahead and ask any of his friends to come in when there's only one parking, one bathroom, one everything. So I wasn't going to speak, but I just thought I'd tell you that I'm one of those nice landlords who I do think you should have rent control with monetary rent control. We shouldn't be gouging renters and we should have a place for them to come and everything. But not, I mean, I have 600 square feet. That means I can have 12 people in that place with one parking and one bathroom. And I mean, that I- Sorry to pause you. I just want to let you know that you are unable to please do not bang on the windows or disrupt the speaker when they're speaking. Thank you. Okay, go ahead and continue. That's pretty much all I have to say. I just, there's a few things in this whole measure and that I don't understand. And I've just worked my whole entire life really hard to be a homeowner and to give a tenant a great place to live and I don't think that I should not be able to get rid of somebody if they're, I just, anyway, I'm done. I'm good, thank you. Thank you, thank you. Hi, my name is Mara Alverson. I wanted to let you know that I'm a supporter of the homeless shelter and support all efforts to build more affordable housing in our community. And to enforce the law with regard to affordable units being included in new apartment complexes, which I understand is not being done very strictly. I voted in support of measure H. I also support reasonable rent increase control measures. I feel that our housing crisis is serious. I'm writing to let you know how my life would be impacted by the adoption of just cause eviction measures. I was only able to afford to buy my home because it has an ADU in the backyard, which I've been renting. This unit is six feet from my bedroom window. So noise, smoke, et cetera, has a big impact on me. If I were to lease it to someone who on first evaluation seemed to be a very responsible, considerate tenant, but who turned out not to be considerate, my living situation would be severely impacted. Having to pay two months rent to a victim would be a severe hardship on me. The addition of additional occupants without my consent or the sub-leasing of the unit would be very disruptive for me. My daughter will be back from grad school in a couple of years. Oops, thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Hi, council. My name is William Robb, and I just want to put my two cents in, meaning I think the measure M wasn't in, and it is still a very angry bill. And I think it was written in anger, written by a group of people trying to solve a very serious problem. I believe both sides probably should have gotten together first to identify the problem and then come up with a fair and reasonable solutions that would have benefited all and not completely distress one side of the issue. Thank goodness the good people of Santa Cruz saw through that badly written bill and voted against measure M and again in overwhelming numbers. The passage of measure M would have been devastating I think to landlords, renters, homeowners, investors, probably broken up many families, and added to the city budget all while helping in my opinion a limited amount of people. More important, and I think it would limit the choices we all hold so deeply. I can't understand why the city of Santa Cruz has decided to take it upon itself to solve our community's housing crisis. By assuming that any part of measure M would help, I just don't understand it. I'm not right, it doesn't work, and against the will of Santa Cruz voters, as we'd be urged. So I urge the board to recognize the need for further public discussions and possibly help form a new citizens committee discuss the issue in an amicable manner to all. So don't limit the choices, we still- Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker please. Good evening, council. My name is Patty Rob. I am a landlord. Please respectively encourage the city council not to adopt any new rent control ordinance or just cause eviction ordinance. Please respect the Santa Cruz city citizens vote in November 2018, which resulted in measure M not passing. I would also like you to please consider the cap on the rent increase. You've got a three and a half percent increase. Excuse me, I'm going to pause your time. That will be an agenda item that will come up after, so you can speak to that item after. Okay, it's just this item that you can address. Yes, okay. Thank you. Go ahead and start. And so then, I'll speak on that later. My other comment is, when you're adopting and considering ordinance like this, it seems like these, I feel my tenants and I are on the same team. I respect my tenants, my residents, I, you know, I can't, I hear these stories about these landlords, these minority of landlords that are raising astronomical rents. I can't fathom it because I'm on the same team with my residents. I've had my residents for many, many years. So I would urge you to consider a penalty. Why can't there be an ordinance with a penalty for the minority of landlords out there that are gouging and excessive rent increases and taking advantage of residents? To urge you to come up with some kind of a penalty for the minority. Because the majority of the landlords out there value their residents and we shouldn't be penalized. We shouldn't be put in a basket and be subject to this severe proposal of an ordinance. The minority that's causing all this should be penalized, but the majority of the landlords do not act. Thank you very much. My name is Mickey Larson and I would like to thank the city council for saving me about $100,000. That would be the approximate cost of constructing an ADU. I have a large lot behind my house and I was considering building an ADU. The city has encouraged these dwellings by loosening restrictions on permit fees, setbacks, parking, etc. But with the push for extreme rental restrictions and council's shim sham slide dance to resurrect defeated measure M conditions, an ADU is out of the question for me. The city needs housing. It's encouraging ADUs. At the same time, it is promoting restrictive rent control. From my perspective, the city is operating at cross purposes to defuse the housing crunch. No intelligent person will build an ADU and be held hostage to the council's proposed rental restrictions. The council needs to reform its act and consider the unintended consequences of its decisions. Some members of the council may view their role as progressive towards rental reform. This is naive and dangerous without studying the unintended consequences of decision making. Case in point, an initiative to keep seniors or five year residents uncontested in their rentals. This is virtually a guarantee that landlords will not rent to seniors. It may be discrimination, but try and prove it. In the end, the rich stay rich. Thank you, thank you very much. Your time is over. Thank you, your time is over. Thank you. Excuse me, your time is now over. Your time is now over. The middle class gets screwed and housing and seniors lose under the misguide. Guided politics of a just cause. I'm going to go ahead and turn off your time. Each person is a lot at the same amount of time, so I appreciate you in hearing and respecting that. We have our next speaker, please go ahead. It would be disrespectful to the democratic process and to the majority of Santa Cruz residents to approve an eviction ordinance that contains objectionable rules from overwhelmingly defeated measure M. The tenant sublease rule and the family member addition rule in this ordinance violate common sense leasing standards and are as objectionable now as they were in measure M. There is no need for new temporary eviction ordinance and the justifications for putting it in place are hearsay and not supported by any hard data. The right way to move forward to heal the city from the divisiveness and bad feelings around measure M is to convene a task force with a cross section of stakeholders, support them and build consensus. The proposed eviction ordinance is exactly the wrong approach. It is not appropriate why is it fiscally responsible for this council to attempt to override all the active leases in the city, especially without buying from the majority of Santa Cruz residents. This temporary eviction ordinance will taint the task force process by indicating that the outcome is already a done deal. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, council. I'm Linda Hodge and I'm a landlord. I would like to say that process is important and democracy is important. I'd like to see changes like this, since we just had measure M. I'd like to see changes made on the ballot. And I would like to see this lady, she was describing how you get groups together to negotiate and figure out what the issues are and I'd like to see that happen. And I'd like to see the council work on supply. I'd like the state to force UC to build some dormitories. And finally, the last thing is the ordinance, it hurts the landlords because it kind of assumes that most landlords are bad. I have to deal with people, I haven't evicted anybody. But I do use the perspective of eviction when two tenants are knocking on the walls and fighting with each other, got a 67 year old man and I'm 65, so I don't give him any slack. He's drunk and falling down and disorderly on the property. And when, after the ordinance expired, after measure M was defeated, he's step two. He's behaving himself now because he knows he could get evicted. We need to manage our units where 26 people or 50 people live in proximity. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next speaker please. Hi everybody, my name is Alice Terrell. I'm a renter here in Santa Cruz for 20 some years. And I support rent control in this town, I think we need it. But the just cause eviction proposal and the emergency measure and measure M is unfair to landlords. Completely unfair to landlords. Because people who have owned property in this town, many of them live on site and they have a right, in my opinion anyway, they have a right to say who lives on their property that they are good tenants. And that to my understanding is that the 50 square feet per person, less kitchens and bathrooms is overcrowding and overpopulate over parking issues and that it'll be detrimental to the neighborhoods if you pass this like this. I think we need something, but this is not it. And I also think I am like one of the previous speakers. I think that if you- Okay, thank you, thank you. Hello, my name is Josh Perhinsky. I'm also a landlord and I'm a part of a group of landlords who supported measure M. There were a bunch of us, although not probably about 40 or 50 of us on our list. But there were dozens of other landlords who came to me throughout this process and said, I really support rent control. I really think there needs to be some kind of eviction protections. But there's a couple of details in measure M that just get my goat and I'm having a hard time with that. And that was person after person after person after person. And they said, that's why. I mean, we all know that the campaign against measure M, right? Was not don't do rent control. It was it's too expensive and it's too extreme. And we know that rents here are too expensive and too extreme. And but we also know that there are all these small time landlords here who really, really care about the people who they rent to. And they wanna build a community that's kind and a community that's stable and they bought that rhetoric, right? They believed it, they're like, yes, this is too expensive and too extreme. So right now is the time to bring those people and the renters together and build a community process where we can figure out what's not too expensive and too extreme but actually protects people. That takes care of people in this town. Because everybody we talked to agreed, I don't think I talked to a single person out of the hundreds and hundreds in the last year that didn't agree that we have a massive crisis. That people are being kicked out of this town at an incredible rate and we need to fix it. Hi council members, my name is Melissa Freebarron and I am your local nurse. I grew up in this town, I've been a renter for over 20 years and the voters have spoken with no on measure M for a reason. Because not all of the landlords in this town are slum lords. Many of them are local moms who were single moms who worked over 30 years to own a property who now this council can come and adopt an ordinance and tell them what to do with their property. If they had a tenant for over 13 years that decided, you know what, I like my rental. You won't sell it to me, I'm not going to move out. I'm going to do everything possible to make it impossible to move out. We are your working unseen people, your nurses, your firemen, your law enforcement, your city workers. I worked at the jail, juvenile hall. I know I can't afford a place to live here unless I go to work every day and I earn it. I'm a single mother, I work every day. I know that these things will not be handed to me living in a coastal town. I grew up in this town and I can't even afford to live here and I serve this town. So I want you to be aware, I'm speaking out for all those mom and pop landlords who are not slum lords. They're your local people, generations of people who fought to own a home here and they don't deserve you to just adopt an ordinance and I voted for all of you. So I'm paying attention. We're paying attention. I am your constituent. Thank you. Hello, my name is Alayna Kohn and I'd like to start out by thanking you for your statements at the beginning about rules of civility and respect. I think it's a really important first step to try to heal some of the problems that existed so deeply with the last election. And so towards that end, I actually encourage, I think that the options suggested about community input in the agenda report were very helpful. I actually would like to suggest support for the mediation approach. I'm concerned that the task force in terms of how it's going to be selected may create problems. I'm concerned about the quality of the surveys. I had participated in programs in the summer where Santa Cruz together representatives met with the city representatives and I wish that the yes on M people had participated too. And I really encourage that approach as a way to try to resolve this problem respectfully. I'm glad to hear about the ADU exemption continues. I'd like to see that continue. And then lastly, I just think it's really important that we all try to improve building affordable housing and I'm concerned that this interim measure will actually discourage that. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Deborah Wallace and I am a housing provider as well as a property manager. Since last February, our housing supply has been significantly reduced as a direct result of the emergency rental provisions adopted by the previous council prior to the voters defeating Measure M. Many owners either sold their properties or withdrew them from the supply of rentals. It is my hope that the new council does not further reduce our existing housing supply by passing this counterproductive ordinance, which reads very much like Measure M. What you are currently proposing will cause even more owners to remove their rentals from the market. Your homes will be sold or left vacant. This is permitted under state law and nothing compels owners to continue to offer their properties for rent. You should be doing everything you can to encourage mom and pop housing providers to stay in the market, not withdraw from it. Investors and developers should be encouraged not to scourge from owning rental properties. We need more rentals, not fewer. Fewer rentals equals higher rents. The laws of supply and demand apply here just like everywhere else. A large majority of people have spoken loudly and clearly on this issue, and it is time for you to listen. Thank you. Good evening, my name's Mike Marcus. I was born in Santa Cruz. I've lived here all my life. I'm a homeowner in a landlord. We have talked about loving Santa Cruz. I don't love it so much anymore. This has been really, really bad on our family, the stress that's caused. When no one am means no one am. I just don't understand it. The democracy is not working. So to get to the point, I wanted to retire, worked here all my life. I'm gonna sell my home. And move somewhere else. Thank you. Okay, excuse me. We have a chance to hear from every person one by one, and now it's your turn to speak. Thank you. My name's Paul Coonsy. I'm a rental property owner. I kind of have to echo the same assessment I want out. These are just crazy rules that you're trying to apply. It's hard enough to be a good landlord. This just makes it impossible. I recommend you guys look at the New York City Rand Institute study. The MIT of 1970, the 1995 study of MIT from MIT of rent control in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the 2017 study in a Sanford Graduate School of Business. They all basically say the same thing. You can get two economists, economists are wildly opinionated. You can put two of them in a room, ask them the same question, and get six different answers, but most economists agree rent control is bad. I would like to suggest a solution. One of the problems we have is, or micro homes would be sustainable. I would like to suggest that we put a college program together where the students get to build their own home, where they actually get to live in it while they're at going to school. I think it'd be a phenomenal program. The second part to this is I work in a construction type industry. We have an impossible time to get anyone who knows left from right of a hammer. I mean, these aren't skills that are taught anymore. To get a handyman around here is near impossible because there's just so few of them out there. I don't know how else to say it, and I apologize, I get a little stage fried here. But I hope my points come across. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your time. Hello, council. My name is Julian Prino Stoll, and I am the co-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, Santa Cruz. Today, this council has an opportunity to initiate a democratic and expert-informed process to enact long-overdue tenant protections. You could do this by creating an advisory committee that would provide recommendations for effective rent stabilization and just cause protections and to protect tenants in the long term. Meeting times should be advertised and accessible for working people. Its composition should include representation for students, proportional representation for tenants, and reflect the racial diversity of Santa Cruz. As an organizer, I know how essential good facilitation is to running a good meeting. That's why it is so important that this committee makes use of a professional facilitator to keep this urgent work moving and to craft the best policy recommendations possible. Additionally, I would like to say that strong just cause eviction is necessary for preventing evictions in the meantime, and removing the exemption proposed by former council member Naroyan would make just cause much better. All of this, of course, assumes that the opponents of Measure M were serious when they said that they want to wipe away the battle lines that have been drawn in our community. So demands to recall council members or to run a referendum on any policy which has been passed by this council would be done in bad faith, and it would be a shame to see such hypocrisy. Let's remember that no community process will let us hear from all those who have been displaced in the city. Although they are not here tonight, I ask you to do your best to hear them. Greetings council and staff, thank you for all of your input on this. I'm Marvin Christie, I was born and raised in Santa Cruz. I am involved in the housing industry and I'm very passionate about this subject. I'm also very saddened by the divisive nature of this current dialogue. I think you guys have a big task ahead of you and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all comes out. I'd like to be a part of the solution. Unfortunately, I'm seeing firsthand the tenants that are being hurt, the great landlords who are being hurt. This just cause is not helpful for anyone. It's not helpful for either side. It helps a few, very few tenants and it hurts everybody else. I really hope you take that seriously. I hope you put back in the exemptions for owners who live on site. It's a huge thing. ADUs are a great asset to this community and you just don't hear about them anymore. No one's building them. Why would you? It's crazy. You have to do something about it. The statistics, I'd love to know the statistics. I'd love it if someone could come up with those statistics. How many were built before this proposition and how many are being proposed now? How many permits are being pulled? I'd love to know that. That's something you guys need to know. Need to know what the effects are of the current conversation. I do look forward to finding and expanding common ground. I hope that this works and I think you guys have a huge task ahead of you and I hope you can bring both sides together. Thank you. My name is Gerhard John Phillip and you might not like what I have to say. I don't get any part of the just cause of eviction. And the reason I don't like it is in my opinion it's unconstitutional. I think you should talk to your city attorney. I think the ex post facto criminal law is banned in all legislatures everywhere in the United States and the fact that you may not prosecute people makes it just sort of a threat that you're issuing, but you're not going to go through it because you know you'll lose. And the other unconstitutional part of the ex post facto nature is the contract clause which says you cannot interfere with a contract. So if a landlord gives notice in that retroactive period, that becomes an obligation of the tenant to move on that date. And if you're dangling money in front of the tenant saying sue the landlord, sue the landlord, well if they do it, they're going to turn around and sue the city. And you have no idea what you're doing. You don't know what's in those contracts. You don't know how many people will bring suit. It's like going to Vegas, playing crabs with the people's money at 3 in the morning except you don't know the odds and you don't know how much you're betting. Okay, that's one thing I don't like about it. I also don't like the whole idea that landlords. Thank you for your time. That time? Yeah, it's time. They're Watkins, city council members, members of the community. My name is Tom Powers. I am a homeowner. My wife and I also own a duplex in Santa Cruz. Like many people I've been on both sides have come up through the ranks going from moving out from home to renting a house with four of my friends right off of Ocean Street. Working hard to many different jobs, going to school. Working really, really hard just to achieve the dream of home ownership with zero help from family. And just doing it just on my own, so me and my wife on our own. So anyway, so it's really, really disconcerting and it's been so polarizing. It's turned into an us versus them where the supporters at Measure M have pretty much categorized all landlords as greedy, scum-sucking, scum of the earth. Basically looking to raise rents at every opportunity. I think that's really an unfair portrayal of landlords. I think most landlords are mom and pop landlords and care about the community and basically as most