 Good evening everybody. We're about ready to begin our meeting for this evening, so if I could get your attention. I wanted to begin first by announcing and really with great sadness the passing of Peter McGettigan, who passed away on June 14th. And I don't know if Mary or Martha McGettigan are here, but their, his sisters that were traveling down here to help care for him and anyone who's been sitting in our chairs knew Peter quite well and anyone who attended a community event probably know them equally well. So I wanted just to start the meeting and read something that was prepared by both Mary and Martha. And then I'll invite up James Fisher, board member of this community television also to make a brief statement about Peter's work with community television. Peter was born in St. Mary's Hospital in San Francisco and raised in Menlo Park. He was a percussionist and musician in the Palo Alto military band Peninsula Symphony and California Youth Symphony. He traveled with CYS for a month long concert tour of Japan in 1963. Peter moved to Santa Cruz in 1975 and became well known and recognized for his extensive documentaries producing, directing, editing and chronicling our community's history. In 2010 Peter received the Gale Rich Award. It was said that his mantra was tape everything and that Peter is always shooting. Peter over the years has produced thousands of hours of programs and recorded over 700 city council meetings. He worked with community television of Santa Cruz County and earned six awards from the West Coast Alliance of Community Television Stations for video excellence for his documentaries. Peter served on two of our city advisory boards. He was for eight years on the City Arts Commission and for another 12 years on the Historic Preservation Commission. He also served on the boards of the Del Mar, Friends of the Del Mar Theater and Museum of Art and History's blue plaque committee. He was our current chairperson of the Historic Preservation Committee. In December 2015 then Mayor Don Lane proclaimed Peter McGettigan Day for his work in our community. He will be greatly missed. I'd now like to invite up James Fisher. I want to thank the council for allowing us this opportunity. This is a prepared document from our board. For generations of members Peter McGettigan was the face of Santa Cruz Community TV. Everywhere one looked there he was operating camera both volunteer and staff shoots in the studio and in the field. Hunkered away for hours in the old tape based linear edit base where he was the master and then reluctantly in front of a Mac editing in Final Cut Pro. Or behind the scenes at the Santa Cruz City Council meetings bringing the proceedings to the public and their homes. Many CTV alumni, some of whom have gone on to professional careers in media, credit Peter as a mentor. Beyond how to frame a shot he taught them the intangibles, things that aren't typically taught in classes, how to put talent at ease, how to take control of an event space not designed for video or sound and rearrange the entire room to guarantee a good recording. Oh and not to mention how to find the best free food. An avid local historian and always keenly aware that today's activities are future history, Peter would often convince event organizers that their events simply had to be documented. Even if the thought hadn't occurred to them. Through the Davenport Oral History Project Peter captured for posterity the memories of Santa Cruz County's North Coast residents. Known by his friends for his daring he had always classy fashion sense. Peter was a passionate thrift store bargain hunter and would often gift his fines to deserving recipients. He was quite fond of cooking for his friends and breaking bread over a fine glass of wine. Peter's dry, witty, the revelant sense of humor brought a smile or a laugh to many a face. Peter will be fondly remembered with a sense of gratitude by the many CTV members and staff whose lives he touched in both and ways both profound and modest. And I just want to add we are all of us molded and remolded by those who have loved us. No love, no friendship can ever cross the paths of our destiny without leaving some mark upon it forever. Mr. Peace Brother. Thank you Mr. Fisher. I wanted to also say Mr. Stevens. It's always difficult to lose a friend. Peter, my wife and I are here because we treated, we considered Peter a member of our family. We had him over for dinner not too long ago and he took over the kitchen and he prepared a nice meal for us and that was one of his loves. What hasn't been said about Peter when we were here protesting the Vietnam War, Peter was in Vietnam in a Medevac unit where he got Agent Orange and I'm sure that contributed to his death that he will be greatly missed. Peter was in Vietnam in a Medevac unit where he got Agent Orange and I'm sure he will be greatly missed. He was also a co-founder of the E. Clampus Vitus local chapter. I'm sure that all of his brothers, both in the military and the E. Clampus as well as everyone in Santa Cruz will miss him. I just want to thank this council for not only previous councils but for the current council for honoring him. Thank you Mr. Stevens. Certainly if you didn't know Peter, you saw his work and he made a lasting impact on our city and I'd like to invite you now all to take a moment of silence in honor of Peter for his work to the city and to recognize him for the many contributions he's made to our city. Thank you. I'd like to say that the Magetian family and I believe members of the CTV board and others will plan a memorial for Peter. We'll also in an appropriate time lower our flags to half staff and recognition of Peter for our city. Now I'd like to open up the meeting and ask our new, this is our first day in her new role as city clerk administrator. Bonnie Bush who is promoted and I'd like to open up the meeting with a call to the roll call. Thank you Mayor. Council Member Cron. Present. Matthews. Here. Chase. Here. Brown is absent. Naroyan. Here. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. Mayor Teresas. Here. So thank you. Welcome to our 7 p.m. June 19, 2018 study session meeting of the city council. This is a single item that will be on our agenda dealing with a study session on the downtown library advisory committee with recommendations for the downtown branch and downtown parking rate strategy. As a reminder the order will be a staff presentation followed by questions of staff from the council and then we'll take public comment. At this point I'd also like to ask if the council, if there's any conflicts for this meeting. Yes, I would very much like to be present for the presentation and discussion but unfortunately I do have a conflict of interest, material conflict of interest because I own property within 500 feet of the site in question. So on the advice of the city attorney I will have to recuse myself from this issue and not be present or participate. So at this point I'll leave. Okay. Yeah. Enjoy your evening. I will be watching at home. Before you leave I'd like to just say I'd like to recognize some members that contributed to some of the information that we're going to receive tonight and I'd like to say on behalf of the entire city council I'd like to thank the members of the downtown library association or the D-LAC members for the many many hours of service they provided to our community. In addition to all the public meetings that were held members also contributed research and participated in visit to other libraries to ensure that Santa Cruz gets the best of and it's the best of all possible libraries and I know I was on one of the trips that traveled over to the Los Gatos branch and met some of you there when we toured that library. So to all the D-LAC members thank you for your service to our community and thank you for your work to fulfill the community's wish to look at and establish the new downtown library and engaging the public in that work. If you would and you're willing if you'd stand up so you could be recognized for your work as a member of the D-LAC. Thank you. Okay. Now I'd like to turn it over to staff to begin the presentations. Good afternoon or good evening mayor and members of the city council my name is Bonnie Lipscomb I'm director of economic development and with me this evening is Claire Flesler who's our transportation planner Jim Burr our our public works. Our transportation manager. And also Susan Nimitz who is our library director. So we'll each be taking this in parts and I'm just going to kick it off and start with talking a little bit big picture of why we're here tonight. This is actually part of a two evening presentation last week we had started in with sort of big picture downtown some of the things we've been working on over the last couple years focused in on some of the work we've been doing with the farmers market over the last year as well as some of the work related to the housing blueprint subcommittee related to housing and some big picture sort of looking towards the future. Tonight we're going to go in a little more detail where I have first have a presentation from the downtown library advisory committee with some of their recommendations that they made last December moving forward and a more detailed look on the parking rate strategy. So those of you who saw the presentation last week this is a familiar slide just in the context of the big picture vision one of the things that we have really been focused on in the last two years is really looking overall at the downtown what is our vision going forward for the future where are we now where do we need to focus some of our efforts. I would add to sort of these four areas of community spaces parking housing and transportation sort of with that community spaces is also sort of our commercial aspect of retail and as part of the downtown community office some of those other elements as well but the ones that you see on the screen right now are those that were directly as part of the overall vision actively working at the city level but there are some policy both directions and decisions at the council level related to retail as particularly as it relates to the downtown plan amendments that you recently approved. So this is part of the strategy last week we really focused in on on three of these community spaces parking supply and demand and housing and some of the overall vision for the five to six hundred units and then tonight we're going to go into more detail on the library and the work of the downtown library advisory committee and then on the parking rate strategy. Just to recap you actually did provide us direction back in December 2016 so just briefly wanted to recap what that direction was and that was to actually form the downtown library advisory committee the DLAC committee to determine the best path forward for the library. You also directed staff to develop recommendations regarding the development of the new permanent site for the downtown farmers market and following last week's presentation you did direct us to move forward with pursuing an agreement with the Santa Cruz community farmers market for a permanent location and with an actual site identified we'll be looking to see if we can actually come up with a long-term agreement for that site. So we're pretty excited by the progress in the work working today with the farmers market board. You also directed staff to develop a parking rate strategy for funding of the parking portion of a potential project in the downtown. A lot of work has been done on this some of this as I mentioned the supply and demand was really focused on last week. The strategy and the parking rates will be part of the presentation for you tonight. Last week specifically we overviewed this sort of overall community spaces I already mentioned the farmers market those three areas. We also focused a little bit on housing and some of the overview of the projects that are planning downtown and why we're looking to the future as far as the vision and wanting to make sure that we're getting that balance right particularly as it relates to proposed development future development housing creation specifically the market rate housing that's under that's currently being planned privately as well as the affordable housing development largely on the public side and making sure that we're balancing that right and we're creating those opportunities to create more affordable housing and housing downtown downtown being the of all the places in our community where we can actually develop additional housing. So that's a component of what we presented last last week of showing where those sites are identified in the work that we've done to date. Today's presentation will really focus on by the downtown library advisory committee on the process of vision and their recommendations that they have made coming out of their committee to you and that will be presented tonight as well as a detailed specific strategy on parking rates including the proposed sunset of the parking deficiency fees currently paid by businesses in the downtown as well as transportation demand management funding and that program both the progress that we've made over the last you know decades of work on transportation demand as well as the future plan for expanding that program and then a more detailed sort of in-depth analysis of parking replacement what's going away and what is that balance for parking for future for future development and then finally and we'll recap this at the at the end of the presentation what we really like to do next is is outreach so we wanted to come back to you based on the direction that we had on December 2016 you also asked us to develop an outreach plan and so we wanted to come to you and present the sort of the information we have thus far and then we additionally would like to do community outreach both on the proposed library downtown mixed use project outreach on the parking rates strategies both for downtown businesses downtown workers property owners and then return to you in august with further recommended actions so that's sort of an overview of tonight tonight really is a study session we intentionally didn't want to have actions for you to just to make tonight because we felt like we had so many moving parts and components to these two-part presentation that we felt it was really important to present the information to you to take some feedback from you on a lot of these various elements conduct community outreach and then come back to you with that information so that's our proposal and sort of our outline for how for how tonight's presentation will be and what our sort of proposed next steps are and with that I'd like to turn it over to Susan Nimitz our library director thank you so much for having me I'm Susan Nimitz the director of the Santa Cruz public libraries I'm so excited to be here tonight and introduce you to the work of this amazing citizens committee and we had 10 members of the public who had great love for public libraries and devoted an enormous amount of their time and energy to this project just for me to go back a little bit this was the result of a 2013 master planning exercise that the library board did to really look at the facilities across Santa Cruz county and and to begin to address what was a great deal of deferred maintenance and out of date service models at that time there was a suggestion that we move forward with measure s and measure s was on the ballot June 7th 2016 and it received approval with over 70 percent of our voters agreeing to it the money from measure s improves all 10 libraries one of the things we knew about measure s at the time was that the amount of money being approved was less than what was probably needed and I will say as we work on all 10 projects one of the things that we're finding is that our community expectations far exceed the funds that are available so each and every community is really looking at how they manage that shortfall I think one of the things the city recognized in the fall of 2016 was that the 23 million allocated to the downtown library was not likely to cover the full cost of a remodel or rebuild and so we did this quick study with group 4 that Bonnie referenced and just to see if a multi-use facility could work in downtown Santa Cruz and if it could be financially feasible the consultant group 4 did find it to be so and the city council instructed us to put together a citizens group to basically explore national trends assess current and future library service needs in our community look at the existing condition of the library and make a recommendation about what kind of library we should be building in downtown Santa Cruz I the mayor's already introduced the committee but again I just want to say thank you to these amazing community members we had some really incredible people from our community serve on this community we had librarians and educators and small business people and tech people we had heavy library users a community maven and a home school mom we had a woman who's working with immigrant communities we just really had an amazing cross-section of the Santa Cruz community and I can say in my entire 30 years of public service I've never worked with a community group that was more devoted to finding solutions for the library in this community so thank you mayor for mentioning that it was very a very lovely process let me just say also I know Martha Dexter was on the former library board because I served with her so I'm sure she has a pretty lengthy tenure being on a library board and she also spent 30 years at the Library of Congress so there's two of our members that really are going to present their findings and we've got Rina Dubin and Martine Gomez Rina is the homeschool mom who's a community activist and has more energy than I think the whole community committee put together and you'll see that in her presentation Martine Gomez is really extraordinary gentleman with a long history of working in libraries he's the former director of the LA public library the Brooklyn public library the Oakland public library and most recently was the director at USC's academic library the two of them would like to tell you what they learned and what they found so in the last eight years beloved bookstores have closed all around Santa Cruz county and amazon.com streaming services and the internet have permanently transformed our relationship to books how we get our information and our entertainment with bookstores closing not only here but all across the united states and with google searches so ubiquitous it would seem that libraries are doomed however in many communities around the world libraries are not only surviving but thriving these libraries are not only managing to stay relevant in today's world but they are the hub the key part of vibrant neighborhoods and cities in fact so many libraries are evolving that there are now 1.5 billion in-person visits to the library annually that's more than four million visits to libraries a day nationally nationally yes across the yes not here and library programs are attended by 96.5 million people across the country per year that's more than attended all major baseball leagues and nva games combined many libraries in the u.s. and worldwide are prospering but part of the charge for our committee was to explore why why are these libraries flourishing what are they doing right what are the trends nationally for libraries the committee wanted to know how these libraries have been designed to address the modern needs of their particular community and most importantly what does Santa Cruz need from its library and how can we best use millions of dollars to create a library that can still be an integral part of the Santa Cruz community 20 years from now the members of the committee visited other libraries and researched national trends that are creating such successes and here's what we found and I will tell you it was really fun and exciting to research and go through these so hopefully you'll get a little taste of it so thriving libraries here we go have welcoming children's rooms like this slide from wisconsin and this slide from south korea successful libraries today have children's areas like these in rhoda island that are inviting and inspiring they have flexible space for early literacy programs and activities that can draw families together libraries that are flourishing also have a fun and safe space to support learning for pre-teens and teens like this teen room in a library in stock home libraries with great teen rooms are wildly popular here's a room in new york teens want a safe place to gather after school and hang out and meet with tutors and do homework like this teen room in jacksonville florida these teen spaces are designed to appeal middle and high schoolers flock to these libraries if you've been to a library that has a welcoming atmosphere for teens like the scott's valley library between 330 and 5 on a weekday or enlist gata's library after school then you know what i mean because children and teen spaces are used and provide a wonderful asset for the community 21st century libraries also have computer labs and quiet study spots and flexible spaces for tutoring and small groups to meet as well as larger rooms for lectures classes and other programs a thriving library is a welcoming place not just for people to borrow books but for the community to meet to gather to take classes to listen to a lecture to work or study our committee was really encouraged these libraries are so successful that neighborhoods are using them as an anchor for their communities some of these are standalone structures and some are in mixed use structures so here is the shirlington library in arlington county virginia and it's a good example of this a mixed use structure in this four story building a branch of the county library occupies the first floor and a theater for plays not for movies is on the second third and fourth floors they are all attached to a 750 space parking garage the vibrant and artfield courtyard unites the entrances this is in chicago and they are using the neighborhood branch libraries to anchor affordable housing for example the west ridge branch project in the left photo will soon feature a glassy 16 000 square foot ground floor library space topped by 44 senior housing units the right photo is of their independence branch currently under construction from inside the library the design ensures that one would never feel like four stories of housing are above that space the four apple level upper levels will contain 44 apartments comprising of 30 public housing units and 14 affordable rate units these pictures are from the east branch library in milwaukee a 16 000 square foot library and a five story building with 99 apartments parking and retail space the milwaukee public library billiard square branch pictured in the bottom corner is in a mixed use development that includes the library on the first floor with 47 apartment homes on three stories above and that's specifically for families where the grandparents are the primary caregivers for the grandchildren so what does santa cruz need from its downtown branch to have a flourishing library now and also 20 years from now one way the committee attempted to understand the community's needs was by surveying a public the public about optimal features for the downtown branch library over 2000 people 2273 people responded surpassing our goals the results of which i shared with those of you who are in the los gatos tour with us the details are also printed in the appendix of the delac report and recommendation if anyone wants more information but from this survey working with the consultant and other interviews presentations and research the committee realized that santa cruz needs 44 000 to 47 000 square feet to meet the needs of our community this will give us enough space for a treasure children's area a vibrant teen space a genealogy and local history section there's the location of the first library right there expanded technology like more printers and computers quiet seating and study areas tutoring rooms and community learning spaces as well as keeping the current collection of books and other materials if we have anything less than this amount of square footage we will have to eliminate key priorities we need to have at least 44 000 square feet to have all the programs and features that santa cruz wants and deserves good evening the downtown library advisory committee worked with the architectural firm of nolan tam to develop various design options that fulfill our vision for the new downtown branch as rina stated our vision was to create a library that met our desired program of at least 44 000 square feet had dedicated space for children and teens seating and meeting spaces for group study and community programs and of course state of the art technology for public use and to support public access to the increasing numbers of digital information sources available for library users in the end we were presented with four options to consider first option a was a partial renovation of the existing library but you can see there did not meet the requirements for the program that we had developed b a new mixed use facility it did meet the program requirements c full renovation of the existing library also met the uh the program requirements and d new construction on the existing lot as you'll notice on the cost estimates that were provided by the architectural firm of nolan tam the costs for all the libraries uh varied widely after much discussion and deliberation the downtown library advisory committee voted unanimously to recommend that a new downtown library be built as part of a city's proposed mixed use facility on cedar lincoln and cathart streets or option b the committee did not arrive at this recommendation lightly we debated and many of us felt that option c was also very desirable but the cost as you can see was prohibitive we only had 23 million dollars from measure s to work with option a was also not a logical alternative it offers less usable space than other options and we couldn't recommend that an option that doesn't meet what the community asked for we felt that option a is an irresponsible use of measure s funds because primarily it will not meet our program and people may ask what did we get for our money so why option b the cost the option