 There's a lot of people who are on there. Is the city clerk ready? I am, thank you. It says we are in a practice session. Good morning and welcome to the 1130 a.m. public portion of the closed session of the November 15, 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. If you would like to comment on a closed session item, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. In this part of the meeting the council will receive public testimony thereafter the public line will be closed and inaccessible. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming, so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. I would now like to ask the city clerk to please call roll. Thank you, Mayor. Councilmember Calentari-Johnson, present. Councilmember Golder is absent. Cummings? Here. Brown? Here. Myers? Present. Vice Mayor Watkins? Here. And Mayor Brunner? Present. Thank you. The first order of business on this morning's agenda is item number one, referral to closed session for Tannery Arts Center, 890 River Street, 1,000 River Street, and 1,020 River Street. For members of the public who are streaming this, if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in and you can raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer. When it's your turn to speak, you will hear an announcement and the timer will be set to two minutes. Members of the public who are joining us here in chambers in person and wanting to comment on this item, please line up to the right of the dais and you will each have two minutes to speak. We request that you sign in to ensure correct spelling of your name in the meeting minutes. However, it's not required. I am now looking for a motion on agenda item one, referral to closed session. I will take that cue and make that motion to refer to closed session number one on our agenda, which is the Tannery Arts Center, 890 River Street, 1,000 River Street, and 1020 River Street. We have a motion by Vice Mayor Watkins. Is there a second? We have a second by Council Member Brown. May I have a roll call vote, please? Council Member Calentary-Johnson. Aye. Boulder Cummings. Aye. Brown. Aye. Council Member Myers. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. And Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously with Council Member Golder absent. Okay. This meeting will now adjourn to closed session. We will return. 130. 130. Great. Thank you. For those of you who are on the meeting and not part of closed session, please log off and come back at 130. Welcome to our 130 p.m. session of the November 15th, 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Calentary-Johnson. Present. Boulder Cummings. Here. Brown. Here. Council Member Myers. She's joining us virtually. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Brunner. Present. And Mayor, your camera is off. Thank you. Is Council Member Myers absent? Okay. I'm not seeing her. Okay. Thank you. Just want to confirm that. Okay. Our first item today, we have a couple of presentations. Our first one is a proclamation declaring November 26th, 2022 as Small Business Saturday. Since its inception in 2010, Small Business Saturday, which falls between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, has illuminated the significance of supporting small independently owned businesses across the country. And whereas Small Business Saturday is a day dedicated to supporting the diverse range of local businesses that help create jobs, boost our economy, and keep communities thriving across the country. And whereas the City of Santa Cruz celebrates our small businesses and the contributions that they make to our local economy and community. And whereas 85% of Santa Cruz businesses are small businesses employing nine people or less. And whereas small businesses continue to recover from the impacts of the pandemic and rely on the holiday shopping season for much of their revenue and support of local shoppers to their businesses each year in order to survive. And whereas there are over 500 retail businesses in Santa Cruz providing nearly 4,800 jobs. And whereas purchasing goods and services from local and small businesses allows small businesses to contribute to a more vibrant and sustainable economy. And whereas the City of Santa Cruz encourages all residents and visitors to shop and dine locally and to recognize the impact that we can make when we support local small businesses. And whereas businesses across the country will be celebrating Small Business Saturday and encouraging shoppers to shop local. Now, therefore, I, Sonia Burner, Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim Saturday, November 26, 2022 as Small Business Saturday Day in the City of Santa Cruz and encourage all citizens to join me in shopping local and throughout the year. Thank you. Our next presentation is a proclamation. We have a special guest for this proclamation. I'd like to welcome assembly member Mark Stone. Would you like to step forward? Did Bonnie Lipscomb, did you want to say a few words first or after I read the, okay. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Good to be here. Thank you. It is my great pleasure to present this proclamation to you. Assembly member Mark Stone has a remarkable record of public service. Having served on the Scots Valley School Board, County of Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors, California Coastal Commission, and California State Assembly for a total of nearly 25 years. And whereas as the Chair of the California Assembly, Judiciary, Committee, Assembly member Mark Stone has been instrumental in passing legislation that creates a more just and equitable law enforcement and court system in California. And whereas during his years in the California Legislature, Assembly member Mark Stone has sponsored numerous legislative initiatives to improve the state's environment and protect its marine and coastal environment. And whereas in his 10 years in State Assembly, Assembly member Mark Stone has sponsored legislation that reformed California's foster care system to ensure that there is continuing support for literally thousands of foster children providing a path forward for successful futures. And whereas when the City of Santa Cruz requested legislative assistance, Assembly member Mark Stone was always willing to help, no matter how small or large the request, advocating for funds for affordable housing, and the restoration of the San Lorenzo River are among a few of his locally based initiatives. And whereas when the City needed assistance with various state agencies, Assembly member Mark Stone and his district and Sacramento staff were always available to provide immediate and effective assistance. And whereas during his many years of public service, Assembly member Mark Stone has listened to all opinions and treated all persons with respect and courtesy, no matter what their point of view, and advocated for advancements in child welfare, foster care, criminal justice, mental health, and LGBTQ plus rights that benefited the Santa Cruz community. And whereas the Santa Cruz City Council, City staff and Santa Cruz community now congratulate Assembly member Mark Stone on his retirement from the California State Assembly and want him to know that he is valued, he is a true representative of the community, and his work on behalf of our community in California is so greatly appreciated. So now therefore I, Sonia Burner, Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim today, November 15th, 2022 as Mark Stone Day in the City of Santa Cruz and encourage all citizens to join me in commending Assembly member Mark Stone for his many years of providing invaluable assistance to the City of Santa Cruz and its residents. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. And one of the few people who would like to say a few words. I really appreciate the opportunity to acknowledge Assembly member Stone and his years of exceptional dedicated service to the Santa Cruz community. And I should back up and say my name is Bonnie Lipscomb, Director of Economic Development and Housing at the City. I first met Assembly member Stone back in 2012 during the demise of redevelopment which was a pretty tumultuous time. And his support and understanding of kind of what we were going through at the time really helped a really challenging process at the state level. I was struck by his genuine interest in hearing about the issues that impacted our community, particularly around affordable housing. I was also struck by just what a pragmatist he is. We would have these regular meetings, legislative meetings, and Maureen would set them up and periodically we would talk through and he was just really listened. He was really a good listener. He would talk through some of the issues affecting our community and give us feedback on, yeah, you could take this forward as a bill and probably not. This may not be the best path for this issue. So it really gave us constructive feedback on how we could successfully sort of navigate to us at the local government level is often pretty challenging and unknown sort of path through the state and through that process. He also has a great support team. Over the years we really felt like we had a representative here through the field office with Maureen McCarty, always just sort of there for us, checking in with us periodically and really helping us move forward. I also really want to acknowledge Assemblymember Stone, just how he's been an affordable housing advocate for us and a champion. Particularly this goes back to AB 411 and some of you will remember our efforts to create that legislation that would have enabled us to take our bond proceeds and on our capital side and turn that into affordable housing funding here in our community. With Assemblymember Stone's support, we navigated successfully through both the Assembly and the Senate, but unfortunately it was vetoed by the governor and I think that's more related to sort of redevelopment woes than the merits of the bill. But we wouldn't have gotten that far at all without Assemblymember Stone and I just want to acknowledge him for that and his support and really championing that for us in our community and recognizing that affordable housing is one of the most important issues in our community. So we have a true voice and representative in Assemblymember Stone. So thank you for your years of service. Congratulations on your retirement. Well-earned retirement and it's really given me sort of renewed faith over the last 10 years in just our democratic process and that we have had leaders like you. So thank you. And Public Works Director Mark Dettel. Mark Dettel, Director of Public Works, just a few words. I've known Assemblymember Stone for probably 25 years. We served on the Bond Oversight Committee for the Scotts Valley High School back then, but professionally the last 20 years has been great. The support for the environment and our mission that we provide, waste reduction, plastic issues that we find at the beach. But what comes to me is his support on the Coastal Commission when we came forward with Arana Gulch. That was a huge project for us and his support helped drive that thing and get it approved and get it built and it's really a jewel for our community and that one stands out for me. So Mark, I want to thank you for all your support throughout the years and I wish you all the best in your retirement. And Water Director Rosemary Menard. Hello. You know, it's interesting to come here and sort of maybe a little bit last on this cue that you've had. So many of the words that I've been hearing that describe Assemblymember Stone have really resonated with me when I heard them. A great listener, accessible, someone who was willing to give you good advice about what he thought, but really open to hearing what your concerns were and you felt even if you didn't get something when you went over there, you felt when you left that you had learned something about how the process works at a big state where a lot of things are going on and have to be managed. So I really want to say ditto to everything that Bonnie said to everything that Mark said and to everything that was in that resolution and thank you so much for your service. You've been a real blessing for this community. Are there any council members that would like to say any words? Vice Mayor Watkins. I'll just briefly say on behalf of Education you have always been a champion for our youth and our young people at the state and have moved tremendous policy forward, particularly for our foster youth and locally having been connected and am currently connected to the efforts that are happening you've changed the lives of kids. So I just really want to thank you on behalf of all of Education Maureen as well for always being champion champions for our kids at the state of California and wish you the absolute best. Council Member Myers. You're muted. Can you hear me now? Yes, welcome. I also just on a personal note for someone who loves to be in the ocean I want to recognize Mark as our only assembly member that has actually swum the English channel so that is I think one of his most important outgoing outstanding things that he's done but Mark I also just want to thank you thank you for so much of your work in the environmental field thank you for caring about the things that we need to be thinking about both present generations and for future generations and I also was just very touched by your work especially around the Pacific Station items that we were working on and Maureen your work you guys just always have our local communities back in Sacramento and your understated way of getting things done I just so appreciate it and you are a big giant in our community and I want you to know that and so thank you for everything you've done thank you enjoy your ocean swims from now on Council Member Calantari Johnson great thank you so much Mark everything that's been said about you but what really stands out is your compassion for the community and your pragmatism and finding a path forward I realize I've worked with you for 17 years when you were on the Board of Supervisors and one thread that I've always been able to go to you on is your champion for children as Vice Mayor Watkins said I think the first project we worked on was the social host ordinance making sure that youth and children didn't have access to alcohol and when we were working on youth homelessness at the state level you were accessible you gave guidance on how our coalition can elevate this topic at the state and even Davenport school kids who needed to cross streets safely you're accessible to help us facilitate with Caltrans so just you're always there along with your fantastic team member Maureen and you have been and I know you'll continue to be a champion for children so thank you for all your work and your leadership thank you Council Member Brown I already had my hearing up moment at the Regional Transportation Commission so I'll keep it short echoing everything that I've heard here today I also want to thank you for standing up for workers and working people's issues in a way that has been really meaningful for a lot of people in our community and beyond and I I just think that you have you see how to say this really shortly so you're we have a lot of representatives who I think you know represent us well and we say thank you for representing us but you have stayed so close to our community in community with us connected to our community in ways that I don't always see with elected officials who are the Sacramento which you know really is the center of the universe for a lot of people and you just that maintaining that connection I mean I see you out there you show up not for fanfare but you show up to really meet people and hear from them and listen and take action on that and I just want to take the opportunity to thank you again so we wish you all the best in your future endeavors I know you're retiring from the legislature but not retiring from all the wonderful work that lies ahead Thank you Councilmember Cummings I'm not going to reiterate everything that my colleagues have said but do you want to appreciate all the work that you've done over the years you know related to kids criminal justice environment workers affordable housing but I do also want to really thank you for being so accessible during 2020 when I was mayor you know when we were going through the pandemic and all sort you know pandemic George Floyd fires you know our community was going through a lot and I just appreciated being able to reach out to your office you guys being able to hear our needs and really being you know that accessible because you know when we all started 2020 nobody knew what was going to happen nobody knew how long it was going to take and what kind of resources we were going to need and it really helped me better understand as mayor during that