tenants are good. So it's a symbiotic relationship. As a landlord, we need good tenants and as a renter, you need a nice place to live. So I think what we need to do is come together and come up with reasonable solutions other than just trying to ram down our throat, just cause eviction, which the voters resoundingly rejected. Thank you. Hey, Tony. My name is Randy Strong and I've lived here over 30 years, raised my kids here in this community. And we've worked really hard to build our home in Santa Cruz. I started out as a carpenter at $18 an hour, built our first home, and we tore it apart from scratch and raised our kids in this home for 20-some-odd years. That then became a rental to provide for another beautiful family. They were there for seven years and we treated them fairly. And unfortunately for us, the house took on a totally different shape during that seven years. The house was completely changed on the inside, the exterior was totally demolished. And changed from what we had, which was the nicest home in the block, became what was not the nicest home in the block. And so anyway, with that in mind, we opposed to wanting to be a landlord again. Because of course, the big expense of restoring this property. So I now have moved my kids into this house, which is now off the market. I apologize for that, but it is. We have other rental properties and we are very, all our rental properties outside the community, outside this community are below market value. We rent to an elderly, we rent to another business, and those costs are well below. The problem with that now is to fix up that home and to keep it looking good. Thank you. My name is Dave and I live near the university. And I want to state that if you want to address the issue of rent increases, you need to build more houses, specifically for the students. What I'm saying is- Okay, go ahead. I don't want to distract from your time. You can go ahead and speak now, go ahead. You need to address housing by building more houses, specifically for the students. And the only renters or landlords that I've seen abusing renters are actually students that are renting houses from a landlord and then subletting to other students. Those are the ones gouging for prices. They got 12 people living in a house, three people in a garage and charging outrageous prices and profiting from it. Thank you, council. My name is Rob. I'm a lifelong Santa Cruz resident. My wife's born and raised and we have three units in Santa Cruz and we are on the teetering point right now with two bad experiences we just went through. I don't like the dialogue of villainizing landlords. We are what would be considered a mom and pop landlord that are proactively involved. Our tenants like us, we take care of issues that come up. But we just went through two nightmare evictions. One for non-payment, convicted felon after she moved in. It took us four months to get her out, cost us $14,000. I mean, it's economics 101. Where does that money come from to pay for that lost rent? So, shortly thereafter, we had another tenant that moved two dogs into the property, tore the place apart. It was a cooperative eviction. It wasn't fun, but it cost us $4,000 to put new carpet in this place after 11 months putting it in there. So I just don't like the dialogue of villainizing landlords. We're mom and pop people that have worked here. I've been gainfully employed since I was 13 years old and Santa Cruz, my wife's worked here. We've worked hard to save money, to have a couple rentals to help us in our retirement. And I think it's wrong to villainize landlords in this whole process and you need to bring people together to work together. So that's what I encourage you guys to do and not throw the baby out of the bath water and just assume all landlords are bad. Thank you. My name is Elizabeth Walsh and I'm a 25 year resident of Santa Cruz County. And I've been managing multi-family housing for 32 years in Mountain View. And we have rent control and it's destroyed the community. And it started just like this, with an emergency just cause eviction ordinance. And it was a slippery slope and it didn't work. And my tenants, who I love, who I've had for 20, 30, I've had tenants who have been there for 35 years because I treat them well and they've turned on me because pro bono attorneys have taken them over and promised them no rent increases. And I can't pay the bills because my buildings are older and I can no longer do the things that need to be done in my buildings. I built a little multi-family housing unit over here hoping I wouldn't be around Mountain View. Even though I had to keep managing over there and now it's followed me. It is a Trojan horse. It will ruin your community. It will become divisive between tenants and landlords. It's not the way to solve the problem. Supply and demand is the only solution to this. We have a housing shortage and we cannot fix it on the backs of landlords. It's a community problem. The landlord should not be required to fix it. And please take that into consideration. This will not work. Thank you. Hello, my name is Matt. I'm a homeowner here in Santa Cruz, relatively new homeowner. My wife, born and raised in the Seabright area. I'm here today to encourage you not to implement the just cause ordinance. I took the time today to tediously read through the 510 pages of public correspondence published on the city's website in response to this matter. I counted all 489 emails sent to the council and of those emails, 474 emails specifically urged the council not to enact the just cause ordinance. That's 96% of the 13 emails calling for rent control protections. Few of them actually identified. You can go ahead and start. I just want to let you know when, please just allow him to speak so that his time is his time and every individual who wants to speak will have their time as well. So please go ahead. The 13 emails calling for rent control protections. Few of them actually identified just cause evictions ordinances, which is what we're reviewing today. Instead focusing on the high cost of rent and rent increases, which is a separate matter. Are you listening to the community that you represent? Renters and landlords all want a stable environment, but how can this happen when the rules keep changing? Council previously instituted a mandatory rent freeze that was supposed to expire after the election if Measure M didn't pass. It didn't and now we're here reviewing the same language that was opposed placing controls on one's property. I believe that some limit on rent increase is something that we can work together and work through and be agreed upon. But the just cause eviction language copied and pasted verbatim for Measure M is some of the most divisive for the community by hastily invoking major controls over one's property. Retroactively denying a homeowner move in if a tenant has rented for five years is ludicrous. The end date. Thank you. Hello, my name is Robert Corvors. I'm a tenant here in Santa Cruz and I want to applaud the council for starting this session by proposing a community process to protect tenants and to protect the community and stabilize the community from the kinds of effects that we get when there's high tenant turnover and when tenants don't feel like they can even be a part of this community. So I applaud you for that. I don't have that much faith that a consensus will be easily reached and there are two reasons for that. One, because we're talking about a consensus that would naturally include tenants, but I don't see a lot of tenants in the room and I suspect that's because tenants don't currently feel protected enough to even engage in a process like this. I don't think you can have a process like the one that's proposed without an interim ordinance that protects tenants. Two, I hear a lot of landlords as well as other people saying time and time again throughout the election season. Well, I would support tenant protections. I would support rent control, but not this. I would tweak it like this. I would change it like that. And yet every time the same people come up here and try out the same talking points, regardless of what's actually under consideration by the way, and oppose every effort to protect tenants. So I don't think some of the people who are participating are participating in good faith, but I do believe in the council that was elected. I do think I know what your values are. If not, everyone shares those values in this community. And so I hope you will do what you were elected to do. Next speaker. Thank you. And my name is Mark Agnello. And I grew up here. I went to Santa Cruz High School. Lifeguard with Tom who was just up here on the main beach 16 years and went through the nursing program, Gabriel. And I was able to get a rental. And I just wanted to reiterate is my understanding that the council is poised to adopt almost all the extreme provisions and measure in the voters rejected by over 60% just last fall. As a constituent, I expect the council to remember and respect the majority's vote and not force through new rent control or just cause eviction measures without having public discussions with, you know, we're doing. However, it's my understanding that the city council, council plans December 4th established to require the landlords to give tenants 90 days warning before evicting them due to litigation. And, you know, I only donated 20 bucks to, you know, the measure against them. But I have a pretty good feeling that almost everyone that's come up here is willing to donate like I'm willing to donate 200 bucks right now for litigation. And I just hate to see it go that way. But you know what? I feel, you know, there's no doubt it will that we voted. We can vote again. But if we vote and you guys turn it over, you know, what are we going to do, right? I'm, yeah, I'm complete. All right, our next speaker please. Hi there, my name is Stacy Falls. I'm a renter in the city of Santa Cruz. It's a little hard for me to be up here right now to talk about rental issues because less than a week ago I was served a notice to vacate my home of 12 years. And, man, 12 years, you know, we've planted gardens, we've planted fruit trees five days before I got the notice I buried my cat in the backyard. So, you know, like I would love to buy a house and set down roots and know that a 30-year mortgage is going to protect me and allow me the luxury of being able to have a stable life. But I, who can afford, who can afford 20% down when the average housing price is $900,000? I can't, I'm a teacher. I can't afford that. So the best I can do is rent and rent from a good landlord. My landlord probably would have told you that she's a good landlord and she takes care of her tenants. Less than a year ago she told me she had no intention of evicting me and that she cares about having stable responsible renters and that she cares about having stable community members and that, you know, having good teachers is important to her. And here I am, I'm out of a house. What do I do? You know, what are we going to do? What are you going to do for me? So, you know, please pass this so that we can have a community conversation without people like me being in fear of retaliation for speaking out. And please get rid of the, like, sole rental property exemption. My landlord only owns one property, but she is not struggling. She owns two properties worth over $2 million in this town. She can handle it. Thank you. Excuse me. I want to just again remind everybody that each person has their time to speak. And we will hear from everybody who wants to speak here this evening and to allow the person to speak without any disruption. I sincerely ask you to please do that. So, go ahead. My name is Dave Willis. And what I've been hearing is like a lot of words. Like, it's obvious to me that some people do not know or understand how serious this problem is, like talking about hiring somebody as a consultant. We got activists here who can tell you the information that I guess you're asking. And if you don't already have that information, after all of these years, look outside the window. The problem is here, it's now. You want to pay somebody, you've got activists, pay them. This is how I see it. You get seven people, one from each category or three. And you, let's say like you have three homeless advocates, three from the other side and one person in the neutral. Get them in the room. Let them come up with some writings because I'm figuring that we can all get along and we can be smart enough to figure something out. And we need action now. Yesterday, people are hurting. They're hurting. Now, we walk around with worries. We don't need those worries. Let us put something else positive in here without emotion. People going to the moon, et cetera. People should be smart enough. We don't need nobody be talking about consulting two weeks, three weeks or three months. We need action now. Thank you. Thank you. A preschool teacher and a renter for over a year and a half since I moved to Santa Cruz, I have lived in fear. Fear that kept me from speaking up till now. My old landlord, who I lived with, had mental issues. Something I never knew until recently. So I never knew who I was going home to. Yeah, I did know who I had to go home to harassment and his messes, which he demanded my roommates and I to clean up after him. I am here to urge you to support just cause of eviction so others don't have to live with that kind of living situation due to current renting laws or even face eviction threats because one does not have good vibes to the house. Welcome new council members and congratulations to our new mayor and vice mayor. My name is Carol Paul Hamas and I also was a single parent who worked two jobs to buy my house and was lucky enough to build an EDU for my parents for the end of their lives, which I now run out as a single rental to a UCSC professor. I also worked for the County Office of Education developing career training programs for at-risk youth. We made tons of decisions about changing programs. We never made any decision in the absence of data. The city does not have any data on actual rent increases. I'm not talking about Zillow. I'm talking about real data on actual current tendencies as well as new ones. There is also no data on evictions. City council previously voted against conducting a study of the potential impacts of the passage of measure M and when discussing rent stabilization just prior to the election council's decision was to wait and let the voters decide. Well, the voters did decide. And now in spite of election results that rejected measure M2 to 1 you're still considering just cause evictions, which in my opinion was the primary reason M failed in the first place. Making laws in the absence of data results in bad legislation with unintended consequences and will set up the city for expensive litigation. The overarching goal is to increase the availability and affordability of housing. Don't lose sight of that. If you continue to alienate housing providers Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Next speaker. So Bula Bula, which is a Pacific Islander ceremonial term for the Kava ceremony, which I've now been a part of this week. Well, I do enjoy smoking camels in the pinch. I'm definitely a Marlboro man. Marlboro headquarters now has $4 discounts. Every Sunday it is. I think it is every week on your phone. PayPal, Apple, e-pal, whatever. You can get $4 and Marlboro discounts. The word exemptions really in my experience with government service brings back memories of you have no idea how big a meeting can be with the FAA. None. A very impressive picture would be to go like Google Images FAA meeting and you will be stunned at the machinery that is represented in a FAA meeting. Anyway, that goes back to my years of Colonel Comer right after Y2K. Really what I want to talk about in my 17 seconds is that it's so great working for a lawyer as a boss. Debutant status really is not the issue. The issue is what was done in law school. When your boss is a great lawyer, everything gets so much easier. My name is Henry Lopez. I have a friend named Greg Nielsen. I have a friend named Greg Nielsen in Oregon. I never knew the guy. I never met the guy in my life, but one time I had money in my parking and stuff, but my friend broke his wrist working for him. I decided to help him because I felt bad for his wrist. I was like, dude, I'll cover your spot or whatever. It doesn't matter what kind of job it is. Then this guy was actually getting evicted at a 30-day notice. He had lived there for 30 years. His whole lifestyle was just totally natural straight from Hawaii, which was cool. When I first seen him and met him, he was just so pleased to have someone actually there to help him move his stuff. And some people don't have money here to move their stuff. And I watched his body. I don't know if you've ever seen someone's chest plate break and their heart stick out of it from the actual pain that they feel from losing everything their love and that energy just being ripped away from them at one moment. When I visualized that, I gave him a hug and I felt his chest click. I felt his heart heal. And honestly, if all these people are going to be gone and lost, that's what they're feeling. Thank you. Hello, my name is Tom Donahue. When I urged the city council to pass the ordinance, but in order to ensure that tenants have equal protection under the law, the single property exemption must be removed. The purpose of this ordinance is to protect tenants, not their landlords, who already hold all the power in that relationship. This exemption would give those landlords free license to upend their tenants' lives, most often for no other reason than to take in even greater profits. And there's been a lot of talk about the supply problem. Well, if you really want to address that, then the city needs to address the fact that too much of the housing supply is being artificially restricted by rampant speculation in the housing market, which is consuming what little available supply there is to be used for something other than its intended purpose, as a shelter for human beings. Far too many homes and rental units are being kept off the market because that restricted supply drives prices higher. And the lamentations about pulling rental units off the market is nothing but a terroristic threat. Essentially, housing providers are threatening to exacerbate this crisis if they don't get their way so they can keep their renters on a puppet string. I agree that we need more respect. Respect for tenants' rights, including the right to live in a stable, affordable environment, as well as their property rights to not be built out of their last dollar every month. And if you want statistics, my rent increased 30% in four years. I have now been forced to move and pay $200 a month more than that in order to avoid another $560 rent increase, which my landlord is putting the unit up for rent for now. Evening, Councilmembers, my name is Rick Longinati. I was named to the Water Supply Advisory Committee at a time when it was a really contentious issue around desalination in this city. And those 14 members were stakeholders from pro, desal, anti-desal, business community, environmental community, and other residents of our city. A lot of people didn't think that there was much hope from that committee of reaching any kind of agreement. My group included, we were the Alternates to Desalination Group. There was a lot of skepticism as to what could come out of it. We were unanimous in our conclusion out of that committee and our recommendations to the City Council, which were then adopted. Something kind of magical happened and it needed professional facilitation in order to do that. That's a really important ingredient for success and what you're considering tonight. It needed expert staffing. I would suggest to you that if you're going to do a task force to protect tenants, that you get expertise in how to do that. And be able to inform that committee and the public about what is done elsewhere, what different kinds of innovative things can be done so that we can have a homegrown version of a tenant protection sale of recommendations to come back to you. Thank you very much. Hello, my name is Michael Levy and I have lived in Santa Cruz since 1979. Most of that time as a renter I recently was able to buy a mobile home but I understand the vulnerability of being a renter, especially now in this market. And it's clear that something needs to be done to protect renters. And it's, I would like to address one point that's been raised, which is that the thing that can help renters is has something to do with supply and demand. I wish that were the case but I don't think it's true. Housing gets built very slowly in this community. There are many, many people that need housing and cannot afford it here. And the idea that housing, especially because most housing that gets built is not affordable and we have not been able to change that yet, it's never going to correct the problem purely by supply and demand. So we need some kind of regulation to protect renters. I think that in this situation that we find ourselves in, which is extremely complex, there's no way to have, there's no simple solution to this. We need an intelligent body such as a task force to study this and to take input from landlords as well as tenants and other stakeholders into consideration. I support what the last speaker said about something similar to the water supply advisory committee with professional facilitation. Thank you. Members of the community and city council, we've heard about the need for data and I think that's certainly clear. How many evictions, how many, the real issue for me is how high have our good mom and Poc landlords raised their rent in the last few years? Surely the people in this audience who honestly have that information can give it to us and yet not one landlord has been specific about that. Now this committee needs to find out just what's going on around that issue. What are the real costs that landlords claim justify eviction raises? I'm sure there are real costs, but we haven't heard any specific stats given about the reasons justifying the rent raises in the last few years. So if there is such a huge hardship here, it needs to be documented. And I think that this commission, if that's what you're doing, needs to do that. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Steve Snar. I've been a renter in Santa Cruz since 2001. I was served with an eviction notice last week. It is definitely an immediate need for lots of renters as it has been for years to have eviction protections and just cause eviction. Just saying the words doesn't make it the same if you formulate it in a different way than Measure M. So I hope that you pass these temporary ones and work with a task force bringing a lot of diverse people together to have a long-term solution. I also wanted to comment. I appreciate, Mayor and Vice Mayor, your opening to this and calling for civility and all that. I understand and hosting a public meeting. And it's hard if people are all shouting at each other. But it also struck me to hear about that we all need to have respect for each other. And we all need to be able to feel safe and part of the community because I don't feel like that as a renter. And I think thousands of other people who are renters don't feel that. And Measure M, I was a part of that. Nobody said all landlords are bad. No one said that. No one said this was an attack on landlords. It was about protecting tenants because they need protection. And mom and pop landlords are not the victim here. They have much more power and money. We need to bring all the sides together. We also need to be realistic that there's some fundamentally different interests there. And I hope that at the end of the day some form of protection that both keeps costs down and protects people like me against arbitrary evictions is passed. Hi. Good evening, council. My name is Clayton. I am a renter in Santa Cruz. And so Prop 10 passed within the city by a majority and Measure M failed. What does this mean? This means that people support rent control, but just every person had some specific reason that they didn't like Measure M. So how do we fix that? We go in with the pieces of Measure M one at a time on a temporary basis just like this. We pass and we, you know, see how they work, see what people actually do, see how people react. And then we can figure out like, okay, how does it actually affect the supply, the market, etc. So we do pieces one at a time until we get something that doesn't work, then we repeal that. We don't just reject the idea of rent control. Another thing I wanted to point out is about this issue of reducing the housing stock. We don't really care about the housing stock because we want a certain number of units. If we remove everybody who currently lives in them, right, if we sacrifice the people who live here now by letting them be evicted for no reason, then there's really no point in keeping that rental on the market for some new person. It's exactly as damaging as if we took it off the market and sold it to somebody. So it's important we keep that in mind. The people who actually live in those units now are being evicted. They're being replaced by someone else. That would be the same no matter whether it was removed from the market or whether they just got evicted normally. So we'll have making it so they aren't evicted. Thank you. Sorry, we had a we had a thing, but your time is up now. Thank you. Hi, my name is Abby Samuels. I would like to give you respect. You mentioned that in your when you were put your openings speech or acceptance, whatever you want to call it. You mentioned it twice. So I know this is important for you. So I'm wondering if you could let people finish their sentences or their paragraphs when their pair buzzer goes off. That would be very respectful, especially since our time has been reduced to one and a half minutes. I would love to be respectful. I'm wondering since this is a known heated topic and a lot of people would show up, I believe it would be more respectful to have to have been prepared. And instead of kicking almost everyone out and separating us into the inside outside in the civic that maybe we could all be in the same room and prepare that would be extremely respectful. And there's a lot of people who aren't in this room that are outside as you can hear that are renters that are more poor because they have jobs or they can't they don't have time to sit around and get here at 6 p.m. So they can get here early. I'm a renter and I'm not poor. I tried buying a house though and was priced out by cash offers selling over the offer price. So I'm for the just cause eviction. I just have one issue that you brought up Justin about the nuisance complaint. My neighbor has been bringing up a lot of he's been trying to get me evicted and now I can't finish my paragraph. Thank you. Okay. Next speaker please. Hi, my name is Neil Langholz. Excuse me. Can you pause the time? Yes please. If you if you don't mind adjusting the microphone. My name is Neil Langholz. Voters opposed draconian measure M by nearly two to one. Just cause evictions are the most problematic and objectionable part of measure M by passing just cause evictions. The city council is abusing its power and ignoring the will of the people. This reckless action will create more uncertainty in the rental housing market and will accelerate the loss of rental housing already underway. And the correspondence to the council and mhj proponent describes losing her rental house. An owner who rented her house for years now chooses to exit the rental business and the home will likely be sold to an owner occupant. Had it not been for measure M, she may not be in this predicament. California state law permits people to exit the rental business by selling rentals. The city council cannot do anything to change that. Those behind the extreme rental laws are in fact going to hurt more renters than they help. According to the city of Santa Cruz housing element, renters depend on 8,000 rental houses. These can be converted to owner occupied use. The city has no ability to stop the evictions for the purpose of withdrawing from the rental market. Passing measure M will cause more of these evictions and the city council will be responsible. Thank you. Next speaker please. Good evening, Mayor Watkins and members of the new council. My name is Brennan and I'm here tonight in strong support of the temporary just cause ordinance before you. And that is enough. In the last few months we've seen far too many people thrown out of their homes in this city. I know tenants who have been evicted as obvious retaliation for their work for measure M as well as tenants of all political persuasions who have been confronted with crushing rent increases or eviction notices since the expiration of the temporary rent freeze back in December. While we work on long-term measures to address the housing crisis, keeping the status quo is simply not an acceptable option. The status quo is not working for tenants who every day are waiting for an eviction notice on their door in their mailbox. It's not working for students who plunge themselves into debt just to literally live in a room in this city until graduation hurting our mental health and academics. It's not working for seniors and people on fixed incomes who have no place else to go when evicted and can't just get a job or move away from their support services. The list goes on. This temporary just cause ordinance while it's obviously not a permanent fix will change that status quo enough to actually afford some meaningful protection to myself and all the tenants who are speaking to you tonight. Enough is enough. Let's pass this ordinance. And please think twice before you propose or adopt any weakening amendments that will leave tenants vulnerable. Please vote yes. Thank you. Hello, my name is Robert McNeil, homeowner here in Santa Cruz with an ADU that is currently not rented. So with all due respect, I really have to say that I feel it's really unconscionable that City Council is trying to go against the will of Santa Cruz community that's overwhelmingly expressed their opinion. Feel like it's something that basically makes me question the overall intention of what's going on. So I feel personally, you know, uncomfortable about that. And despite, you know, any moral ethical comments I could make, I mean, really realistically what it comes down to is economics at this level. Because of this, I'm keeping my rental unit off the market and to have an industry, you know, basic economics where that you're adding additional, you know, legislation and liability for me and I'm going to, you know, if I do decide to go back into the rental market and put it up for rent, I'm going to make sure I get top dollar for it, right? I'm going to make sure that I extremely selective of who I do and only, you know, rent to people that are willing to pay the most amount of money. So, I mean, overwhelmingly, despite all the, you know, objective evidence around it, it's definitely affecting the bottom line, the bottom line community for Santa Cruz. And, you know, it's a cottage community here. It's not some big city, you know, that we're looking at and it is, you know, homeowners that represent the largest portion of these things. And so, thank you. Good evening. My name is Mary Hesketh. We recently moved here. We had hoped to do the same thing as we did on the east coast by a property that needed a bunch of work, do that work, then rent out part of the house to help pay our mortgage. But we really are less and less inclined to do this since the Santa Cruz City Council seems bent on a mission to subsidize renters by enacting ordinances which are absolutely punitive to landlords. We are just working people like many of the renters you claim to be trying to protect. My husband is an elevator mechanic and I work on our rental properties. We can't risk the possibility the lease would essentially have no expiration date if the tenant decided they didn't want to leave. What if that tenant is just a bad fit to live in an apartment that shares a common wall in our home? Too bad. We just can't wait until the end of the legal lease and no harm, no foul go our separate ways. We are in effect stuck with that tenant forever. So it looks very much like your decisions are influencing at least one potential rental unit to never enter the market. And I'm sure that many other potential landlords all across the city are assessing the risk involved in making the same decision and passing these ordinances you're actually going to decrease the number of housing units on the market thereby hurting the renters you desire to protect. Hi, Council. My name is Kim Fleming. I'm also a local resident here and a landlord. I'm a teacher in the community as well and I also work part-time doing art and coaching because it is a very expensive place to live. I share a property with my brother and we are opposed to the ordinance. We have some wonderful tenants and we've also had some tenants that have given us quite a bit of trouble via pets, via noise, also doing things that are nuisance to other people in the adjoining building and the building next door. And I think it is a shame it does concern us as landlords that our rights are limited as far as evicting somebody that might be harmful to other tenants and neighbors. It is making us consider withdrawing that property as well and leaving the community. We don't want to do that. I have lots of friends that are fellow teachers and students and I know there's a housing shortage but it's a big concern for us and we're definitely opposed to it. Thank you. Leaving, Council. Well, there's something really kind of tragic going on tonight and its best emblem is just what's happening. Look at this. We're all sitting with our backs to each other and we're each telling you our own best story. My partner of 60-year-old was evicted from the west side by a nice landlord. She was homeless, 60-year-old working woman therapist. She lived with me for a year until she got subsidized housing. I have my story. It's a really bad story and we've heard them tonight. And I hear the mom and pops who work really hard. My dad was one of these people so I kind of know that perspective too. Why don't we just talk to each other? I think it's wonderful that you've presented to the community the opportunity at least to talk to each other, to have the kind of task force that DSAL had where it was a really strongly, clearly structured group where they had clear professional facilitation. At least they practically were locked in the room. They had to talk to each other and they were charged with reaching consensus. They couldn't just vote. We've got to get rid of this, win-lose model in our heads. Thank you and I have more to say. My name is Curtis Rolaford. 831-246-4242, 831-246-4242. My concern of being here, I'm hearing a lot of money, money, money. When we cut down all these trees, pollute the ocean like it is, what are we going to talk about then? I've been down the last few days. I know where all you rentals can get some free rent down on the riverfront, down by the levee. I've been working down there with the homeless people down there. They need all the help they can get. There's free rent down there and the people who are charging these folks for this high rent. Dude, bring it down a little bit. Have some love, compassion, empathy. I haven't heard any of that up in here. Anybody love anybody? Anybody thinking about anybody else outside of money? There's a way, if you pay me 3%, I can solve this problem. Right now, all I'm bringing up in here is my heart and soul. And I heard somebody talking about a handyman. I'm a handyman. I'm a landscaper. And I'm catching all kinds of blankety blank doing this. Even serving people and helping people. Hey, you guys, we got a long ways to go. Thank you. Hi, my name is Bill Welsh. And I just want to congratulate Drew Glover and Justin Cummings. I'm winning their election to get on the City Council. I also want to say that most of the people here are well-meaning, but they were deceived by all the propaganda from the opponents of Measure M. We're talking about the California Apartment Association and the California Realtors Association. They spent over a million dollars attacking Measure M and Measure H. And a lot of what they said was a fraud, was lies, was fear. And no, it's not against the landlords. I'm not against the landlords. You're not. And I just want to say that, you know, that we all need to work together. I've seen the homeless camp, you know, up by the river. I go there. I'm starting to go there on a daily basis, bring them food, bring them clothing, and to sleep out there in this kind of weather is horrible. And what we need to do is that we need to stop these evictions. We need to have rent control and then closing. I just want to urge you to pass this resolution, and thank you very much for your time. So we're in a housing crisis. There's simply not enough rental stock, not enough rentals. And I hear a lot of people removing, you hear stories about landlords removing rentals. Landlords removing rentals from the market. Just the more somebody said earlier, the more restrictions you put on rentals, the less rentals you're going to have to put restrictions on. Hi, I'm Susan Caron. I just drove from over the hill in the dark and rain to be here and speak before you tonight after spending the afternoon with a four-year-old and a six-year-old granddaughter. So if I stop my foot and glitter comes out and I wind a little bit, please excuse me. So here we are again, and I'm really not sure why this debate is continuing. The vast majority of the electorate of voters in Santa Cruz voted Measure M down. The components of rent control which carried the most controversy and divided our city are the very ones you're still trying to push forward. Why is that? We put our trust in the process, and some of you seem to be ignoring that. This causes many voters great distrust. And if you don't stop, it'll take a very long time to win that trust back and to reunify our city. I know you're tired of hearing the same messages from opposing sides on this issue. I understand that. What I hope you decide is to show some respect for the process and for the voters and to use a collaborative process to determine what is right for this issue. You have available to you scores of people who are literally experts in rental housing, whether as owners or managers, some on a small scale and some as a business, on a slightly larger scale. None of us appearing at repeated city council meetings are greedy and heartless, as characterized and criticized. We do not unjustly evict tenants. We honor the conditions and the ends of leases as required by law. Hi, my name is Sasha, and I want to appreciate everyone who's come up here and talked about coming together and listening to each other and finding a way to have consensus around this issue, because we do have a housing crisis. And I think that this ordinance will give us more time while protecting tenants to come up with some solutions and hear from both landlords and from tenants. I myself am a tenant. I supported Measure M, but I couldn't vote in it because I was living in Capitola at the time. I didn't understand how important just cause eviction protection was till the end of October when I myself also received an eviction. And our landlord told us many times we were the most incredible tenants. When he evicted us, he said we were like family, which is funny. It was really stressful. It was really hard to move during the holidays as well. And another point is the market. We were there for five and a half years. The market then and now was so different. And so anytime people are getting evicted, it causes hardship. It causes a lot of stress. We're paying almost $700 more than we were paying a couple months ago. And so it's a real challenge. And I just want to say that I would love for this to pass just so that we have time to hear from everyone in this community and find solutions. Thank you. I'm Daryl Darling. I am fully conscious of the fact that this ordinance was passed because we were facing a housing crisis passed by the council that just concluded their terms. And it's carried over in order to stabilize until we are able to improve on the problems that Measure M had. I was a signer on the ballot measure. I'm proud to have signed that. I fully recognized difficulties that that measure had. But the crisis and the potential inaction really overtook my reluctance to sign Measure M. I'm confident that this council has heard what you need to hear. We'll move forward judiciously and fairly. And I'm confident of this city to likewise move forward with genuine care and creativity. Congratulations on your elections. The two of you were elected specifically on Measure M. That means the community really wanted action on the housing crisis. Thank you. If I can't, Bonnie, before we get going, I wanted to see who is still interested in speaking at this time. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I know that we have some folks in the Tony Hill room. If there's not a whole bunch there, please let them know they'd be welcome to come fill in. Okay. Okay, Bonnie, we'll go ahead and restart the time. Thank you. My name is Ben, and I would like to just thank you for the opportunity to talk. And I just had made some observations. And it seems like generally there's a lot of fear around this issue, because everyone just wants a nice place to live, somewhere to call home. And both for renters and landlords. And something that I did keep hearing for people who are against this ordinance. Where that they have had issues with evicting problem tenants. And I just wanted to remind everyone that this isn't going to make that more difficult. If there is just cause, you can evict a tenant. It's only trying to protect people who just want a home. That's all. Hi, everybody. My name is Danny. I grew up in Santa Cruz, born and raised, as they say. So I've been listening tonight. And again, like I say this every time I speak here, it's really jarring listening to a lot of people come up and speak with a lot of flowery language directly to protect their profits and protect their property. Well, a bunch of other people come up here and cry and beg for survival, right? Like there's just such a difference between those two kinds of public comment. And it's really tough to see that. So I obviously support this just cause eviction proposal, because we're about to engage in a mediation process, which I also support a process to create some kind of rent control measure. And we have to fix the deeply unequal power dynamics that are currently in play here if we want to have a real process to build something that works for everyone. If you look tonight, there's a lot of landlords here and probably a lot less tenants, because it's not safe for us. And if it's not safe for us to come speak somewhere like this, how are we going to engage in a process? How, when they have all of this leverage over our lives, I don't see how it's possible for that to be fair. And I think that's deeply related to the election we just had. No one's mentioning how the opposition to measure M put almost $800,000 down in a city of 35,000 voters. I have a lot of friends that do organizing in Illinois, and they don't, even in Chicago, the middle of Chicago, they don't deal with ratios like that, of that much money against that much voters. So I don't see how that is actually a democratic process that we should respect. Hello, council. My name's Owen. I obviously am also, I also live in San Cruz. I'm a tenant. I'm also an organizer. And my main political focus is in attempting to reduce harm in this community. So keeping that in mind, if I had to choose between policy that keeps somebody in their home, keeps them from being arbitrarily evicted, or protects someone from getting their flooring damaged, I would choose a policy that keeps someone in their home. Luckily, in the case of the ordinance in question tonight, those two things aren't mutually exclusive. There's an exemption in the case of material damage to the property, which would allow for that person to be evicted. And so keeping that in mind, I think we need to step into this decision-making process ethically. When it comes to mediating, competing interests, we need to keep in mind which party bears the greatest degree of harm. Tenants in this community are hurting. We know this. We know that there is an asymmetrical relationship that tenants are hurting generally more than homeowners. All right, so over mediating between those two competing interests, we need to side on the group that is hurting the most. So listen to tenants and make your decisions accordingly. Hi there, my name is Liv. I'm with Students United with Renters. We've heard a lot tonight, really sad stories from landowners, landlords who are sad because their right to profit and their income is being challenged by our right to survival. And I just want to remind you that it's their choice to make it so their income is reliant on someone's well-being and safety. Like that's a choice and it's really frustrating to hear them being like sharing so much sadness about how they're not allowed to throw around their wealth as they please when we're talking about people's right like survival and comfort and right to live with their families. And these people fear losing profit. It's like it's not an equal playing field. These two conversations shouldn't be had, shouldn't be compared in the same context. And we're still here having this conversation because tenants still need protection. And these measures were written by tenants and we'll keep telling you what we need. Thank you. Hello Council and congratulations to all three of you for being elected. Nice to have new faces up here. I'm a former employee of the City of Santa Cruz and I've seen personally the struggle of fellow city workers and how hard it is for them to afford to live in this city. And the ones that are not commuting from far away are literally just clinging on with everything they can to stay in this town. And so having a protection against evictions that are not just cause is I think extremely important when you look at workforce and keeping people who are working here in their housing. I've heard a lot of speakers today talk about Measure M. This isn't Measure M. We're not talking about rent control here. This is just a small piece out of it. And what's really important, another piece that people kept bringing up is the universal building code. This is a federal code that deals with occupancy limits has nothing to do with what we're talking about today. And let's just keep that in mind. Let's try to be fact based as much as possible. I think that a temporary ordinance is reasonable. I think it's extremely reasonable. I think it closely resembles non-temporary ordinances in other cities throughout this