option b was selected because it is the most cost efficient although the cost is slightly above the 23 million dollars available for measure s this option fulfills all of the program requirements identified by the downtown library advisory committee in addition to the programmatic benefits the cost for creating a new 21st modern library are less expensive in this option because it is being designed and built from the ground up in other words built with all the modern features and flexibility of function that can be taken into consideration for the next deck several decades this option is also less expensive expensive than trying to retrofit an existing facility that is nearly 70 years old it is important to point out that the anticipated costs for this option are less because the infrastructure costs can be absorbed and shared by all the project participants in this mixed use project as the anchor tenant this option will add character and greater public benefit to a mixed use development project drawing more foot traffic to retail businesses from families and individuals students etc in the area however our recommendation comes with some caveats first we want to make sure that there is public participation in the design of the new library we don't want the library to become an afterthought as the mixed use design moves forward the library will be and should be the core anchor tenant for the project and the residents of santa cruz should have a library that they can be proud of for generations to come second we know that we will need additional financial support for the construction of this plan b the friends of the santa cruz public library will do their part but we will also need additional support from the city of santa cruz third when we were given a behind the scenes tour of the current downtown branch we were all appalled by the condition of the library it's clear that basic and required maintenance had been deferred over the years overlooked for decades hva systems and other infrastructure needs had been sadly neglected we don't want that to happen to a new downtown branch library we would like some assurance from the city of santa cruz that they are committed to keeping the library in excellent operating condition that it's well maintained and that it receives the attention that it needs over its usable lifetime on behalf of my colleagues on the downtown library advisory committee i want to thank you for the opportunity to serve the city we know that you've received copies of the report and at the appropriate time we'd be happy to answer any questions you may have thank you i have a couple questions and martin do you want to do those you want um what's the preference to do we'd prefer to go all the way through before questions any more presentations are there this is a it's parking can you hold and then we'll do the questions after is it something you really want to put if you if you'd like to pose it i mean i don't know if you have a series of questions or a single one series but go ahead okay let's let's go through this and then i'll come back to you okay parking rate strategy portion of the meeting tonight just to recap we developed a new parking rate strategy at the direction of council at their december 6 2016 meeting where we looked at the concept plan the feasibility study for a mixed use project there we did convene the ad hoc an ad hoc subcommittee to look at the rates we did reach out to some business owners and run looking for critique on our initial plan we did present to the downtown association association just a week ago for more critique and then finally we presented our rate strategy to the downtown commission meeting this morning and for those of you just one one i apologize to interrupt would it be possible to have the outside speakers turned on so we could make sure that others that might be outside on the far can hear that and have it turned up louder all right so just we'll pause for one moment and also we have staff looking to develop some overflow seating so that's in the works too someone just said move it to the civic do you want to i heard that all you did okay do you want to explain why that ready i i was hoping if the speakers are on but um yeah uh you can let's tell them i want to just confirm that the speakers are on thank you for your patience because we we're missing our our new city clerk right now and now we don't have a quorum should we keep talking so we'll make it we'll wait for a pause for a moment stand just a reminder hey everybody got up we didn't have a quorum okay just a request for the speaker did you hear that okay the outside speakers are now on and thank you for your patience you can continue just to recap uh we are developing a rate strategy by the way i'm jim burr i'm the transportation manager here and this is the player fleece their transportation planner we uh been working on this rate strategy at the direction of city council at from their june 19th or from their december 2016 meeting um again we presented it to the downtown association about a week ago we have reached out to a few businesses just to get critique on the plan and um we did convene the ad hoc finance subcommittee of the downtown commission meetings as was directed by council um just to remind folks here that the downtown commission is advisory to council on all things parking and i'll go into more of that in just a moment so we took the rate strategy to the downtown commission meeting this morning we had a four one vote to one increase the permit garage lot meter user fees we had um approval to recommend that council sunset the deficiency fee at 20 percent a year we had a recommendation for council to approve funding transportation demand management at three hundred thousand dollars a year and we had a recommendation to that city council approve construction of a new parking supply project in general that's not cool okay just keep working through and if i ask you this is the type of meeting where everybody please be respectful of one another when we have the discussion there's all different viewpoints and perspective but the bottom line is we all want to hear from each other and um so please when each person speaks i ask that you be respectful of of their comments and uh they'll be of yours so thank you please go ahead sir one more that's a warning i see in the back please if you can keep it down thank you sir please go ahead mr burr so the downtown framework uh we'll touch on briefly we'll touch on a budget overview just to orient folks um current status of transportation demand management in in town and uh supply and demand review just because it's so important for this for the parking rates discussion we're going to reiterate some of the points we made last week um and then finally the new information the parking rate strategy and as jim said the first four of these items here are mostly a recap of items that you've heard before but we wanted to make sure to present them again in the anticipation that we would have a larger audience tonight so to really set up and help everyone understand how we how we reached item five the proposed parking rate strategy so apologies in advance because some of the information is what you've heard before but hopefully you find it a good refresher uh again the big picture slide and we are talking about fees tonight um to support all of the other uh items why a new rate strategy again council direction um in a nutshell we have planned housing and growth downtown we are losing surface parking lots uh even if we do nothing and we have growth that uh we'll be coming in at a um at a rate probably that we haven't seen in a few years we um had several supply demand models over the years and we our latest model predicted a balance point around 2008 and that's just about the time the great recession uh really sat in and so we didn't see much growth much new growth downtown but we are seeing new projects we have pipeline projects that we're fairly certain are coming in and we are planning for those uh so we have both uh lots coming offline and we have demand coming online in in a nutshell that's what we're looking at um why a new rate strategy we want a regular predictable funding from the from the district side for transportation demand management um another good reason to adjust the rates is because the old model is exactly that an old model where businesses subsidize the cost of parking uh best practices uh and best practices the user of the parking facility pays for parking and uh that way that user can make the best choice around whether or not to drive and park um and finally those businesses that are paying the subsidy um will no longer have to do it with sunset the deficiency fee one more piece on that the um we've heard over the years that the deficiency fee is actually a double hit to businesses in that I'll explain more of this but they paid a deficiency fee it doesn't get them any parking they also pay for parking thanks uh we are in a downtown parking district and and this is important because this is a different it's a unique place in town everywhere else in the city and usually everywhere else in the state and the nation when you open a business you provide the parking that's not the case in the district uh the city provides the parking in the district and um it's been that way since 1956 um it uh a downtown enter uh parking district enterprise fund was established in 1956 it is a separate fund it doesn't use general fund money as nor does it um send money back to the general fund it's a standalone self-supporting fund uh the downtown commission advises on all things parking um in the parking district we have reduced parking requirements again because we concentrate the supply because it's a shared supply we can reduce the number of spaces basically that are needed downtown uh it's about 30 to 70 percent uh reduced parking requirements that's the code that businesses are are required to um provide the flip side of this uh it's very important for the city to supply that parking it's our job to be out front and supply the shared add to the shared supply the district is funded from very few sources um parking parking in really uh then the deficiency fees which we're going to talk about sunsetting tonight so really it's users of parking that's that's how we get funded the citations the whole enforcement operation the meter enforcement personnel that's all general fund um both funded by and and the citation of revenue goes to the general fund just a real quick this was presented in great detail at the downtown commission we do this each march we go through the entire district revenue and talk about the capital improvement program and um I bring this slide to your attention to just point out that the parking deficiency fees are now um at 16.7 percent of the the whole pie if you will um there was once a time it was greater than half when I started it was about a third and it shrinks every year because one it's eroded by inflation it hasn't been raised in a long time but more importantly it's overshadowed by finally more and more paid parking facilities that have come online uh and this is an important I think to to point out because when it was half the budget I don't think we could have ever considered um sunsetting the deficiency fee but but I believe now that it's in a reasonable uh it's a reasonable piece of the pie that we can actually it can be replaced and I'll show you how in a little lot in a little while here again shared parking is the model we use for the downtown district it's like the gold standard of parking uh there are so many different businesses downtown a mix of uses different business hours people can park once and hit three or four different businesses alternatively um those businesses are open at different times of the day so their customers can come down at different times and um I'll share the same parking we can turn over a parking space three or four times a day and some of our busier garages and serve the same number of businesses with much less parking and that's the key here the difference here outside the district is that each of these businesses would provide their own parking for example if you had a breakfast restaurant next door to an office building next door to a bar each of those establishments would provide their own parking requirements could not share them and would result in a net higher number of parking spaces whereas in downtown that same breakfast establishment office and bar could share that same parking supply leading to an overall net lower number of parking spaces because of the differing business hours that they represent so in the downtown the key component is we have a shared system that results in a lower number of parking spaces provided and a higher efficiency of use moving on to our current status again I'll try to go through these quickly because there are elements that you've heard before but the one that I want to make sure that we always pat ourselves on the back for is that in terms of our transportation demand management efforts to date in the city of Santa Cruz we see a drive alone mode split of 20 percent below the national average we have been investing as a city in alternatives to give people choices that don't involve driving alone in their own vehicle and we've been investing in these for decades what this has resulted in is a significant mode split in public transit 6.8 percent a huge number of people walking over 10 percent which is seven and a half percent above the state and then finally the second highest bike mode split in the state of California at 9.5 percent and what this has resulted in is us being named a gold level bicycle friendly community we've continued to invest we're pretty proud of it we've been investing in these heavily over time one of the things that we have underway right now is between 2011 and the present we've been successful in winning over 21 million dollars in outside grant funding sources to continue to construct bike and pedestrian projects to continue to move the needle on giving people alternatives to the single occupant vehicle we're really proud of the progress we've made and we've worked really really hard to get here and this is something that I know I spent too long on the slide but I want you all to feel very very proud of how much progress we've made in particular some of the current TDM strategies that we've been working on our bike and pedestrian mode split combined is just under 20 percent we've been investing heavily in our bike lane network and our off-street facilities in particular we're going to be going to construction on segment seven of the rail trail in the coming months we're really excited about that in downtown we provide over 100 bike lockers for secure bike parking for people to feel better commuting downtown and using their their own bicycle our downtown commission and our city also sponsors encouragement activities getting people excited about biking and walking including bike to work day in open streets we're really proud that we've rolled out our bike share system at 250 bike shared electric bicycle fleet we've had over 5200 rides since we rolled out just over a month ago and we're averaging six trips per bike per day where the national average is one to two so we are just blowing it out of the water on bike share we're amazed and we're looking forward to continued progress there and then finally we've invested heavily in our sidewalk network to to provide for safe pedestrian access with parking as Jim mentioned we have our shared parking model resulting in a net lower parking requirement lower spaces provided in higher use we also use pricing strategies to encourage people to consider alternative modes and to encourage turnover especially on our main street on pacific other options we have is that we provide partnerships of zip car for car share for those who choose to use alternative modes to get downtown but who might need to make a trip during the day or don't have a vehicle and have one on demand additionally our transit center is in downtown offering a transit alternative to downtown employees and residents we partner with the RTC on the cruise 511 program which offers traveler information and finally we have the downtown trolley which operates summer weekends and holidays update on segment seven the phase one will be out to bed early next week we're very excited now i'm going to walk you through our supply of parking that we have oriented to that and the supply impacts that we see upcoming and then we're going to follow that up with demand supply and demand in terms of parking and land use are intrinsically linked so we have just under 3 000 spaces downtown which are shared public supply 815 on street and then 200 excuse me 2135 off street primarily those are those are mostly in the garages those are about 1500 spaces i believe garaged we lease 140 spaces which is a key piece of what we're here telling you about in that we see lots coming offline one of the reasons the district works is because we have supplied parking over the decades and we heard even at the last presentation a number of businesses who don't support any new parking and that's that's fine that's great but one of the reasons we don't have a parking problem downtown is that we've planned for and built parking structures over the decades that's also one of the reasons we can keep prices low because most of these structures are paid for with the exception of the soquel front our early modeling showed that when soquel front was completed we did have a surplus in the district and we've enjoyed a surplus again right till we got to the balance point of 2008 and we've kind of teetered on that balance point since but we see that changing in the near future so as Jim mentioned here we have 140 spaces leased in the downtown a particular area that we're concerned about is the calvary church lot in between the 515 and the red church there this lot has 108 spaces and we sell 120 permits to downtown employees and residents here uh we were operating under a two-year lease with a two-year option we are currently in the two-year option with a lease end date of october 2019 we are anticipating this lot coming offline because we have been approached with a couple different potential uh projects here which should mostly add housing to downtown this would be a loss of 108 spaces in a really imminent time frame we are planning to send out um letters to all the permit holders in this lot next month to notify them and give them a year's head start to get on a permit wait list our permit wait lists currently are between 10 months in a year this brings us into our predicted loss of supply of parking over time so to orient you here the blue polygons are existing public garages and the yellow rectangles polygons are um our existing surface slots um further to remember that we have a total public supply of 2,950 spaces in downtown the first lot that we're predicting losing parking in is lot two which is in the northern northern portion of pacific and this is going towards filling the final gap left over from the 1989 earthquake so it's a long time in coming but it will result in the net loss of 30 spaces in our supply next uh as we identified the cavalry church lot 108 spaces predicting that coming offline in late 2019 and then a lot 23 which is at the corner of laurel and front there that's going to be incorporated into a mixed use housing development project those are both coming offline and we're currently at a net loss of 162 spaces next uh we have lot 22 which uh it will be incorporated into another mixed use housing project and then lot 12 which is a city owned lot adjacent to the transit center and this has been identified by your council as being incorporated into a future affordable housing project there those coming offline results in a net loss of 202 spaces we have lot seven lot 27 excuse me which is another lot that we lease we anticipate this coming offline in 2025 and then that brings us to the action from last week which is to look for a permanent home from the farmers market at lot seven which is there at front and cathcart and the potential library mixed use project at lot four which would result in an additional loss of 135 spaces so uh with that happening if that is incorporated into a future project we will have a net loss of 369 parking spaces during the project that is being considered um we modeled it on a potential 600 total space garage but with a 369 net loss of spaces this results in a total net new of 231 spaces what that represents is about a 10 increase in supply um whereas without the project we would be losing about 10 of our overall parking supply another thing to notice here is that with their resulting loss of these lots coming offline the southern half of our downtown parking district is really lacking for that shared parking supply the remaining public facilities are almost entirely north of cathcart street that's particularly important as we get into the demand of what we're seeing in the future when we look at demand and when we talk about what is full for our garages and our off straight facilities the accepted literature has an effective capacity of between 80 and 90 percent for our models we use 90 percent to model the most progressive way that we could that we felt was still viable what this allows for in modeling at 90 percent is gives a cushion so that you know when you enter a parking facility there will be a few spaces available this reduces the amount of circling that people spend looking for parking and reduces the impact of the estimated 30 percent of downtown congestion which is directly attributable to people circling and looking for parking we really want to make it so that if you are driving downtown you can drive directly to a facility and find a space rather than spend your time circling we'd rather you park get out of your car and continue on your way additionally what this allows for is fluctuations for special events and local to Santa Cruz what this looks like is every Wednesday when we have the farmer's market that's a special event the 26 home games a year that we have the warriors that's a special event first Friday is a special event street closures are special events and those are not events that we would consider providing additional parking supply for but planning for a 90 percent effective parking parking capacity allows us that fluctuation to happen on street we look at 85 percent effective parking capacity and what this does is leave one to two spaces open per block face so that you can make those quick trips and especially to those businesses immediately on Pacific Avenue so quick run in for a cup of coffee run into a store etc and there is a space available on each block face so we used the supply impacts that we just showed you and we used a 90 percent off street effective to make effective capacity and an 85 percent on street to model out what we saw coming forward the future development impacts and what those are to orient you to this slide shown in yellow is where our existing surface parking facilities are after that the supply impacts come offline and the purple shows where we are projecting future development occurring primarily this is due to our adoption of the update to the downtown plan which encourages mixed use housing projects and intensified development in the southern portion of downtown and oriented towards the river this also is in line with the council's two-year work plan goal to entitle five to six hundred housing units downtown and so you really are seeing that that is something that we're projecting out occurring based on both applications we have in pre-apps and then conversations we've had with various owners again what you'll notice here is that the existing parking supply is heavily in the northern end of pacific avenue and the new demand is largely generated from the southern end of pacific exactly where the existing public supply will be going away so as I mentioned we modeled this on the loss of supply and the increase in demand this first scenario you see here which you've seen models out a 10-year and a 20-year planning horizon this is a 90 90 percent effective capacity scenario that does not add new parking supply but does model in that loss of parking supply and the increase in demand as you can see in 2026 the 10-year horizon we're projecting a net deficit of over 650 spaces and then the 20-year horizon in 2036 net deficit of over 1200 spaces we also modeled this on the addition of a 600 space structure which were to result in a net new parking supply of 231 spaces you can see here in 2026 we're projecting a parking deficit of just shy of 200 spaces and by 2036 of 745 spaces as you'll note in both these scenarios we do have a deficit in both the 10-year and 20-year planning horizon which tells us that a we're not considering overbuilding parking by any means b that we need to continue to invest in alternatives in either scenario and see that we we can and must do better in our transportation demand management and that's one of the elements that we included in our proposed parking strategy again to reorient you we're already doing very well in our transportation demand management and we want to continue to do better one of the things that you received very many letters about so we wanted to provide you information on is how do we stack up against some of our peers uh the ones we heard most about were uh Palo Alto and Boulder as peers and also San Luis Biscoe gets brought up a lot you can see us highlighted here in orange and the data that we use is the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey they do a um five-year rolling estimate that they release each year and this is the data that we use to track ourselves over time and also to track ourselves against our peers over time this is an apples to apples comparison that uses the same methodology in every uh every place in the united states um as you can see our drive alone rate here at 56 and a half percent is incredibly low boulders is lower than us by about 5.2 percent largely that comes from their larger percent of work at home 5.3 percent higher than ours um when we discussed transportation demand management strategies with the downtown commission and brought up work from home as one of the effective strategies they came back loud and clear and told us that downtown employees are downtown customers and