time what my role was in terms of communicating our needs to you all to be able to reach out to your office and have that support and know that you were there for us so I just want the community to know that you know you were a big part of us being able to meet our needs at the state level along with you know Jim and Panetta at the federal level and many of our other representatives but just want to appreciate you for making sure that you know Santa Cruz was safe and that we were getting our needs met during that very difficult time. Thank you council member Cummings a lot of love in this room and appreciation and thank you for supporting Santa Cruz in the ways that you have I hope we've been able to express that today we really appreciate you joining us and I'd like to offer you a chance to say any words if you'd like Thank you Madam Mayor and council members and city staff I appreciate this quite a bit the part that you really got right though managing marine capital staff and those folks none of us are effective without strong staff and the members of your staff who spoke I very much appreciate and you have really world class staff here in fact I'm going to tell a story on Bonnie Lipscomb when we were running that RDA bill there's a certain senator who can be a bit of a blow hard and started throwing terms out not expecting I think anybody to understand and she went down whatever rat hole he decided to go until he ran out of pomp because she just answered everything Mark Duttle what I first met him was working over the hill you were smart to bring him here and bring him into Santa Cruz where he could have come home and provide his skills here he's been a real leader for the city for a long time and Rosemary has been absolutely fabulous and as you know in the water area which around here is just kind of quiet not controversial nobody seems to have a beef about water well having the right people in the right places and that is sometimes your most significant role as elected members the city council is ensuring that you have the right staff the right people to provide guidance for you what you do it's not easy and in the city like Santa Cruz where you have a very active constituency a lot of people wanting to weigh in and work with you but yet what you do is part time I know it doesn't feel like that but by definition it is and so you rely tremendously on your city staff and you have one of the best city staffs around and always have for quite a long time people too who are looking out for constituents in the city you should be proud of that and the other thing I just looking at the city council here I'm really proud to see the diversity that is even in Santa Cruz County not as common as I think we need and we would like representative bodies need to look like their community and this council really does that's something I think to be proud of and something to be thinking about as this council changes over the years with the recent changes that have happened so I've been very honored to serve in this area both on the board supervisor school board then at the state level council commission in various roles because this is a community that is worth taking care of and worth looking to the future with our kids our next generation but also the people who have decided to be here for the next I've also long said that elected officials do have a sell by date and I think the trick is to leave before we each get there or before anybody else realizes what we've got in there so this is my time to move on and let others step in and you'll have a tremendous representative in the state assembly in Gale Pellerin I know I even said that I'm confident that she was going to win and you have an amazing state senator and John Laird two local people who understand Santa Cruz's needs both city and the county so they are going to be very strong representatives I appreciate the recognition the day that I'm a mayor so if I have any parking tickets I'll be sure to bring them by but I just want to say thank you for your service work that you do thank you very much it's been a pleasure thank you thank you everyone for joining us and speaking all right we're ready to move on in our agenda I have a few announcements and then we will continue with the meeting today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website cityofsantacruise.com our rules of decorum are on the window ledge here in person to my left it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside or outside of chambers for the consideration of our community please stay home if you have any symptoms of a cold or flu or are feeling unwell in any way if you wish to comment on an agenda item today and are joining us virtually you may call in at the beginning of that item you are wishing to comment on and you will use instructions on your screen at that time please mute your television or streaming device when you call in and listen through your phone please note there is a delay in the streaming so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak when it's your turn for public comment you can raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature on the webinar controls of your computer please note that public comment is heard only on items council is taking action on and not on regular updates reports the items that will be open for public comment today are agenda numbers 10 through 40 I'd like to ask the council members if there are any statements of disqualification today councilmember brown thank you mayor I do have a out of an abundance of caution I am going to recuse myself on item 19 this is the for the future housing loan agreement and so because I live in very close proximity to the parcel thank you councilmember brown councilmember comings I just want to ask the city attorney I think this has come up before in terms of process should we pull that item then from consent because it's on the consent calendar you can just abstain from discussion and if it does get pulled then I'll just leave where to happen okay great okay I'd like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions or deletions there are none okay thank you I'd like to call on the city attorney to provide us a report on closed session please yes thank you mayor bruner members of the city council let me turn on my yes this morning the council met in closed session in the courtyard conference room and via zoom at 11 30 a.m. with councilmember golder absent and discussed the following items item one was referred to closed session real property negotiations involving 890 river street 1000 river street and 1020 river street that item is also on your consent calendar for action this afternoon council received a report from its negotiator on that item gave direction item two was a conference with labor negotiators concerning POA police management SEIU temps SEIU service employees supervisors and OE3 council met with its labor negotiator Lisa Murphy on that item item three were three items of real property negotiations the properties at 890 river street 1000 river street and 1020 river street located at the tannery art center item two was real property at 136 river street those first two items the council met with its negotiator Bonnie Lipscomb and council received a report and gave direction item three was real property negotiations involving 24 30 and 38 front street on that item the council met with its negotiator Kristoff Schneider and received a report and gave direction item four was a conference with legal council inviving liability claims claims of Mitchell E. Swinton and Janet Cantillon those are also listed this afternoon on your consent calendar and then the last item was a matter of existing litigation case entitled Herman Herman versus city of Santa Cruz currently pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court received report from city attorney's office and gave direction on that item I should just add for the record on the river street real property negotiations rather for the 136 river street real property negotiations as council member Brown did just now for the consent calendar she refused herself and did not participate in that discussion due to the proximity of her residents to that project or to that property thank you okay I'd now like to call on the city attorney to provide any updates on city's business and events of interest I'm happy to provide those updates on behalf of the city attorney if I may the city manager will now provide updates report and updates on the city's business thank you thank you and good afternoon mayor and council Eric is smart our communications manager is going to pull up the slide deck for me I've got a handful of updates for the council and community this afternoon so let's go ahead and jump in next slide please so as the council knows for the last several months we have had staff from multiple departments working on a phase closure of San Lorenzo park the closure of the park was officially completed on November 7th and it's really hard to overstate how complex and challenging this process was and I wanted to take the opportunity to thank this is a big number or nearly 60 staff members that were part of the closure as well as outreach to the individuals that were in the camp throughout the last several months and that contributed to the success of this closure and restoration process and by extension I want to also thank the council for your support and leadership throughout that process next slide now I want to also point out and note that this was more than a closure and restoration process our outreach also connected over 170 people with a higher standard of shelter and everyone in the park was given the opportunity to move to an alternative shelter location also for the first time in partnership with the county we were able to enter the majority of the individuals in the camp into the homelessness management information system also known as HMIS this may sound like a small feet but in fact has been a challenge in past camp closures and what this information does it allows our outreach team to really provide a higher standard of case management services to better meet the individual needs of folks that are living on house in our community in ways that we've not been able to do in the past and really in close partnership with our county partners in ways that again we've not experienced in the past so I just wanted to acknowledge that it's really taken a village get into the point that we are and I'm incredibly proud of the work the teams done to connect those 170 individuals to a higher standard of shelter and on their way to permanent housing of course this process doesn't end with the closure and restoration of the park itself the city team will continue to conduct regular assessments and outreach to people living unhoused in other areas we continue to partner with the county and community partners in this work and that includes healing the streets front street, housing matters and the downtown outreach workers next month the council will be receiving quarterly homelessness response update from Larry and Wally our homelessness response manager with more details as to what's to come as we move through the closure and restoration process next slide I'm sure many of the community have noticed that there's a lot of activity underway at the mouth of the San Lorenzo River this work is part of the San Lorenzo River Lagoon Covert project and is the culmination of many years of planning and partnership with multiple agencies those include the National Marine Fisheries Service the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service the Coastal Commission the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers the California Water Resources Control Board and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife construction was funded by $2.2 million in grant funding from the California Wildlife Conservation Boards steam flow enhancement program and another $650,000 that came from stormwater, general and liability funds I also just wanted to acknowledge Council Member Myers who I know was a key part of helping to lead this effort on the council as this work came together it's really an innovative project that will do a number of things and I wanted to highlight those for the community's benefit it will prevent excessive flooding of lower ocean and beach flat neighborhoods caused by the closed lagoon, a condition that has been exacerbated unnaturally by the construction of the harbor jetties in the 1960s it will reduce or eliminate catastrophic breaches of the lagoon which seriously damaged the habitat for a long time and can purge protected species including steelhead trout and tide water Gobi and perhaps most importantly it mitigates the life safety danger posed by lagoon breaches which can sweep beach goers into life threatening swift waters that we've unfortunately experienced at times in our past so we're very excited to see this project moving forward and look forward to seeing it in action I just wanted to also acknowledge that we've had a lot of work team that has been overseeing the construction process next slide in August of 2020 the council will remember that we executed an emergency declaration in response to the CZU lightning fires while the declaration has been in effect for over two years we are going to go ahead and extend it for an additional 60 days due to some of the high risk that still exist around debris flow for the burn areas so just wanted to update the community and the council on that and I do expect that we will terminate that declaration in January of next year next slide I know we've all been monitoring the election results of the midterm election very closely yesterday afternoon the county clerk updated the vote totals now representing about 61,000 total votes throughout the county and I wanted to go ahead and provide some updates on some of the preliminary results I'll stress that these are not the final outcomes but I did want to provide some updates on who's leading in the polls both for the initiatives and for some of our upcoming council seats so as it currently stands Fred Keely is leading in the polls to be our first four year mayor Scott Newsom is leading for district 4 and Renee Golder is leading for district 6 we've also had a number of important decisions on the ballot this November that we were asking the community of their position on and that includes measure N that was the empty homes tax as things currently stand yes on N is at 41% with no on O at about 58 no on N sorry did I say that no on N measure O would have included amendments to the general plan the downtown plan and was brought forward by our downtown our future and we understand yes on O is at 40.48% and no on O is at 59.52% so that appears to be going down by a wide margin and then lastly measure P is the increase to our transient occupancy tax yes on P is at just shy of 80% with no on P at about 20% so it looks that that will also pass by a wide margin next slide please we'll provide some updates on some upcoming events that the community may be interested in the first is November 13th through the 20th is united against hate week the cold water classic is coming back after several years of being dormant that will be taking place November 15th through the 19th Santa Cruz trades day occurred today I got to absorb some of the activity it was very well attended lots of interest the whole lift outdoor market is coming up on November 25th through the 26th and with that concludes my report thank you that was great information and I will just plug in that the Santa Cruz public libraries has on their website a list of events happening all week for united against hate week there's film screenings bystander trainings and many there's a youth event at Capitola branch library on Thursday so that whole list is available to Santa Cruz public libraries website thank you thank you I will now call on the city clerk to provide any updates to the calendar there are no updates but just some reminders November 29th we have a special meeting as well as December 6th and then our next regular one will be December 13th thank you next up is our consent agenda the consent agenda consists of agenda items 10 through 34 for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you would like to comment on any item 10 through 34 now is the time to call in instructions should be up on your screen please remember to mute your streaming device and raise your hand by dialing star 9 on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to comment or pull any items for member comings and council member calentari johnson I have a comment on 17 I want to pull 30 and I have a question about 19 okay council member comings comment on 17 pull 30 and a question on 19 okay council member calentari johnson I had a comment on 30 and on 19 question on 19 okay let's see I'll check in with council member