state. If you look, the city of Glendale, the city of San Jose, the city of East Palo Alto, the city and county of San Francisco, the city of Emeryville, the city of West Hollywood, the city of Santa Monica, the city of San Diego, the city of Hayward, the city of Petaluma, the city of Pacifica, the city, another small coastal town, the city of Fremont, and others all have just cause evictions protection. So let's pass it. Okay, next speaker. Hello council, members of the community. My name is Zov Hirschfield. I'm a tenant advocate in the community and was very involved with the campaign for Measure M. The first thing I'll say is that it's really hard to be up here. I'm sure that's true for everybody who has come up to this podium tonight. I want to speak to two things and I'll try to be brief. The first is the question of whether democratic process is being followed. And I'll just repeat what Mr. Darling said, that two of the new council members who are sitting up here in front of me today were elected saying they were full supporters of Measure M. I fail to understand how pushing for further tenant protections that are not Measure M, such as this just cause ordinance which strips major aspects of Measure M out of its law, such as the ever contentious relocation assistance, is a miscarriage of the democratic process. When voters heard you saying you supported this law and still decided to put you into these seats, the other thing I'll talk about, and I only have 20 seconds, is the question of safety which also has been bought up many times. And I'll just say that I was told by a friend that my ex landlord called into a radio show that he was speaking on when he was speaking in support of Measure M and said that I was evicted from my home because of activism for tenants and on part of Measure M. So please consider the just cause ordinances in that context. Yeah, my name is Al. I'm a tenant here in Santa Cruz, have been for the last three years. I'm quite nervous and I'd just like to name that, but I would like to share anecdotal evidence of the very unequal power dynamics between tenants and landlords. I've lived in my current apartment for the last since September and the day after I moved in, I had not yet signed a lease. I had submitted my rent for the month which had not been deposited, so I had no rights as a tenant. My landlord came without providing 24 hours notice, inspected the apartment for I think our fuse box. It was very invasive. I was very vulnerable. Two weeks before that, she had tried to increase our rent. I live in a duplex and so she had tried to increase our rent more than the allotted amount under the temporary rent freeze and when my housemate confronted her about it, she yelled at him and still continues to refuse to talk to him. As soon as she could after the election, she issued a notice that we would be receiving an 8% rent increase and we had a Measure M sign in our apartment. I was involved in the Measure M campaign and I live in constant fear of an eviction. So please pass this. Bonnie, before we get started, if those of you who haven't spoken yet are interested in speaking, please do feel free to line up to my left and we will continue. They're all here. Okay, thank you. Thank you. My name is Marta Aguilar. I'm a resident here of Santa Cruz and the temporary rent or protection expired on December 12th and I received an eviction notice dated December 12th. Just like I said, I would when I was here last time. Housing is a basic right and the just cause eviction, not being considered an emergency action is appalling. If rent or protection is put into place according to the process you outlined tonight, those of us given eviction notices in December fall through the cracks. We get left out of anything you put into place. That actually protects renters. So please keep that in mind. I would love for you to reconsider making this an emergency action or moving on it quicker than you proposed tonight. I think there can be a win-win. I think leases can be honored and I think renters can be protected. Leases are legal documents and I can't understand why it's so difficult to have them enforced and honored. You've asked us to play nice tonight and you're asking us to play nice on a basic need. I'm asking you to stop playing nice and to be bold in the actions of protecting renters, your most valuable and vulnerable members of this community. Thank you. I want to speak about this in a way that's slightly different. As a salesperson who had been forced into a sales career because the mental health field was absolutely privatized and more or less demolished by Ronald Reagan in the mid-80s and we have never recovered, I was about to embark on a real estate career and took the requisite courses after selling art in La Jolla, but I realized that I could not quite fully get behind the idea of property ownership. And it's not that I'm completely opposed to it, but here's why I'm talking about that tonight. We have just seen one of the most unfair, unjust, imbalanced, absolutely not a democratic campaign. That was won by money. We have no, what the community would have, what would have come out of a process that wasn't so completely polluted, adulterated, and become something that was so oppressive. I just want to end that I resist the current state of violence and oppression and this battle is about the third massive battle in my life where I just want to say I want human beings to evolve to a place that's remotely like where we can come to. Thank you. Thank you. Pardon me, I have to read off my phone. At the risk of a little over bravado here, I'm the most qualified person in this room to talk about evictions and I'm going to focus on the word emergency. Why? I'm a registered process server here in town and I work for a company that serves 70% of the active attorneys. So being active in this housing debate and rental debate, a year ago when the rental freeze, rent controls becoming very prevalent, I started keeping my own metrics. Let me read to you some. So I started keeping metrics on my landlord tenant serves when the rent control, sorry, I'm repeating myself. Okay, so given the histrionics of the pro just cause reviction camp, I expected a spike in notices in UDs before the rent freeze and certainly after December 6th when the county confirmed the defeat of measure M. Nothing of that sort happened. There was no change in the tempo of my three day notices, 30, 60 or UDs. Let me give you some real statistics here. Now I don't claim to serve the course all the notices and all the UDs of course, but it is a representative sample. I served 38 three-day notices, 32 for non-payment of rent and six release breaches. I served 15, 30 or 90, 30, 60 or 90-day notices mostly for landlords who passed away and the heirs who wish to simply sell the property or owner simply wishes to sell or move back in. Thank you. Okay, that's your time. Thank you. Next speaker. I'm going to read my, thank you. You'll have your time. My name is Stefan Bianchi and just listening to this, I don't know if this would be, I don't know if this would be... Go ahead and pause the time. Go ahead. Okay, it's now your time to speak so I'll ask that we please let you have your time. So I don't know if this is legal or practical, but it seems to me that we have specific people that have been, you know, have lost their, their, their rents and have been put out on the street, so to speak. And it would be very interesting if you could find out, you know, if you could call for these people to, to, you know, tell you their stories and then find out what the landlord story is on it so that then, you know, specifically why these people are, are, are getting kicked out and, and, you know, what, what the reasons are so that then you can solve those problems. You can either work with the landlords or just find out sort of what's going on because otherwise it seems to me like you're, you're trying to solve a problem but you're not quite sure what is causing or what it is. Thanks. Good evening council and welcome to our, our newest three members. I also undertook the citizens initiative to review all 576 pages of public correspondence as of 445 p.m. today and I think this data bears repeating. After subtracting out for 17 duplicate letters and accounting for 16 letters with multiple signatories, I counted two neutral positions, 19 pro-JCE positions and 535 signatories that express concerns ranging from mild disagreement to horror with a proposed ordinance modification. Whether a policy is temporary or permanent, the objective should always be to produce policy directives that are thoughtfully designed and well positioned to succeed. As a community, we have not yet undertaken the due diligence effort commensurate with the issue at hand. We lack the hard data we need to understand the scope and extent of the problem and have not yet researched or reviewed best practices designed to tackle the issue we face. In the absence of unbiased data, I fear that it would be virtually impossible to measure the effectiveness of any policy modification. Anecdotal information no matter what the source should never take the place of empirical data. We need robust objective data that would get to the heart of such questions as exactly how many rental units would be subject to the ordinance modification. How many renters have received eviction notices since December 11th that would have been spared by adoption of the ordinance? How many residents support rent caps that are opposed to JCE or the establishment of a rent board? Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Mike Paul Hamas. I'm a teacher at Santa Cruz High School and I just want to say first off it's really cool that two of the City Council members know me. I'm really glad about that. I'm really glad to see you guys up there and congratulations to the people who were most recently elected. I would just like to address the issue that rents are high in this city because landlords are concerned about their profits. What I would like to bring up is the fact that the most probably the thing that owns the most property in Santa Cruz is the banks. Okay, so let's start there. Mortgages are what mortgages are and if you're lucky enough to have a home, right, you pay it. Otherwise you lose that property to the banks. Okay, and so for me myself, I got really lucky. My grandmother died and she left me a life insurance policy and I had a down payment for a house and I threw myself on the mercy after being bought out with cash with other homes. I threw myself on the mercy of this one seller and he took my offer and I got really, really lucky and I used to rent my house out for $1,000 a month. It's on the west side, which I think is a pretty good price and I didn't raise it for three years and then once Measure M came about, I let the lease expire and the tenant moved on and I haven't rented my house since and the reason for that was it just caused eviction, you know, protections. I just I just want to bring that to your attention. Thanks. Hello Council members. My name is Rosanna Bruni and I own a number of rentals here in Santa Cruz. While my preference would be that you do not pass this measure this evening, if you're going to consider it, there are three modifications I would like you to take into account. One is I strongly support Sandy Brown's amendment. I think it's reasonable and fair. The second issue is has to do with the number of tenants in a unit. I cannot tolerate as a landlord the prospect that my 1600 square foot house could have up to 20 or more people living in it. So I would like to suggest a reasonable standard that's used in the property management field, which I was a part of for 10 years here in this town, which is two people per bedroom plus one. That is a reasonable standard to be held to as a landlord. And the other item I'd like you to consider doing differently is having to do with sub tenants. I just agreed to a sub tenant situation with one of my rentals where one student was leaving and another student came on board. I'd like for it to be stated that if not be unreasonably withheld, that a landlord provide his permission that it not be unreasonably withheld instead of just giving it carte blanche. Thank you. Evening. Congratulations, new council members. I just want to be clear that I think that most people I've said this before have not enthusiasm, but they have an understanding that this is a difficult situation for everyone. And most people that I know are not against rent stabilization of some reasonable form. However, just cause eviction regulations are one of the main and very specific reasons voters rejected measure M. I was going to restate the letter I sent, but I hope you'll read it on your own and offer some statistics to dispel the myths being pedaled about rent control ideas being proposed by M supporters and how they compare to other cities. Richmond city ordinance, ADUs and any homes exempted under Costa Hawkins are exempt from being controlled units. Santa Monica city ordinance exempts most units for which construction occurred was completed after April 10, 1979, as well as for most single family homes, condominiums and owner occupied properties that have three or fewer units. Mountain View exempts all homes built after 2016, all properties of two units or less, all single family dwellings, ADUs, condominiums and duplexes. Oakland city ordinance exempts all units first occupied after 1983. Berkeley city ordinance exempts most owner occupied duplexes. Alameda allows no fault eviction of subsequent tenants. Rent is no more than 5% more than previous tenants agreement. East Palo Alto exempts single family dwellings, homes occupied after 88. Anyway, there are many, many different approaches. Bonnie, let's go ahead and pause it. I want to see who in is still currently sitting that is interested in speaking. If you wouldn't mind raising your hand. Okay. So as far as I can tell, then that would make you with the blue shirt our last speaker or are you speaking, standing up to speak? Oh, you are. Okay. And a few more. And then a few more coming up. Okay. Okay. Okay. So you'll be our last, are you going to plan to, are you planning to stay seated at this time? Okay. So we'll have you as our last speaker. And I believe that covers everybody. Okay. Please go ahead. Okay. Thank you. My name is Paul Hodge. And I want to ask each and every one of you a question and congratulations on your election. But I want to ask you a question. Do you know what no means? Do you know what no means? Do you know what no means? Justin, do you know what no means? Cynthia, Sandy, do you know what no means? If someone says no to you, do you respect no? Do you go further? Do you stop when someone says no? This is a problem. Do you think the voters are stupid? Do you believe the arguments that they were bamboozled by thousands of dollars? And it's the same voters? Okay. It's the same voters. Please. We have a right to hear everybody speak, whether we agree with them or not. Thank you. And everybody will get their time and please proceed. It's the same voters that voted for you. Maybe not the same numbers that voted no on Measure M, but they voted you over your opponents. So please respect democracy. Please stick to what the people asked for. Let's not do a Donald Trump in this great city of Santa Cruz and declare the national emergency that we're going to just have Measure M again. Thank you. I do respect you. And thank you for listening to me. Let's make a comment. Why don't we go ahead and pause at this point? I want to remind you to that everybody has a right to speak without feeling harassed or threatened by coming and speaking before us. And we will all take your time to speak. It is now nearly 10 o'clock, so I will ask that we have, after you, Cynthia, you, sir, sitting down, you'll be our last speaker. Then we will take a short break and we will come back for action and deliberation. Okay. Go ahead. Thank you. My name is Andy. I am a renter and I came here and I really wanted to listen to the landlords and I did and I listened to their fears and their concerns and I also listened to the other people who, like myself, are afraid of not being able to live here anymore. And I wasn't going to speak, but I came in from outside and I sat down next to the person who had four minutes to speak on behalf of, you know, not passing this. And while the people who were on the verge of tears speaking about their fears, this person spent their entire time looking at Facebook on their cell phone and I want to encourage the landlords to think and feel and hear the voices just like I have tried to feel the concern and pain of the people who are landlords. I don't know if I misspoke myself. To hear the pain of the renters and to try to feel that and not ignore it as I have tried to hear their point of view. Thank you. Good evening all of you and I've got to hand it to you all. I wouldn't want your jobs for anything and I've been a business owner here for 40 years. I came here when I was 19 with my wife. I've spoken to you before. I graduated UCSC when I was in 75 and I've been working ever since. I'm 65 now and I'm still working. We managed to get a place that we have but I want you to take one of the issues that everybody had with M and it wasn't being bamboozled by big money. The issue about being able to sublant or bring multiple family members in is a huge freaking issue. Think about if that gives every potential tenant the incentive to lie and say they're single and as soon as they're in bring in a whole family, a whole group of family members and in my case I own an old Victorian that's divided up and it was never intended originally to be a whole home or multiple houses and it is now. So imagine having a whole family up above when you were only expecting two people suddenly you have six and then that the other tenants down below having the coming to me and saying hey I can't live with this. So there's issues the ramifications to this letting people move in without without any ramifications. Thank you. Thank you council members for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Linda Chattin and I'm a property manager. I represent landlords in the city of Santa Cruz and I also own my own rental properties. I oppose the just cause eviction ordinance like the majority of individuals that have spoken tonight. I support the elephant in the room which is increasing the city's housing stock. I ask each of you city council members if you could tell me the number of increased rental housing that's planned in the city of Santa Cruz. I would ask you if you could tell me how many housing development projects are in the planning stage in 2019. I would ask that you tell me how many projects are in the implementation stage for 2019. I would like to know how many rental units will be built in 2019 2020 and 2021. And I would like to say that this is the real issue on the table that we need to address and I haven't heard an answer regarding this issue. Thank you. Good evening council members. My name is Rose Marie McNair and it is always in my heart that people get along and understand things and one of the things that's very very important to me and to everyone is understanding clarity and making sure that the law is being followed. It occurred to me that real estate deals with a lot of contracts and a lease is a contract just as the sale of property is a contract. When I first took the test some 42 years ago we had to learn about the statute of frauds which said that all of those things have to be in writing because that way everybody understands what's going on and what is correct. If there is a law for a lease you simply can't have a third party come in and usurp that the agreement is between two parties generally speaking it has a beginning and an end. With this just cause particular thing I think that it brings up a problem. Whenever a problem arises it becomes a legality that could you know cause problems all along the way for both landlord the tenant and the city. So I think we need to review all of those things and make sure that things are in order and clear and that we're not usurping some law. Thank you very much. Hello and good evening. Yeah first of all if all of you needing data there are many professional studies at your disposal no place like home for example so check that out. Secondly I believe it is imperative to pass this just cause eviction. There are no protections for tenants and this is by far one of the most reasonable ones proposed. All we want is to not live in fear of unjust eviction and unjust rent increases and if you want to talk about the word no well I want no more exorbitant rent increases. I want no more unjust evictions. Renters are tired of saying no. I want those most disenfranchised in our community to be protected and I believe and hope that all of you want that as well. Thank you for your time. Next speaker. I'm just going to go ahead and pause. I believe that you two have joined are you planning to speak? Okay okay so we'll have you four including you who are who sitting there as our last speakers it's okay so go ahead. I don't really have anything to add that hasn't been set already I've sat here and voted with my seat and my presence for countless hours now I guess I feel like you could cut to the chase sometimes by taking a poll so that you knew who was here and support of what but to me this these are so tedious I really respect for you all for your patience. I guess I'd urge you to consider that housing providers may not be the problem the problem is there aren't enough of us providing housing and in our city ADUs aren't being built large single family homes are slightly lived in all over the city builders are being thwarted and hundreds of second homes sit empty we should be making it easier for people to provide housing and not harder so let's stop the assault on the residents of our community that have been providing safe and regulated and in many cases below market rate housing to their fellow community members for years I hear a lot about tenants suffering sudden increases in rent and I guess I always wonder how long like the woman in Capitola earlier who after five years had to move and realize that market rents were really much higher than what she'd been paying most mom and pop most normal landlords were people we don't want to raise rents on fellow people if things are working we're going to be happy to have good tenants so I would just like to keep that for everybody to keep that I'm Cynthia burger um our rental units with constitutes the landlord's sole rental property how do you know they can own property in Hawaii Connecticut anywhere so I don't understand that part of this exemption here is the tenant responsible for combing all the records in the United States that's a really you know that's a glaring error in that and it should be fixed I think I think you can get data from all the cities that have rent that have just cause protection laws and you could find out the average length of tenancy after a just cause eviction law passed is their tenancy longer in the city of Santa Monica which has been completely degraded by the Costa Hawkins law since they passed their rent control a very long time ago and that affects how their law works their people don't live anywhere five years and that happens in Santa Cruz long term tenants are just a dinosaur so um you know if you want to have long term tenants you have to have lower rents your average rent means x percent you know is below that and x percent is above that so you know