we want to do everything we can to attract more people to come downtown and to stay downtown not to discourage them from coming so the transportation demand management strategies that we are looking at heavily rely on transit walking and biking rather than encouraging a work from home so that explains that the largest difference in these stats here um we also modeled our parking demand over time with different mode split goals so one of the questions we asked was since we're seeing the parking deficit in both the additional supply and no new supply scenarios how low would we need to get our drive alone rate in order to be at a balance and not have a parking deficit to orient you here blue is our existing 56 and a half percent drive alone rate red is with the addition of a 600 space garage for a net new of 231 spaces and green is a status quo scenario with just losing supply and increasing demand uh we modeled this on 10 year on a 10 year and a 20 year horizon and as you can see here 10 years out if we were to add a new project we would need to reduce our drive alone rate to 50 percent if we did not have a new project we would need to reduce that to 35 percent a 21 and a half percent reduction over our current similarly in our 20 year planning horizon we would need to reduce our drive alone rate to 37 percent um and with a new project and without a new project we would need to reduce it to 25 percent which means 75 percent of people are getting downtown not in a single occupant vehicle to contextualize this for you we've recently been celebrating increases of one percent in our bike mode split and one percent in our pedestrian mode split and we've been working incredibly hard and investing incredibly heavy heavily to get there so um mode split reductions of this magnitude are incredibly aspirational and incredibly difficult to work towards and are likely unattainable our professional opinion is that we cannot use transportation demand management alone as a way out of our parking deficit problem if we are to uh to realize the housing and growth downtown which brings us to our parking rate strategy so we've presented the problem and now we're presenting the solution okay again the components that make up the um pieces of the rate strategy are deficiency fees those are paid by businesses again that's about just under a million dollars per year of district revenue permit fees hourly which is your visitors downtown anybody who doesn't have a permit comes down in parks um regular funding for transportation demand management uh the bonding assumptions which i'll go through to fund a new construction project uh the parking portion of it and then the operations and maintenance costs both current and new uh yeah we don't need to hit this again again it's a smaller piece of the pie we can now get rid of it so this morning at the downtown commission we uh they did move i had two different scenarios and if anyone picked up a rates matrix uh at the back of the room i'll be going over this in a minute um they recommended the 20 option and not the 15 percent they would like to see the deficiency fees sunsetted over five years so uh i'll spend less time on that the monthly permits are currently primarily 39 dollars a month there are there are few exceptions to that with some um uh off core lots if you will that are a little bit cheaper we're proposing the first year increase be 45 dollars a month that's a six dollar a month increase or 72 dollars a year um with 10 dollar per month increases after that so then the 55 then the 65 then the 75 this brings the cost of a monthly permit in line with a transit pass and allows the user to make better choices or more fair choices about how they're going to spend their transportation dollars this is one way to incentivize or disincentivize um employee parking in the garage is downtown um david had a point just a quick question so near five it says 10 10 dollar increase is that should that be 85 or is that that's my error no we top out at 75 okay yeah strike that so four years of increases we we did hear a little bit this morning about accelerating this um but that motion was uh um not uh successful and the downtown commission approved this methodology here for parking meters uh we have a variety of different meters downtown uh they are the most expensive on pacific avenue and then they get cheaper as they go out uh towards the edge of the district that map I showed you up at the front of the presentation um in year one we are proposing to raise meter rates by 25 cents an hour so if it's 75 it'll go to one if it's a dollar it'll go to a dollar 25 and so far down the list a year two increase would be between 25 and 50 cents an hour uh it would bring all of the core with with the exception of the very very fringe outer fringe of downtown to bring the core to a dollar 50 an hour for the introductory uh the the first two hours of parking um there are 815 meters not included in this pricing or anywhere in this financial model is a recent uh approval by city council to uh install credit card meters on pacific avenue and move to a performance pricing um program in that uh we heard from businesses that they wanted more turnover in their core shopping district and we're going to use the meter pricing to try to effect that instead of beating people over the head with uh parking tickets the uh proposed parking rates for lots and garages they are currently 50 cents an hour I believe for the first three hours we're talking about raising them to one dollar an hour in the first year and a dollar 25 in the second year they will remain they'll top out of dollar 25 for this uh for the remainder of the five-year forecast uh we're looking at a daily max of eight dollars and um the downtown commission may take up restructuring that daily max at a later meeting I know there is some interest and some discussion around commuter buses or what have you but that's more of a policy standpoint it doesn't affect over 90 percent of the revenue is uh quick turnover less than three hours or so so that's that's what I used in here we want regular funding for TDM um again the bulk of our community funding for alternative transportation comes from many of these grants Claire talked about the 21 million the rail trail could be a true game changer in that it's an off-street um method for people to get uh around town um but for the district we want a regular funding amount that we can um gonna meet people where they are uh we want to expand our existing program where we support bike share and we support the trolley we want to expand that uh to support transit we want bike and bike share subsidies um we want carpool and ride share subsidies and we'd like to look at an emergency ride home for people who take alternate modes but are not sure they can always or if they need to leave unexpectedly so they can be assured of a way back I'm in there no anything overall the the goal to meet people where they are and provide transportation alternatives for all modes really speaks to the downtown employee commute survey that we did we asked people how they get to work now if they're a full-time or part-time employee what time they start what time they end to get some basic information about them and then we also asked them what would you be interested in trying if you were going to switch from driving alone to taking another mode and we heard things across the spectrum for some people um transit was the best alternative for other people biking was what they preferred for others carpooling um for some people they said no no way no how am I ever gonna switch to anything else and so in looking to provide the easiest alternative to make it as easy as possible for people to switch we want to say if you want to try transit we're going to make it as easy as possible for you to try transit we can provide a for your subsidized bus pass likewise if biking or bike share is what you want to try let's meet you where you are there and make that a feasible alternative for you and really incentivize that if carpooling's your thing let's help you get set up with a carpool buddy and provide some incentives via scoop or Waze carpool or other programs that are out there so recognizing that for transportation there is no one-size-fits-all it depends on how far you're coming how many days a week you're coming downtown what time you get off work if you have kids to pick up if you have a second job to get to all of those elements so really really fashioning our TDM program around meeting people where they are and encouraging them to shift to whatever mode works best for them um the bonding assumptions for the new supply uh we in December of 16 you heard a concept plan developed um and the feasibility study that our price tag for the parking portion of that was 33 to 37 million we just used the highest um uh end of the range the 37 million it was also for a for a construction date that was um midpoint two years out so i added two more years to that because we're two years down the road um and then i ran just a standard amortization and then of course had it double checked by the city's bomb consultant the number i use in here is um conservative it in that it shouldn't be any higher it should only be lower when when when the dust settles um again i use the high end of the costs i use a high end of the annual payment you want me okay um we also looked at some of our comp cities to see how we would stack up in this proposed rate strategy as you can see here we present Monterey Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Santa Rosa, and Ventura for their on-street off-street and parking permits um to orient you again our proposed parking changes will go to a maximum of um on-street to a dollar fifty in the core and a dollar off-core what's shown in blue right now is our existing um off-street to a max of 125 and our permit prices increasing incrementally over the next four years to 75 dollars an hour as you can see presented here this is right in line and right in range with many of our comparable cities here uh so in summary we we looked at the sunset the deficiency fee we look to increase the permit price to in line with monthly transit pass and we looked at increasing hourly rates um for our visitors to the least extent possible i mean i really we really approached this model to we don't want to disincentivize people coming downtown and yet we we we did need to do some adjustment it's in pricing um so with that i'm going to dive into the model itself and i've already spoon fed all of the pieces i realize the model is fairly robust i think i can go through it pretty quickly and i believe i have handouts yes about how many more slides on on this this is the last one and then the recommendation okay there's handouts also available so basically this reinforces the slides that that came before it we're increasing permit pricing by six dollars a year the first year uh ten dollars for the next three years to top out at 75 dollars the next section lots and garages we're looking to raise the rate to one dollar per hour the first year into a dollar 25 the second year in here there is some items in red in this section we assume a occupancy loss with raised rates and we used industry standards and local expertise to develop these we're not sure we'll see any loss but but just to be on the safe side with the model we modeled in some lost costs um down on line 26 is when the Calvary lot goes offline and when we if we build a structure on lot four those lots will come offline and we'll lose we won't see that revenue so those show up in red um we also won't pay the lease on that lot so that shows up in black the next section in meters we talked about 25 cents for the first price increase and 25 to 50 percent for the second increase uh i told you about the bonding assumptions for the new parking garage and there's the annual bond payment uh 2.9 million um out for 30 years we do have our last garage coming offline the bond will be paid off in 2027 that's just off our our modeling horizon here but uh that is in the in the works existing supplies and services existing services downtown we want to make sure to maintain the same level of service we provide downtown we do do sidewalk scrubbing we maintain public restrooms we want to continue to do that and so we've just put inflationary values so that we can continue this service over time so for personnel for supplies and services we just added in the the future cost to maintain our current level of service we did add a number based on how we maintain our existing structures for the new structure as well so there's some new costs for OM in there and as discussed a whole bunch of times we have the 300 000 for the first year in annual TDM spending and then I add in we add inflation to that number for all of the out years um finally the um totals and I'm just going to go through the 20% scenario the line 58 and 59 58 is the annual effect of all of these changes to the district on a year by year basis the line 59 the cumulative change is the running total if you will you can see we get a bit of a head start in year one which is good because as we bond for the new structure in year two and three before it's online before it's constructed we'll need a buffer and we just carry through there and then once we come out the other side and the new project is online we again are more comfortably back in the black and that concludes the rates summary so that brings us back to the next steps what we're looking for is direction for staff to go out and conduct additional outreach on the proposed downtown library mixed-use project additionally to do more outreach around the proposed parking rates with downtown businesses and workers return to council for further recommendations in august and looking for additional actions from you this evening thank you thank you for the thorough presentation um and I also want to thank councilmember crown your patient in terms of those so you had a question for the delac I think thank you david I appreciate that and I do want to go to the public but I had just a couple questions uh if uh rena wants to come back up thank you um you you you and I have spoken you know we've had meetings and uh I went to probably three or four of the delac meetings and I know councilmember brown who is um ill tonight and can't be with us also went to a few of those meetings I don't know if other council members uh joined the delac in those meetings as well um I'm just wondering uh you know I'm not a big fan of the the parking garage and just wondering um how much the delac was involved with the garage library did they ask your advice were you able to bring in uh get other transportation planners outside of our staff to come in and brief the group on what this meant did were they was this in this mix the whole time the library pairing it with the garage well we did have presentations from the staff and we also um we're really focused on the library uh to present to you what we felt was the best option and what santa cruz needed as far as the library is concerned and then the more information that we did receive about uh how it fit into the bigger picture I think uh helped us understand that it could be a really positive thing not just for the library but in a whole more holistic way and we did have presentations from the farmers market because that part was very important to us too I don't know if there's any if anyone wants to would you have preferred not to have dealt with the the garage part of it at all and just focused on the library or did you in fact only focus on the library um I think I think um we our primary we were very clear that our primary purpose was to advise the city council as far as what the library uh what is beneficial to the library but also taking into account the uh the other aspects of the project I'm not I'm guess I'm not really sure would you ever feel like you didn't have had a choice that you didn't have to deal with the library with the garage part of this project that you're only going to focus on the library that that was a choice that that the the group uh could could make oh I see where you're going um I think that we had a lot of autonomy as the and for the direction of where of where we wanted our meetings to go and what we what we felt like how we were very aware of the garage and um how that would impact our decision is one of the options and I felt like we got all of our questions answered and that if we didn't that I do feel that we could have gone outside and um made sure that we could ask all the opinions thank you thank you I had a question for Susan as well um I was looking at the surveys and maybe I missed something but was the garage we you did like uh I don't know a couple thousand responses it was amazing um was the garage part of those surveys at all was that question ever asked that do you want to see a library in a garage um the purpose of the committee developed the survey I did not um and the the purpose of the survey was to find out what features of a library the community wanted Yolanda we were uh because we put together you know we strategized on what would be the best thing to survey and we felt that we really wanted to come to you and tell you what the community wanted to see as far as the features of the library and come up with a really good solid square foot um estimate of what what we really needed and that was the main purpose of the survey so we knew from public comment that there's a lot of contention about the garage and you know quite frankly I think most of us didn't really um we had no agenda I want to make sure that that's very clear we had no agenda one way or the other we really just wanted the best thing for the library did you ever see sketches of what a library was going I mean I saw that last one in one of the one of your slides yes were there other sketches that they brought to the group and said this is what the library could look like or might look like or we were uh we had done the research to see what other facilities were like and so that was that was enough and I felt like we could ask the architects for whatever it was that we needed okay thank thank you very thank you Mr. Mayor and I did want to thank the the downtown library advisory committee for their their work it was uh really tremendous and I know you've been through a lot and you finished your work in December and here we are in June I'm I really I apologize that it hasn't gotten to us earlier but thank thank you again for your for your work thank you mayor thank you council member chase do you have any questions but if I could just have a minute to yeah sure formulate them yeah council member Narayan I just have a couple I was really curious looking at the teen sections in the library it looked like it might be noisy and so it which is you know a step away from what I was taught growing up as a kid that when you're in the library you know you've got this so is this kind of a new model um and is it I mean it looks like it's being replicated in places all over the country I think part of the idea behind this is that uh kids want a space to come and call their own to be able to do homework whether it's group study or individual study a place to go to after school where they feel safe and somewhat protected without adults prying on them a lot of the construction of these new libraries there's acoustic you know um um details that helped to absorb a lot of the sound um and sure it's we're beyond kind of the in the library in many respects because it's not just the teens but you know if there's a program going on or there are adults that are there I mean everybody you know respects that the fact that everybody else is reading and certainly you know um I think most of the teens who like a space that's very inspiring they'll respect it they have helped to respect uh control the sound themselves and the other question I had is did you look at the possibility of um having housing be an element to this building we discussed it and there were as you saw there were some projects from San Francisco as well as um Chicago there's a mixed use facilities have been very successful and um so yeah we did look at that as an option so it wasn't just looking at you know the garage and the library it was all their potential tenants including some potential commercial enterprises as well so we kind of approached us with the idea of what is the best that we can get for the dollar uh given that we'd like to have a new modern functioning library thank you um just to say that um San Francisco and Chicago I know for sure they're both um for every new branch they're redoing all their branch libraries and they're incorporating affordable housing as part of that and so there's a lot of different possibilities that we were really excited about with a mixed use structure great and then just a question about the parking I notice you know we're going to be losing parking because surface lots will hopefully transform into something that will use the land better than what it is now um but I notice we're adding it's 240 additional spots and once again that goes back to your forecasting right of what you think the parking needs will be um if housing that's currently proposed or looks like it's coming down the pike actually happens so is that the reason for proposing more spaces above just replacing the current surface lots so part so all of the new projects which will be coming online are mixed use projects that incorporate um housing and commercial typically in the downtown the commercial does not provide its own parking rather it is supplied by the parking district and traditionally businesses have paid deficiency fees in lieu of riding that parking um similarly the housing units typically um housing does park most of their own project on site but sometimes that's not feasible for a variety of reasons in particularly we know with affordable projects such as what we're considering at the uh site adjacent to the metro it would be incredibly costly to provide parking for that project on its own site and you would be able to get more units and a higher level of affordability if you were able to have that parking be off site as part of a shared facility other projects that come in if they are a few spaces short a dozen spaces short 20 spaces short um one of the roles of the downtown commission is to find that there is sufficient parking capacity in the downtown parking district in our shared system in order to allow those projects to move forward and without that parking capacity it really puts them in a position where they can't give a thumbs up to projects that are good projects that do provide for our housing needs but that can't quite park themselves the additional 240 is to take all of that into consideration it uh takes a the commercial component and a portion of the residential component largely driven by the affordability okay i just wanted to know what was driving to go above just replacing so thank you councilmember chase so um one of the things that you had mentioned was in the downtown commission recommendations was the additional funding for tdm were there specific recommendations i know you had a few bullets in there um but were there things that they were saying were really important to them or is that forthcoming because i think it would be really great to hear um examples from them of what they think would be most beneficial generally acknowledge that a variety of modes was appropriate but our next action would be upon um having a funding source identified so that 300 000 or whatever that number turns out to be to develop a program around that get it vetted at the downtown commission and then bring it to you for approval so that would be the process there um it would largely be driven by our downtown employee commute survey asking people to meet them where they are um and then looking for some further work on that and then for the delac whoever wants to answer it um so things like the veterans information center came online uh relatively recently and so i don't know how that factors into the proposal but i'm wondering if things like that uh were factored into the new project because i know that that's we do some really innovative things i know we're not alone there's a lot of other libraries that do that too but i think this was an important new addition to the library so is that something we can continue to support it is factored into the space needs count count some more chrome going back to miss dubin's um point about affordable housing was that ever uh considered by the the the delac in this process affordable housing within a library complex kind of idea that you're speaking of san francisco has it yes in chicago too i we felt like we were here for the we're representing the library and um so it was we were excited about the possibilities and if you read the report it talks about how that's something that is um exciting to us we hope that that's something that you could incorporate in a mixed use structure but as far as um as specifically delving down into all the details of that we didn't really feel that was part of our purview of the expectation of what we were supposed to do thanks okay vice mayor walkins hold questions okay um really thank you for all the presentations i i have a couple questions that i wanted to ask you know one following up on council member naroyans um for the younger kids not the teens you know i my family uses the the library and i know that you know i was there with the grand opening of the scott's valley library and i served on our library board um the prior library board for um over four years and i was chair two years so i've seen a lot of these presentations and one of the things i feel that we haven't done in our city has kind of provided um uh upgraded spaces for young children i was recently um talking with a young child named elliot who one wanted to create a fun and safe space to be with his mom and you know one how do you create a welcoming and he was talking about making a welcoming place to pick up a book do homework and learn about the history of santa cruz is that i mean what are some of the ways that we can create activate public spaces help kids like elliot as he suggested make a fun and safe space to be with his mom you know with through this type of action so i'll ask maybe the library director mayor the most simple answer is to build a library i think um you