Myers okay I don't see a hand raised great okay so let's see since we pulled item council member Cummings pulled item 30 we will come to that after we proceed here so we'll leave 30 out of the mix right now and I will jump to council member Cummings you had a comment on item 17 and if you could just state what item 17 is or I can pull it up as well sure this is so item number 17 is a letter to the honorable site of Cogliati expressing the city's condemnation of the vandalism of the Black Lives Matter mural and I guess the comment I would first I would just like to thank my colleagues for working to bring this forward on behalf of the SC equity co-lab who has been well they're the individuals who brought this to to the council initially when I was mayor and asked us to install the mural and it's definitely been a topic of interest for many people in our community as to you know why we haven't repainted the mural and so I just wanted to let everyone know that on Friday morning at 10 a.m. will be the sentencing hearing for these two individuals and there's an opportunity at that hearing to make a public comment these letters needed to be submitted prior to the hearing and so that's why this is before us today but if people really want to you know hear of the final comments and hear that final verdict they can attend the hearing at the Santa Cruz County Courthouse on Ocean Street at 10 a.m. so thank you thank you council member Cummings we had a comment from Calentari Johnson on item 30 which was pulled so you'll go to that when we get that item and then we had a question on agenda item 19 and I'll start with Calentari Johnson sure yeah comment question this is item 19 is for the future housing California corporation loan agreement and I was I wanted to invite Bonnie Lipscomb to respond to this just there the interest in making these types of projects indeed restricted projects having them be a local preference for the residents so if Bonnie could touch on what our policy options are for that for the future that would be great sure and I think their city attorney's office probably should weigh in here as well they did reference a resolution on the books that may enable a preference of local preference policy I will say it's been a challenge historically to have anything that has serious teeth to it because of typical funding sources for affordable housing projects which includes state and federal funding sources and fair housing laws and just the risk of discrimination is often very prohibitive for developers being willing to put preferences on affordable housing projects with that said we have successfully in the past had a preference for some of our projects specifically the tannery art center there is an artist preference that has has somewhat with stood the test of time it is largely artists that live on on campus but it's more sort of self selected artists on campus there is recently enacted legislation we're just we're just learning about the governor just signed it the end of September that would allow local governments to have a sort of a local tenant preference policy so we're going to look into that a little more the process for that would be for council through an ordinance to establish this is a policy and I think that would give a little more support for developers and others being willing to actually have a robust policy in place going forward I could just elaborate on that briefly so council has already enacted a provision that that states that preferences for rental inclusionary units will be given priority to residents of the city but as limited by state and federal law there's also a resolution that has been adopted that includes local preferences for potential renters or purchases purchasers of affordable units and I believe that language will be written into the affordability covenant to reflect existing policies as well thank you both thank you council member Cummings you also had a question on agenda item 19 I did in the agenda report on this item it was stated that money would have to be transferred can't remember which fund it was but there there's a need to transfer money to the affordable housing trust fund in order for that to go to the developer and people are just asking how much money is in the affordable housing trust fund if we can get some kind of update on like where the how much yeah how much money we have in the affordable housing trust fund to date I'm happy to provide that we can come back at a later time I can just tell you right now with the three affordable 100% affordable housing projects that we have under way we have committed the balance of the affordable housing trust fund because we plant we planned it out and we're successful in getting matches at the state level to our affordable housing trust fund so we were leveraged that for double matches and in doing so we had to commit the funding for the next three-year period to those projects so for pack station south pack station north and the downtown library affordable housing project we've committed the affordable housing fund balance for the next three years so while there is a balance in the funding it's because we haven't drawn it drawn it down yet for the project but it's fully subscribed for the next three years with that said we're we're queuing up to apply for another local grant match to the fund and then we also receive annually funding coming into the fund we have some long-standing development agree development agreements we receive on a few projects a little under a hundred thousand a year coming in on those agreements and then of course we receive annually in Luffy's as projects move forward into the fund so we do think and that we'll see the balance increasing over the next few years and so our proposal is to have a interfund transfer from the public trust fund to the affordable housing trust funds that we can make the loan out of the affordable housing trust fund because it'll be a residual receipts loan back to the fund but that will have the funding replenish in the affordable housing trust fund within I'd say the next five day years and we can repay the public trust fund thanks and actually you answered my second question because I was interested in where that funding had been allocated so that helps for when we're having these conversations with folks if they're asking where's the money it's like well it's dedicated so yeah thank you okay thank you that concludes comments and questions on agenda items 10 through 34 with the exception of item 30 which has been pulled item 30 is Santa Cruz High School parking so we will come back to that item at this time if that concludes that I will go out to public comment and I will look to our in person we have no members of the public here for public comment I will look to our virtual attendees and we are looking for public comment on agenda items 10 through 34 except for 30 we will come back to that next okay our first hand raised if you'd like to raise your hand press star 9 on your phone or choose raise hand in the webinar features of your computer and the first phone number ends in 4844 go ahead and press star 6 to unmute yourself welcome thank you council members and members of the community I would request even before saying anything else that item number 22 be pulled from the agenda for brief staff report and city council comment has to do with an issue of police misconduct and I would request that the council member perhaps council member Sandy Brown who committed herself to public and accessible activity on these issues will do it not I'll say no more until she indicates whether she's going to be doing that I would ask if are you going to do that Sandy mr. Norse we we did have a conversation about this in our closed session and we got a the appropriate report from our city attorney so I'm not going to pull this one I'm sorry about that I will maintain my commitment to doing so in this case it doesn't seem appropriate to me it sounds like you're violating your commitment but thank you for your explanation Sandy yeah well then I'll mention very briefly in the two minutes that I have this is a I wish I could speak about at a greater length but in my attempts to get the information from city administrator Bonnie Bush as I always do with these items it has been it has not been placed on the agenda as is unfortunately the case in spite of repeated requests in terms of the actual substance of the situation the substance of the actual issue of what Mitchell Swinton actually is having a problem with it's not been made available to the public even though it is a public record and can be done and often Bonnie is quite out you know helpful in doing this with a time lag but this should be on the agenda so we know what's going on and it's very nice for you know you can't actually comment on this item if you don't have the specific information about what exactly is the concern of Mr. Swindon and that is not available so we're in a situation here where the community is essentially facing a violation of the Brown Act because the city council is getting this information and it's public information so it's not privileged but the community is not and it is being intentionally withheld from the agenda even though it is available so I would ask that perhaps Bonnie Bush explain to us exactly why it is being withheld and why this is being done on a regular basis because it seems to me that one cannot make intelligent comments at this very brief open interval that is allowed before the closed session well I'm not I didn't make any comments on the quote at the interval because I didn't have any information about it even though I requested it earlier today so I would ask someone on the council devoted it to accessibility and transparency to request that all subsequent items that are claims against the city be put in full on city council agendas and I think such an advisory would perhaps persuade Bonnie to do that even though her own preference seems to be otherwise it's within her power but she's chosen not to do it I can't say anything more about this issue because Councilmember Brown is declined to pull it off the agenda so we can't get a staff report on we can't even know what the specifics are about this okay our next public comment is the name I am watching you go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself thank you I was disappointed you did not address any of the questions the public sent in letters on item 19 perhaps you could do that later at the item 17s open letter to the presiding judge on the BLM vandalism sentencing matter I would point out restorative justice as most unusual has roots and village justice and shows an ignorance that the restorative justice doesn't work at all unless all parties voluntarily agreed to participate with purely restorative and rehabilitative goals not as extra punitive punishments and not required to match the severity of the crime I don't see any understanding of this in the plain of slatter and census was discussed 18 months ago even before any hearings I suspect there must be other motives at work the equity cohab or radical activists known to promote public protest spectacles like showing up to direct painting in a kiss kiss my black arts t-shirt or end white supremacy t-shirts at trial and get their pictures in the paper that and the obvious lack of understanding of restorative justice's voluntary component makes me question their sincerity and by your own public spectacle here and by association your own sincerity I do also have a problem with this being a public calling out of the judge by name and specifically listing unilaterally demanding really quite publicly some very unusually harsh sensing expectations of what amounts to trying to force your sentence outcome by instigating a public outrage even pressing with full civic and public force to pressure the court to invoke this involuntary restorative justice sentence maybe the equity cohab doesn't know any better but you should the judge decides what justice is not you or anyone else my guess is it won't matter what sensing the court arrives at it won't be enough for anyone involved with the black lives matter movement my worry is the BLM narrative follows the marches Malcolm X and believes in severe violent retribution for any grievance large or small any violent protest that might follow from a different sensing outcome from this will be very much also at your hands without a voluntary acceptance by the accused this then becomes I'd say a purposeful public shaming spectacle recommendation mudstering aimed at judicial coercion not so different than recommending use of medieval stocks for the public to throw garbage at the bandals heads this item is the modern day version of your version of the water street bridge tension hasn't the city been used enough as a witness tool by the black lives matter movement that is responsible for normalizing violence and enabled extra more murders and property damage than 911 itself why would you ever want to perpetuate a radical permanent BLM glorification symbol of an agenda which resulted in the mass murder of an extra 3000 black people in 2021 and three to five billion in property damage countless arsons and assaults the public is has enough of no justice no peace protesting justice is what the judge says it is I think you should modify the letter to state only the city's actual damages for just responding to the public when you get paid to do that job that's something else to say about leaving the mess okay thank you your time is up our next member of the public is the name yoga for all movement go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself welcome let's see we can't hear you there you go there you go speak louder i can hear laughing thank you my name is shundara gill and i'm a member of the santa cruz equity collab can you hear me now yes as i said before i'm a member of the santa cruz equity collab as well as director of the fiscal sponsorship of the black lives matter mural working with the santa cruz equity collab and i wanted to start by thanking both mayor bruner and the council members that included this item on the agenda you're so grateful for the full council's consideration of all as you all have read we are asking you to send a letter on behalf of the city council to superior court judge sida bogliati expressing the city's condemnation of the vandalism of the santa cruz black lives matter mural which includes specific sentencing recommendations for the defendants that align with the restorative justice approach these recommendations include community service being part of the painting and fanning process and restoring the mural and the presentation of a public apology to the community at the restoration event participation in the victim offender dialogue program through the conflict resolution center participate in weekly professional therapy for at least two years participate in a racial justice workshop that the santa cruz equity collab has co-created and co-facilitated payment the full restitution amount and most importantly that they be prohibited from purchasing firearms for at least five years this last piece is especially important for boring people's sense of safety after seeing two separate videos of one of the defendants naming mr bochat one with him holding a firearm uh real maybe maybe not real doesn't really matter too much still said ravage um towards our latinx community while holding what looked like a firearm that's all available in i think the samples of the script of the proceedings as public information mr bochat at least has demonstrated that i'm having a hard time hearing you if you could speak closer to the phone please thank you i'm on here so i'm i'm not sure what that is is there a port part you'd like me to repeat airbrunner i'm not sure but go ahead and continue and just speak loudly okay thank you so much so uh with that the court proves court transcripts have been uh made public so you're welcome to look at that and if you need it we will send it to you but we mean mr bochat at least has demonstrated that he cannot be trusted with a firearm at this point in time so that's one of the asks this is an opportunity to choose progress within this system through a restorative justice model to explicit we show the defendants in our community that we all understand and even care about the harm that has been perpetrated through this hate crime and the need for true amendments to be made and to publicly demonstrate that as a community we will not tolerate hateful racist behavior we appreciate the community and city councils thank you our next public comment is peter be here welcome go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hello city councils all right my comment is as um representative the underrepresented where the city community the city of san jacuzzi community is on peter bichier um i wanted to comment just briefly