just how high they are so those folks maybe everybody who's providing lower rents is in the room but the most the most units in this town are owned by landlords that own a lot of units not these folks here those folks don't show up they're guaranteed okay they own a hilltop or they own Cyprus Point and they do as they wish they may have some kind of law but they do as they wish good evening thank you Santa Cruz coral broon tenant and there's been a lot of emotions in the room tonight and time seems to be of the essence I feel justified for the interim ordinance to protect renters that it be that it is necessary but also feel that some of its wording can be approached using certain changes by the advice of community efforts one of these best ways would be with facilitation experienced community tenants landlords nonviolent communicators who have studied the intricate features of tenancy law contracts other successful cities efforts with rent control and and to somehow not simplify but rewrite the necessary words that would apply here and to make Santa Cruz a truly beautiful place to live it would retroactively help those who may fit in who may have been erroneously evicted for no reason other than the desire to be to have them removed from the tenant tenancy or the property a task force for landlord tenant relations is the best thing and this needs to be done within the next two weeks hello council members I'm Nancy Crusoe and I'm here as speaking oh yes I'm here speaking as a renter tonight and my first observation is that this is not felt to me like it should be a battle between tenants and landlords just cause eviction is absolutely necessary for the renters to exist in this town with any peace of mind at all and we need a strong one and it needs not to be have added on exemptions we have to have that to have any stability so I retired after teaching for at UCSC for 15 years and I do not want to spend my 70s looking for a new city to live in that seems grotesque to me to force that on your retired employees because I do plan to spend the rest of my years here if I can possibly afford to live here I don't see it as a battle primarily because the eviction clauses cover everything necessary for a reasonable landlord to want to have in order to evict I don't I have not heard of anything left out that is a reasonable cause for eviction they're there they're covered so I don't understand the battle tone that we're having I think we could easily see this as the same side most of us are on maybe there are few opponents okay thank you thank you okay so you're a second to last speaker in our last oh I thought it was last not quite we got one more okay go right ahead you'll get 90 seconds hi my name is Ken Rilling I own some properties here in city I developed them as a PUD so I was able to build the houses that I wanted about 30 years ago so I rent a college students and most of the time there's five people in the house and they're all they'll always come up that somebody's going to leave for a while maybe come back so they use the term sub lease and I think sub lease is a problem for them because my tenants become the landlord in fact so if they got a problem with their new tenant they're going to have to go to a board or see a judge they don't generally have the money that I do so I recommend that you change the sub lease agreement to roommate addendum so they can sign the same contract that they had when they moved in so knock knock who's there knock knock who's there it's your landlord I brought the plumbers who are ready to fix the toilet all right go ahead next speaker good evening I'm Scott Graham and I think that you should have a citizens task force look into this item and I support this temporary measure because there's a lot of people out there that are in fear of being evicted and the the cost of renting right now is astronomical I mean if you look on craigslist or realtor.com I don't know where these landlords are renting their cheap places but they're not on there that's for sure and then you know we've got this thing called just evictions so what do these landlords want do they want unjust evictions they want to be able to just willy nilly evict people for no apparent reason we don't like the curtains you put up in the living room so we're going to evict you it's just it's absurd on the on the face of it the other thing is that we have a housing crisis right now so I think it's absolutely justified to declare a housing emergency so that you can take the actions you need to take to bring things under control because right now everything the housing market the rental market is out of control all right okay so I want to say first that that concludes the public comment portion of this agenda item I want to thank those who came to speak today for exercising restraint and I recognize that this is a very emotional topic and I appreciate you allowing individuals to address the council and giving them their time at this point I will ask that we take a short recess and we will turn in about five minutes or so at 10 10 and we'll return to the council for action and deliberation so at this point we're going to be in recess questions to answer all right who's the teacher of the house Sonia we back oh Mr. Tanya and Chris have your attention please I will now reconvene the meeting okay thank you okay we're back on okay thank you I appreciate it so at this point we have heard from the community so we have closed public comment on this item we appreciate your input I'd like to now return it to the council for action and deliberation are there any council members who would like to speak to this item council member Matthews just a question and I spoke to you in advance um when we get to the actual discussion and deliberation action I'd like to request that we separate these two items because they seem to be quite different so that was my comment as well okay great so is that the is that the action you're wishing to ask that we take at this time to address them separately and start with the first yeah okay okay seems to make sense okay great so then now we will direct our conversation the items separately and when we begin with um the first uh element of the recommendation which is to introduce for publication and interim ordinance requiring just cause and that conversation can now ensue I have a couple of things I want to say and then I'd like to make that motion um so I'm not going to say much because uh there's a lot of it has already been said I you know I I've said here and I I'll say it again I do not I'm not interested in a post mortem on measure m um what I am interested in is moving forward with some modicum of tenant protections while the community does meaningfully engage in a range of options for rent stabilization and tenant protections for the longer term so I'm just going to start there um I'll be brief words of one illustrious council member who came before me um so we heard uh measure m was too extreme we saw we've seen the outcome of that um vote um we um we also heard from a lot of people who said that they did support some form of rent control um or rent stabilization um but not that that particular measure and you know and I those voices don't seem to be heard as some of you are in this room tonight um those voices don't seem to be heard quite as loudly I'd like to take people up on that um uh their interest in community engagement I am dismayed by um what I have heard in terms of you know uh some people suggesting that this is an n run around measure m because we're actually proposing something that's more extreme than measure m that's just simply not the case um it just isn't the case for uh in so many ways and I don't want to belabor it but it's just it's not so um that's not what we're doing here tonight um no I've and I could quote from them but I won't um you know lots of people have communicated with this body about um the fact that they are landlords and they do support some kind of of rent stabilization they do support um uh some protections for tenants that means some kind of just cause eviction I don't think that um 17,000 people voted no on measure m because just cause was the poison pill I mean it's an empirical question that can't be answered but I just disagree uh with that analysis um you know I want to say that I am dismayed that there are people who have called for uh an opportunity for engagement who have now um sent out messages including the following don't be fooled this task force is a sham and no landlord or homeowner should participate that doesn't sound like wanting to engage in a community conversation I'm just dismayed that that happened um I I hope that uh the the folks who have said they wanted to be involved in a meaningful conversation we'll step up and do that and I hope that we can come to some agreement tonight on a structure for that task force in the meantime I would like to make a motion that we adopt uh that we um we introduce for um uh the um we we introduce this interim ordinance this is I just want to add one more thing for clarification we are talking about um uh an ordinance that was has been on the books I did not hear from one landlord during the period from February 13th to December 11th that um there was any hardship we never received any requests as far as I know I could correct me if I'm wrong staff if we had any request for hardship exemption from that um that ordinance I believe there was one one okay so one two two but one was ultimately withdrawn so okay um the sky didn't fall while we had that interim ordinance on the books while I believe we are in uh uh an housing emergency an affordable housing emergency in this community um we're not asking that it be passed as an emergency measure there are political considerations there and legal ones so that's not the request on the table I'd like to move that we um vote that we um we introduce this interim ordinance with the language change that the uh city attorney included so if you um for those of you who don't have it because it was public on the city council in the agenda packet um section 3.7 2 was that right 3.7 no 3.7 f sorry exemptions I'd like to pardon me council member run it's just section 3 f 3 yeah okay well it's not seven I'm sorry I'm confused no anyway I have seven here I want to move in seven that three that's uh three a seven oh okay so 3f sorry um be um um introduced for publication with with that the with the language change that that's right here before you thought you got that Bonnie in addition um I want to I want to add a couple of other changes or additions I would say I'm you know I'm sympathetic to landlords who suggest that tenants becoming sub um leasers um sub landlords it can be problematic and so I would um add language that um requires sub leases to be approved by the landlord I just want sorry I'm going to pause for a second I just want to remind that um the community that is here tonight that we've had an opportunity to hear from you and at this point it's your opportunity to listen to us take action and deliberation after hearing that input so if please keep your voices down while we have our opportunity for deliberation in action go ahead okay and uh finally last but not least in section seven the effective date and expiration date uh yes we did uh suggest the three months and so 90 days is listed here um I am I agree with uh staff's analysis um Shull suggested that three months is is an awfully short turnaround time to get this done um assuming that we we have support for a task force to to bring us some kind of proposal for the longer term um so I'd like to say that the ordinance shall automatically terminate upon uh the um upon an alternative recommendation being made by uh uh the task force unfortunately we don't we haven't voted on the task force yet but I'm going to just put it in there in the hopes that we get somewhere so that's my motion okay so there's a motion by council member brown is there a second for the purposes of discussion I will second it but not even for the purpose of discussing for the purpose of passing it okay for the purpose of discussion and for passage for your perspective and then council member just a couple questions on the effective date to say that it's effective until a recommendation from the committee that recommendation would not be acted upon by the council it seems to me to be better to establish a further off date that's more specific I put it to you guys over there so it's uh so they're talking about another part of it so what I'm hearing though is is council member brown talking about a presentation of the work product to the council okay so um and then um council member Matthews I thought I heard you say well but we would need time for the council to deliberate and act upon that so that might be earlier so there might be need to have some language um maybe and we can ask the city attorney when he finishes the discussion maybe um this shall be effective upon the effective date of an alternate policy direction or something to that effect so um Tony what's being discussed right now is the effective date so maybe something to that effect would that cover that because I think you don't want to create yet another gap where this expires prematurely there's still needed time for a process if more time is needed to to happen which is actually very common in these sorts of processes is that they get going and say I need another month I need a few more weeks at working on something um okay so that that's what I would recommend so Tony could we fashion something to that effect where this would remain an effect until um whatever alternate policy um direction taken by the council becomes effective and that is really open to whatever policy direction that looks like yes and I and I'm happy to formulate help formulate that language um in the meantime however I would like to also discuss the first not the first but the second modification that you suggested with regard to sub pieces um that was going to be my other question where does it go and I'm not quite sure what you have in mind with respect to that but I have a suggestion that's not exactly that same thing but that um addresses some of the concerns that were raised about um multiple sub tenants moving in to replace uh like if if the rental agreement is for two people then eight people moving in and sharing a bedroom and so I have a recommended language that's not requiring um landlord approval of the sub beliefs but does address that issue so so could we touch that one first sure because I don't have an answer for you on the second one yet um uh if you look at sub subsection 3a 2 lowercase a roman numeral 3 um or let me just back up and say section section 3 uppercase a 2 lowercase a landlord shall not take any action to terminate a lease based on a tenant's sublease of the rental unit if the following requirements are met one the rental unit continues to constitute the tenant's primary residence to the sub s e replaces one or more departed tenants under the rental housing agreement on a one-for-one basis the problem with the language as I see it is that there's an inconsistency between that language on a one-for-one basis and the next section which says the landlord has unreasonably withheld the right to sublease following a request by the tenant and it says a landlord's reasonable refusal of the tenant's written request may be based on but is not limited to the grounds that the tenant has replaced one or more departed tenants with short-term subleassores or the grounds that the total number of occupancy in a rental unit exceeds the maximum number of occupants permissible under section 503 b of the uniform housing code the question is if a tenant replaces another tenant or sub tenant with a number of sub tenants that don't exceed the maximum number under that section of the uniform housing code that be a reasonable basis to terminate and I see those as inconsistent provisions so here's it would be my suggestion leave roman numeral to the same the sublease the sublease replaces one or more departed tenants under the rental housing agreement on a one-for-one basis and then continue with the language of roman numeral three but delete the last sentence of it it would read the landlord has unreasonably withheld the right to sublease following written request by the tenant if the landlord fails to respond to the tenant in writing within 14 days of receipt of the tenant's written request the tenants request shall be deemed approved by the landlord the landlord's reasonable refusal of the tenant's written request may not be based on the proposed additional person's lack of credit worthiness if the proposed occupant is not a legally obligated is not legally obligated to pay some or all of the rent to the landlord the landlord's reasonable refusal of the tenant's written request may be based on but is not limited to the grounds that the tenant has replaced one or more departed tenants with short-term sub less sores period that works for me the second I'm wondering just um the sake of ensuring that the I think we we can all agree that the that the task force process is going to be difficult and particularly the part about reaching a consensus and what I suspect might happen is that the task force might come back with a bunch of comments or a report and then the council will be faced with the dilemma of not just endorsing a consensus but in considering the information and coming up with a compromise which is another possible outcome of the task force and in there's also the possibility that the task force once constituted won't be able to come to any conclusions and the provision that makes it ambiguous as to when it would conclude would be in effect a permanent ordinance so I might suggest a one year or 120 days or 180 day expiration date and make the ordinance automatically terminated upon the council's receipt of a report from the task force or however i'm a number of many days the council decides whichever is later or whichever is sooner okay that makes sense to me um i'm gonna just go out on a limb here and suggest that we replace 90 days with one year or the uh conclusion uh or an alternate um proposal being adopted by the council i think that's right i'm just trying just seeing where my colleagues are i think that makes sense and with the understanding that well in advance of the one year expiration date you should have a pretty good sense of how the task force is moving along and if necessary you could come back and extend the ordinance further if it looks like progress is being made and there's a reasonable likelihood of a of a positive outcome from the task force is that then accepted by the seconder of the motion yeah i mean i'm contemplating that it's going to take longer than i mean we had thrown around like ideas like 90 days 120 days but i think it's going to be longer so yeah i accept that okay so so could you just restate the language this ordinance shall automatically terminate after one year from final adoption or upon the sooner to occur of one year from the effective date one year from the effective date or or the council's adoption of or council's action the council's action on a an ordinance addressing tenant additional tenant protections this is very in artfully worded following the conclusion of the the work of the task force would you say the ordinance shall automatically terminate one year from the it's effective date or upon council's action on the task force recommendations is that that sounds perfect to me that's a pleasure of the council okay does that work for you i'm just trying to make it yeah please here i'm going to want to ask the city clerk if she's okay okay any other comments at this time i have a question oh go ahead i had comments about language that i was um wanted to consider to be added and removed from the ordinance okay one piece was in just to um provide some background i have heard from lots of people having knocked on many doors and had conversations around rent control with both tenants and landlords and understand that this is an issue and having heard from everyone tonight that this is an issue that people want to work on within the community um when i was on the campaign trail one of the things that i said was that i was going to support a community process and i'm hoping that we can get an effective community process to address the concerns of both landlords and tenants um with that being said um some of the language that i was interested in changing within the ordinance is um with the um let's see with section 3f um making the exemptions only for landlords who live on site um and removing the rental units if it's a sole rental property of a landlord so therefore um if the landlord lives on site they would be completely exempt from just cause for evictions but if the landlord were to have um their own residents and then be renting out another house and that house was their sole rental unit that that rental unit would not be exempt from the just cause for eviction is that going to be a friendly amendment to the motion the make the make yes it is because i accept it okay so do we need clarification on that language then yes the recommendation would be just deletion of the first clause of that sentence which reads a rental unit which constitutes the landlord's sole rental property and and begin with the capital the following categories of rental units thereafter okay so it would it would it be worded exemptions if the landlord lives on site in the same residents a duplex or single-family residents with an excel accessory dwelling unit okay that's right um could you just type that out so we can look at it yeah he's doing it right now okay great lea just uh thank you just delete the highlighted language is proposed to be removed by vice mayor comings and the remainder of it would uh remain and that was a friendly amendment assuming the second right thank you and so if i can just ask your intention here so that means if the rental unit landlord's sole rental property property but it's somewhere else from where they reside yes yes so the idea being that if landlords live on site then they would be exempt and i have a number of other sure okay um in addition to this exempt before you do pot i just want to make sure that was accepted by the maker of the motion is that accepted by the second year of the motion okay um in addition to that if a landlord um intends to reoccupy the site within one year or less they would also be exempt from just cause for eviction you want to add that yes where would that where would that go um so owner owner move in you're under seven we're back to i believe you're looking at i see um section three seven yes seven owner move in three a seven three a seven thank you eight a seven okay do you mind restating your uh yes that landlords who intend to reoccupy a unit within one year or less will not be um would not fall under just cause for eviction so if a landlord um decides to go on vacation and wants to rent their house out or are away for a year for sabbatical or leave and they want to rent their help their property out that they're able to come back to that property within one year period i appreciate the intent and i'm just trying to figure out how we can prove it so if we if we can find a way in the language to um men tony maybe you can help us out here to to word it so that the so that they're i mean because we can't really prove and in a future intent right um so i'm just trying to think and i'm not very good at thinking through these matters on my feet here um how do we how do