know i really think that we haven't touched the downtown library since the late 1960s and so people in this community i don't think have necessarily had access to 21st century library spaces um they're incredibly inspiring um they're full of light and they're full of learning and they're full of community interaction of every age and every socioeconomic class and every um every type of individual in our community and um i am constantly asked are libraries going away and beg people to go to a library that's built in the the last 10 years and and tell me what their experience is and inevitably they come back to me and say i was amazed and so i really encourage this community go look at los gatos go look at scott's family to speak in the mic three o'clock after school and sit there for one hour and it's not just the kids it's the teenagers it's the adults it's people who don't have access to computers at home and are filling out job applications online um it's people with some really significant needs in our community using the library to make their lives better and i think anyone who stepped into a library like that knows how spectacular it can be and i think if we're really trying to create a community for the next generation we need to create a facility for the next generation it's been 60 years since we've invested in that facility and it deserves it and our kids deserve it i like to i think uh vice vice mayor walkins has a follow-up i think thank you i i just i know that a lot of folks want to speak tonight so i was going to not ask too many questions but i um we'll just echo the comments made by the council in terms of recognition of the work and volunteer time spent um by the delac on this um their time being here tonight to share their perspective and be open to questions as well as the staff's presentation i just had a quick question in terms of um tdm and the um if the model has or takes into account sort of technology and advancements in tdm um like for example the the jump bikes like i don't know in terms of your trying to forecast for the future in technology does that fit into your framework and strategy so that is a great question um as you probably recall in the two bar graphs that we showed both of those alternatives show that we will have a parking deficit um then we did consider what it would take to reduce our single occupant vehicle trip in trips in order to get to a place where we're at a balance we did not assume where those shifts would come from but we um we're projecting that we are going to see increases in particularly biking and walking which has been where we've seen historically our greatest increases so bike share hopefully will play a big component there additionally um well we don't have a crystal ball we anticipate there being big shifts in the way that people own vehicles and the way that people choose to get around through both car sharing and through autonomous and connected vehicles um that's one of the reasons that we do feel confident in still showing a parking deficit in these out years but knowing that there will be huge technological shifts between between now and then and that will hopefully help us to address some of this problem thank you and one brief follow-up question to that and then if and when or that you know technology comes about and we don't need cars there was discussion around the potential transformation of a parking garage to be affordable housing and i'm wondering if you could share a little bit about that uh sure and in the design stage that might be a better question to ask however i could tell you lot four is a is a great lot to build on downtown because of the length of the streets between Lincoln and Cathcart um there only one side of the garage is ramped the other side is level all the way and that's on the west side of the building and that's actually adjacent to the garage is actually pushed to the back as it should be of the of the project and the whole front piece is whatever it is it's library and something above um but that level floor then meets the level floors of the adjacent i call it the remainder parcel and uh so that's a quick natural conversion um you could do something more costly where you try to convert the the other ramps on the backside of the building to be convertible but i could tell you we built um from my earlier slides we've constructed um parking garages in the 70s and 80s and i would think before we would spend the money to convert a brand new structure that we would actually retire um some of those older ones if if in a decade we find that uh parking actually goes down thank you hey thanks do you have a follow-up i i had some questions on parking but should we go to the public and i ask them after we come back on that or sure if you want to hold those i have a couple questions i'm going to ask before we go to the public but you're welcome if you want to ask them beforehand as well um yeah go ahead okay so my question i appreciated you getting that pure level comparisons of different cities and the parking districts because i know there's different models that are out there and ours i think is unique is that correct in some ways yes in some ways no so for our particular parking district you know we have traffic impact fees are those lower for businesses that might be in the downtown than in other parts of the city so that we're we're helping to build infrastructure to reduce the cost maybe for businesses to operate or locate downtown they are i believe the reduction is 40 percent on the uh traffic that's not connected to parking that's a traffic issue and in your look you i saw on that slide for the comparisons for the other cities you were you were talking about from the cost of parking downtown did you also look at how much those cities invest in their maintenance and upkeep of their downtown's no there are some national averages and i um i don't have them right at my fingertips but we used in our forecasting we used our actual numbers okay we know it because we know them because one of the things i'm interested in if you do have in the forecast that you you're just keeping your budget at the current level of investment for maintenance and upkeep and i was wondering if there was any discussion either at the downtown commission or from some of the downtown businesses about how we might look at increasing the amount of maintenance and upkeep of our downtown there was some discussion of that uh this morning um but without any specificity um so the increase could be it could be so many things and um at that point we would need to rethink um how we fund that depending on the you know the size or change that people are looking for i understand that um economic development staff is looking at ways to kind of make some improvements and investments in the downtown i was wondering if you know part of those actions we look at coming back with some sort of kind of overview of how much we're investing in downtown and how we might provide better kind of like transparency about what we are doing to keep you know it sell a safe and welcoming place by you know just keeping it clean we are working um and working actually with public works in parks and rec on doing a full assessment of current conditions downtown and coming up with a plan over the next two years for beautification downtown as well as maintenance the one thing i want to clarify though is that the parking fund is an enterprise fund and so again it's a fund that can only be used for parking related purposes and it's paid by parking fees so there's no general fund that goes into the parking district so the money that's collected from the users goes to maintain the parking garages and support supply as well as any associated needs and so it does contribute to some of the maintenance downtown but not all of it so for example the garbage collection the landscaping the repainting of the of the lights the repainting of and maintenance of the aesthetic features and the benches and all that that's not out of the parking fund that is why public works and parks recreation are critical components and they have in their budgets funds to maintain the downtown there's also other funds that contribute the refuse fund with the hope services for example as well as the downtown streets team so there's a variety of funds that support the maintenance of downtown i appreciate that it'd be nice to have some maybe a report that kind of shows that those different funding sources how they're being used so we can see whether or not we're funding enough and maintaining the downtown and then what was the date that we'll have something back in regards to the infrastructure or improvements that that are being planned in the downtown we're working on it this summer so i imagine we can come back to you in the early fall okay um august or august probably okay all right thanks and then the other um was a wondering for the facility um is there any sort of public art component um because when you think about i know this is something that came up when i was on the public works commission is you know the two percent for the arts that used to be there and for transportation projects you know there would be funding i know sometimes it's there's complications in how they're used but i think you know for me equally important to like the uh the functionality of garage is the aesthetics in terms of how it you know operates and interacts with some of the places downtown i was wondering what kind of thought has gone into the um a public art component of you know the the garage as well as any sort of landscaping or sometimes you'll see structures that have you know living living walls that make it more of a green space and i'm just curious if there's been any discussion about that there has been some discussion about it and just in discussion with um our parks and rec and talking through the parking we have envisioned our it's you know one percent for public art would become a component of any new project both on the library side as well as the parking so we've been we do have a placeholder in our budget as we're looking forward for that project to make sure that's a component of it okay so there'll be a public art i said two percent but it's ours is one i thought it was used to be two percent used to be two percent and and due to as you reference sometimes there were difficulties particularly with state and federal grants that uh precluded us being able to provide that we always were having a shortfall what we found is if we could do one percent we had greater participation across the board because one of the shortfalls we could actually make up the difference so since we've converted to one percent we actually have a pretty robust fund so for any major project whether it's you know major projects in water department or public works we've been able to include the public part art element and it's pretty substantial so there though there is absolutely a public art component to this project yeah it's part of the project budget okay okay comes from the TDM question the transportation demand management you said we can't do TDM alone how long have we been how have we been using or or doing TDM decades since before i was born so could you say could you say some of the things that means yeah some of the elements as i mentioned specifically in public works we've invested heavily in the project side the infrastructure side of transportation demand management we have expanded our bike lane network significantly we've built off-street paths you see is on the riverwalk the rail trail which is going to construction west cliff drive multi-use path we've also expanded our green lane network we've invested in sidewalk facilities safe routes to school projects we have incentive programs to some degree through partnerships ecology action do you want to add more things and you've been here longer than i have it's okay downtown bike locker program bike share yeah you got my point that's good it's great um the single occupancy vehicle question you said we would have to get to 35% to avoid uh have building a parking garage um to be at a balance and so it depends on which alternative you look at there and let me bring you to our complicated slide there um yeah in green here in the 10-year planning horizon you would have to be at a 35% drive-alone rate in order to not have a parking deficit and not have a new supply project and you do know we conserved enough water to avoid a desalination plan that's that that's how i'm looking at this if we can we can get the single occupancy vehicle stuffed down we can we can you know pave the way to pave the way to avoiding so if i can contextualize that for you in the year 2000 our bike mode split was 4.6 percent we set a goal for ourselves to double that via our climate action plan and between then and now we've been able to increase from 4.6 percent to we are at 9.5 this has been 18 years of investing millions of dollars in bike infrastructure and we've been able to garner uh you know just shy of a 5% increase there shifting modes by two active modes or other non-auto modes by even 1% at a time is incredibly difficult so getting to a 35% drive-alone rate is something that um professionally i think is aspirational and unachievable in this 10-year time horizon thank you could you put up the slide that compares all the cities different parking things uh fees for garages and and parking meters and stuff um almost two hours just wondering i see um san luis abispo which is you know similar city to us is at 125 dollars a month for for downtown residences 255 for a court i mean um so it's a 10 hour meters 60 dollars a month okay got it because it went so quickly i'm just wondering why we can't get even beyond 75 dollars i still think that is not enough incentive or or de-incentive for people to come downtown and park park their cars and especially when you have this five years to do it you know within you know they're gonna be 10 dollars a year it doesn't i mean i'd be i don't know what the rest of the council thinks but a shorter horizon and actually getting the fees up well over 100 dollars you know i mean uh if you look at ucsc what what do they charge uh a month to park do you know a lot it's uh i i believe it's 800 dollars a year so it's 800 a year i think that's probably for nine months the year so that's yeah um so i'm just wondering if you know i don't think our monthly stuff is going i mean monthly rate is going to really be a disincentive so much even if it goes to 75 dollars we in this forecasting we we looked to not shake things up too much um we tried to raise permit rates uh probably five years ago we went to the downtown commission their businesses spoke out against the higher rate and uh we landed at i think they approved two dollars increase per year so we're currently in that five year where we we raise them two dollars a year it's absolutely a policy decision you can by all means uh propose raising rates higher this is a very slow careful conservative approach and i heard about some metro pass deal can you talk about that a little bit for downtown workers um let me before we get there could i just add one one thing to that one about the 75 dollars a month for the permits i mean i think it's possible to to raise it higher and that's definitely as jim said a policy decision i i would just bring up um one of the feedback and part of the outreach we're going to be doing for the month of july is really doing a lot of business outreach and part of our concern and what's come forward to the council in the past when parking rates have come up for consideration has been that concern of what that impact is both to businesses and employees who park downtown and may have financial hardships that are requiring them to park downtown for whatever reason can't take public transportation but also that concern of how difficult it is right now for some retail on some level and there is a lot of business concern that their margins are really tight and if we raise the cost of parking too high that's going to impact whether or not people are willing to come downtown and shop so it is a balance that ultimately it is a parking decision but we're trying to balance these as we recommend um initial rates for you to consider let me let me also just interject uh chris that there's a speaker that's going to be up next that's going to talk about some of those transportation programs so i i think maybe that's way and if there's further questions we can go there all right so if there's no other questions up here well i'm going to go to public comment we have before we go to the those that are seated four people contacted me in advance and requested additional time each of these four individuals are representing groups and they'll have four minutes and i'll just tell you the order up front then i'll call you but it's going to be dana begshaw on behalf of bus by choice then it'll be rick longinati on behalf of the campaign for sensible transportation then erin brandt on behalf of the friends of the santa cruz public library and then gene brought brocklebank on behalf of don't bury the library so we're going to start up as i mentioned with dana begshaw on behalf of bus by choice so um we'll give you a little moment to set up okay right hello you have four minutes thank you ready to go i am all right we are so i want to offer to you a little to explore the model from boulder colorado can you use the mic ma'am the mic please can you speak into the mic we heard she heard okay boulder colorado we want to explore that as a model that maybe we can learn something from it they are similar to us and that they're located uh near a metropolitan area like we are they have a university on the edge of their town they have a current population of a hundred thousand which is a little more than we but you know still considered a um a small city and look at this in 1991 the boulder leaders decided to make transit a priority in their town at that time their population was 83 500 they went to the public and didn't ask them you know try to meet them where they are but they asked them what can we do to encourage you to use the transit system and they gave them uh what they wanted and they wanted something that was fun that was exciting to ride so they came up with an entirely new bus system and with um routes that were had names and not numbers and they were just people friendly and it reminds me of our wonderful jump bikes they're you know they're fun they're bright red tomato red they say jump if they invite people to ride and that's that's the kind of thing that we and how many of you have seen the metros buses with the little banana slugs peeking up the windows things like that you know they just make it fun and inviting but that's not enough it's also much more economical so um boulder has come up with um eco passes similar to our metro cruise passes see i've got one right here all you have to do is tap and go and it cuts down on um the boarding time they're a great device and what they have done is they have offered these as we are talking about doing free metro passes to the employees of the businesses in town so and they're financed by TDM and here's a comparison of the these this model split that we've been talking about now i know my numbers are a little bit different from the ones that we've seen um they're based on a survey of Santa Cruz in 2017 and a survey of boulder in 2014 now what's interesting to me is that you see that the pie um claire was talking about walking biking working at home in both boulder and Santa Cruz they take about up about one fourth of the pie and likewise in these years carpool was seven percent but look at the difference in the bus three percent here 20 percent there and they were able to bring down the drive alone proportion to 43 percent okay so as a result boulder transit use was up by 250 percent in a 20 year time span compared to what's happening here in the same amount a similar amount of time that it's been down 25 percent said it that is it but i mean if you can wrap i just wanted to say it's a self-sustaining system in that very last slide um okay just to wrap it up yeah just to wrap it up if i could have the last slide which is that the parking fees the parking revenues go into the transit the TDM system which encourages more access which goes back into the parking fees so it is a self-sustaining program thank you to how to lean thank you okay thank you our next speaker is standing before you it's rick longinati on behalf of the campaign for sustainable transportation and you have four minutes thank you council members um so back in back in the day when we were considering desalination um the city thought it had a shortage shortfall between you know the water supply and the water demand right in 2010 a projected water demand would be over four billion gallons like 4.2 billion gallons what turned out in 2010 it was 3.2 billion gallons that was the actual demand we had a discrepancy that amounted to more than two desal plants that was a projection a demand projection that was wildly inaccurate that demand projection was done by a professional agency that did that's what they did they did demand projections why were they off they were off because they didn't anticipate behavior change and they didn't anticipate technological differences so we need to keep that in mind what if we had a parking strategic plan for our city wouldn't that be great well the good news is that we have contracted for one two years ago the city signed a contract with nelson nygard and they're supposed to come up with a parking strategic plan for the downtown what would they say in such a plan first thing they would say was the implement demand management before you build new capacity how do we know what they would say that they said it at this joint meeting in the planning and downtown commission all three of these different consultants said the same thing what else would they say they would say use your use many demand management tools that are not currently being employed in santa cruz i'm going to go through this really quickly consider eliminating monthly parking permits or how about daily rather than monthly permits because when you buy a monthly permit that is an incentive to use it every day rather than a daily permit the ecopast danage has talked about the ecopast new development required to provide transit passes make car sharing easy discounts for uber and lift and this is important reform of parking requirements needs to be a priority you saw a chart from staff that projects a parking deficit in future years and that's because of three things one is they're not considering that we're going to change our policy we're going to have the same policies why would we have the same policies when our parking code needs reform and actually you heard last week that that's what the recommendations of the housing blueprint committee are to change parking requirements so why would we have projections that depend on our old requirements we would require unbundled parking this is a massive incentive to not own a car i i want to ask you something i want to ask you to explain to me how new housing downtown would result in any impact on daytime parking use in our parking structures if we have unbundled parking and we give out for whatever amount of money residential parking permits why would we allow those residential parking permits to be good for the hours of the day when the garages are most impacted we wouldn't that wouldn't be smart policy so if we're going to have projections let's do the smart policy first and then do the projections after that so again these are the these are professionals these are consulting firms that have told the city look you do this first that is the best practice confirmed by urban planners all over the country to do something different makes us an outlier now you all got a letter from adam miller ball who's an expert on parking he's recognized across the world having done a study of san san francisco parking i don't want Santa Cruz to end up in an article on parking about how the wrong way to go about supplying parking demand thank you thank you mr longinati i'm just going to ask also for those of you that have signs and if you could keep them lower so that people that might be in front of you if you're there if you're in the back of the wall fine but if if you keep them lower so that you're not blocking people in the back please thank you and then um next up um we have um erin brant on behalf of the friends of the santa cruz public library hello my name is erin brant i'm the current president of the board for the friends of the santa cruz public libraries i'm here to talk specifically about libraries today we were a major part of helping to get measure s uh passed and we knew at that time that it would not supply the necessary funds that all 10 branches of the library's need thankfully it was passed and we do have these these monies available to help improve our libraries the delac commission for all the wonderful work they did they came and spoke to us and they showed us what options they were entertaining our board talked amongst ourselves about what we thought was appropriate what we felt would be best for the libraries and for the community and then we reached out to all of our volunteers and to all of the individuals that we call friends that donate their money and their time to help support our community and the libraries we feel that libraries are a lifelong learning institution that help to serve the community and to improve it we feel they need to be flexible in their use of space we feel that every single branch is going to face constraints no matter what their options are on the table due to inflation and just generally how money and economics work when we had a chance to talk about all four options that were presented to us we quickly ruled out options c and d because there's not enough money available for those options and do we think that we can go out into the community and fundraise for effectively close to double the cost in many situations we took a look at remodeling the library we've been working having our meetings out out in that library for a long time we run a used bookstore out of the big the front center of it we're very familiar with the ins and outs and the maintenance needs that it has and we're not experts in this we did rely upon the delac and all of the people