on the city manager's agenda is this the appropriate place uh typically we don't take comment on reports or updates you're welcome to uh email city council at cityofsanacruz.com okay thank you and that looks like it concludes our public comment i do want to also add for anyone listening we have oral communications is also a time to comment on anything not on the agenda and oral communications today will be at six o'clock six p.m so if there's any items the public would like to comment on that's not on today's agenda you are welcome to um either attend in person or join us virtually at six p.m okay i will bring it back to city council for a motion on our consent agenda i'll go ahead and move the consent agenda with the exception of item 30 which has been pulled no second great we have a motion from vice mayor Watkins with a second by council member calentari ginson uh items 10 through 34 with the exception of item 30 which has been pulled okay and may we have a roll call vote please council member calentari johnson i boulder still absent uh Cummings i brown i uh with the exception of item 19 which i'm recusing myself uh council member mires aye vice mayor Watkins aye and mayor burda aye thank you that motion passes unanimously with council member golder absent and council member brown abstaining from item number 19 so now we will move on to agenda consent agenda item 30 this is an item santa cruz high school parking um this is a public works item and i'm wondering if assistant director of public works nathan ewn is available we had a council member Cummings and council member calentari johnson who had a couple questions on this item yeah so i pulled this item um i just the first question i had was um if you could maybe um provide any kind of update on kind of what the timing is of these conversations and um when we might be able to get an update i think the one thing that was left the reason why i pulled this is because um you know with all the work the city has going on some things can slip through the cracks so oftentimes having some kind of report back date incorporated into the motion can help so that the community has an understanding of when we should when we'll hear back from staff about um you know the the progress that's being made on these items and so just wanted to kind of get a sense of where the conversations are heading and when um folks can expect to see this item come back to council sir uh good afternoon council members nathan ewn assistant director of public works um there's been ongoing conversations with santa cruz city schools we are in contact now with the director of facilities trevor miller so we're definitely at the right with cut in contact with the right person to discuss potential parking changes around uh santa cruz high school i think our last contact was in late october um we do need to follow up with them to discuss uh potential changes um as the staff report noted um it has been a kind of a long-standing item in the sense that um the discussions happened in early fall of 21 and then as construction happened at santa cruz high we had ongoing discussions with several members of the santa cruz city school system but now i think i believe we're in the right contact now so i guess the fall would be um what would be a kind of reasonable time frame for hearing back from staff on this item i would anticipate in the coming year as we get through the holidays and we are still working on hiring a parking programs manager and so once we have additional staffing to to help reach out and provide some additional support i would probably expect some time in the i guess early year or next spring to hopefully come to a resolution so would it be acceptable if we had a report back to eight at the second meeting in april or before that yeah i think that would i think that would provide enough time to allow staff to reach out um get these discussions to proceed a little further there are a couple options that have already been discussed with them but uh again we'll have to kind of tease out the the process to see which ones um seem most applicable for for the schools great thank you thank you councilmember calentari johnson great thank you for your work on this um i was really glad to see that we are working with the school district on the supply side of the challenge and i wanted to ask the city team as you're working with the school district to consider a transportation demand program to address the demand side of the challenge of the situation it's similar to what the city has with um go santa cruz program so just uh just that comment that as you're working with the school district uh to encourage and ask that they pursue or explore uh transportation demand program i appreciate that comment and i believe we got that comment in another letter from our our chair of the public transportation public works commission that's um and i have to admit i think it's a great idea to reach out to santa cruz city schools and see if there's any resources that could also be provided to work on a tdm program i believe the tdm program in our downtown parking district has been successful and will continue to grow and so we'd like to see that that type of shot kind of approach not just the one silver bullet out there to address these parking issues great thank you thank you okay so that concludes uh item 30 questions and now i will take it out to public comment item 30 is santa cruz high school parking um and are there any members of the public here in person that would like to um speak to item 30 okay i will also look to our virtual attendees seeing no hands raised virtually i will bring it back to council and i'm looking for a motion on item number 30 council member coming it's like to move the staff recommendation and incorporate um an update um an update on the parking issues at santa cruz high school to come back to council on or before the second meeting in april and as part of the direction encourage santa cruz city schools to explore transportation demand programs a little second thought okay we have a motion by council member coming seconded by council member calentari johnson are there any other questions maybe have a roll call vote council member calentari johnson i colder coming brown liars smear watkins and mayor bernard i that motion passes unanimously with council member golder absent okay that concludes our consent agenda let me go back to our agenda here i will take a 10 minute uh break at this point we um before we move on to consent public hearing um just a quick bio break for anyone who needs it public hearing items these items are 35 through 38 on our agenda if you are a member of the public streaming this meeting and you won't wish to comment on items 35 through 38 now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen you can um raise your hand to press star nine when that time comes and we will let you know when it is your turn to speak if you are joining us in person and wish to comment on items 35 through 38 you can line up here to the right of the dais all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to comment on or pull items 35 through 38 i will look to our virtual council member council member mires okay just want to make sure i don't miss you okay so at this point then we will now go out to the public for public comment and if you would like to comment please press star nine to raise your hand or choose the raise hand feature on your computer and you will hear an announcement the timer will then be set to three minutes are any members joining us virtually that would like to comment on items 35 through 38 seeing no hands raised virtually none here in person okay so at this time then i will bring it back to council for a motion and deliberation vice mayor Watkins i'm happy to move the consent in public hearing items 35 through 38 a second okay we have a motion by vice mayor Watkins with a second by council member Cummings may we have a roll call vote please council member calentary johnson i folder Cummings i brown i mires vice mayor Watkins i mayor hi that motion passes unanimously with council member golder absent okay thank you for being here today being available next on our agenda is item number 39 this is public hearing for permanent outdoor dining program update related to public on street parking spaces for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from council we will then take public comment and then return to council for deliberation and for action and i would like to welcome rebecca unit our economic development manager thank you so much good afternoon rebecca unit economic development department here for our second reading of the parklet ordinance i'll share my screen for the presentation so this afternoon we are here to seek adoption of our parklet ordinance as well as the resolution to establish the parklet fee schedule and the parklet guide guidelines in november 11th following council direction at the october 25th uh city council meeting we were able to form an outdoor dining subcommittee and meet on octobre on november 11th excuse me um our attendees for that meeting included councilmember mires councilmember calantari johnson uh zack davis who's the um one of the owners of the glass jar penny ice creamery and picnic basket as well as mike bobadilla from walnut avenue cafe myself my director bonnie lipscomb and stephanie duck from our city attorney's office um we met to review the parklet ordinance in preparation for this meeting as well as the parklet guidelines and the fee schedule i just want to give a brief overview of some of the feedback that we were able to uh take in from that meeting and really appreciated the time that was spent reviewing these and really helpful feedback that we were able to take away from it um so in terms of the parklet ordinance um we just had uh mainly clarifying comments around some of the components of of that ordinance uh language and so there was a question around the term of the parklet permit so in our ordinance it does um state that the term of the parklet is for one year um and it's an auto an annual renewing process um and so we clarified that the intent of that is really um to be able to continually renew the parklet permits after successful reinspection and payment of the annual park permit fees and that this annual permit is the mechanism to collect the parklet annual fees and that the permit will continue to renew each year the business wishes to continue and operate in good standing um we also had a question around the removal requirements that are stated in the parklet ordinance um and so really there's a there's a section on the city authority and removal on of parklets and it sets out the procedure for removal in the event a parklet goes unused for an extended period of time or an emergency occurs such as a water main break or other emergency in the street um and the intent of this is really to clearly state that the parklets are operating on city property and in the public right of way um and so making sure that we have the we retain the city authority over these spaces um and in practice it's really um intended that we're able to take the action that we need to resolve an issue um while still uh retaining you know and supporting the business's ability to use their parklet spaces um and then we also had a question around the inspection process and more of a comment on just the value of that process and wanting to make sure that those inspections occur and that um we're making sure that businesses are operating uh to the standards and and everyone is compliant with that uh on that annual basis and then in terms of the guidelines there were a few other clarifying comments again not necessarily changes to the guidelines but just wanting to have a little bit more clarification of what the intent was and so some of those items included questions around securing the parklets after hours and what is meant by um where the guidelines state that parklets shall be closed or gated when not in use and so we're able to talk through that the intent of that is to make sure that the area is secured since it is private property and not accessible after hours and clarifying sort of how that can be demonstrated for businesses such as locking up tables and chairs that are movable or making sure that they're removed from the parklet spaces um there's an additional comment around um defining the public space between the sidewalk and the parklet um so making sure it's clear sort of what the authority is for parklet parklet operators as well as maintaining that public access between the businesses and the parklet area and so we talked through um you know making sure that business owners know that they have the ability to sort of enforce their operation standards within their area if they have sidewalk dining that they have a cafe extension license agreement for that they're able to operate in that license area maintain that public access along the sidewalk and and maintain their operations within the parklet and that you know any impacts from folks that are walking through the area you know they really need to be able to ensure that they can have the full benefit and use of their licensed areas um and then there was a question around live entertainment in the ordinance operating standards we state that there is no live entertainment to be allowed in the parklet area but there's a question raised around if there could be opportunities for a special event activity or something where they want to use this parklet area such as downtown winewalk or something where that could be a beneficial opportunity so we discussed that that would definitely be supportable through a special event permit working with our colleagues in the parks and recreation department to be able to allow that to occur on a case-by-case basis and then we had a few questions around weatherization in terms of lighting heaters and wind screens and this is a really helpful comment as we're finalizing the completion of our pre-approved designs and so there was questions around how high wind screens could be installed on the platform and the support posts for lighting and shade sales and so we're taking in that feedback and actually working with our designers to be able to add an option to include wind screens on parklets so having a transparent wind barrier around the upper portion of the parklets to block the wind so we're gonna we're adding that onto the pre-approved design so that that's something that people can implement easily and then finally a question around platform design and just how to ensure that the base of the platform is secured to the city standards in terms of limiting road and access or debris collection and so just clarifying what that process looks like and what's needed to move that criteria and following that review we did receive unanimous support from the subcommittee to move forward and seek council approval for the second reading of the ordinance as well as the guidelines and fee schedule. So just as an overview of the parklet ordinance again just some of the core components that are included included in the ordinance this is really our legal framework for the parklet permit process it includes that that permit review process the design guidelines and operating standards suspension revocation and removal processes and the appeals process and then additionally today we're asking for approval of the resolution to adopt the parklet guidelines and the parklet guidelines include the size and location construction requirements traffic and pedestrian safety requirements design and furnishing standards ADA accessibility the application process checklist and then the operating requirements and insurance and in the resolution it does have a minor typo in terms of the code section that it's referencing but we can easily correct that as a cleanup item and then the other portion um as a resolution that we're seeking adoption today is for the parklet program fees so we presented this at the previous council meeting I want to provide a little bit more information about the revenue sources for these fees and so our application fee you know is proposed at $500 for the pre-approved design and retrofitted parklet and then a custom design would be that $500 application fee and the actual cost related to reviewing for staff's hourly time. Those go towards the general fund and also we are wanting to propose an option on the application to provide a fee waiver for those application fees so meeting a hardship requirement so businesses would like to have their $500 application fee waived we would complete our view of sort of a sales tax analysis to to evaluate if they would qualify for that and then we have our annual inspection fee $250 per year and then the annual permit fees $2,000 per space for metered spaces and the $5.80 cents per square foot for unmetered spaces. The fees in the downtown parking