we we get out that without just saying i mean because anybody could say i intend to reoccupy it's okay it's we this is the time for the council please this is the time for the council to yeah yeah i'm that's what i'm trying to get out here it's not about it you know so how do we get at demonstrating that so like if if somebody did want to sub you know they wanted to rent their home for a year because they're going away um just trying to find language that would get us to that i'm looking um money potentially adding a second a number nine after the language withdrawing of the rental unit permanently from the rental market and perhaps wording along the lines of landlord seeks to reoccupy a rental unit after having vacated the unit within the past year and maybe there should be an addition of language that they that that unit can't go back on the rental market within 48 months or sorry 24 months years right because now you're talking about trying to avoid uh abuse of that for somebody who moves in for a month and then goes back and runs it up i would think there would be some measure of protection against that by the fact that this would only apply to a landlord who has occupied the unit within the past year landlord has occupied provided that the landlord has occupied the unit for at least the prior year the landlord seeks to reoccupy the unit within one year of of having vacated so the landlord has to live there for a year in order to invoke the right to return within one year so i'm always going to have concerns and you know there's always possibilities that we're not um envisioning right in the moment but i think that that that does get at the year intention here for people who are wanting to rent for short term and move back in their primary residence so it doesn't require the landlord to live in it for an additional year but in order to invoke it they would have to they would have to stay there for a year anyway i'm not quite sure what the concern is because i don't think a landlord that owns a single family residence or a condominium unit that that intends to use it as income producing property that would be a very odd business plan to annually try to solve yeah yeah i think that the the issue is that there are people within the community who um have expressed that there are times when they may have to for work purposes or otherwise leave their homes for a year and rent them out and in those situations um if there are no protections um for them under the just cause provision then they would it would seem that based on the language in this ordinance that they would have to provide they would have to pay relocation assistance to those tenants who occupy that space we don't have relocation in this this is just this is just cause that they would not it would not be able to reoccupy the residence that they had just vacant and that would be particularly um useful in a community like Santa Cruz that has a lot of faculty that go on sabbatical and and that sort of thing so i think the language that i suggested um covers that but i'm hoping bonnie was able to catch it about the reoccupying the unit after having comes condition number nine yes accepted we're we're basically talking about somebody needs to they're going away to work and they need to get their mortgage paid while they're gone and it would preclude them from actually being able to take that that you know short-term position what that's what we're getting at we're going on vacation traveling i was also going to suggest that we eliminate um section three number seven f roman number one that um a landlord can reoccupy the unit even if the person has lived there for more than five for five years or more a friendly amendment i just have a quick question um so i you know i i am also sympathetic to the need for owner move in um even in the case that there are longer term tenants but i i'm i'm just worried about i mean if given that part of our intention here is promoting stability in the community um if you could just talk a little bit more about your your rationale for wanting to do that and maybe it'll help me be okay with the friendly sure um one of the things that i'd heard um people had concerns with around uh just caused for eviction was the idea that if they wanted to move one of their if they wanted to one reoccupy um the space that they had purchased and someone had been living there for a long period of time that um if they've been living there for more than five years then they don't have access to their space um additionally if i've also received word from people who mentioned that um these places have been purchased for um allowing their sick family members to be able to move into or older family members to move into when they want to take care of them um at later dates and with under this provision if someone's over there for more than five years they would not be able to have those people leave those spaces and um just in the um with in addressing the concerns that i've heard from some people um i wanted to bring that issue up for discussion i'm going to ask the or any other council members want to weigh in on this before i make a decision about accepting and the friendly or voting on this separately just asking me i'm not sure if i understand because um i thought we're we're doing something in a short term and then going to look for the uh a task force to come back to us so we're i mean i'm not opposed to what you're saying at all but it doesn't seem that relevant to right right now so okay well i'll let you respond we split the as you know we split the discussion and so this is simply on the language of the just cause and then we'll revisit the discussion on the task force specifically but the task force is not going to take up stuff like this and come back to us with something possibly different i could i think the point i'll let did you want to respond the year i understand but five years it says sure um and so in response to that um people have family members that become sick you know at any given notice or someone has something catastrophic that happens to them within their lives and they may need to move those people into their home or um and given that um if the persons live there under this ordinance if the people if the person has lived there for more than five years then the owner would have no right to be able to either move back into that place or to move any family members in and as a result um and based on some of the things that i've been hearing in the community um i was making the suggestion that we remove this from um this current ordinance so that was asked as a friendly amendment um to the maker of the motion i'm going to remind you all that this is now the time for the council to deliberate and take action please i have to confess i'm having a hard time with this one because i my sense is that no matter whether we take it out or we leave it in it's going to be a moot point because this is a temporary ordinance that isn't going to last for five years so okay i i just i we we can take another recess so that we can have a chance to reconvene again but i just want to remind the community members that are in the audience that we have had an opportunity to hear from you and this is now the time whether you agree or disagree with any of the comments that are made by council members up here for us to deliberate and take action and discuss amongst ourselves so the next time there is a uh a call out or cry out from the from the from the community in the audience here tonight we will take a brief recess and then we'll reconvene so that we can take action and deliberation okay did you have any additional comments i just wanted to comment that although um this may just last for a year it will be relevant if the need arises within this year for someone whose house has been rented out for more than five years that's over there that's all just to comment okay i get i get it so it's a friendly amendment if that's acceptable and that was accepted did you catch that uh barney okay do you have any additional changes um so i did have a couple questions but i can wait until other council members can weigh in so something that was brought up uh i have a couple things but something that was brought up a little bit ago and just since we're on this topic of owner moving and the five year whether or not to make it five year or not five year uh one of the concerns has been brought up by people as the definition partner in both sub-lesis moving in and in this language here of owner moving of being able to move in any spouse or partner so if we're going to remove the five year language i think it'd be uh important that we specify or remove the term partner from number seven uh so that there can't be any eviction on false pretenses of relationship as well and to address the concerns of the people that may be against the sub-leasing term partner there may either be an addition of a definition of what partner is or remove partner from that so that you know to find a middle ground so that it's uh equal on both sides i just don't want to see people coming landlords coming to tenants and saying i'm having my partner move in and then it's not anyone of any significance it's just someone that said was their partner been at the same time i want to provide some form of security for landlords who have expressed that concern but i don't know if it's really the same thing uh anyway i want to introduce that as a conversation piece to to see what other people thought about that language and the definition of partner i know that's been brought up as an as an issue um and so we could touch that person i have one more something after that or what do you think i think maybe let's let's go ahead and address that and then we'll go into your next issue mr kudani a suggestion was made that the term partner be expanded to register domestic partner okay does that cover what you're i would definitely support that okay does that does that all good okay so that would be an additional amendment to the motion okay and um so we've heard a lot of statements from the community night in support of the just cause eviction protections and against it um there have been claims that we're passing measure m i want to emphasize that to the community that we are not passing measure m there have also been claims that we're circumventing voters and i want to ensure you that we are not working to try and circumvent voters what we're doing is we're talking about a way that we can ensure stability for those in our community who are renters while we enact a transparent and democratic process that the previous council failed to do thus causing this division that we face today so for the most part i think that we uh are more or less on the same team and wanting to find a solution but in that mindset we need to provide the space for the solution to be formed through that process and in thinking about this i want to echo the statement from our brother curtis relford i don't know if he's still here or not but that uh he's one of the most giving men that i know and that we need more love compassion and empathy in this conversation so this is going out to both tenants but especially to those landlords that were talking about their bottom line compared to people being able to survive in santa cruz um like with curtis i really resonated with some of the statements made by community members and was really disturbed by others i imagine that we all are coming from a place of what we think we feel is right but something that stood out to me was the number of landlords specifically that said they would pull their units off of the market um and then also the statement from the community member that said having no just cause evictions is just like having no rental units on the market because you're pushing out a certain population that isn't able to stay in santa cruz so the question is do you want reduced housing or gentrification is essentially the the the ultimatum that you're offering when you say that kind of stuff which is problematic to me in a lot of ways and it does from my perspective feel like a way of holding the situation hostage which is really troubling for people that say they want to come up with a solution but to say that if there is anything enacted that even resembles protections of renters that you will pull your units from the market that that does not speak to compassion love or empathy and it does not speak to you caring about the other people so with that being said there was another community member that brought up the issue of those that are facing evictions now because even no matter what we decide with this process and the timeline that's been associated with it the people that have been served evictions now will be without a home by the time the process ends so i want to uh open that up to discussion with our body up here as to how we can ensure that we will protect those people that have been served eviction notices now until the democratic process has been completed to avoid them from facing homelessness uh uh council member coming says a couple of questions and council member matthew says a couple of questions and council member mayors has some additional comments okay i said a question regarding the water task force that was mentioned earlier and was just wanting to know how much time that task force um was so if you are if you looked in your agenda packet there was an attach and this is also if i may let's go ahead and pause that question and postpone it to the discussion around process so we'll go ahead and hold on to that and we'll make that part of that conversation thank you any additional conversation any additional question no i'm good yeah thanks i'd like to go to item oh i have to go back here section three a two three and it has to do with breach of lease item a three a two and i'm just trying to understand that um let's see um i have to go back and read the full sentence the landlord during the moratorium period no landlord shall take action to terminate any lawful tenancy um yeah to um notice to quit that we're served on a tenancy prior to the detective date one reason is to failure to pay rent where where um that is considered a just cause one reason is breach of lease um and so that's to breach of lease the tenant has continued um to substantially violate the terms of the housing agreement notwithstanding any contrary provision a landlord shall not take any action to terminate um okay i'm sorry notwithstanding any contrary provision in this ordinance a landlord shall not take any action to terminate a tenancy based on a tenant sublease of the rental unit if the following requirements are met the first one is the rental union unit continues to constitute the tenants primary residence the second is the sublease replaces one or more departed tenants under the rental housing agreement on a one for one basis but that doesn't require that the landlord even be notified of who that other tenant is correct which is something i cannot imagine so are you proposing to add language i think that requires um uh replaces one or more departed tenants under the rental housing agreement on a one for one basis after approval by the landlord that is and then number three so that would put it in there and then number three says um the landlord has unreasonably withheld the right to sublease following a written request by the tenant if the landlord fails to respond to the tenant within 14 days um uh the receipt of the tenant's written request the tenant's request shall be deemed approval by the landlord a landlord's reasonable refusal for the tenants written request may not be based on the proposed additional person's lack of credit worthiness if the proposed occupant is not legally obligated to pay summer all of the rent to the landlord but that's the only criteria given for refusing it doesn't have anything to do with references character reference what was there how were they as a tenant in their former rental etc so it seems um to really restrain the reasons for what i would say honestly in some cases legitimately withholding permission so are you are you proposing i think it needs work is what i'm saying is which is the problem i've had with a lot of these clauses and it's uh i'm hard pressed to think right now how to rephrase that um maybe i should work on that in the next couple minutes but would the maker of the motion be um open to understand what i'm saying there modified language and i apologize to the audience it's hard when we've got a letter and a number and a letter and a number and a letter and we're kind of construct the whole chain of logic there yeah i understand what you're saying and it's it's kind of what you know when we uh the the original you know my response to uh comments from the public about um landlord approval of a sub lease was kind of trying to get at that and the the number of people question and we kind of took care of the the number of people or the we took care of the um the number of people question with the elimination of the um the uniform code um so i do see what you're saying i get what you're the intent and i i am yeah so i mean i would accept some kind you know i don't know how maybe it just said this says and even the whole sub-lesi thing gets into the whole issue do you rent to one person and they're renting to a whole bunch of other people or do you rent to the master tenant yeah individually um the sub-lesi replaces one or more departed tenants under the agreement on a one for one basis uh upon approval by the landlord that could be number two that just states that with the replacement tenant has to go out an application and be vetted by the landlord if they so choose um i'm okay with that consumer matthews would you prefer uh sometime language and we'll go to councilor mires for yeah oh please yeah and so we'll pause on that specific language language going into the motion we'll revisit that if that's okay with the maker of the motion and we'll have uh council member is it sure although i think i i mean i can say that be there if we want to keep it simple with approval of the landlord kind of covers it you want to just make that change let me just read and think here to age two so that will be so we'll go to council member mires and then council member coming and then council member glover i just want a little bit of clarification are we are we continue so are are we able to make comments just in general about this or are we still wanting to nuance and rewrite section to this okay okay so yeah i just have a question about um nuisance the nuisance clause which is section three a let's see section three a three i heard a number of people just sort of talk about um sort of the reality of of being able to control not only um their own property but also respond uh is there any um would there be any uh would would any would the maker be amenable to uh at least changing this one clause to to also acknowledge uh immediately adjacent properties potentially in case someone needed to or neighboring neighboring yeah immediately neighboring uh i don't i don't i don't know i don't want the whole neighborhood but um you know something in terms of a j i think just in my i had a similar note to that in my notes yeah so when when uh vice mayor Cummings brought it up i kind of started my mind started um spinning around how we might get at that because how adjacent property is one thing you know if you share a common wall or you're in close proximity enforcing that is the question that concerns me and so given that i i just couldn't wrap my mind around it i let it go but if we want to discuss it and try to find a way to get at it i'm amenable to doing that mr condo did you have something to i think it can be reasonably simply addressed by at the very end of subsection three a three uh or is creating unreasonable interference with the comfort safety or enjoyment of any of the other residents or immediately adjacent neighbors of the property and i would also offer a friendly amendment that that similar similar language would be would be added to number four as well under criminal activity i'm not sure but i'm i'm amenable to that so i can so that language would be then added to section three a three and three and four okay so it's accepted by the maker of the motion is that accepted by the accepted by the seconder of the motion are we ready to go there or do you have any additional do you want to yeah i'm gonna i'm just gonna pose the question again since it just kind of got glazed over uh what are we gonna do tonight to protect the renters that are facing eviction that are going to have to be out of their place before the end of the democratic process which has yet to be established so what what are we gonna do are you proposing um the maker of the motion consider some language or to respond i think we would discuss it since it hasn't been brought up and it's not in here to revise any language so do how will we as a body work to protect those people that are current the attorney kandadi would you do you have any suggestions on ways that we might be able to add language to the document that would protect those people during the hopefully coming process well we we did include language in section seven on the on the second to the very last page under effective date and expiration date um it states the ordinance shall take effect 30 days following that's a final adoption which is defined as the effective date provided however that it shall apply retroactively to any notice of termination of tenancy with an effective date on or after december december 11th 2018 in any unlawful detainer action brought pursuant to a notice of termination with an effective date on or after december 11th 2018 that is still pending as of the effective date so there's possible um there's a possibility that some evictions could fall through the cracks but this would cover most evictions that might otherwise occur between now and the ordinance taking effect great and then with the um there were people that had said they received eviction notices prior to december 11th like the 6th or the 7th right after the stuff was going away we've attempted to address that is to say um notice of termination with an effective date on or after december 11th 2018 uh that is still pending as of the effective date so so if if a notice of eviction was brought with an effective date prior to december 11th it's possible that an unlawful detainer action could be brought and concluded prior to the effective date and i don't see a convenient way of getting around that frankly but um but that being said even unlawful detainer actions don't always get adjudicated within 30 or 60 days so um most would still be covered by this ordinance some would fall through the cracks i i i think at least theoretically okay it's just i just want to make sure that the community especially we have attempted to add language to address that that specific concern cool i just want to make sure the people especially none of this none of this fixes the problem under every circumstance but but that's the language that we've proposed it proposed to attempt to address that concern thank you at councilmember brown and then and bisoner Tony got Tony got it i was just curious um my understanding was that the previous um rental ordinance um the rent freeze and just cause freeze that was in place um had a expiration date of uh december 11th when the council got sworn in so i would imagine that any eviction notice that was served prior to that date would technically be an illegal eviction notice if the if the