that they contacted we determined that their knowledge in this institute or in this situation on what was required to remodel the library was sufficient for our purposes and we felt that option a could effectively be crossed off of the off of the table what we're left with is option b building a brand new library during all of this we did not entertain any other option beyond a library we know that it's a mixed use facility and we're leaving it up to everyone else to decide what the other mixed uses are for our purpose and goal is to advocate and fundraise for the library system and we feel that this is a fantastic opportunity that our community has and the last thing that we'd like to see happen is have this slip away and not provide the opportunities that pretty much everyone us everyone here in this room has had growing up having wonderful libraries to go to it is a fact that our libraries are incredibly old and they will not serve the needs of this community going forward something absolutely has to be done I'm a homeowner I've remodeled some places in my house I know that if I want to continue to remodel it it's just going to get more prohibitively expensive and it's just not going to work out for me in the long run our official position as the friends of the Santa Cruz public libraries is we wholeheartedly support option b and we would love for you to adopt that option and move forward thank you thank you our our last group speaker is gene brockelbeck on behalf of don't bury the library do you have four minutes no I need to hear my name is Michael Lewis gene brockelbeck we're friends of the Santa Cruz public libraries we have written many checks over many years and we don't agree with the board on their decision we also walked here tonight two miles from home first to come to dinner a couple blocks away and to be at this meeting and we're going to walk home after the meeting and I'm 73 more than 73 and Michael's almost 69 so you can walk in this town and be okay you don't need parking we're on here on behalf of hundreds of Santa Cruz city and county residents to ask the downtown library be retained in its current location renovated renewed and revitalized right where our downtown library has stood for 115 years voters who passed measure s never had a clue not one clue when they were voting that they were voting for a new downtown library in a new parking structure that was not found anywhere in the 13 page ballot language of measure s imagine residents surprised then to learn that our existing library was to be abandoned rather than upgraded and modernized fixing years years of deferred maintenance it's not just that the building is old it wasn't taken care of nor was the public informed that the 67 million they would tax themselves for plus interest was not going to be enough we've heard that from two people tonight the voters didn't think that they were voting for something that wasn't could be enough to do what they wanted for their libraries most people in the room do not know that this proposed project came from the city public works director and the county's library director and was resented to council a year and a half ago without any prior input from the public as to whether that was okay with residents in addition to the unfortunate beginning of this process consider some of the following several requirements of the city's official rfq were not met by either the architect or the downtown library advisory committee public engagement during the committee's work sessions was minimal and largely ignored at the only community meeting held by the committee six months after it began and just 10 days before it made its final recommendation the public at that meeting overwhelmingly opposed moving the downtown library into parking garage now it's notable that the report that you have before you does not include the transcribed comments from that meeting they were deliberately left out otherwise you would know that the only community meeting in that whole process the people who showed up were overwhelmingly opposed to moving the library into a parking structure i've got not very much time left here oh pardon me um and i'm not going to get to everything i wanted to say but let me just fast forward we've called for an independent study of what can be accomplished with renovation on the current site versus a newly built library we've even suggested a creative nationwide contest geared toward design proposal build proposals yesterday you all received our five solid recommendations for a smart renovation now let's consider these words from our mayor spoken just six months ago and he was speaking if i may both conservatively and progressively when he said we should show our respect for the past by doing a better job of taking care of what we have we don't just start over from scratch throwing throwing away everything from our past instead we renew we revitalize we transform i'm quoting the mayor okay let's uncouple the library from the parking garage and demonstrate that a 30 23 million dollar renovation of the existing downtown library can result it can in a 21st century library of 44 000 square feet with public art with resources for everyone in our community thank you very much thank you thank you miss brockelbank thank you for your comments thank you okay now we're going to get back to thank you so next we're going to get again hey can you put your signs down that was uh thank you for following those thank you sir i see in the back i see the sign yeah so if you would please uh line up for those who would like to speak at this public art public art at this at this public comment portion of the meeting um you'll you'll each have two minutes for those that are willing let me first get a show of hands of who plans to speak on this item and if i could ask a council member to give a give account just we get some numbers six yeah please keep your hands up those that are those that are interested in speaking on this item please raise your hand as public comment we see you got you no 16 17 i kind of get like 20 ish okay all right so there's about 20 people so i'd like you to those that um are standing up on this side are prepared to speak you'll have two minutes and uh you can begin ma'am you want to go first okay the number the number is going on take it away yeah jackie griffith i'm going to speak to something as your original energy advisory um member that's has not been brought up tonight uh there's a in the just in the last week the rate of ice melting in the Antarctic has tripled in the last i think it's eight years it might be 15 years and the amount of permafrost that is thawing letting out huge amounts of methane which is 16 times worse than co2 at raising things means that we are going to have uh ocean rise now the earlier maps from like i think 2010 2012 showed that by 2030 we would begin to possibly in our winter storms have um so much more water coming in and a higher level underneath our areas that were already a problem before and that it was going to come in and it would not go out as fast that the rate to come back out would be might take weeks or months to come back out and that it would begin to impact even our um sewage treatment plant and that we have so what i'm saying i don't know okay is that we have major things that we are going to have to do to take care of the very basic necessities and we do not really stand to put 2.9 million into something promised for over 30 years plus i thought that in these wonderful proposed um that they they only allowed five percent interest and that's when i when i was a young person the interest rates were 16 and 18 percent a year and we also just did this thing with china you know with trump thinks that's 400 billion dollars a year we're going to have higher costs across the board thank you for thank you next speaker please hi there dipper taylor uh two quick points and then the library regardless of what you guys think i do not find this town pedestrian friendly i walk a lot there's a lot that you could do to make it a better for those of us who walk mr crone when you go about charging a great deal for parking which is what you want to do to keep us from driving our cars you're going to have two results people with money won't blink and the rest of us are going to have to sit around and decide whether we're going to go downtown or not so the library i'm not happy with this plan i went to uh some of those meetings it felt to me i had been hearing rumblings about putting the library in the metro building putting the library and the parking structure long before the committee started to meet i never felt that this was anything but predetermined and guided i felt that the numbers i saw being presented didn't entirely make sense so i'm going to leave you with just one question which is why is it that it would if you were to tear down the current building and completely rebuild it it's going to cost you almost twice as much as to put it in the parking structure because that was the numbers that you showed right up there that does not make sense to me and i think it needs to be justified i didn't have faith in the numbers when i saw them and that just kind of cemented it for me thank you thank you next speaker my name is sofia brumba i am going into senior year at santa cruz high school as i enter this wonderful community as a young adult i would like to know that i have a 21st century library that is able to support me now and in the future this is why i'm in complete support of the relocation of the library so this is a yes on option b and ask you to please listen to the library committee thank you thank you next speaker please hello my name is aliyah glatt and i'm 14 going into my sophomore year i was born in santa cruz and i've lived here all my life i was really excited when i heard that the library downtown might be redone with enough space to have a teen room my friends and i meet downtown for first fridays and we usually meet at marines it would be much nicer if we can meet it as safe and welcoming teen space at the downtown library right now there's no space for us to be inside the library and most importantly it just doesn't feel like a safe place i get scared walking into the library even just to return a book also i wouldn't choose the library if i had homework or a group project which is kind of ridiculous i hope that the city can provide a great place for the teens of santa cruz to meet up study hang out read books and most importantly to feel safe thank you thank you next speaker hi debbie bolter i love the library i use it often i'm in favor of a new library but i am opposed to the garage and i feel like it was a bait and switch when i voted and regarding the computed the changes in revenue we saw the slide that showed the computed changes in revenue but not the reduction in demand that those changes in revenue would cause and i'm referring as you probably know to adam millard ball's research and i attended the lecture that he gave at the police community room when he said that a in seattle and portland parking demand dropped 2.7 percent for every 10 percent increase in price until today i didn't know what the projected increases in price were but my quick calculations which are just quick showed that um that the decrease in demand would free up more spaces than you would gain than the 234 spaces gate so it doesn't make financial sense um additionally the um the drive alone rate the 35 drive alone rate uh that said we had to be down to 35 percent assumed that cars would need to park uh where the they delivered the person uh what i'm hearing is when we have autonomous cars we can send the cars wherever we want and we don't have to necessarily park them downtown we can park them anywhere we want um so uh i would like to see those calculations figured into the demand projections and the revenue changes and the reduction in command in demand so um let's get a new library but let's not do it with the garage and let's uncouple those projects thank you thank you next speaker please you could step up go right ahead hi i'm probably going to need about three minutes you only get two minutes sorry ma'am i represent a group um i'll just tell you you could pause please um groups will request additional time in advance of the meeting but i you have two minutes okay i didn't know that my name is lani belcher and i'm writing to you regarding the proposed development of parking lot four oh at the corners of lincoln calf carton cedars i'm the show promoter for the downtown santa cruz antique fair which for the past 15 years has been held on the second sunday of each month on the 100 block of lincoln street in the portion of parking lot four that abuts lincoln my concern is that the antique fair would be displaced and have to move which would be very devastating to the show this would be the fourth move we had to endure in 25 years since the show show's inception in 1993 on pacific avenue the original antique fair was started in that year as a means of bringing more people downtown since then the show has grown to become a downtown santa cruz tradition with a large amount of local supporters as well as many outer towners who come to visit the show and also patronize other merchants as with any business location is the utmost importance and after being involved with the fair since the beginning i know the location we have now is by far the absolute best visibility and accessibility from pacific is crucial for our continued success therefore my request would be should the proposal go forward which i'm definitely opposed to on so many levels quote unquote that we'd be able to retain our lincoln street location with space for 25 vendors we'd be allowed to use parking lot eight instead of four with the same number of vendors and at a price that has commensurate with our present cost since the show was brought back to lincoln and excuse me 2003 our parking meter fees have gone up 100% originally being free on sunday then going all the way up to a dollar for all the meters in addition in addition our cost to close the street has doubled as well therefore keeping the present cost for use of lincoln and the parking lot is critical to the uh to preserve the show there is concern that parking lot deficiency fees meter fees road closed fees and other parking related fees such as permits would most assuredly go up for our show other businesses events or anyone else using downtown parking to help fund the parking garage you can you can wrap up if you want to finish but i mean not for an extra minute though most of my vendors are 55 years and older and virtually all of them depend on the money they make at the show for either part of or supplement to their income space rents have to be affordable with not a lot of room to increase or the cost is prohibitive in closing i hope you will consider my request and continue to support the downtown antique fair there are a few monthly thank you ma'am thank you thank you as a third generation sanitary is i'm very proud to be affiliated with the show thank you very much next speaker next speaker my name is carol fuller and i am a long time volunteer for the library currently i'm volunteering out at the capitola mall at the shop out there for the capitola library but i also was a member of the measure s campaign to raise the funds for a new library and just to clarify for people who don't know the measure actually promised um felton and capitola new libraries and the rest of us it was a somewhat amorphous because without money you don't start a long planning process so i recently i've been watching the hubbub over the parking structure surrounding the proposal for a while and i suddenly woke up one day and realized that my favorite cafe downtown is inside a park parking structure i never realized that the cafe limelight was inside a parking structure so i mean anyway i have friends that you know i normally agree with on a lot of things who are not happy about the park parking structure aspect of this and when i pursued it with them and almost always come down to what i regard as totally wishful thinking that if you don't build parking for people they will get out of their cars and they will get here some other way i live in the band king neighborhood i used to often walk down in fact i walked to work i worked on pacific avenue quite often not every day but i did and um i no longer can do that i'm now 75 and good luck with anybody who still has good feet at 75 but i cannot do that kind of thing i do sometimes take the bus downtown trying to be a good citizen and do an errand or two or go to a movie in the daytime i would not do that at night for one thing my safety on my feet you know my balance is a little impaired and also sometimes you are going to i can't be on my feet quite that long on concrete but i have to say that all the hubbub about the parking i mean a lot of what we're talking about are downtown city staff as you know not recognizing the reality of people's lives that they have errands on the way home picking up children from childcare etc thank you next speaker please very friendly greetings i'm jack nelson and my friend here is going to queue up a couple slides which is i appreciate so basically these slides i heard mention of special events and so we had ucse graduation uh just on saturday and so there's a special event doing a reality check downtown downtown's crawling with people uh here's is this overflowing parking here's some top decks of parking garages this is the reality check on current parking demand doesn't boy look at that pack full of cars there uh i well i don't i don't see it so so this is just a reality check um so i think the city's data purporting uh over capacity is off the mark and i think we can do better than just building more parking garage capacity beyond that i'd i'd like to um say that i'm a a long time library patron downtown i'm doing a lot of reading researching and writing about our human future currently so i have over 20 items checked out from the library and i'm reading a book about our human future which has a chapter in it titled don't even think about it the invisible force field of climate silence and in there it talks about well why are we not talking more about saving ourselves from ourselves and so there's actually a growing field of social scientist study uh which is the sociology of ignorance which explores the field of non knowledge which is information that is deliberately not acquired because it is considered too sensitive dangerous or taboo to produce so what i noticed in listening to the presentations tonight was that how we're going to fix climate wasn't in there but instead we're going to build more of the infrastructure that is causing climate change this plan for a new parking garage i see as a plan to bring seawater through those double doors there thank you sir next speaker please check out the april issue of scientific american arctic meltdown thank you very much good evening thank you for listening to all of us um i have a couple ideas and they're not new but um it's my turn and i'm gonna let you have it i think we need more bus passes for city employees uh and downtown employees that would make a better right ridership and more money and our metro will improve with more ridership um i think we need to take steps to initiate a campaign to get single occupancy vehicle rates down and this doing more and really having a campaign could alleviate the need for this structure making developers responsible to provide their own parking for residences and hotels will also ease the push for this garage transportation demand management must be considered first i believe we need to wait for the nelson niger two-year strategic plant and implement the recommendations first before building a garage also protections of the trees at lincoln and cedar are in that parking lot is an important consideration as a retired teacher i want to talk a minute about the library i believe putting a library in a garage is as my neighbor said quote disrespectful to book lovers a library is a sacred place of learning and contemplation santa cruz yes deserves something better it deserves a magnificent library facility we need to defer this gratification until we have the ample funds to build the library this community deserves thank you very much thank you next speaker please my name is john hall and i love libraries but i think that the proposal to have a parking garage with the library underneath it is extremely ill conceived for the dynamism of this city this has the potential to be a great city but uh we need some city planning that is much much smarter than we're seeing with this proposal it is abysmal not only are you taking away uh the library facility you're destroying the location of the um farmer's market let me just make two comparisons one to davis california another two san luis obispo davis has a vibrant downtown farmer's market that is draws i literally 500 people every wednesday and saturday with a much better facility than this in the kind of space that this could be made into a park right next to pacific avenue okay i was in davis a few months ago it's vibrant dynamic in its downtown uh economy as well as the farmer's market i was in slo last weekend they charged me a lot for parking but i didn't notice that there weren't people there rather i noticed that it was incredible the number of people the number of businesses the amount of construction that was going on it puts frankly it puts santa crews to shame santa crews needs to wake up and you're not doing it if you're being railroaded into a stupid idea okay so please think about it get smart about city planning i urge you to do it thank you thank you sir next speaker my name is mary jennings long-term santa crews resident a concern that i haven't heard a peep about is earthquake nature certainly can send earthquakes that are beyond what human engineering can protect against in armenia uh some decades ago there was a famous earthquake where the floors of the schools fell and you ended up with towns with no children because of the cement floor construction now cars can't be supported without heavy floors to put people under cars is something that needs to be explained in california thank you ma'am next speaker good evening my name is justin comings and i just wanted to address you all real quick on the with the issue of the building of the parking garage and library and i just wanted to express my disconcern and um opposition towards that idea um one of the big reasons is because santa crews has been pushing for reduction in people driving and i want to commend the city on some of the efforts that it's made around more bike use and especially the new jump bike program i find myself biking more with those because i actually um feel less safe riding my own bike because of bike theft i've had two bikes stolen since i've lived here both were expensive bikes since what discourages me but now with the new bike program i want a bike more and i think that we shouldn't we should consider we should continue to encourage people to not drive so instead of putting a parking garage on top of a library which if we're thinking about how different neighborhoods have their own libraries then the majority of the people who are going to be coming downtown or using a library are likely going to live within the downtown area so we should be encouraging them to do more like walk and bike skate to get to the library to utilize those resources and so that is one one of the um the issues that i wanted to address the other was with the transportation demand management proposal um many people who work downtown um are not of the highest income earners in santa crews and as we all know with the um increase in the housing demand and the reduction of affordable housing that's here many of those people are going to be um more and more displaced and with that it's going to increase the number of people who have to commute and therefore by increasing this amount of um the ten dollar per year or per month increase per year of parking that's going to put a really big strain on a lot of the low income workers um that uh are going to have to commute over um and not only is it going to have an impact on them and their ability to commute um but it's going to have an ability on there it's going to have a decrease on their uh survival hood which we already seen a lot of low income communities so um i just there's a lot of major concerns i have regarding both of these proposals and i just hope you all take those into consideration thank you sir next speaker please my name is Cynthia burger i'm with the santa cruise tenants association and uh my concerns um are related to as far as the uh park the parking and uh well i'll say the library next but for the parking yeah um as justin was saying i recently spoke with my when i go to my doctor i have to pay parking because it's at planned parenthood and um and sometimes i kind of um forgot to bring some money and i was asking the workers there and the workers in santa cruise county including the city make 60 less money than the than the workers in santa claire county and that includes the people working at uh planned parenthood and so they're not getting these raises you're going to be raising their parking my was this on uh they're going to be raising you're going to be raising their parking and um they're having to pay extreme housing prices and can't even live in the city so i think that you need to um look to possibly the business owners that are paying um lower than they ought to be um that that'll be a concern for for parking for people who work here of course we need more buses maybe the money that goes into the parking garage part of that library could actually just be used to um boost have more routes for the bus the metro and um you know as far as the library i think it's great that you know i grew up here brought my son up here we use the library a lot i love the library but um now let's be realistic santa cruise has 60 percent less children under the age of five than the city of watsonville santa cruise has 60 percent less children teenagers than the city of watsonville this is american community survey um so it's great to plan to put a lot of money into your library for kids but let's be realistic um who which kids are you planning on having here are you going to planning to have like a lot of kids move in soon um are