district in metered spaces go towards the parking district fund any fees collected on the wharf would go to the wharf fund and the other meter locations go into the general fund and then the appeal fee is set at $519 and that appeal fee is just for a business owner appealing the city's determination not for an appeal from the general public that is handled through our normal code enforcement process and then any additional costs and Bonnie did you have a comment Ted? Yeah thank you Rebecca I just wanted to before you went on to the next slide say that all the fees here because the temporary program has been you know recommended to be approved to go through October none of these fees would be applicable until that time with the exception of the application fee so the $500 fee at the top or either the pre-approved design or the custom design parklet and then on the application the applicant can request to be considered to have that that fee waived so we are just really sensitive and hearing some of our businesses some of our restaurants are saying hey we're still struggling we want to take that into consideration whereas there are some restaurants that are doing really well so we just want to have that in the context of the the larger program the annual inspection fee would take place in year two after their first year approval so that's not applicable in the first year and then the actual you know basically rent for the city public space the parklet itself wouldn't kick in until the permanent program is in place next October and it would be pro-rated just for the remaining portion of the year so they wouldn't oh oh the full 2000 you know for the two months of the remaining year it would be pro-rated so i just wanted to clarify that thank you thank you i just wanted to talk briefly about those annual permit fees for the needered spaces so the the annual fee is really for the use of the public right-of-way and especially in the needered spaces that really is going toward the core city service so the parking revenues that are collected especially in the downtown go towards the parking district and those funds are it's not just a staff coverage it's really for those services that are provided in the parking district so maintenance and upkeep of the parking facilities sidewalk scrubbing downtown the tdm program or go sand cruise program downtown receives funding through that fund downtown public restrooms security services etc so i'm really being able to maintain that revenue source for the use of those parking spaces to support the district services and then just want to provide the parklet program transition timeline we presented this at the october 25th meeting as well if the council does adopt the second reading today the ordinance would go into effect december 15th we are proposing to have a parklet permit application deadline of march 31st to be able to receive the applications and provide the review you need to allow businesses to complete their construction by the october 31st expiration date of the temporary program and at that march 31st date as well as we know what businesses would like to move forward and proceed will also work on removal of any inactive parklets or reduction of underutilized parklet areas with that transition period being between april to october as we move into the permanent program our recommendation for you this afternoon is adopt ordinance number 2022-15 establishing a permanent parklet program citywide and adopt a resolution establishing the parklet fee schedule and adopt a resolution adopting the parklet guidelines with the feedback we received we're still finalizing some of the pre-approved parklet design components so those will be coming back to you at a later date for final adoption and i will welcome any questions thank you thank you rebecca and bonnie um and just to clarify the pre-approved designs are not required correct that's correct right those are uh an additional support mechanism that we're providing is just another option if a business should so choose okay um okay i will open it up for council questions council member comings thank you mayor thank you for the presentation um can you go back to like two slides back to the timeline i was a little confused i thought i was thought i understood everything and then when you put that up i got a little bit confused um so my understanding and maybe maybe i'm off on this one is that the um direction that's given is that was given previously was that the that the temporary program would end october of 2023 um and what i see here is that you have um applications are open if people want to move to permanent those applications are doing march and then there's a removal of parklets in march of starting in march of 2023 but based on the direction that's been given the temporary use people have until october of 2023 so i'm wondering if you can clarify that because i think that there is an understanding that if people don't want to move to the permanent program that they have until october of next year to stay open but what is presented here makes it seem like they have to start removing their parklets in march of 2023 so can you clarify kind of what um you know if people don't want to move to term to um if people don't want to move to the permanent parklets but they still want to use their permanent parklets will they have will they be able to until october of 2023 yes absolutely so the the temporary program is an is in effect until october 31st 2023 um what you see here in terms of the removal of inactive parklets reduction of underutilized that is just looking at um any parklets that are currently out there which there are a few that are not utilized on a consistent basis and are taking up additional parking spaces being able to move forward with removing those or reducing the areas that they're not using um just as we transition forward um in preparation you know as we head into the summer months just just starting that process being able to move forward but if businesses are actively using their temporary parklets and you know they're operating within compliance of the temporary program we wouldn't be removing them they'd be able to do that transition or if they don't want to move to the permanent but they're still act operating in our temporary they have until the end of october okay if that helps clarify okay thanks for that clarification um a couple other questions um guess what what will outreach look like to to all these businesses um to let them know about the opening of the application and the timeline for closing so that people can start getting you know their applications ready and are aware of what's happening yeah um so once the ordinance is adopted um we're we have an application uh for the permits that's under review now and so we'll be finalizing that uh if this is adopted today um being able to have that ready once the ordinance is in effect um we have you know been doing a lot of email communication with businesses and so definitely continuing that and having on our website um I would also like to have an application um preview meeting you know doing a sort of a training with the businesses to go over the ordinance components the application requirements and and what is allowed and especially with the pre-approved designs so we can discuss those options with the businesses um so having those um public meetings and reporting that as well having that available um so that businesses can um can get all the information that they need to to be prepared to apply um and also uh being able to um you know do the in-person visits with businesses to answer questions having my team available to to schedule those one-on-ones as well to answer questions especially for businesses that are wanting to do a retrofit um we'll have a checklist that we go through and can actually do an inspection to give them the feedback of um what criteria they would need to correct to to be able to apply for the permanent process um and we can pull together a more formal um outreach plan as well as part of this and have that available on the website too. I guess my next question is for the city attorney on this because um my understanding is it's 90 days from the adoption of an ordinance before it goes into effect particularly 30 days from the second reading. Okay sorry that's I just wanted to clarify that I'm just I was asking to just because um making sure that from when the ordinance goes into effect to when the deadline for applications hits is sufficient for people to um have enough information and um so that they can start you know working on those applications um and I guess this is a combined question I'm just curious I didn't I don't know if we received an update on who was on the subcommittee because I just wanted to know that I thought so there was just the two council members on the subcommittee and me okay because that wasn't on there and I ask that because I just want to let some of the small businesses know that I've been in contact with who those members are so it's Mayor Bruner, council member Collin sorry Johnson and then I had council member Myers okay um and then I guess the last question I have on this is that um I know this came up at the last meeting and I don't think it's been addressed yet but there are some temporary or what emerged through the pandemic of um outdoor dining or outdoor vending on the sidewalks and that hasn't been discussed and so I'm just wondering how that will be impacted by the sunset of the temporary ordinance and if this is a part of the work plan of the subcommittee and yeah that's that's a good question so um we do currently have our cafe extension uh license agreement process for sidewalk dining um that was in effect prior and so that um that process is an administrative use permit review with the planning department um my goal is that uh when we get the parking ordinance adopted and work through the private property as well that we're able to modify that sidewalk dining policy as well to um bring it up to this similar uh staff level review as the park ordinance so that is on deck to streamline that process as well um with the goal of getting that accomplished before the October 31st deadline okay those are all my questions thank you okay thank you uh council member brown thank you mayor uh thank you Rebecca for the presentation and all of your work on this I I know you have been you've made yourself available and accessible to so many stakeholders in this process and really listened and I really appreciate the the outcome um I I do want to ask a question about the you know I expressed concerns based upon conversations that we some council member Cummings and I had had with a number of businesses in group meetings about the timeline and I really advocated for an extension of that transition period hearing their um general concerns but also concerns that were often site specific and you know particular to the individual operators circumstances resource questions as well and and so I'm just I guess I'm wondering um with uh the deadline coming up now pretty quickly and with the holidays it's just gonna happen happen very quickly um what um and the and my concern that there are businesses that are are gonna struggle getting through this transition um what happens if they can't get it together by that deadline um but want to continue how will the city how will we work with them to try to make make it possible yeah yeah yeah that's a great question thank you for that um so the initial deadline is um you know the intent of having that set at the end of March is to be able to you know know who wants to apply get those applications in um be able to have enough time to review them and and be able to enable businesses to construct by the October deadline um if a business wasn't able to apply by that date we're just uh you know we would continue to review it they would be you know in that process it's the intent of this initial application deadline is so that we can sort of guarantee that they'll be able to uh not lose their temporary permit operations you know not have a break in operations of the parklet um by the October 31st deadline so we're certainly you know happy to continue to support it's going to be an all hands on deck you know process to make sure that people have the information that they need to complete that application and and get through the process and so um sort of that initial batch is related to have us focused on who is applying and help shepherd them through by that deadline um but you know supporting businesses as they can enter the process as well okay if there are no further questions from council I will bring it out to public comment and I will look to our virtual attendees and if you're joining us in person and wish to comment on this item you can line up to the right of the dais we have one hand raised virtually the name I am watching you go ahead and press star six okay thanks of course absolutely none of the justifications used to justify temporary parklets will have any validity after the last state california removes official COVID emergency declarations french laundry emperor new some has stated expiration will happen early next year this is perhaps before your extended temporary permits will expire meaning they may exist without those justifications my opinion is for about 85 percent of the people there never was an emergency COVID mortality risk says the real risk to them from COVID was no different than any bad flu season was unless so now that the virus has evolved for the other 15 percent far more extreme measures than parklets never stopped the spread of COVID therefore you need some new justifications to violate the public right away as you intend permanently in the simplest sense you should not be essentially renting out per annual fee exclusive use permits in the public right of way unless there's an overriding benefit to the public this overriding public benefit must more than make up for the loss of the public right away and with a certainty this extra benefit will exist permanently in order to justify any such permanent permits as you propose otherwise it's like fascism the government business polluting where the public is the loser government business feeding like pigs at the public drop of public assets on the public right away seems alarmingly likely there are many examples of case law where courts invalidated permanent exclusive use concessionaire public property permits without an overriding public benefit how sure are you that even the most paranoid COVID and neurotic will even want to pay full fare to eat and drink smelling exhaust in parking lots in a year or so if that happens no one will benefit at all except the government having sold out the public right away to line its pockets it might even harm businesses who participate it's not like the public has any actual permanent need for outside dining they can just go inside where it's normal air conditioned and wonderfully comfortable all year long um while it is not clear to me what absolute individual rights apply to public property i'm quite sure the american principles of equal rights of equal public access of equal opportunity to enjoy public spaces should apply equally to everyone as the public means everyone the endless support for the COVID fear narrative so full of lies convincing everyone to treat closeness to each other as if everyone is a leper should not have an extended permanent presence the standard way to remove fear is exposure to that which makes you afraid you are not helping but profiting from those lied to patrons consumed with a false fear the pandemic is over but it is still endemic the day will come though when it is non-existent with real limits to the total number of daily dining patrons there is something unfair about increasing the number of seats for the few that can take advantage of this program i see no limits to this not becoming a horrible public property right principle destroying precedent tell me you are not engorging yourself selling out the value of the public right of way to fund the city's underwater excessive spending habits thanks okay thank you for your comment it looks like that concludes our public comment on this item i will now bring it back to council for emotion councilmember calentari johnson sure i'll move and i have some comments valid move staff recommendation to adopt ordinance number 2022-15 establishing a permanent parklet program citywide and adopt a resolution establishing the parklet fee schedule and adopt a resolution adopting the parklet guide guidelines great i'll second and just the comment is i want to acknowledge rebecca and bonnie and the team that worked on this it was really apparent in the subcommittee meeting that really the businesses that were there were really pleased with what they saw they had some clarifying questions but it's clear that you guys have done a lot of work and