rent if the just cause um the previous measure was in place at that time arguably um councilmember might have some language so i'm going to go back to the confusing three a one a three um and that says um not preface notwithstanding any contrary provision in this ordinance the landlord shall not take any action to terminate a tenancy based on a tenant sublease of the rental unit if the following requirements are met and i think we've resolved one and two for three perhaps the simplest is just say the landlord has unreasonably withheld the right to to sublease following a written request by the tenant um and application from proposed sublease if the landlord fails to respond to the tenant in writing within 14 days of the written request the tenant's request shall be deemed approved and then just eliminate all that other stuff it doesn't define what's um unreasonable that seemed okay is that a that's that seemed to me the simplest way to handle that so it's so basically and then it does have at the end a landlord's reasonable refusal of the tenant's written request may be based on but it's not limited to the grants that the tenant has replaced one or more departed tenants with short term sublease sores and i would say without permission that's accepted as um language friendly amendment to okay so what it would delete is the whole thing that you couldn't um find someone uh you couldn't refuse a tenant based solely on their lack of credit worthiness right so it's basically allowing uh the landlord to judgment run a credit check if they want to right sure okay yeah okay which i have mixed feelings about but given that it is the kind of the norm for any tenant agreement i i get it so that's accepted by the maker is that accepted by the secondary i just had a statement i'd like to know if that's accepted first by the secondary i i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm sorry do you mind using your microphone thank you um um the credit report thing for me is very abusive to a lot of a lot of tenants and getting into places and stuff um i would rather not take it but okay so that's over well yeah i mean i'm just having a hard time with this one because it's we're not to the extent that we're really not able to tackle the abuse of credit worthiness writ large it i don't know how much of a difference it's going to make and for for these particular cases you know i mean that's so i'm having a hard you know i i have a hard time with it as well i just don't know how we can okay then you could just add the word solely i mean the way it's written now it just says you can't refuse on the basis of credit unworthiness but doesn't give you any other criteria but if you said solely then that would suggest that there are other reasons so you could say a landlord's reasonable refusal of the tenant's written request may not be based solely on the proposed additional person's lack of credit worthiness if the proposed occupant is not legally obligated to pay some or more of the rent to the landlord then you would say a landlord's reasonable refusal of the tenant's written request may be based on but it's not limited to grounds that the tenant has replaced one or more departed tenants with short-term lessors without permission is that acceptable by the maker acceptable to me that is that with that modification does that address your i just wanted to hear what councilmember um lover had to say he wanted to say something about this particular issue about the credit issue i mean look i think i'd like to know prior to that if that's what you're asking if the modification was accepted by the maker the second yes and if it if the seconder would prefer to have comment is that that's the mayor's mayor's prerogative okay go ahead thank you yeah thanks uh so the the main issue that i had with that initial motion is the fact that credit is used in ways to hold people down and limit their ability to participate now the the sole credit worthiness uh makes it so that it's more acceptable to me but at the same time like how are you going to know if it's if that's the only reason like what if they have bad credit and how are you gonna know if there's some other reason and then you have to report have them report it or something like that so it's it's a slippery slope with regards to being able to go against people because of their bad credit and even after talking with the police chief who has brought into conversation the issue of having to do credit checks to hire police officers and the barrier that creates for us to be able to get police officers on the force if you can imagine that that impacts students he spoke a lot about it impacts people of color it impacts working class people so and this is here to protect those people for to be able to move into a place and avoid homelessness and if you allow the landlord to make a deliberation based off of their credit worthiness what's the point i think this is protective the police do a background check not a credit check they also do a credit check what i mean background is anyway i think as revised now it's protective in that it it says the landlord has unreasonably withheld the right to sub lease unreasonably is not defined but it says they can't refuse on the basis of a credit record they may refuse if the tenant has moved in other people without permission so it just it defines a couple of areas but not completely so i just want to make a statement yeah i i don't disagree we parcel out for a separate vote then you know just up or down that amendment that's i feel more comfortable doing that don't accept it that's the friendly amendment we can have an amendment proposed let's vote on it that's your preference i'll defer to the second on that if you if you want to do that we can just do an up or down vote okay so do you want to propose it as a friendly amendment i mean as not as an amendment sure just that shall i reread that one section ii i three that we're looking at here yeah okay so it could be your motion for for the the section three a two a three we'll read the landlord has unreasonably withheld the right to sub lease following written request by the tenant and upon approval of the landlord um excuse me following written request by the tenant submission of an application by the proposed sub-lessie and approval by the landlord if the landlord fails to respond to the tenant in writing without for within 14 days of receipt of the tenants written request the tenants request shall be deemed approved by the landlord a landlord's reasonable refusal of the tenants written request may not be based solely on the proposed additional person's lack of creditworthiness if the proposed occupant is not legally obligated to pay summer all of the rent to the landlord a landlord's reasonable refusal of the tenants written request may be based on but is not limited to the grounds that the tenant has replaced one or more departed tenants with short-term lessors without permission or the grounds that the total number of occupants in a rental unit exceeds the maximum number etc etc etc so that's the language okay is there a second to the proposed amendment a language it's okay okay so that was uh could i make it just to point out something is that i thought that the prior motion eliminated um after the work after sub-lessers okay that's fine with me i i had some okay i also delete that yeah so just to be clear this is a motion to amend the main motion is the motion to amend the main motion and we'll vote on that amended language at this time any further discussion and i'll just for discussion i'll say my purpose is to be clear that the landlord uh does have the right next expectation to receive an applicant from any sub-lessor and review it yeah okay any further comment or questions okay councilmember matthews could you confirm um that um this was the language we missed that sorry yeah yeah okay mission of an application and approval by landlord yeah thank you we'll be voting on the amended language to the main motion i think and tony may be correct me if i'm wrong you have to vote to accept the amended motion first and then vote to accept the amendment you on the motion oh yeah yeah you have to accept it first and then vote on the motion okay we're going to vote on the did you have something to add i was just going to add that we do have a number of clarifications that are needed before the final vote okay so we're not doing the final vote we're voting whether or not we want to make this change so from this voting on this change all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed no so that passes with uh councilmember brown councilmember matthews vice mayor Cummings uh councilmember glever abstain uh can't abstain uh no okay uh councilmember mires and myself uh yes and councilmember crone and councilmember glever uh no so that is now part of the main motion okay is there any other modifications or just changes or council members that want to speak to this item before we take the vote on the main motion are we prepared to vote at this time um these we're doing the main motion is all these all these additions plus approval of the of the ordinance correct um well i'm just yeah i'll make a quick comment um i'm actually not going to support uh i won't be voting in favor of the ordinance um i do feel like um we are uh i i do i do feel like we are at a point in this conversation around how we provide rent stabilization and protection for renters where we're acting without information and data um and i will talk more about my thoughts about the task force when we get there but um i do worry that um this action tonight is going to will result in loss of rental units in our in our community um and i don't think that that is a threat um or a hostage taking situation i think it's just a reality um that some people face with various finances and mortgage issues and things like that and the risk that they take in terms of trying to hold on to uh whether it's uh trying to hold on to a unit here in in in town um i'm absolutely committed to trying to figure out how we protect renters and have how we stabilize rents in the community but um at this point i'm not i'm not in favor of this um this evening but i didn't did want to add those comments um and i i guess i would also add that um you know i think this will pass tonight obviously um i think uh the language is a little better but i would have liked to have seen a different tool looked at in terms of this point in time before we did the task force and that tool could have been um for example hiring a mediation company or firm that actually renters could have had access to upon receiving eviction notice uh and then having landlords and tenants go through a mediation uh i believe this is going to be um very helpful to a lot of attorneys in town and uh we're going to end up um spending quite a bit of money and as will tenants and landlords in this situation so i just want to go on record with that uh i'm going to be a no vote on this and um but i just want one of our community to know my reasons behind that thanks um i too will be voting against the um ordinance as pros i think it's it's improved a bit and i appreciate the efforts for doing that but i do think uh coming um straight after the break straight after the election understanding that the just cause was uh one of the keynote objections to the um measure m as written uh and then this to have this come right back again in substantially the same form i think has really um undermined uh the confidence of those who do have rental properties to participate in in a good spirit and goodwill in the discussions that we need and that we will talk about on the next item um i think there's plenty to do um there were there were so many really heartfelt and genuine statements on both sides of this issue tonight and there were plenty of offensive statements on both sides so let's just acknowledge that um the issue this issue has brought santa cruz as we've said before to um a more deeply divided um circumstance than i've ever seen and many people on both sides expressed just a sadness on the polarization that this has brought and i do look forward um when we get into a community process i take a lot of people at their word they said i was not in favor of measure m but i do see the need to deal with the housing crisis with the affordable with rent rental protection and so forth i think they are willing to come to the table but um it has to be in a different format and there has to be a more open discussion you saw him how hard what a hard time we had just kind of refining what was the meaning of certain uh phrases in here and uh to do a good job i think we have to listen to what are the issues and how can how can we arrive at um ideally a consensus but hopefully uh some maybe a menu of solid recommendations that we can move forward with so um i appreciate the thought that's gone into it but um i feel that um overall it will be costing us rental units and it will be costing us um a undermining of public confidence um if there aren't any further comments i'll just briefly say that i was um very supportive of the temporary measure while the community decided on measure m and um within that time we often heard from um both sides asking that we let the community decide and sort of stay out of it knowing that um that was already underway and also interest in having a more inclusive community conversation um if if the measure were to fail um and and going from there and so i look forward to that conversation i appreciate the intention i recognize the intention um i uh won't support it for uh that reason and um look forward to the conversation that we're going to have at the next item so in the interest in time i will go ahead and just um ask to take the vote so all those in favor please oh pardon sorry to interrupt oh no go ahead a couple of clarifications or um confirmations uh there was the specification of um calling out registered domestic partner um in um seven section seven yeah on page five and um we just wanted to confirm that that would also apply to uh the reference in two b three a two b uh yes three a two b here um so just wanted to confirm that because it wasn't specified but i believe those are the only two places where um it is identified and second sorry to belabor the point here um but um council member brown your original motion was uh to um require that um landlords um approve um sub leases and i just wanted to be clear um that was addressed as part of council member matthew's in um three a two correct a three however just so the council is aware that does not apply in the instance of um family or now a registered domestic partner so i wanted to make sure the council was aware of that given that your your original motion was fairly broad and saying people coming in so if there's any discussion regarding that that state law isn't it oh i thought anyway i believe so that that's what i mean yeah okay and okay my general statement was really more due to my inability to um adequately wordsmith so yes but thank you okay you're welcome okay was there was there another okay that covers it sorry question um just it's up to one year or until the report comes back to the council should we have a task force working on it till we take action take action okay this one okay i'm not going to even try to attempt but i'm can i can i ask clerk if you need any clarification before we go ahead and vote okay so all those in favor of the motion on the floor please say aye aye those opposed no no so that passes with council member crone council member glever uh council member brown and vice mayor Cummings voting yes council member Matthews council member mires and myself voting no okay so that then leads us to the community process and a discussion around how to direct staff to move forward with that at this time any um go ahead kill darn so part of me thinks we're at the point where we should go into mediation but i would like to hope that um similar to many of my colleagues comments up here that we can work towards a community process where voices can be heard and we can build out some of these solutions together personally i think um our housing affordability and um availability problem is is larger than just than just just cause guarantees um and so i think you know i we've done the blueprint uh but i'm i'm a little confused right now how this sort of where this sits in our process the blueprint we have 99 actions we're doing a lot but um i don't know that we're getting at some of these issues with regards to rent rent stabilization and rent protection and security for people to stay in their homes so with stating that um one of the things that uh i think is really important in this process and i guess i would put as a goal um is that um the process uh includes and whether this is created by staff or as it's created by some other outside experts or others who who could get this information together but um i think we're we're we're designing policy a little bit in a in for a black hole right now and i don't know that we know all the the um the stress is on the on the system um as a biologist uh that does restoration i'm always looking for the stressors on the system of and if i don't understand the stressors on the system then my restoration project will fail because i'm going to be fixing something that i have not adequately diagnosed and so um i guess one goal that i would um ask for is a robust data uh analysis and a robust set of um uh measurement factors that we can really assess as for this for this group um i think if we don't start working from data uh and current data and understanding even just in the past six months what have has happened in our market then we will you know potentially be developing policies that might not be affected at protecting people and we may continue to lose rental stock so that's probably my biggest addition just uh looking at the time tonight uh and then i do um i do support a committee process uh task force sounds reasonable but um i i guess i would also say that mediation i think may be a quicker uh pathway and um so i would support either of those at this point and so at this time we're um um my if i may my understanding would be to sort of gather and what i'm gathering is that there is consensus to have a community process to take place um and so what will inform our staff is our ideas around what we like that to look like for them to return to us with a proposal does that seem accurate for the ask of this evening yes thank you mayor Watkins especially now that we don't have the 90 day limitation which was giving me up at night a little bit we will have some time to take your input and then we can generate a model and bring it back to you and i think that would be the most effective way so if you can advise on the goals what you're really trying to accomplish as much as you can about the scoping we already got some information around um some of the mechanics of the committee having some data there which leads me to think well facilitate our next expertise we need to make sure that helps with the budget and i can advise on the the costs of doing the process so if i can get um feedback from the council on your goals the outcomes you know what you want the product to look like your expectations around community engagement which you might want that to look like and you know is this a small set of people do you want this to be um a very large very inclusive process all the way through so any sort of feedback you can give me now even though it's not fully dialed in will be helpful because then we can generate those models and bring them back to you okay so um okay council member i'm i'll let council member lover so throughout the public comment period i heard many people echo that they were in favor of a mediated uh conversation so i will also express my support of a mediated conversation between the opposing interests but instead of and i want first of all i want to appreciate staff for putting together this report and the asks so you can let us know exactly what you're looking for and all that kind of stuff so we can provide you with as much as possible and also for um segregating these three potential options that we can choose from uh something that a community member said was get creative so i was thinking about ways that we might be able to fuse uh or synthesize some of them together specifically the mediation between opposing interests which has a smaller group but at the same time we want to maximize community involvement and consideration so figuring out ways that we might be able to fuse that with a discussion circle of some kind whether it be a community information submission process that's then reviewed by the body and taken into consideration or whether it is actually a set of town halls that the representatives that are chosen go and attend to listen to the community and then break into uh deliberation processes or sessions just to make sure that community members are feeling heard but we're not bogged down in a extensive hundreds of people trying to make a consensus decision and uh at the same time we'll avoid the erroneous potential of the public survey options so what i would like to see in addition to the the data would be the experience of other communities um and come up with a menu of approaches um as we've done on some of the other big issues that we've tackled and and then not necessarily adopt them all but narrow those down a mediation in my mind requires very limited partners who have the the authority to agree on the behalf on behalf of themselves or others whereas i'm thinking more of a facilitated discussion a task force um but i also agree there could be different levels here the housing blueprint used a whole lot of and that was a big expensive complicated lengthy process but it did get a lot of voices a lot of the meeting where they were so that they felt comfortable in that environment hearing very different comments probably don't have to go to that length but i think there's a value to reaching out i mean we certainly heard a whole lot of experiences and opinions right here that have enormous validity um so i think some combination of community discussion maybe you know as you say breaking into smaller groups and actually talking face to face with someone who doesn't agree with you but in the end i think um opposing not opposing appointing a um uh a smaller task force representing informed um community members who represent a combination of the mom and pop and the property owner and the advocate and and maybe you know cut that a bunch of different ways as well so that you have those different viewpoints um and then having a facilitated discussion understanding reviewing the information and then um coming up with as i say a consensus recommendation but i could think maybe even several options to choose from i mean that's that's kind of what i see okay um before councilmember brown one of the things that i heard as a request from staff is for us to refine truly the purpose of what we're asking them to do and so i just wanted to see if i could get clarity on where the council is with that and i'll go ahead and start with you councilmember brown so i was going to start with my um my interest in you know in terms of identifying the purpose and perhaps some goals or goals and objectives so um i think for me what i would like to see is um a process that's professionally facilitated um and resourced with expertise absolutely i think that's very important um that and that the the the purpose of the committee would be to identify