they going to be rich next speaker please hi my name is kersha durum i'm a fifth generation northern californian and i'm also um an activist environmental activist an advocate for active transportation so new construction does not support our climate car storage towers will not support our environment protect the soul of our city community plaza protect this land from the greed of humans and the you are soil who's gonna stand up and save our downtown skyline who's gonna say that we've had enough cars who's gonna say that we gotta protect our pop-up parks this all starts with you and fossil fuel let's draw an assure a life for all our sons and our daughters who's gonna stand up and save the heart of our town who's gonna say that we've cut enough trees down who's gonna stop inducing traffic and more driving who's gonna stand up and save our public community plaza we are the people 25 feet above the rising sea level thank you next speaker please hi i'm satio ryan and i'm representing the raging grannies and we love the library at its current location and we want it renovated right where it's sitting and we have a song to sing and we hope anyone that would like to join in will it's to the tune of god bless america what's nice about that is they stayed within the time limits and both got two songs so i love this town next speaker please yes that is of course guys in the gender-neutral sense um anyway i'm brett garrett and i want to question a working assumption with all this i think there's an assumption that we can't have a parking deficit and i want to emphasize that's an assumption san francisco new york they have a parking deficit and they have excellent transit and the parking deficit isn't a big problem so what if we say what if we change what's mandatory what if we say transit is the mandatory thing and then if we have enough money left over then we'll think about whether we have enough parking i mean to me the important thing is that people can get around i mean the library is important too but i'm mostly focused on the garage issue and the important thing is that people have transportation people can get around i personally advocate a personal rapid transit system but you know more frequent metro would be fabulous ecopass would be fabulous um there's some quotes from metro board members who are also supervisors bruce mcpherson said the ecopass is a win-win situation and a great example of a cooperative effort to solve a transportation issue in this county john leopold said the ecopass could serve as a model um i agree with these statements um i just i i think a parking garage is inconsistent with our goals for transportation to management uh demand management seriously look at the positive side of a parking deficit deficiency it's an incredible it's incredibly effective tdm to not have enough parking people will find another way to get around um building a garage is the opposite of tdm i i think we got our priorities wrong if we're building a parking garage instead of transit and also instead of more affordable housing we need more affordable housing we could put affordable housing in that same place for the same money and coupled with transit people wouldn't need cars thank you thank you next speaker please hi my name is kandace elliot and i'm the human resources manager for the glass jar restaurant group here in santa cruz um and we were actually just in sacramento this morning we received we were honored to receive the small business um award for district 17 um and it was it's actually really amazing to have been in sacramento this morning and then to be here right now talking about this issue which is so important to our community and i live outside of town in a more rural uh area because it's more affordable to live there and one of my housemates is cathleen astin and she actually works at the downtown branch of the public library and she created this awesome program recently where you can rent telescopes um i don't know if any of you have done that yet but you should it's it's pretty awesome we had one at our house and looked at the moon and and so i'm very much in support of a new library and parking in downtown both for my staff and for me and all of these other people who work and in the downtown area so thank you for listening to all of us tonight thank you and congratulations also thank you next speaker please makes me so nervous um i'm not as brave as those women who's saying um my name's kender baker and i am also with the glass jar um group we own the penny ice creamery um assembly restaurant and the picnic basket um and i want a downtown that is a vibrant cultural center that blends commercial retail with robust residential components a 21st 21st century community center driven spaces where our residents and visitors can enjoy experience and learn about the diverse interests and passions of the current santa cruz people and those that have come before us i am inspired by what having a 21st century library will mean for our downtown and our community at large i want to be a part of a city that prioritizes having a library of this caliber our children teens um all economic groups people starting small businesses college students avid readers insatiable knowledge seekers and all those unexpected users who will have their minds blown um when presented with the modern library that's being presented or that's being proposed we deserve to have access to an exceptional resource center such as this um people have mentioned earlier that we are a community in a world that is changing the way we gather the way we communicate the way we acquire information and the way we learn and grow and a modern library like this here in downtown will be a dynamic and rich cultural center that will be integral to the meeting to meeting these changes and helping grow the future of santa cruz i want to be a part of city a city that thinks strategically about how we can preserve and grow our downtown because being a city with a robust and unique downtown is one of the parts of being in santa cruz or one of the parts of santa cruz that makes us great there's not many cities with downtowns anymore and this is important i also want to be a part of a city that thinks responsibly about issues related to environment and the impact that our decisions have on our environment i think that what's being proposed here actually benefits all of these things and i think it is responsible and i think that the city has done a lot of work in creating strategic plans towards this i think we can meet many of these things by combining these these projects thank you so much next speaker please my name is robert kibrik i've been a resident of santa cruz for 46 years i'd like to second the comments of ricklick log genotti and others uh questioning some of the assumptions that went into the parking demand models both our transportation systems our demographics and our climate are rapidly changing in ways that are interrelated expanded transit ride sharing bike sharing electric scooters skateboards autonomous vehicles and a strong demographic shift where a lot of millennials are choosing a car free existence all of these will impact demand models and all of them have the potential to greatly reduce both parking demand and co2 emissions if the city is really serious about meeting the goals of its climate action plan then it must encourage such transportation alternatives rather than continued use of private automobiles the proposed parking garage does just the opposite there's a 20th century solution that fails to address our 21st century realities i urge the council to promote transportation alternatives now and avoid investing in a parking garage that will likely be obsolete long before it is paid off we've heard about boulder but one need no look one need not look any farther than ucsc for an example of a successful bus pass program for decades ucsc has made metro bus passes available to any staff member at minimal cost currently to cost about one less than one fifth of the cost of a monthly permit providing bus passes to staff cost the campus much less than financing building maintaining and policing the additional parking structures that would otherwise be needed program is a win for workers the campus the community and the environment i speak from personal experience having used such bus passes to commute to ucsc on metro buses for over 36 years not because i had to but because i chose to over those 36 years i saved tens of thousands of dollars doing so and workers downtown should be given the chance to experience that kind of benefit i urge the council to implement the eco pass program now what are you waiting for thank you sir next speaker please good evening council members michael st with campaign for sustainable transportation uh while rick gets couple slides up thank you rick um one thing i just a comment there was no mention from staff as well as council member questions about greenhouse gas emissions or vehicle miles traveled increase with this garage parking lot going up so i thought that was rather out of place but i want to do mention another tdm program uh stanford did an amazing thing back in the early 2000s they avoided over 100 million in new parking construction and how did they do this that was transportation demand management uh the main thing offered on that was the eco pass it's been changed its name a few times but presently it covers vta buses vta light rail dumbarton express highway 17 express monterey san jose express and cal train i also support the bus passes free here for our employees in santa cruz i have a personal note here my wife elizabeth has used this pass as an employee of stanford uh this last year and it has saved us over a thousand dollars in gas money uh not including maintenance and wear and tear on the car or wear and tear on my wife um she has also saved us over 5000 pounds of co2 not released annually based on a car that gets 40 miles per gallon most cars do not get that much other transportation demand programs are offered at stanford and that's significantly reduced the single occupancy car usage let's take a look at a couple slides and these are from uh 2002 to 2012 uh focusing primarily on the blue line on top uh which is based on employees they've dropped drive alone 72 percent back in 2002 uh all the way down to 46 percent drive alone rates in 2012 that's quite a drop and if we were to do that here on a similar program we'd easily reach our 35 drive alone goal thank you thank you sir next speaker please my name is susan cavalieri um i have petitions that were signed by people so over 600 can you speak into the mic please and you can hand that over over 600 people have requested um free bus passes and over 1500 people have requested um robust uh commuter incentives first before building a garage the other thing i just would like to say is that there are remote parking places cruise uh 511 has a map of parking rides these parking rides are places where people can park to get a car pool together or they can get on a metro bus the other um two of them uh resurrection church and the paul sweet road parking rides are on the so cal transportation quarter it is free to park in these lots and the bus is much less expensive than driving and parking um pasatiempo is a lot further north um by a small uh distance and that's um serviced by the 35 bus if people were to park at holy cross church or the boardwalk jump bikes could be put there people could ride from the from the parking lot to town and then back up and without too much trouble um bikes might also be um appropriate at the quaker meeting house parking ride because according to google maps this location is 12 minute is a 12 minute bike ride um as more people car pool bike walk and use the bus to get to work congestion on the roads decreases and the need for a 37 million dollar parking garage is uh non-existence thank you thank you next speaker please my name is dancy giro i represent the genealogical society of sanikers county and i'm on the board i'm an office manager and we have just um uh put together a resolution that i believe was emailed to to many of you and uh approving of the dlac's recommendation for option b and it states whereas in its final report the dlac committee members agreed that option b gives the downtown branch library the desired square footage balanced with a fiscally responsible price and whereas the mixed use building has the potential to be a beautiful and vibrant asset to the community allowing for new programs and spaces that could increase library usage across all age groups and demographics and whereas option b does not require branch closure or interruption of services during construction and whereas option b will ensure that the collection of the genealogical society of sanikers county which we call gss cc will be co-located with a california on a collection in the new library and therefore the gss cc supports option b and therefore the gss cc members will continue to volunteer as staffers for the gss cc collection at the new library and just to tell you about the demographics in my group we represent people from watsonville to boulder creek thank you next speaker please hi my name is deborah ostberg and my background is i'm a retired museum curator with the national park service and an archivist with the national archives this is my hometown i'm glad to be back here and i do support the brand new construction of a library i have a lot of experience in what is the state of the art collections storage and research facilities and i'm telling you if you rehabbed and retrofitted a 50 year old building you'd have nothing but a nightmare you need the best h-fax systems and as the daughter of a santa cruz city firefighter you need the best in fire protection you get that with the new building you can also add design elements to provide greater safety and security for folks i am very much in favor of the new library i'm also a member of the genealogical society and in addition to the genealogical collection which in itself is is irreplaceable by the way at the national archives the one question we'd always get we would roll our eyes at is always and everything online it's not and there will be not with any collection there are very special items in that collection not just for genealogy for for local history we have an excellent cadre of local historians here from around the country everywhere else i've been i've never seen a bigger and more successful group of local historians not just doing work on the local santa cruz area but touching on subjects that cover the state and the nation it is extremely important that that collection remain as part of the main branch of the downtown library i fully support that and another thing when you're talking about art incorporating to the library another thing i'd like to see is not just the history in the one room but incorporated throughout a new design on the walls on the floor all throughout the library so you see it as a part of it our history always there and at a time like we have now in our society i think our history knowing it understanding it respecting it is more important than ever in the history of our country thank you thank you ma'am what was your name yeah what was your name debora osterberg thank you miss osterberg thank you thank you okay next speaker please my name is mary odigard and i'm here to let you know that i think we the citizens of this community have two very good public commons the library and the farmers market great places the farmers market with those mature magnolia trees should stay right where it is i've heard farmers talk about like the idea of moving it to front street like the it would be such a crazy situation as far as having driving in right now they can drive in park their trucks unload sell their produce it's a great common space for all of us it's like our town plaza that we don't have it is our town plaza so let's keep it there the library it's a great place it's beautiful it's right across the street from here maybe we could turn the entrance so it faces city hall and maybe there could be festivals where the streets closed off and it's more like a plaza and it could be renovated and remodeled and brought up to date like so many of us want so that's what i have to say thank you thank you mary next speaker please hi elise casby again uh the first thing i want to say is i helped establish the green belt in boulder almost 40 years ago i played a small but significant role i've been in this a long time and my public's my comments tonight are more for the public dear public please do not go away after tonight we are witnessing a very small and elite's power block trying to gentrify santa Cruz they want to keep their cars they want to keep their gas guzzling cars and they want to keep a lot of people out that's one of the reasons they want a parking structure on top of a new library we've seen so much corruption here i really wish the public could have been here last week to see the obfuscation that really i'm sorry i just have to really tell the truth the deceit the bureaucrat ease there is no affordable housing with any really clear path that's the truth you can look up the documents yourself and now we're hearing tonight thank you gene brocco bank and michael for speaking about who this came from this is a mandate from the public director and the library director and then they assembled their supports and there was a bait and switch with measure s how much corruption are we going to put up within santa Cruz santa Cruz has a small elite group in the economics department in the planning department in the majority on city council and they are working to shove their plans down our throats they always have they do not care about our opinions they do not listen to us this is all one big promotional thing to make it look like they did a public comment which gene brocco bank thankfully thank you gene again there was only one public outreach meeting this is really a snow job and i'm tired of the corruption i'm tired and i'm so happy so many intelligent thoughtful well rehearsed thank you dana thank you so much for your presentation and rick too let's get all these people out and a whole new bunch in this november thank you alice next speaker please uh rickardo contras managed downtown business and uh live in the city limits uh thank you for jump bike i used it i think six times last week nice i walked to work quite a bit um that being said i would like to see you know mixed use library um and increased parking for us downtown the businesses do need it um we are losing parking places we have to replace those we have to forward thinking on that uh have two small daughters who would love to see a state of the art um downtown library that they would go to their avid readers love books and i think uh i could i would support this thank you ricka next speaker please hi good evening daniel spells i'm a family historian and a retired high school teacher i uh i commend the dlac for its uh its vision and recommendation around a new library count me as a supporter of of a new library um as uh and and as a teacher in the in the south county at pahero valley high school i loved going to the watsonville public library and meeting with students after school helping them with their research and uh writing in the watsonville public library which um has not received any mention tonight for the fabulous beautiful magnificent library there that embodies many of the features or even all of the features that the that the committee is uh putting in its recommendation as uh as dlac chair uh gomez mentioned the dlac was given four options to consider two options that were not included in those four were one a new library in a civic center plaza a standalone library in a civic center plaza um that also could uh embrace multiple uses and a second option of a uh of a multi-use of a library in a multi-use structure independent of a parking garage multi-use means residents offices and retail spaces in addition to the library it doesn't necessarily incorporate a garage the gaping hole in services in santa cruz is bus transit the library nobody has as studied the benefit potential on the library of an enhanced and much improved bus transit system so please embrace bus transit for the library um in the cedar lincoln cathart space thank you thank you sir next speaker please hi council members my name is barbara river woman my throat is really dry and it's very late and i'm 80 so thank you all for your tenacity um i think the the aha moment for me tonight when was when i heard chris crone council member crone ask rena um like how much did you actually know that you were going to be involved or how much did you know about the parking garage and it felt to me like a moment of sort of deer in the headlights like well that isn't what we were really thinking of we're the dreamer of big dreams it was exciting to watch all of the photos of the libraries all over the country and think of these as sort of dream places but i felt like all the wonderful work that delac has done was done without understanding or really being ready to make this kind of Faustian bargain with anti-environmental forces um and i feel sorry about that i feel like we all want a beautiful library i love libraries it's my church i wanted to be a church too and look like a church and not be in a garage to me the iconography or the symbolism of putting a library which is the heart of our democracy under a garage which is a symbol of our culture our culture which is contributing to greenhouse gas emissions which is contributing to the end of our life on this planet is just too much of a juxtaposition an ironic juxtaposition so please plus measure s was not about creating teen centers i love teen centers but i don't think libraries are about creating teen centers if it's a social space we should do it and i don't think teens are going to come downtown i think teens are going to they need to have study spaces in their schools and in the branch libraries i think this is misconceived and i hope there's a really robust discussion hate toward us thank you very much okay thank you next speaker please mayor and council my name is james meccas i'm here because i've got siblings still trying to run businesses on pacific avenue and parking is an issue uh before i do that though there's been so many library issues i've got to say that for people that can't picture a library combined with parking go give a look at like the san jane main library award-winning architecture when it was built or the far more recent watsonville library both tightly integrated with parking structures they work very well but we desperately need more parking downtown and many business owners and their customers agree our pacific garden mall was a model for the exceptionally vibrant santana row but they added large multi-story parking it contributes one percent of its amazing revenue gross revenue to san jane's general fund revenue parking remains a basic requirement if cities want both community friendly core and business revenues for programs because retail rarely succeeds when relying only on nearby customers plan development below cathcart will add hundreds of residents cars and only a small portion of that parking is required on site even if many ride bikes they will likely leave their cars park downtown while they ride those bikes just like they do today the shortage of parking below cathcart was considered acute when my father was on our off-street parking commission 50 years ago still is little has changed my brother owns a business in the 900 block of pacific he buys permits for employees to park in any of 10 spaces three blocks away they often arrive to find those spaces are taken by all-day local residents and have to feed the meters all day there simply isn't enough parking today the owner of sunshops and surf flight life downtown 1300 block pacific told me just yesterday that lack of parking is an ongoing complaint and deterrent to customers we provide to provide parking for new housing and to generate retail tax revenue we need more parking thank you thank you sir former mayor don lane you're up next thank you council um i don't think i'll surprise you by saying i'm here tonight as an advocate for housing i know there are a lot of other issues on the table tonight and housing is a relatively modest part of your considerations but i hope it will not be forgotten because it is the most pressing issue in the city of santa cruz today the proposed library garage building if constructed will have a positive impact on our opportunity to create needed affordable housing downtown it means we can build more units of housing on other sites because those sites will not need to build separate parking it means parking can be more efficiently used because at times it can double as both customer and resident parking it means inefficient flat lots can become sites for housing so how do you navigate this political and parking policy minefield here's one quick suggestion adopt a formal policy stating that if the new library parking structure moves ahead the council is committed to reducing parking in other locations downtown when that parking is no longer justified and commit to converting those lots to developments then include affordable housing i know that's somewhat simplistic but i only get two minutes but i think it addresses the desire of transportation and climate change advocates to devote less space to cars and parking the desire of advocates for smart land use to eliminate inefficient flat lots it it satisfies advocates for a great new library and they get one and at the same time it meets the housing advocates desire to have new tools to meet our parking needs best wishes for success in your decision thank you next speaker good evening council monoconic i sit on the downtown commission so i got to hear about these issues this morning and i've been worrying about them all day so i think so much of what we're hearing from the public is the issue of you know we this is the location okay the location of this garage you're talking about putting it in the heart of downtown and we can't cut down our heritage magnolia trees to do that i don't disagree with the science we do need more parking i mean that's as don lane said that will support more housing construction and more dense usage of our area of our urban core but we just can't put it in the heart we