you've worked really hard and you brought it to a place that feels right for the community i specifically want to just acknowledge the work you did around the the custom design and bringing that fee down i think originally it was like 50 to 75 000 and now we have the option of 14 to 20 000 so you listened you heard feedback and you work hard to get us some different options that were affordable and then the the framework of being able to waive application fees for hardship i think that speaks to what council member brown was also bringing up earlier that you know businesses are in different places so you've really just thought this through and i wanted to acknowledge and thank you for all the work and bringing us something that i think is really going to be a great benefit to the community and i will just jump in with my comment as well i know that i've worked over the past year with rebecca unit and bonnie lipscomb and your team on how we can make outdoor dining you know a more permanent way for folks to in and feel safe and to enjoy being outside and having that option for employees and customers and visitors has really made such a difference even as covet is ongoing and cases are still coming it allows that breathing room and that really it adds ambiance as well and so all of the work and time and comments and you've incorporated so much of the feedback from the businesses and things that i know i've passed along to you as well are all incorporated into a very fair reasonable support system for everybody and thank you for getting it to this point and thank you also for staying on top of the communications to the businesses i think that's been really key the emails going out that with the summaries the updates i think that needs to continue and it's been really helpful so thank you council member mires yeah i just also want to recognize bonnie and rebecca and i just kind of want to mark this moment at time because you know you you basically have ushered through this horrible pandemic period into really kind of changing the face of how we are going to dine outside in Santa Cruz from here on out so it's just a really neat change for our city and i'm really glad that you know we're moving forward with it and and i think you know our residents are going to let this into the future so thanks for persisting not an easy thing to do lots of complications i learned a lot meeting with the other subcommittee members last week and i think you guys have a real pulse on what business owners are struggling with you know our needs as a city and just really really thankful for the work you guys have done thanks just take a second i just want to um and thank you for those kind words and i just want to directly thank rebecca because this has been the hugest lift um and she has been balancing this in addition to you know bringing new team members on board and providing business you know outreach services you know with a lot on her plate and i feel like she has just gone over and beyond and the outreach and the communication and so thank you for acknowledging that um that she has done that but it's been um such a pleasure to work with her on this but it's the the recognition and the hard work has really all been done by by rebecca so i just wanted to say thank you as well thank you rebecca uh councilmember Cummings yeah i just want to thank you rebecca and bonnie for your in your team for all the work over the past two years you know since this all hit with the pandemic and then figuring out how we're going to do outside you know because everybody started coming to us like we need outside dining and we're like we have to figure this out so um yeah you really got up to speed and we had a lot of different options and we've gone back and forth um but it looks like you know i haven't gotten any feedback from the businesses as i was getting before so it looks like we've you know gotten to a place where they feel comfortable with this as well i do want to um i think you know councilmember brown brought it up around the applications and what happens if the um you know there's a backlog where people aren't ready and i think that's definitely something to keep in mind with moving forward and also um it does sound like you know with trying to do the outreach around the applications review those and implement that along with the sidewalk vending along with the permanent on private property just to keep in mind you know if there's the need to have extensions um that is a consideration because it does sound like you've got a lot on your plate now with this and i'm just i'm sure you have other things on your plate as well and um so just you know um just hoping that you keep that in mind um but um given that i haven't heard any you know um push back on this i'll be supporting the motion that's before us today i also just wanted to briefly i'd give a shout out to the team that is also helping with this because it's not done alone um but Nathan Nguyen and Curtis Buzinhart and Tim Shields and John Dervisoni and uh my colleagues as well Sarah and Nathan and the ED team uh Stephanie a a full team effort um but really excited to be able to get here and appreciate all the support as well thank you and Stephanie Duck in the city attorney's office so thank you thank you okay so we have a motion by council member Calentary Johnson seconded by mayor Brunner may we have a roll call vote council member Calentary Johnson aye council member Golder absent uh Cummings aye Brown aye Myers aye ice mayor Watkin aye and mayor Brunner aye that motion passes unanimously with council member Golder absent thank you very much okay our next uh item is a recess um okay so uh we will return for our evening session at 6 p.m and that will begin oral communications followed by our um item number 40 objective standards so we will return here at 6 p.m thank you and if council members can turn your cameras off if council members can turn their cameras on and is the city clerk ready i am thank you thank you okay welcome okay here we go good evening and welcome to our 6 p.m session of the November 15th 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz city council i would like to ask the clerk to please call roll thank you mayor council member Calentary Johnson president Golder here face mayor Watkin hearing and mayor Brunner present thank you i will now begin with oral communications oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on today's agenda for members of the public who are streaming this meeting and joining us virtually if you wish to comment on oral communications now is the time to call in instructions are on your screen oral communication is an opportunity for members of the community speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda if you're interested in addressing the council you can raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature on the webinar controls of your computer you will have two minutes to speak members who are joining us here in person and you wish to address the council please line up to the right of the dais you will have two minutes to speak we request that you sign in to ensure correct spelling of your name in the meeting minutes however it is not required please remember this is a time for council to hear from the public we are not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public however when we are able we will address the questions raised after oral communications has completed our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside or outside the chambers for consideration of our community please stay home if you have any symptoms of a cold or a flu or a feeling unwell in any way okay let me look to our virtual attendees for hands raised and then i will look to our in-person attendees i have one hand raised the name i am watching you go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself yeah okay fine although the big red wave didn't exactly materialize on election night i would publicly like to acknowledge the wisdom shown by santa cruz city voters who have had enough of leftist politicians trying to attack private property rights in the dismal showing of measure n and it looks assured that not a single out leftist politician got elected locally this time around possibly because of measure n it's saying people know the national leftist policies have led to crisis and crisis response failure over and over from the minute joe biden took office don't want those kind of failures locally here and are rejecting those of the globalist socialist communist persuasion i suspect it's going to be a little lonely for any leftist left on the council isn't there going to be a vacancy on the council question then what happens anyway while you consider answering that the closet leftist leaners on the council need to do some self-evaluation and start to distance themselves from that equity thing and high up surely if you can ignore and violate city policy on not rating the public trust fund except to fund cip projects as of not out of 19 i assume you can just stop using higher policy for better reasons of sense human potential is unknowable unmeasurable and as unpredictable as our life outcomes people are different not equal attempts to make them equal by force will not result in the better world who knows leftist might eventually suggest blowing everyone's brains out reaching age 76 since then we could all be a hundred percent assured of an equal life outcome you know instead of the girl equal opportunity sound good but leftists are nodding yes the real source of increasing inequality is that the federal government rulers and moneyed interests are corrupt and moral sociopathic and fascist but that is not the fault of capitalism of the free market or the founding principles of america but the people who elected those who could care less about any of those things there will always be bad guys it's up to the voters to reject those thanks thank you for your comment that concludes our virtual attendees commenting during oral communications i will now look to in person are you here to speak to oral communications welcome hi thank you everyone um my name is Elise i live in santa cruz and um i have been watching the uh the library issue since um years ago i think it was six years ago or more we voted for measure s and it was widely understood uh that that measure was to renovate the downtown library where it is and um the amount that we were allotting when i say we i mean the public public in general and uh the people who sponsored the measure um we were able to get 20 million dollars roughly toward that renovation um what what i have seen since then is first of all the people who sponsored the measure kept the money and did not go forward with renovation quite against and betraying i think the public's goodwill and trust that needs to be said first and foremost what was proposed was a library garage there was no housing attached to that so-called mixed-use project that then was put forward by certain people cindy mathews and others on the council and behind the council were pushing this this was enormously unpopular one meeting the emails were four to one against it and so what this group of powerful people did is attach so-called affordable housing to this mixed-use project making it largely irresistible to many especially students and young people in the community who feel we need housing i can't go into details right here right now about the um deceptive practices that went into such as stacking the so-called library group i forget what they were called bringing in a certain director to try to hoodwink the public but the signs that were used for measure uh no on no were very very deceptive and sadly very unfair we're going to have to live with the result and i think that the hubris of these parties who feel that it was their privilege thanks their privilege and power to deceive the public i hope one day will be held accountable for this fiasco of democracy thank you bye thank you for your comment we are taking oral communications this is a chance to comment on anything not on today's agenda welcome tonight i'm just going to say but the alarm didn't go off on our end they couldn't see it thank you hi everyone my name is sam hughes i'm a phd student at ucse yesterday more than 48 000 graduate student teachers assistants postdoctoral fellows individuals with phd's and master's degrees went on strike from all 10 university of california campuses in the largest higher education strike in us history this is the result of unaffordable wages in coupling with the housing crisis that we're currently dealing with according to the ucse's own statistics on the available rental properties available in town for students the cost of housing for a room in a home has more than doubled in the past two years despite the fact that they're offering us only a seven percent wage increase which isn't even enough to cover inflation for the last year essentially a pay cut because of this we're asking you as members of the council to please consider two things first please consider meeting with chancellor larive to help her understand the struggle that we're dealing with as citizens in the city um per inaction has led to the university council of the president of the office of the president doing very little in response to the strike and second we encourage you to consider coming out to the picket that's taking place from 7 a.m. in the morning until 5 p.m. each day of the week so that you can hear about hundreds of your constituents struggles that we're dealing with right now in santa cruz um please feel free to get in contact with me if you have any questions thank you thank you our next member of the public welcome my name is isadora i'm an undergraduate student at ucse i came out here will you um bring the microphone to your mouth thank you yes i'm sure sorry um yeah my name is isadora i'm a student at ucse i came out here with him um i think that the strike is going to go on for a long time there's definitely a big support both from graduate students and the undergraduate student body as well um and my concern is that if the strike is unaddressed this will affect future enrollment from undergraduate students and the economy of santa cruz relies so heavily on students both for like purchases and also we work a lot of the jobs like you know the starbucks jobs downtown jobs um so if there's no more undergraduate students that's really going to affect santa cruz so i really think it's in your best interest to um urge the university to make good faith negotiations with the tas so the strike doesn't go on too long thank you thank you for your comment hi welcome hello oh Jesus um i'm cj hun i'm a i'm a ucsc undergrad as well i came here in solidarity to support the strikers didn't really originally intend to say anything but another voice in the crowd seems to me can only be productive um you know this council i'm aware doesn't run the uc you guys don't decide how much how much tas get paid so i can't make you do anything but it seems to me it would be good of this council um it would be it would be kind of this council and service to this community to go to uh synthia larive and other uc officials and to put in a good word on behalf of striking workers you know what they're demanding is is really only the bare minimum uh uh that is needed to survive in this community according to the math they've done and they know their way around math these people have phd's uh so you know it's it's it's perfectly fair to demand that they be paid enough to survive in this community it's not a radical demand it's not an alarming demand and the uc can say they can't afford it um but that claim rings pretty hollow when it comes immediately after larive has given herself um pretty big pretty big raise as i recall so so you know the the promise of public universities right is that they don't function for profit they function for the community they're supposed to serve the students uh but when the people who do the very hard work of grading of research of of lecturing tutoring all these things that make the university work and i know it's hard work because my parents are teachers i watch them do it all along when i was growing up it's hard work grading all these things that's what makes the university run because the university what it is is a factory that produces education when all the people that do this hard work aren't getting paid enough to live and the people that that run the school are getting paid so much doesn't seem like a non-profit it seems like the workers are being squeezed for the profit of a boss class that isn't very fair and i think it would be good of this council uh to speak in opposition to it that's all i have to say thank you thank you should i be giving a warning since the bell's not okay that's okay i'm going to go back to our virtual attendees it looks like we had a couple hands