strategies to protect city residents from displacement due to inflationary rent increases and arbitrary evictions and to make recommendations for council action i have some specific uh or more specific objectives that i'd like to see us at least discuss and maybe put into the mix um uh so the following so i'd like to see a committee that could could bring us recommendations about the following one a formula for protecting landlords rate of return on investment through setting annual rent increases to cover inflation and operating costs i mean that's i think a concern that we've heard it's been included in rent stabilization measures um i think that we should include that in the um in our set of objectives um causes for eviction including definitions of nuisance behavior and consequential breaches of rental leases so really fleshing that out and i mean we tried to do some of that tonight um but i think that that is is absolutely important uh terms of no false eviction um so what what those might be the you know for example landlord moving you know um owner moving back in moving family members in measures to mitigate hardship of evictions reload such as relocation assistance you know those kinds of um factors extended notices to vacate i could come up with more but i think we could get the just there um um and then identifying potential exemptions for um classes of property we've done that here so um i think that should be part of the charge to think through what kinds of exemptions make sense um and hopefully with get to consensus i'm not you know i can't even say i'm cautiously optimistic we'll get there but i you know i'd like to see us at least try um um enforcement and dispute resolution strategies and um i think that's it for now i have some comments on membership as well um if you wanted me to just keep going or do you want to keep stay stick with the goals and objectives and then i'll come back on membership however you however you choose you can well why don't we you know what actually let's pause on membership at this point so i agree with meant much of what has been said um especially around some of the points that sandi just brought up and one of the things that i um very much am interested as a goal is how can we incentivize landlords to keep their rents below market rate um one of the things that i've been hearing is that you know there's many people in our community who don't charge market rate and they keep their rents well below market rate and so i think that if there are those people within our community we should try to devise ways to incentivize people to continue that behavior or that there should be some exemptions for people who actually keep their and are able to demonstrate that they keep they keep their rates well below market rate yeah uh so one thing that was brought up that was mentioned by community members was the all the different cities that have just caused eviction language and i'm not sure if it's possible to get a compare and contrast between the different cities so that we can get an understanding of just what's been implemented and if there's data that supports that another thing that was mentioned was and i'm not sure whether this would fall into the purview of the task force or someone else but uh the data associated with rent increases over the last five years with renter or with landlords and i realize that'll be difficult because we don't have a database of landlords uh to my knowledge so i'd love to explore the potential of creating a database of landlords and their rent histories and all that kind of stuff if possible um just so that we can be aware of what's going on we have the rental inspection program one other point that i was going to bring up is whether or not we can find out information on costs around potentially putting the lease leases and rental agreements online and this would be a way to begin creating an additional database where we can track rent increases on tenants we can track whether or not there have been complaints made by landlords or tenants the number of times people have been evicted or landlords have evicted tenants from their properties and so just so that there's because one of the things that we've heard this evening is that there's not a whole lot of data on how many landlords have been increasing their rents how much they've been increasing their rents by and i feel like as we're moving further into the technological age getting away from paper leases and having um this be having leases be made online um and what potential if there's a potential option for having that i think would also in the costs around that i think would also be a direction that we might want to go i would like to add um if there's interest at the council of having this being if it's going to be comprised of Santa Cruz City residents yes okay and um and and then thinking of um having areas of consensus be something that's really spelled out for us to receive when the report is complete actively seek even if limited consensus i think that's a good idea okay and then um if that covers um input at this time in terms of um more or less the direction we're hoping to go to help you all bring something back then we could talk a little bit about membership is that appropriate at this point yes and i'm thinking we can all you know we're going to go home and think about this we can give our thoughts to staff individually in the that's absolutely near future so if there's additional thoughts i just wanted to add ucsc to the mix too i mean that's a huge elephant in the room okay so the impact of ucsc in terms of data yes sure okay housing office is that what you're thinking yeah okay get them involved in yeah okay okay great okay um do we want to bring forward a conversation at this time in regards to membership or how that would look aside from the Santa Cruz residence i'm i'm just it's late it's almost midnight and i'm gonna you've got enough to chew on maybe bring that back we all agree we want some kind of facilitated smaller group i think okay city residents representing a spectrum so that could be we could pick up that and if there's input or ideas amongst the council that we could email you those ideas is that appropriate or did you like well i just want i mean i'd like to make a statement for the people who stayed for as late as we have just really quickly on membership and that's fine you know i have some thoughts on that which i'm happy to send along but i agree with um it's been it's been suggested by others um that we ensure that we have uh tenant representation landlord representation um i'm not sure exactly how to designate a student voice in this but i think that's important um representative from you know a non-profit at least one non-profit engaged in housing issues um etc so i i do think that you know we we but i also want to say that i'm absolutely supportive of this being uh a relatively small group so 9 11 i'm thinking that's that's where i want to i'd like to do so um for the official task force process with opportunities for the public to weigh in now i'll just add that i think it'd be beneficial to also include any experts with that live within the city that are interested in serving on the task force as well council member um are we talking about a brown-acted committee too it's going to be open to the public all the meetings and we'll have i would think i imagine just kind of looking at staff but for example the public safety was not a brown-act committee but some of their meetings had public participation in some they were invited to observe but not engage i mean just in the interest of moving and we could look at that so we could look at those various options when we get that return to when the item comes back to us in terms of and consider that yeah thank you i just want to make sure that in our not focusing on the memberships right now it doesn't have the potential to delay the process just because of the time frame and the urgency associated with this topic if we push it until the 22nd and staff hasn't had time to come up with a full presentation because they're lacking the membership details will that push it another two weeks to the next meeting and is that something that we want to do i don't i don't know i mean i'll let staff respond to that yeah thank you this was very helpful and actually to answer your question vice mayor Cummings it was an 18 month process for the wassak and i can talk to you more and we've got lots of materials it was a very sophisticated process but there are some very good parallels there and one was the very carefully constructed composition because in that similar to this you had about two maybe opposing sides if you will and so it was very important about the membership and the balance on that so that was very carefully wrought so we have a model there that was effective that we could bring forward to you now as for timing counts member Glover i was thinking realistically to put this together to devise strategies think this through carefully it would most likely come back on february 12th and that is i know i know everyone wants to move but if you just think about our calendar preparation this would have to be done by next wednesday and to be you know published by the thursday and i just i don't know if that's adequate i'm gonna aim for that but i think it's very likely to have a very fully vetted carefully considered um process options for you um it might make more sense to have additional time trying for the 22nd i just want to put that out there because you want to be thoughtful i i get this matters a great deal to you in the community and i want to be able to do the best we can do to give you good options okay thank you i'm gonna go council member brown and then council member crone and then i just want to rate because it's been the issue has been raised i just want to see if we can get some clarity about direction regarding the potential for a survey of some sort um if if do people want to weigh in on that now um or should we just give you that i'll just brief i mean my my way i mean unless that seemed something that's absolutely necessary i think um with the voices on housing we've done significant surveying and if that doesn't seem adequate and we think that at that point we want to maybe do additional serving then i would be open to that potentially would you like me to give some thought to that and present that as a discussion question i actually don't know that it's necessary but i just wanted to see what other others thought okay before so are you talking about like a gene bregman to kind of survey like we take five what what kind of survey maybe with the data collection with the thing you know there was suggested in our in our agenda report that we might consider a survey so i just wanted to i don't really have any thoughts on it because i don't think we need to do it but um i wanted to see where if anybody wants to have direction just to have to come back to us and again if you have additional direction or input that you like to provide i think it's appropriate for you to reach out to staff directly at this point um to me the meat and potatoes of this is going to be the the task force working on this and um the surveys will have i think limited function it depends on um who takes them and that's kind of self selecting you can do a survey monkey or something like it gives people the chance to weigh in but it's it's certainly not scientific so i would say that's maybe a nice add-on we'll get some okay i would just add that hopefully the facilitator can help maybe suss that out with us a little bit is you know that's often one of the things they think about is when they put the process together is one of that did you have yeah was the um was the wassak that was a brown actor they have participation by the the public all yeah so they took um uh public comment like at every meeting um how about the delac delac oh library yeah that that was all thank you i'm sorry i can tell us yeah they did yeah it was open and there was public comment um so how many members were anybody remember the of the delac it was 11 12 13 around that range and the um wassak was the wassak was 14 14 and looks like the public safety here the advisory public safety was 14 also right is there any further discussion do you need a motion on this or is this just direction no you don't okay this is just this discussion about the also like some sort of budget i mean that the stuff that we got here in on our these pages gives us a sort of flat figure but it says and staff costs and i'm just wondering also sometimes what staff costs are so perhaps when you bring back your proposal you can bring back some financial constraints or costs associated okay great so then that concludes this agenda item and we still have another one so at this point what's that okay okay sorry at this point um we will now move on to item number two of our evening session which is the second reading and final adoption of ordinance number 2018-20 amending chapter 21.3 of the municipal cold pertaining to relocation assistance for displaced tenants good evening mayor and council members almost morning yes so um we'll we'll try to go through this quickly we typically do not have a presentation for a second reading however given the timing here with the new council not having seen the the presentation for the first ordinance we do have a brief presentation here we'll go through it quickly and if you have any questions then we're happy to go into more detail on this this is one of the things that was identified as part of the housing blueprint subcommittees recommendations and it has come back to the council a number of times and and i'll go ahead and let sarah give you the history on that hello council members my name is sarah fleming for those of you who i haven't had an opportunity to meet yet i'm a principal planner overseeing our long-range advanced planning team uh so a little background ordinance history this came out of a number of efforts that you will have seen actually in the staff report the last item um around housing and um addressing some of the housing issues so as we discussed in the last item there was an interim just cause eviction and rent control ordinances that were passed in february 13th 28 2018 yes what year are we 2018 at the same time we had the housing blueprint subcommittee uh that was meeting they brought forth a series of recommendations of june of last year one of which was this item that you have before you to amend our displaced tenants ordinance to add language to address tenants displaced due to a large rent increase because the ordinance has written only address tenants that were being displaced based on life health health life and safety issues so this adds language to that ordinance as we do with any type of policy update we did a series of community outreach efforts and then we brought this forward to the council initially on september 11th uh 2018 because in the housing blueprint subcommittee materials we were asked to bring it back as soon as possible um close to the end of the year so we brought it back then um concerns were voiced that uh it would affect or impact the ballot initiative and so council decided at that time to continue that item until after the election so staff brought back the item november 27th 2018 after the election results were well into the process of being counted and certified at that time council did determine that they wanted to make a couple of modifications so modifications were made to the effective date and to the applicability of the ordinance that ordinance that was the first reading of that ordinance december 11th uh staff came back for the second reading and council had received a lot of feedback with some concerns uh regarding the applicability and so um this uh council decided to at that point um change the applicability language and then also modify in the original language there uh was or the original ordinance there was language that allowed changes by resolution and council decided that they would prefer to take that language out and make any changes required by ordinance so um that then became that first reading of the ordinance because those changes were substantive enough to require that uh to be a first reading and uh now here we are back january 8th with our second reading that includes all those changes so uh just kind of the high level ordinance provisions it's important to note that this does not cap rent increases what it does instead is defines a large rent increase uh as five percent in one year or seven percent cumulatively over two years by not capping the rent increase it's not rent control but what it does do that if a large rent increase occurs and the tenant uh needs to move because of that large rent increase and provides the notice to vacate within 60 days the tenant is then entitled to payment of two months rent uh in the pre uh increase amount so whatever had been agreed upon before the increase uh they're entitled to that from the landlord uh as it's not rent control it would not be subject to cost to Hawkins and it would cover all rentals citywide and so with that that's the the high level overview that's where we're at today and we'd love to turn it over to council for any questions and discussion are there any questions from the council at this time I'm trying to understand um the last time this came to us I thought the two months uh was taken out what was changed from it why are we doing it percentage was changed and then 90 changes by ordinance rather than by resolution that's correct and also actually um some language had been added I had just moved that back there we go um in november this language had been added uh to the definition section this yellow language um that basically indicates that people who are required to vacate due to the termination of a tenancy for reasons other than the breach of the lease um would be entitled for relocation assistance and um at the december 11th meeting the the council then had heard feedback from the community and uh reconsidered this position and decided to take this out so those were the things that changed on december 11th it's late could you explain that to me one more time what was what was changed in the last meeting yeah so yeah let's go back okay actually i'm going to go back here so on november 27th uh council had asked us to add two things we added an effective date and the applicability language that i just showed you which we can go back to in a moment on december 11th we brought those changes back as a second reading council then decided that they wanted to remodify the applicability language so that has now come back out uh and then also require change the language that does not allow changes by resolution but rather requires changes by ordinance and so what what you have now is from november 27th you still have the effective date language in there that makes it effective december 11th um you no longer have the applicability language and you now have language that requires any changes to be made by ordinance as opposed to resolution so those are the key changes over the last three meetings so over four years you can still raise rents um 14 percent over over four years for example so if you go eight percent over two years then and the person and the the tenant can say yes or no if they say no then they accept two months relocation that's correct that's correct so long as they provide notice within 60 days of the rent increase so you couldn't say you know six months later so there there's that provision you've got 60 days to decide and if you decide to leave then you would be entitled to the two months if you exceed either the five percent in one year or seven percent you need to live in two and the percentage of what constituted excessive was lowered from 10 and 15 percent oh thank you that is correct that did happen uh in november 27th and that did carry over so thank you good catch any additional council questions at this time okay um so now we will open it up to public comment is gail jack uh still present here what's that no okay is any member of the community wanting to speak to this item okay just one mc one is that correct two okay two then you get two minutes okay oh are you three okay is there any other members of the community that want to speak to this item we have three members who are standing up we'll have it conclude after use here okay okay so four okay that's it assert yeah okay four members that's it i'm closing the public comment at this point um you'll have 90 seconds go ahead i'm sorry right hi i'm synthia berger with tana cruise tenants association i um i applaud you for entertaining this in the first place it is sure to be challenged in court this is a groundbreaking ordinance thank you thank you honestly all i can say is that it's midnight and i'm exhausted and i cannot give you a confident argument at this moment because i worked the full day and now i've been here for another full day so i'm just stating that for record that i'm too tired to actually give a valid statement okay thanks good evening i'm scott graham um i still think the percentages are too high personally i like to see it uh connected to the cola for social security because that hasn't raised in years and all the your grandparents have been suffering with no increase in their social security for eight years now and we want to let landlords raise it by five percent every year or i guess it'd be what three and a half percent every year so i think the social security cola is a better measure of the increase that should be allowed and since the federal government decides there has been no increase in the cost of living why should landlords be allowed to continually raise rents it doesn't make sense but i think i you know i don't want to delay this thing anymore than it's already been delayed so um thank you at least the gentleman pretty much previous gentleman pretty much said what i wanted to say um but uh but i just want to add that i'm i'm just really disappointed and i i hear that the community is so divided and so forth coming together but i think the overall context of the situation that we are operating in has completely failed to be discussed we are operating in a fascistic environment what does that mean to me this is what it means it means business controls government when business controls government and you already have a foundation where everything is about privilege and money and status and relationships in that sense the people need protection and if this is the best that we can do and i and i've i've watched this whole process and i i'm not blaming anyone it's been a bear it's it's midnight and we're working on this so i just want to say i'm really disappointed in this i'm really i'm just like this doesn't this isn't this is this is abysmally poor it doesn't it's not enough and the greed i'm sorry i don't agree that power imbalance how are we going to have a task for for us this is not diesel in the sense that there is a power differential here that's completely left-sided thank you so now i'll bring it back to council for action and deliberation councilmember miers i'll go ahead and move the item uh for final adopting second reading final adoption just we have a motion okay so we have a motion by council member miers second by council member matthews any further discussion or deliberation at this time none i'll uh ask all those in favor please say aye hi any opposed that passes unanimously so this time the meeting is adjourned happy to run oh mercifully we don't have