have to consider other locations we have to consider the county building they actually are running out of parking at the county building and need the county workers need more parking and so this could actually be beneficial to work with them on that why don't we consider eminent domain on the river street location you know right on highway one and highway nine i mean we want to be closer to the arteries with the parking to get cars off the road so that then people can come in and enjoy our very unique downtown and it's going to be unique if we maintain the permaculture there if we maintain the magnolia trees we can consider a different kind you know it's not that parking is completely inconsistent with that location we know we want on-site parking at that lot so let's look at the union square model in san francisco right maybe you can fit one floor parking right but it needs to be a civic center first and a parking center second and that is the design constraint that we're hearing from the community today i think that building a new parking structure is not inconsistent with transportation demand management but you've got to put it at a place where buses can then get in and out easily and support those kinds of uses so move to study new locations so we have all those options on the table and move to study some different design elements so that we can see what this will look like thank you thank you manor um before we go to the next speaker is there any other member of the public that has not spoken that wishes to speak we've got looks like four people that are up there now any other members of the public want to speak okay so they got one seated just joe you'll be the last speaker if there's no one else okay please go ahead hi everybody thank you for listening i'm emily corn i have a four-year-old we go to the farmers market every week we get all of our local food there i also love the library i would love a new library an updated library particularly with the sciences collections um but please don't put it on the site of the farmers market please uncouple the projects thank you thank you next speaker please judi grunstra from the beginning relocating our library to the bottom of a garage was a poorly conceived idea i've been a librarian for over 40 years many librarians i've spoken with think this is a bad idea though they may be hesitant to speak out for their own reasons also don't be misled into believing the entire membership of the friends of the library supports this proposed project many oppose it while other cities have engaged their residents early in the design process the library committee bypassed that critical step they didn't ask about you know how people felt about moving the library in their survey maybe they did not want to know and they did spend quite a bit of their limited time hearing about the city's parking needs time that could have been spent digging deeper into the cost estimates that the architects had given them um we recently uh renovated our laudan nelson center uh which is an old building the thanks to measure a our schools are being renovated and those are old buildings we can't just say oh this is a 50 year old building it's it's beyond repair um and please don't regard opposition to the proposed project as resistance to any and all change in our city this resistance is specific to the proposed removal of the library as an integral part of our civic center it's not just the library is not just another retail or commercial space that you're going to stick in the bottom of a garage let's respect our history as we build the future renovate and revitalize the library where a library has stood for 115 years it doesn't seem like good planning to couple our library for the 21st century with backward thinking housing for cars thank you thank you I'm Patrick Dexter I'm the treasurer at Calvary Episcopal Church the Little Red Church downtown and we are in negotiation to lease our property that is the parking lot for housing and I want to apologize to the antique market because the free parking on sunday will disappear and as a personal note I lived 34 years in Arlington Virginia I saw the building of the shirlington library that has both a theater the signature theater and also parking garage in it and I certainly talked with the librarians and I don't think they were worried about being in a garage so I'm very much support the downtown plan B thank you thank you next speaker please my name is Steve Blair I'm a member of the downtown library advisory committee and as a member of the community I want to urge city council don't bury a library mixed-use proposal the delac process was about library services understanding what library services we have now and what library services we should provide for the future and the most efficient way to achieve those services with the limited amount of funds and measure s provides remodeling the existing building I came into the process with an open mind I was leaning towards remodeling the existing building I'm sure everybody came in leaning towards one thing or another with the information that I had at the time that's what made sense but as I gained more information I realized that we would spend such a sizable amount of measure s funds mitigating not resolving or remediating but mitigating the infrastructure problems in the existing building we would be spending more for remediating infrastructure and less on services I hear the discussion tonight and it feels like it's about everything but the library and the library services this is what we were this is what we were trying to achieve the best services for the for the best small city in california thank you thank you thank you for your service um before executive director of the downtown association chipp speaks um is there any other member of the public um that would like to speak after joe jordan any other member of the public okay joe you'll be the last speaker uh you're up chipp thank you for that introduction mr mayor good evening how's your night going okay I am chipp I'm the executive of the downtown association I represent a number of businesses here all of them in the downtown or try our best to um our board met on this issue last week um you know that we got all of the pieces including the finances um and really I'm here to say we're we're looking forward to a more robust conversation uh to work with our membership and and get more information both to and from our members I know that all the pieces are together in terms of the financing that staffs put together the proposals and all that obviously you've heard from a number of businesses tonight parking is a very important issue well managed well placed well uh uh priced parking is very important to the success of downtown so that's something we're all very concerned about so we're looking forward to having more conversation so we can come forward with a recommendation from our board that reflects our membership so thank you so much for your time thank you okay um joe last speaker of the evening yeah good evening and thanks for all you do and thanks to all these fine people out here and all the people who went home for democracy in action you know uh given what's happening at the federal level I have to say I am just absolutely starved for democracy I sat here for three hours this morning through the downtown commission and I've been here for in and out for three hours I I need more more of this I'm sorry I'm the last speaker but anyway can you pause up for a second we'll be here next Tuesday for I know okay so so I am a fierce friend of the library and um I I just say we we should decouple those issues if at all humanly possible and I think there are better more innovative creative ways to do that they're separate problems that should be solved separately and uh on the parking garage thing um you know there are game changers on the horizon this side of the horizon I mean you know the jump bikes thing is just getting going we most a lot of people don't even know that exists yet that's really great you know I haven't heard although I've been in and out I had to go down the street to a party for a while but I don't know if anybody mentioned you know self-driving cars I'm not a big fan of all that but uh there's a study out there by respectable people that says that if you uh you know that that will uh eliminate like 80 some odd percent of demand for parking in x number of years I mean I don't know whether to believe that study we should get some more studies but we need to you know think outside the box and a whole lot of the people this morning at the downtown commission said yeah let's think outside the box and then they voted for the same old same old dinosaur age so-called solution to things so anyway I don't see the rush I know there's a some money dangling before you that you feel pressured to use and I guess that's what it is but let's take it easy and get her done right okay thank you so much thank you okay that concludes the public comment portion of the meeting and now it's our time to bring it back to the council for further discussion I just want to say I want to thank each and every one of you for not only being here tonight for the full three hours and 20 minutes that we've gone forward up to this point but also for the really respectful kind of dialogue in terms of everybody's hearing each other out in terms of both sides and I feel these are the types of meetings that are most successful when there is that discussion and we also can take it back to internalize it in terms of how we move forward with some of our future actions I do want to comment and say I heard two comments that that um from the public that that really kind of interested me about the dynamics of these discussions one was you know about the decline of youth in the city or the fact that hey teenagers or our young people wouldn't go downtown and use the library and as a parent I'll tell you one thing my kids use the library our family use the library and I think I want to see more types of investments to make sure that we are seeing more kids in our downtown and more kids in our city and so when we when we think about like what type of investments we make we oftentimes aren't put at put this out front and center where we can talk about the fact that you know these are choices we make and sometimes over generations we have not really kind of invested in the types of resources or infrastructure for our children here and when you look at our schools that have been built many of them were built by a prior generation 50 years ago our libraries of that same time and so when I hear these types of discussions when we look about how we invest in our future it makes me really feel that we're at a point where we do need to kind of backtrack and start to look at how we are going to reinvest in our future and look at the types of infrastructure for our town and for the children that are going to live here that are going to raise their families of their own and when I think of and when I think of when I think also when I also think about what we're doing we do need to maintain what we already have and I personally feel like we're not doing enough to kind of maintain our downtown in ways we're investing in it the way it should be I love our downtown I'm there about every day I work down there I see Elise downtown just about every every day and I feel like it's something where we sometimes aren't acknowledging the need to really continue to invest at a greater level on what we have and so when I think about some of the parking rates that we have there I think that we do need to start looking at how we kind of balance out what we're doing and how we can maybe increase our efforts to make sure that we're creating a more welcoming place a more safe place and so as we hear this dialogue I do feel there's lots of components that we can continue to work on but I just wanted to point that out as something that you know I took away as a really kind of important aspect also I appreciated former Mayor Don Lane's comments about looking at our policy changes we heard this last time in regards to comments that Mr. Longinati made about you know decoupling our parking with or unbundling our parking with you know our existing facilities that is a current policy and we I think by looking at our pricing and costs we can get to that point where we can achieve those policy goals that we've set out so I do feel that there's lots of kind of discussion points we can have right now in terms of how we can move this forward and we have in front of us something that there has already been action on back in December and I know that one of the big pieces that is still remaining from that former action was to develop an engagement and work plan that we go in to see what is that strategy and how we are able to move forward to make these types of investments in our future so I look forward to having the discussion with the council about how we can kind of kind of continue to move forward council members yeah I have a few questions thank you mayor um just one a clear couple things up would the antique fair be displaced and did we not reach out to them during this whole process um no they would not be displaced they're they're on the uh existing lot that's across from the farmers market where they currently are I'm not sure what lot number that is lot eight so they would remain where they are um we did in our initial meetings with the Santa Cruz farmers market we actually did have Bonnie from the antiques fair at at those initial meetings but um and through those discussions um she expressed us how much she wanted to stay at her existing site which wasn't the site that we were looking to develop so um we you know we did meet with her then but we um when she expressed that she didn't want to move we we didn't push her on that issue thank you um the whole global warming climate change issue that's been brought up because I don't I haven't feel like it's been addressed very much um in our the staff report um has I know the plan went to the downtown commission why wouldn't you send this to the climate action planning committee so the why would you consult with them with the sustainability team the climate action planning committee climate action planning committee do we have a task force climate action task force so I know that we have a handful of climate groups that are subcommittees of implementation of the climate action plan Claire I'll turn it over to the manager he knows about the the group I think you're referring to Tiffany wise west she and I'm on the community action and and but their their scope is to focus on the climate action plan and its goals and and the the specific uh right right exactly uh and so they they don't generally uh review uh you know projects or anything like that as far as their scope as well just for the record that's a big mistake that the climate action plan committee should be reviewing every public works project that goes through persistent question that we I think we need to address and um and maybe somebody can do that why was the parking garage it wasn't part of measure s how do we get beyond that as a city that you know how do we tell people well how do we answer that question that the parking garage was never part of measure s we've shared the language of measure s with many entities and bodies it's a public document um the the measure does not specify it says where the money will be spent but it doesn't specify how other than for library purposes and also just this is before Susan was here the the library system went through a facilities master planning process where they identify the various needs for every single branch and looked at a variety of different alternatives for the downtown branch they looked at a variety of them including the mixed use project at a time they were looking at the metro site as a possibility so when they looked at the various needs the the need that they identified as as the best alternative was was to build a new library whether in a mixed use project or standalone so that was something that was considered as part of the facilities master planning process that the library system and the library board took on when it came to the ballot measure as has been noted it was recognized that uh there wasn't enough uh support in the community to pass a measure that would fully fund uh what the ideal uh circumstances were for every single one of those entities in addition since that time the cost of construction has gone up considerably so even some of it for example capital just uh got their their bids and so there they came in over over and they'll have they're gonna have to make some adjustments we've incorporated those increases into the into the estimates that you have here um so there's always been a recognition that there'd have to be a way to sort of figure out to uh be able to meet the the gap in in financing as well uh jimber how would you respond to the question is building a parking garage the opposite of tdm trans uh demand transportation demand management i think as you saw the modeling results tonight uh we need both measures to maintain a vibrant downtown um the structure does not um it it backfills three hundred and seventy spaces adds a couple hundred new um so we'll be we'll need both to look at the kind of growth we need downtown thank you um a colleague of mine uh adam illard ball sent a letter to the uh the council i hope the council members um saw it um he had several questions that he put forward and i i agree with them but the question number three was what is the marginal cost of net new parking space under the new parking supply scenario and how does this marginal cost compared to the proposed one the proposed rates and two the cost of accommodating a trip by tdm in other words is it cheaper to pay people not to drive than to build new parking from the text 35 million dollar cost for 231 parking spaces but you but um mr burge said the implication is that each new space then costs 152 thousand dollars or seven hundred and thirty dollars per month amortized over 30 years at four percent interest excluding maintenance and operation costs however staff would have access to more precise estimates seven hundred thirty dollars a month would buy a lot of trip reduction how might we respond to mr adam illard ball who is the transportation expert uh in environmental studies uh up on campus well i would suggest if you were going to build this parking structure outside of the district it would never be able to support itself but similar to the way if you booked a flight on an airline say southwest and you got to fly in a brand new airplane you would not pay a different cost than if you fly in one of their older airplanes so because the district has been proactive and planned over the years we have 3000 public parking spaces that we spread the cost over to support the cost of the new structure but why not then use just the money to pay people not to not to drive rather than you know they would be cheaper that would be a policy decision the other question he asks what is the rationale for subsidizing monthly parkers versus shoppers and visitors a monthly rate of 75 equates to 50 cents per hour 20 days per month eight hours a day compared to hourly rates of about 125 has staff considered whether shifting to daily rates with no monthly subsidy would encourage downtown employees to walk walk bike carpool or ride the bus on occasional basis what's your professional decision on shifting from daily rate from monthly rates to daily rates so one of the things we looked at we did model the effective daily cost of the proposed increases in monthly parking permits based on a 20 day average work week per month at the top rate at 75 dollars per month this works out to three dollars and 75 cents per day for drivers one of the things that we have been discussing is the ability to provide a monthly punch card a value added card that would have a potentially a decrease in the overall parking costs there potentially a 10 percent decrease or something like that so that if we could encourage people to take alternative modes on most days but accommodate them on you know the one day they need to drive where they're heading home late and the bus is no longer running or they need to arrive early to work for before the bus is running and before their carpool buddy is going it does allow for a break in that daily parking cost that's not an element that's built in here to the the long-term model there but is within the the range probably of acceptable values that we're looking at modeling on daily rates of parking and monthly parking thank you we talked about parking deficiency fees is my last question okay um could you explain what parking deficiency fees are and what the origin of them are because I don't think that's that's quite clear and how much do we actually collect in parking deficiency fees and who do we collect it from so it's money paid by businesses to the district for not supplying parking in other words the district supplies the parking businesses don't supply the parking they pay a deficiency fee based on the type of business they are and the size they are sometimes on rare occasions how many employees they have um but mostly that it's a square footage number again outside the parking district you businesses provide their own parking inside the district at a reduced rate you can either provide your own so not all businesses pay these only businesses that do not provide enough parking the disc the idea then that was set up in the fifties and the fees were first charged in the sixties the idea was to use those funds to bond for and build parking supply projects so that would then serve those same businesses that help and we collect about eight hundred and ninety thousand dollars a year in deficiency fees so is it theoretical or is it real that then businesses have paid they they they're paying for projects the city's already done that's why they're paying for deficiency fees that because we've built parking for their customers is that is that the idea or am I get it wrong the fees go into the district budget which covers all the on m for everything we do downtown on m stands for operations and maintenance of all of the different functions we do in the parking district as well as debt service on the last garage that's the soquel front garage we're still paying we will be until 2027 it's about 450 thousand dollars a year and the restroom maintenance the sidewalks scrubbing the you know attending all the structures maintaining all the structures the cash control issues so it's not just putting the fees on to the people who park their car then there's all these other fees involved as well the business portion is basically a subsidy it has helped keep parking prices low for a lot of years and so we're giving up the city's giving up a 800 6 890 thousand dollars is this money we're kind of leaving on the table i mean can we get anything from the businesses as we decrease the deficiency fee that that you're recommending or that you recommended to the uh the downtown commission honey i'm gonna add one thing in there before you jump in so the same rate more or less that we're decreasing the deficiency fee over time that recommended 20 per cent per year is mostly in line with then that increase in the monthly permit fees that we're seeing an increase in user fees so incrementally raising fees on users while we're incrementally decreasing fees on businesses this allows for us to meet the the best practice in looking at parking management to fully shift the cost of parking to the users and consumers of that parking so that's where that 20 reduction comes from and how it relates to the user fees bonnie can touch on the business actually before you do that i just want to ask the question a different way so if you were to reduce the parking deficiency fee and just make it fully charged to the district was there any interest in looking at that what you like what would it be if you if you did not have the businesses carry the cost but it was just part of the cost of the operations of the district if we didn't raise the fees is that what you're saying no no what if you there's a deficiency fee right to the businesses that are charged annually what if that cost was part of the rate structure that you're proposing was there any interest in setting that up that's essentially what it is where you eliminate the whole deficiency fee structure proposed but it's gonna phase out though i understood that there'll still be a remaining cost at the end of that five year no it phase out completely in five years oh god so 20 40 60 80 and then gone and i would just add to that for the downtown businesses is they currently assess themselves and the property owners as well about half a million a year between the downtown association for that business improvement district and then through the downtown management corporation which is a property based improvement district so there is a number of assessments that are in place that the businesses do play pay and and that's part of the feedback we've had over the last 15 20 years is how many assessments there are downtown particularly by the businesses and the weight that they feel from that with the assessments from the city of one other follow-up then i'm just on chris's comments just in terms of understanding like i mentioned earlier like my interest in seeing how we can invest more in some of our maintenance in our downtown and keep it you know clean and and you know have better oversight of like the the lots as well as our sidewalks and other spaces has there been a an assessment to look at well what would it take to to bring up the level from the current baseline and what that might cost we have not um you'd have to we'd have to define exactly yeah the scope of what you're talking about are we talking about every street in the district or just part of the street anyway there's a lot of definition yeah that would need to go into that study okay so no that has not been done okay i just last one was 300 tdm 300,000 i was confused because i didn't see that as a line item in our budget or anything like that so that that's when you said oh we've been doing that for years and this is what it was so that cleared that up but how did we arrive at 300,000 now like is that a placeholder why it could be three million i mean why why not it