raised um the first name is laura go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself we are taking oral communications on anything not on today's agenda well thank you can you hear yes welcome thank you for taking our feedback i want to jump to the point of the first speaker who talked about the deceptive nature of the campaign against measure o perception of the community admit a lot of members of the community is that the council and the staff are bought and paid for by developers and it's very disheartening to feel like we have very substantial needs and desires to make our community a people-centered place so when i ask you to now to just if you could please open your mind and be a little bit more curious about what the community is telling you we don't want pollution and more traffic and more congestion we would prefer a people-centered community-centered developmental development plan and i've been aware of this since measure o and it took me about six weeks to come up with a wonderful book called cities for people i took a morning class on the new wave of urban development i've learned that the other cities of california are by banning together to fight the state's rena numbers there is a lot going on that would the process so we weren't so adversarial the community is asking you to listen sincerely with an open mind and curiosity about the direction of the 21st century urban building we don't want to look back we don't want parking lots to cause pollution and unnecessary large library or skyscrapers or congestion we want a community-centered living space where you don't go about tearing and destroying the beauty of our heritage trees or thank you your time in skyscrapers that you can't see the view so please be a little bit more curious and thoughtful and inclusive our next uh hand raised is peter be here go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hello hi peter hello mayor thank you very much uh yes i just wanted to just give a feedback from the managers matt hafaker about the and this is peter be she by the way the community is on for the city of santa cruz just want to give a feedback from matt hafaker city managers report and how as a spokesperson for lower ocean and beach flat with the community is delighted about the project the san lorenzo river lagoon culver project i definitely benefits them and they've been very frustrated in the past with and i have experience and witnessed several basement believe it or not they are basements in beach flat and lower ocean and i've heard even downtown businesses as well when the you know what the shoaling of the san lorenzo uh then the rise of the level of the river rises and it just affects uh up to downtown businesses and this will tremendously help them uh we've had the the garden also has been flooded with the with these waters several times and people spend several months having at the beach flat garden having a crop and growing seeds and then they're all the sudden they just get all swamped and then they're even afraid to harvest um you know their their crops just because of these green waters uh affecting at least three to four plots at beach flat garden uh and uh towards the climate action program and tiffani wise west we are having these slow meetings that we want more and more intercommunication with uh members of the community from beach flat and lower ocean who most likely will be the most affected by climate action or by global warming we're making this little workshop to see how they can participate directly and help us to mitigate these problems and how to mitigate erosions and so we having we're starting this series of meetings which is our first of five meetings we had 12 members of the community showing up in the first one and a lot of them were just concerned about the the San Lorenzo so we were able to inform them that this is broadcast going along they were very happy and i saw lots of smiles thank you bye bye thank you for your comment our next hand raised for oral communications is the name Rafa Sonnenfeld go ahead and press star six to unmute hi there um i was just calling uh because uh you know we've had a lot of discussion recently about the uh the challenge that our city faces with um housing affordability and uh you know there are a number of efforts that we are are working on to address that issue um including updating our housing element and um and part of that is the downtown expansion plan um i think i wanted to address uh and make a recommendation um our community seems to not be particularly well informed about what our responsibilities are um under state law and i keep on hearing suggestions that we somehow fight the state or or or attempt to get out of our responsibilities uh every city in the state has to has similar challenges as our own and we all have a responsibility to plan for more housing um so i i would encourage the city to hold some community forums uh to to really educate our community about uh how we have to grow uh our housing stock we have 3736 units of new housing over half of which must be affordable that we need to plan for and and how if we don't plan for that uh uh the state can actually take away our entirely our local land use decision making and so um i've been encouraging us to try to um achieve a compliant housing element um and there are lots of different ways that we could do that um and i i think people are in for a real wake-up call if we don't end up um with a compliant housing at the end of the day so i i would just hope that you all work on on better educating our community about about what we are what we need to do thank you for your comment our next hand raised for oral communications is kyle kelly thanks again this is kyle kelly um i just want to raise a comment because i know everybody's going to talk about housing tonight and i want to point out a few figures just to kind of put into perspective not the rena allocation but the number of students that graduate high school every year santa cruz high alone graduates 250 students a year we are not building 250 apartments per year which means that we are currently without creating enough housing causing a displacement effect somewhere else or even here not to mention all the people that are currently overburdened on rent currently living in overcrowded conditions or commuting from far away i just want to bring it back to that human perspective because like how the buildings look everything else that people want to talk about it's kind of missing the point of you know what are the unfilled vacancies on on public staff what are the unfilled vacancies within our public schools like how do we recruit and retain people that are going to work here the people that that work here and live here and serve here um so i just want to make sure that we we bring that to the forefront as we think about housing for the future thank you thank you for your comment uh is there anybody else in the in person here that would like to comment for oral communications just want to make sure i get everybody it looks like that concludes our virtual hands raised as well i'd like to post it okay and so we have um uh let's see and seagull who um if you're able to unmute yourself go ahead star six to unmute yourself i can't yes are you able to hear me now thank you thanks so much my name is and seagull and i'm an applicant for a hearing that set for november 29th i first want to apologize i'm so embarrassed that i am coming before you on a tangential matter when and not a substantive matter and i i just apologize for that i don't like wasting anybody's time but i am asking this council to consider resetting the hearing that has been scheduled for november 29th the statute does permit and require a 60-day setting but does allow for an extension of that setting in circumstances in which the council may not be able to accommodate it's not an abuse of your discretion to reset this it's a matter that's very personal to me and that is the tuesday after thanksgiving and there's really no harm to anybody and having this matter be heard at a reasonable date few weeks after i've talked to the appellant watermark i've left messages i've called them they haven't answered i spoke to miss i sent messages to miss rusk she did not answer i sent messages to the through a conduit intermediary to a person who was mr burnstein did not answer i spoke to their attorney he was interested but did not answer if they're in difference is that great just to me in a reasonable matter i hate to think of what watermark will do when somebody has a broken water main or has another problem during construction it is just again it's a reasonable request to have this matter be heard by the new city council so that there is not in any appearance of impropriety that there is not finding favor to one party or the other the interest that i'm asking in extending it is not illegal i'm not asking anyone to speed i'm just asking for resetting to a reasonable date so i can appear and my husband dr robert siegel will be able to come without expense did you want to speak to oral okay oral communications welcome thank you for taking my comment my name is susan monheid from a resident of santa cruz um i understand that there is housing that needs to be built and half of it needs to be affordable and i want to say that we cannot build our way out of an affordable housing crisis if we do not build affordable housing i also understand the planning commission has on a couple of occasions at least recommended that the city raise the affordable housing component of new developments to 25 percent and that this city council has not supported that so i want to as strongly as i can encourage this council to take that up and pass an increase in affordable housing in the developments that are coming forward um and i would just like to say that the argument of supply and demand does not apply to a destination location like santa cruz it works when there is not an infinite demand for housing we cannot continue to um watching my time to build market rate housing with increasingly smaller percentages of affordable housing particularly once the bonus density is added to those developments uh i called an infinite calculation it is skewing the median income on which the affordable housing is based astronomically higher thank you okay we have another oral communications good evening i couldn't resist um this is such a huge subject and it deserves mentioning the students 30 percent of our town are students and i don't see any kind of housing that's specifically tailored to them and there's all kinds of great housing in fact there's new york stock exchange companies that that's all they do is build student housing and they're very well financed and we've never encouraged that kind of housing and of course it would be ideal to be next to the metro and along the most major transit stops which go from the university along bay street so it's really something to consider um i also want to mention uh karin chapel she is with the urban displacement she spoke at a keynote a few years ago and um i attended that along with several people um for a couple of three days and she said that this town needs 72 percent affordable housing that's how great the need is we are a small town we're 12 square feet i mean 12 square feet 12 square miles and about 20 percent green space which people would argue is so much but remember that pal out was about 50 percent so um we need that as we found it's provide some resiliency for fire so it's very important to have this the green space and it's also very important that we address affordable housing and especially the students and especially i might add for those that don't use cars and that would definitely be the case so thank you very much thank you okay does that conclude oral communications i believe so and that concludes our virtual attendees um i would like to just briefly ask the city attorney on one matter that was called in that was the matter of uh and seagull and the the hearing my understanding is there is a 60 day um requirement per municode from the to set the date is within the 60 day window yes that is correct um the 60 day deadline is specified by the both the zoning code and the general administrative provisions of the municipal code um and unfortunately the convenience of the appellant is is not a grounds for continuing the hearing past that 60 day if there were another convenient time that the council could schedule for a special meeting within that 60 days that would be an option but my understanding is that the december 29th day was the only day available the next meeting in december the 13th is past the 60 day window as well thank you um okay were there any other did any other council members have any okay thank you um okay we are that concludes oral communications and so now we are ready to move on in our agenda and um we are at agenda number 40 agenda item number 40 is objective standards for members of the public who are streaming this meeting and joining us virtually if you would like to comment on objective standards now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action in addition to public comment tonight we will be hearing on this item 63 emails were sent to city council at cityofsandercrews.com i would now like to um hand it over to uh director of planning and community development lee butler and will sarah van noisy and matt van hua be joining us as well yes they will okay great thank you thank you and good evening mayor and city council members tonight i'm pleased to be presenting to you on the objective standards project that represents the culmination of three years of staff work in two years of community engagement resulting in quantifiable design criteria for new residential development and new zoning districts that match the housing capacity that can currently be developed under state law and the city's existing general plan considering the recent state housing laws the project provides more transparency and more local control to require high quality building and site design for future residential development while the city has always had some objective standards when reviewing project applications it has also long relied on many subjective standards to influence design of new developments recent state laws have significantly reduced the ability of cities to apply subjective standards to new development so it's vital that standards be made objective and that's what this project is doing in addition to propose new standards on building form and site design many others are proposed for things like street trees open space amenities and dark sky lighting protections that improve the city for everyone the proposed standards were developed through extensive engagement with the community to reflect how the community wants new development to look and feel in addition to several city-wide community meetings over 800 people responded to the 2021 objective standard survey following the survey our planning team met with and discussed with focus groups that included traditionally underrepresented groups for further input to help identify what standards accommodate the growth allowed by the general plan our consultant prepared test fit analyses which modeled various buildings on a variety of sites and the results of those test fits including building heights and stories were discussed by the planning commission at a public hearing in january of 21 and were discussed by the city council at a study session in march of 21 that was actually a general business item and not a study session based on all of the analyses and community feedback draft standards were developed and those standards including the number of stories were presented to the planning commission and then separately to the city council in november of 21 and the latest versions of those standards have been available on the website since we prepared them in november of 21 multiple improvements have been made since that time based on community feedback that we've received as for the objective standards rezonings recent state law changes now allow maximum residential capacities in the general plan land use designations to supersede residential capacities based on zoning requirements so that means where the zoning standards do not allow the maximum residential capacities of the general plan the developer can currently wave the zoning standards so a developer right now has a lot of leeway to dictate building heights setbacks parking or other standards that will apply to their projects even if they don't conform to our current zoning requirements the objective standards project rezonings address this inconsistency and shift the control back to the city the proposed rezonings do not increase the amount of currently allowed residential development they create zoning requirements that provide for residential development that is already allowed under the general