is a bit of a placeholder we think we can we think we can meet all of the tdm needs we think we can meet the people who are interested in taking transit who are interested in bike share subsidies we think we can meet that all with 300,000 it may be 350 we might find that as we develop this program with the downtown commission we need a little bit more um and i think that's fully within within the range of possibilities but we'd be expecting to get that out of the monthly fees for the garage that fee is fully generated by user fees thanks thank you council member chase i don't know that you got a chance to answer the question claire about the ego pass um could you talk to us about that a little bit yeah so the um our staff received a staff level recommendation from the team at metro we've been working with them for the last couple months trying to come up with uh parameters for a downtown eco pass we have around 4,000 employees in the downtown and we wanted to look at what it would take to cover them all with a monthly transit pass uh the proposal that metro gave to us is for 311,000 dollars for a one-year pilot program this represents a 90 discount rate in order to cover all employees downtown with a transit pass um it's a really interesting offer and it's based off of good and sound logic one of the things that it doesn't do is provide any level of service over what we have now so it's um paying in to cover all employees at 311,000 dollars with no additional service any additional service hours over what we have now either to start service earlier for our cafe workers who start making coffee really early or uh the people who work in bars and restaurants that work late um that's not included anything that would increase the level of frequency so that maybe instead of your bus coming once an hour it would come once every half hour that's not included either that would be billed at an additional 140 dollars per hour uh so we took this offer on the staff level and we examined our both downtown employee commute survey our current mode split and what we thought were some reasonably foreseeable mode split goals so in looking to double our downtown mode split of transit we modeled what that would cost if we were to just buy transit passes and in doubling our downtown employee mode split it would be more affordable for us to just buy transit passes at the existing 20 percent discount rate for all employees that wanted one um in looking at these various alternatives and modeling um how aggressive we could get in being aspirational and getting more people to switch to transit and really encouraging that what we kept coming back to is the uh desired approach to meet people where they are better needs meets the needs of our downtown employees uh when we did our downtown employee commute survey we asked people how likely would you be to try one of these different modes transit came in six of nine choices things that came in um higher were bicycling a short work week teleworking carpooling and walking um so other modes that we could look to encourage um that we could spend additional dollars on so of our overall TDM program we do anticipate spending a significant chunk of that budget on purchasing transit passes either for free or for a subsidy for employees who want them and for employees who transit works for them and that's a mode they want to try but we thought that um of the funding we had it would be better spent if we could spread it across biking carpooling um emergency ride home transit and other modes as well thank you for that and I have a follow-up question to that and I can't remember the statistic but I'm sure you will um I know that I fit into this category and that is I live downtown both of my primary jobs are downtown it actually doesn't make any sense for me to get on a bus because it would take me longer to do that than it would take me to walk or ride and I know there's statistics on this so I'm sure yeah we have some great stats so we have this I keep referring to our downtown employee commute survey it's it's a great survey that we went out and did and we we surveyed a sample that included both office workers and service workers and we looked at um workers as a whole and then service workers as a subset of that so one of the things we know is that um 44 percent of our service workers already don't drive so it's one of the groups we've caught but in terms of how close people are to work I know I have it in front of me right now and I'm looking for it um the heavy majority of our here we go mileage that's what I'm going for of all of our downtown employees 44 percent live within three miles this is a group that it's going to be faster cheaper and easier to walk or bike um potentially carpool but really walking and biking is the easiest alternative and zero to three miles if you go out to six miles that adds an additional 17 percent at that six mile range transit does become a competitive alternative also but really looking for the lowest hanging fruit and matching people that live close with telling us that they want to try walking biking and carpooling is the most logical scenario in order to encourage mode shift right now thank you thank you very much for those statistics about the bus passes because that's something I was really interested in and looking into but you know someone who grew up in Santa Cruz and had jobs downtown where I didn't get off till midnight I mean the bus was just not a possibility for me um even though I was just going to the west side um and so I understand the issues of you know paying this amount of money and not getting increased service um and really outside of UC Santa Cruz and maybe a couple other bus routes unfortunately our metro system has not had an easy go of it lately we have a hard time getting home right now oh yeah absolutely absolutely so um just some of the things that um I wanted to just really complement the downtown library advisory committee I just I'm still in awe of these citizen committees who are willing to get together and spend so much time really studying this issue and I just can't thank you enough and just the depth um and the breadth of knowledge of your backgrounds are amazing I was reading your biographies and just blew me away at um you know how savvy all of you are and um that's why you know when I look at what you're proposing I don't doubt that you weren't careful in really examining everything um and that you know there's you know some sort of conspiracy to um just subvert the public and that's not true I know some people alluded to that and I just I don't think you all even knew each other before you got together and did this so I'm I'm just thank you so much I you don't know how much you know how grateful I am for it and the community should be really grateful too that we have people with your expertise to be able to do this type of work so um and I mean I think it's been really clearly explained that we're going to be losing parking we're going to have surface slots go away and hopefully be used in a better way in in regards to land use and that the 240 additional spots will hopefully put us in a position to get some affordable housing downtown and you know I know in the ideal world we're trying to get more people out of their cars but if those 240 additional spots leads us to having folks who may be check into our you know check us into our medical appointment or teacher kids or patroller streets as entry-level police officers if it gets more of them to be able to live in the downtown area and not have to commute from the hinterlands to be able to work in Santa Cruz um you know I'm I'm willing to support that uh I think it's important to have those opportunities for people who want to live and work locally and while I know we're not going to be able to have every person who um works at maybe a service job or an entry-level job be able to live here I'd like to at least attempt to mitigate it and if you want to talk about lessening car trips that's probably one of the best things that we can do is to have places for people to live downtown so um I understand why the additional 240 spots have to exist that was one of the first things that jumped out at me was well why can't we just replace what we're going to lose in the surface lots why do we need to add you know when I hear the explanation as to why um it really makes sense to me and then just my own experience of you know the bus wasn't realistic for me when I was a worker downtown so um I think coupled with all those things it makes a lot of sense and another thing to consider is you know the parking isn't just being used by locals we have tourists that come to Santa Cruz as well and the park once model is really great if we can get them to just park downtown which a lot more figuring out that it's a lot cheaper to park downtown than it is across the street from the boardwalk they park downtown they discover we have an amazing downtown that they can have a unique experience both here and at the boardwalk and then there's that wonderful beach trolley that you can take from downtown um to to the beach and I have to tell you once my family discovered that you know from there from out of town they they want they want to take the trolley they think it's fun especially the the 11 year old so he was very enthusiastic about it so um the only thing that I think um you know I'd be more interested in is is the possibility of adding housing have no idea if that's um you know something that's even feasible but I know that we're looking at other lots to do affordable housing and so um I feel good that maybe this you know we're utilizing this um project as well as we can but if there's any possibility to look into that I would really appreciate it especially if they can be affordable units no we'd like to do that to make it a truly mixed use building you want to look at housing office and okay great so I feel confident in supporting option b I think it has been researched really well we've had a great citizens committee do this for us um and I I believe that you know the metro passes I think we should do both make them available people who want them and also do the parking I think we need both we need multiple ways for people to utilize our downtown so um I'm going to feel comfortable with voting for for the option b recommendation I just have a few thank you I just have a few comments and I have a couple things that you can report back because I know we're not necessarily taking exact action tonight um I'll try to keep my comments limited I just want to thank the community for coming out and speaking on behalf of whatever your position is it's really important for us to hear from the community on these these complex issues and there's pluses and minuses to all of our policy options including not doing anything and I really believe that I also feel that part of our job is to have um sort of this foresight into the future and to do our best to plan for the future that's that's what I see my role as in terms of a policy maker how are we designing policy with the long-term vision in mind um and from somebody who has um a lot of vision I enjoy that actually um I also just want to echo the comments that were made by the mayor in terms of the demographics and the shift we're seeing in our community coming off of the housing blueprint subcommittee um we have work to do and being a mother of two young daughters and having an opportunity to go to the library to experience a presentation by the librarian and all that it can offer to our community of all ages for so many different needs is critical for me to offer that perspective and to share that perspective so I want to thank you for your comments in terms of building what we want to see in terms of having more youth in our community I also want to um look or maybe hear back at a future time I don't know if you necessarily need to to um to respond tonight um at first I'll actually I'll first say that I really like the perspective of meeting people where they are that's essentially equity and I think that's a beautiful thing I also um I think we spoke during your presentation um when you met with me individually in regards to um potentially like a sliding scale for folks that might not be able to afford a pass if they need a pass um on many days I'm here and there from school to pick up to daycare to multiple places um and sometimes even if driving is your only option it could be a way to meet people where they are and I know that was brought up also um and then in terms of the uh recommendations for this evening do you mind putting that back up on the um screen for us in terms of best next steps and I just I guess before we we move forward um I'm curious to just maybe know a little bit more about what and you don't I mean it doesn't have to be into full detail but what you have in mind for your outreach I know that the downtown association mentioned that they're excited to hear about more outreach and an opportunity for conversation I too feel that sounds great in terms of education educating the community but also hearing from them as well um and then also just sort of the the timeline knowing that uh you know the month of July and August is kind of quick and people are gone and I don't know in terms of what your thoughts are around the timeline as well we've had a we had a number of individual and small group meetings but we'd like to actually have some noticed public meetings as well as um working with the downtown association and really have as many outreach meetings as we can and that's because a key piece that we hadn't had up until recently was the actual rate strategy so that's the missing component that uh there hasn't been a lot of opportunity to sort of discuss it and so that's the key piece of it okay I mean I think at this point I know unless there's any other I just I guess just as additional actions something we heard tonight was the um in terms of the policy unbundling the parking reducing the parking requirements for new housing when you look at if we are kind of committed to looking at you know creating density downtown and providing more housing looking at how this type of infrastructure can help us support the creation of new housing opportunities downtown I think that was a policy kind of suggestion um also we heard at the last meeting um from rick as far as unbundling and how the cost now a parking because it is lower than the cost that private developments have to pay there's a there's a mismatch where as we start to increase there should be some sort of timelines where we see that those policies better reflect what the the cost is of the parking um I'd also like to see as I mentioned a couple of times I want to see like a actual cost of what it what it would look like um if we were to increase investment in our maintenance downtown what is the uh you know what does that look like in terms of the cost to the structure um what will we get from that and what are our expectations because I don't know if there's a clear understanding of what our baseline is right now in terms of what we should be getting um in the downtown and maintenance and I think it's important to to know that what we're getting for the current budgeted amounts and then what it's going to take to maybe exceed what we are um you know what we're what we're looking for what the downtown business owners might want to see us be doing more of to make sure that it's a more welcoming place and and and it's a well maintained place um the other I I just wanted to commend also Debra Osterberg I was really resonating with me I was on you know I served on on the old library board and one of the the the really kind of exciting things is to go and look at their collection they have an amazing collection of historical artifacts of our city's history and I think that for me not only the genealogical kind of um um displays that might come from that organization but the library collection itself is really something that should be better better displayed and part of any new facility so I'd like to see make sure that as we think about the design I mentioned the public art and exterior but Debra you know reminded me of the the importance also of the historical aspects interior and also how we kind of make that an environment that really does reflect the type of downtown space we want for our community so those are some additional actions I think should be incorporated into not only your outreach plan but as we get the design um suggestions come back I'd like to see those kind of reflected in whatever work takes place from here I I think you have what you need or if I could just ask a clarifying question on your downtown maintenance so we have the ability for downtown maintenance of looking at a number of models like a lmd a lighting landscape maintenance district or putting something in place like that but I just wanted to clarify your question when you um because it sounded like you were making a connection between the parking and the parking fees for overall downtown maintenance and not just for parking related maintenance and so I just wanted to clarify to make sure we were understanding yeah sure well I mean in terms of the the parking costs that we heard today and I've heard this in the past that there is budgeted amounts that take that are allocated and expended for maintenance downtown understanding what we're getting for that current fee that we have for our downtown parking district if it's just the garages or does it include like any sort of street maintenance or painting knowing what we get and also if we have kind of like what we did in terms of looking at the um water uh what conservation there was a conservation fee that like one that we we imposed to look at that perhaps there's a way to look at the cost that we might have whether it be in parking or some other measure to go above and beyond what we're already doing because I feel in my opinion we need to do more so just to clarify with respect to the um parking fund and what it pays for in terms of maintenance downtown it's the restrooms that are in the parking structures and the the scrubbing program and but we'll bring all that back or the yeah the sidewalks on pacific avenue and then but we can bring it all together because then we have the parking fund I'm sorry the refuse fund pays for the the garbage collection as well as the um the hope services clean up and then in the park's budget they pay for all the landscaping but we can bring all that to you so it's to that point it's not just the parking fund this is a multiple fund uh item yeah I guess my my point was I mean I imagine it's also the maintenance of the garages right how they're how they're cleaned and maintained as well not just the scrubbing that's included in the parking yes so I guess I would want to know if um one what we're getting from that now and if you know what types of incremental increases would help to maybe provide some more ongoing maintenance and then have that you know become a discussion point with the downtown association to see well what do we want to see in terms of the level of maintenance downtown this is what we have and you know perhaps going further we can get a little bit more and these are what the options are so I think at the beginning of the presentation Bonnie you mentioned um incorporating the recommendations from the housing blueprint so okay great so many of those things were mentioned tonight many of those things are you know related to parking um as well as the housing comments I loved all the support for affordable housing that we heard tonight uh one of the best ways to do that is to not have parking required in those projects and to have it adjacent that gets us more units and more deeply affordable units so I'm a huge fan of that I think it's I appreciate um the mayor including this suggestion made by former mayor don lane I think that that is really important as well I would like to see us um really you know continue to aggressively pursue our TDM options I don't think that they're mutually exclusive with our parking um plan that you've brought forward tonight and I would be I would like us to pursue what council member crown suggested which is looking more aggressively at the rate structure in terms of the fees I think we need to study that because I'm concerned about the impact for lower income folks particularly those who work downtown um who rely on being able to get downtown and work downtown and raising that could be really problematic for them but I think we should ask the question and we should really talk about that and see kind of where is that sweet spot that could work um and I think I'll stop there and thank you so much for your presentation and thank you all so much for your presentation and all of your work council member crown just to follow up on council member chase I was going to ask could we look into a tiered rate structure for um you know low income people who do have to work downtown and come great distances and can't take a bus you know for uh because the bus doesn't run where they where they drive from is that possibly like a tiered rate structure does that sound like something that was possible if you run across that in other cities yeah I expect that the downtown commission will want to take up that very issue I've heard it expressed from some of the commissioners with the idea in mind that we we we are trying to have less employees parking our garages and more visitors um but some balance yes absolutely um Bonnie what was the affordable housing that you're that you're going to take up that you heard from David well there's a there's a couple of things we had some parking in and in the affordable housing there are two things and one thing that we haven't actually mentioned tonight and that's the city support supported pacific station project and so one of the um sort of policy decisions that will come before you in the months ahead will be a decision on whether or not to include parking in that project there's the opportunity that came out of or actually not opportunity one of the recommendations that came out of the housing blueprint subcommittee which is um there's a variety of them for downtown but one of them is specifically to reduce the overall parking requirements for affordable housing projects so that will reduce the amount of parking required for those projects but another recommendation is actually to allow for the parking to be created in an offsite location so that will allow us to for pacific station for example within the current height to actually build more affordable units within that footprint so that's something that we're really excited about but we have to actually bring the project to you for you to make that policy decision so incorporating some of those specific downtown parking recommendations as it relates to affordable housing within this recommendation when we come back so putting the affordable housing aside do you think that not building the parking garage is going to put in jeopardy the planned sort of growth of 500 to 600 units downtown like is that a no go if you don't have this parking garage uh Owen Lawler was here this this morning at the downtown commission uh speaking about you know in support of the parking garage so it kind of like put up a little bell for me saying oh well maybe his development would be in jeopardy if we don't do a downtown this this garage yeah i i don't know if i would put it in a no go no go situation i i think it's it's looking at trying to maximize the amount where we're looking at particularly affordable housing in the downtown on those parcels that we have control over so we only have so many city-owned surface lots and and parcels in the downtown so we're looking at each of those and part of that has been council direction to analyze what's the highest and best use for those which which are suitable for housing which doesn't make sense where we might want to develop some of the surface lot so that's part of the process and so to the extent that we can consolidate what we have and all those surface lots into one consolidated site that creates more opportunities for us to develop affordable housing would there be consensus up here that if we gave staff direction to look at that two years rather than five years to get the the monthly parking rates for the garages up to seventy five dollars in two years rather than five years i think you know having that as part of it to look at it to bring it back it went to the downtown to see what the numbers look like i mean i i don't have a problem with that and um i wanted to just respond to um councilmember neroy and i don't i don't think folks out here tonight were saying there's any kind of conspiracy i think they're about about the choices and stuff well i i feel folks were saying that there wasn't enough choices that there was four that people were locked into and i think um one of the speakers dan spell said it well you know that there was two other choices that he brought out and there's perhaps more choices as well and there was maybe a constrained uh nature of the the process and that's that's what i feel like folks were saying that i that i heard tonight anyway so let me just say that um there was i'm going to one comment that i i made a note of it was after one of the downtown association or downtown commission members um manu mentioned was the idea that the county needed a new parking garage and lot there and i know we're looking at you know how the transit center is located and i know that's something where i've seen in other areas you've seen a combined transit center with project um with parking garage and that might be something that the county might be interested in doing if there was something and and i thought that was something i just wanted to to to bring up i would have to say though i'm very thankful for all of you that came here tonight that stuck it out with us for four plus hours and i want to thank again the downtown library advisory committee library staff and all the staff um that not only did the presentations this evening but answered our questions this is not the the last time certainly all the comments and additional actions are going to be reviewed and we'll come back um in august but i just want to thank everybody for the patience and all the time spent this evening and if there's no other further comments um we'll adjourn the meeting is adjourned