plan and state law the consistency between the general plan and zoning is both more transparent and it gives the community more control over development given the many improved standards proposed the state mandated development restrictions and the increase in local control it's imperative that the objective standards are and associated rezonings be approved and in place as soon as possible the standards do not apply to applications submitted before the new standards take effect so the sooner we have them in place the more control the city will have over ensuring high quality design and buildings our senior planner sarah noisy and various other team members detailed the changes in a two-hour presentation to the council on august 23rd we're not going to redo that entire presentation for you but i do want to turn it over to sarah she's going to provide an abbreviated overview and some updates and she'll also be joined by travis beck from our parks and recreation department thank you thankfully good evening council it's a pleasure to be here again i am going to get right into it so i'll go ahead and share my screen everyone see that yes thank you sarah it's going to be a quicker presentation i'm going to talk more quickly if there are any details here that you want to pause on please interrupt me if there's any detail that you want to go back to from the other presentation i also have that available and we can get into it if you want to get into it but we're going to try and keep it pretty high level this time since we were all here in august and we went through it all in a great amount of detail at that time so can i ask you sarah sorry to interrupt to not go too quickly to just place it and not rush through it okay thank you so just a little bit of background um just to remind everyone this project this whole project to create all of the standards the rezoning district street tree standards the public work standards that have come in was created was initiated to create local controls under these new state laws that have come in for housing development that really limit the control that we are accustomed to having so that includes both an objective review process that sort of steps in and replaces a lot of the subjective design permit findings we have previously relied on to control building form and site design it also includes this action to reconcile the general plan and the zoning ordinance and address this inconsistency that has been in place since the general plan was adopted in 2012 and we had direction from the city council to reconcile that difference by making changes to our zoning code rather than address making changes in both documents or changing the general plan so we had direction to not alter the land use pattern that's established in that 2030 general plan so these rezonings that are part of the package they set height limits setback limits open space requirements for new mixed use development and provide the envelope that all of the design standards can then stick to and and then apply to housing development and i just want to mention here we did hear some critique from the community is as we were reviewing the 831 water project that we didn't have these objective standards in place to apply to that project so here they are these are the standards that will apply to projects like that in the future i just want to remind everyone really briefly the state is very interested in enforcing the existing housing laws the governor is very interested in it the attorney general is very interested in it and so we are doing our best to comply and to be a responsible community in the state and meeting our obligations under that state law the general plan plans for multi-family housing throughout the city for mixed use development so residential floor in areas that are currently used for commercial uses could be redesignated for mixed use so the areas that are shown on this map are areas that are our mixed-use districts and these are the parcels that are proposed for rezoning tonight these standards also apply to all other multi-family housing that's built throughout the city in residential areas and neighborhoods everywhere in Santa Cruz the state law has really reduced our discretion again and so we're relying on these standards to create some of that control that we have lost through that process so just to give an example of that this is what's allowed today shown on the left side of this column in this areas that are designated in the brown shown in the brown on this map that's the mixed-use high density designation from our general plan so that allows a 2.75 floor area ratio which is a measure of total volume that can go inside a building density of 55 dwelling units per acre for larger size units of two bedrooms or more the general plan establishes that there's no density for small units so single room occupancy units flexible density units one bedrooms and studio apartments for condos those are not um there's no density limit that applies in these in these areas for those uses the general plan does not set a height limit doesn't set setbacks so setbacks would be dictated by the fire code so they would be between zero and five feet depending on the type of construction there's no open space requirement in the general plan there's no need requirement for neighborhood transitions there's no building articulation things in the zone districts that we're bringing in would create those standards that are currently missing in our regulations so we would create a five-story height limit in this location so that we have a height limit at all we would require a minimum 20 foot setbacks at the rear there's a minimum of 120 square feet of open space required per unit and then we have a transition plane that's part of our design standards and articulation of the building plus all the other design standards that we have as part of the design and so the the first two here are really created in the zoning district some stuff too are created in the design standards the design standards cover all of the issues that are listed here on your screen there are a total of 14 different aspects of site development and building design that we cover and address and we can go into the details of any of this if anyone is interested in getting into that to get into the work that we've done since august one of the primary things that we did was create a set of responses to the most frequently raised concerns at that august 23rd so there are five questions posted to our website so this first one we're really hammering on this but i think it's really really key for folks to understand this is the city upzoning property we are not there is no upzoning that is happening today the proposed residential intensity is what can happen today and has been able to happen for the past two years since 2019 this is result of a change in state law which really slips the script in the way that we do planning so the zoning that we're that we are proposing at this point would create a height limit that does not exist today and it would also create setbacks and open space requirements that do not exist today on all of them we heard some concerns about the you know the standards being complicated and this is a big package of stuff we want to acknowledge that this is really you know it's a lot that's why we've had it available for a year through the website that's why we walked folks through it last november so that they could understand these and give really uh standards are based on a lot of community input and one of the things that was really important to our local community is eclecticism so many of our standards can be met in multiple different ways so there's like three different ways you could articulate the facade of your building there's several different ways that you could include architectural detail right so we're not just giving folks one option we're giving many options to promote the idea that there are lots of different ways that something can look like it belongs in Santa Cruz and so these are more complicated than some standards in some places like Santa Barbara everything is just you know colonial mission style and that's like one way to do it and they're also just less they're less complicated than other places so you know the ones that are coming in some places like Palo Alto or San Francisco they're just more complicated they're more they're different types of cities so would this take away public hearings for development so we have brought forward some uh council to consider so a couple of things to note here first of all the streamlining option and i'll talk about these more later was recommended by staff and the planning commission in order to provide some incentives for projects to fully conform to all of these standards and really you know create some some reason for a project to fully conform if they can save some time and avoid going to a public hearing we're also in a situation where if a project fully conforms and it includes housing we can't deny it and we can't condition it to make it smaller to reduce the amount of housing either by square footage or number of units so we'll get into those policy options what was the environmental review that was required package is covered by the work that was done on the general plan and the environmental impact report the eir that was created for that document and adopted or um there are portions related to um you know the miscellaneous zoning amendments that are sort of part of this that are really part of more part of the common sense exemption is that they're very small changes and they're um there's no possibility that they could have any impact on the natural environment send it for me why should i care as a you know jope member jane public of city of Santa Cruz about doing these objective standards so these are creating local control that really has been stripped away by recent changes in state law these are creating design standards that reflect community um input and community values about what design should look like in Santa Cruz in order to fit in and look like it belongs here and adds positively to the urban environment they create transparency so people can actually understand what is allowed to happen and what can be built in parcels that are near them we've all we've had several examples in the last couple of years of people being surprised by the amount of development that is actually able to happen and so creating this zoning really ups the transparency of that they give us these design standards that we really want to get in place quickly as we're um receiving more development applications every day we're also going to get more street trees by creating standards that require them and the sidewalk widths that accommodate them we're getting dark sky lighting in all of our new housing development that's a requirement that's included with these design standards and then there's also things that are about really making the open space that's provided provided with a project meaningful and usable so it has amenities and it's appropriate dimensions and it includes a mix of private open space and common open space within a project so that we're creating really high quality places for our neighbors to live in so let's get into the public hearing policy option so there are three options that are included with your packet and i'm going to slow down a little bit here because this is really the place where your council has a policy choice to make um and so this is pretty significant make any change to our community outreach policy which is the policy that creates notifications it creates community meetings which are an opportunity for community members to meet and directly with a developer and speak with them change other any of these three options um public hearing requirements would continue to apply to lots of other things most commercial development will require public hearing density bonus will always require public hearing the changes that were proposed proposing are really here to reflect the limitations that state law has designed permit process and those 10 findings that we currently have in our code they just they simply can't function in the way that they were designed and intended to function so these design standards replace them and so the process that we use incorporating those design standards needs to reflect that those findings have kind of been replaced so we have to rely on objective standards for review primarily and we can't have any net loss of development capacity anywhere within the city ship housing requires a subdivision map and that is going to trigger that's a trigger for a public hearing so that will already have to go to a public hearing so we're talking about fully conforming renting rental housing so it meets every single one of the existing zoning standards that apply and every single one of the new design standards that apply would go through an administrative review so this is already the same process that we currently use for reviewing residential development in residential zones and for decades reviewed by staff and they only trigger a public hearing if there is some other reason you know one of the many other reasons that they would trigger a public hearing or if they're appealed is that we essentially take that existing process for residential and residential zones and extend it to mixed-use and mixed-use zones and residential would be to to create conforming hearings we've met every single one of our standards we're going to bring you into a public hearing to confirm that and so that we're recommending that those hearings would happen with the zoning admin and then the third option is to sort of take both the prior two options and create a hybrid that's based on the size of the project housing that has 50 units or fewer would go through our administrative process fully conforming rental housing if there are 51 units or more would be required to go to a public hearing with the zoning administrator so this is really a matter of you know whether you want to incentivize conformance and you know sort of the value of that because if you're bringing a if you're bringing an item to a public hearing to be fully conforming they may as well go for at least five variations because it's the same public hearing process that they'll have to go to so that's kind of our thinking is that like there's some benefit into creating some incentive to fully conform to the design standards and that's why that's our recommendation and this is just a policy choice that your council can make so just to reiterate this is the current process listed on the left so community outreach notice and meetings happen with based on the size of development we have public hearings for most commercial development for density bonus projects for plant development permits for variances coastal permits subdivisions being close to a slope and for residential currently and sequel review applies so these places where the highlights are these are the only things that we are proposing any change to so in option one in the streamlined option what would change is that lines for residential would go would trigger that need for a public hearing there wouldn't be a public hearing for something that fully conformed for residential in mixed use or commercial zones in option two we would require public hearings for conforming residential in commercial and mixed use zones and mixed use in mixed use zones and then we would also still be requiring those alternative designs for residential those are always going to trigger a public hearing in every one of these three options and so then in our third hybrid option again we're separating based on size so the public hearing would only apply to alternative designs or to projects with 51 units or more and those projects of 50 units or less if they're fully conforming and their rental projects they could be eligible for an administrative review streamline process see choice for your council to make about you know what kind of incentive do you want to create so I also just want to address the standards the findings now really just focus on conforming to those standards so that's really the first finding that the decision maker would have to make in any of these situations whether that staff or the zoning administrator or the planning commission and then for alternative design the decision makers would evaluate the proposed alternative against the goal for the standard from which they're seeking to vary and I meant to place in a goal here and I and standards they have a stated goal about why are we requiring you know new connections to create pedestrian permeability and create walkable neighborhoods essentially that's the goal I'm paraphrasing and so if someone wants to propose an alternative design to that standard and somehow do it in a different way that's the decision maker is going to be deciding if they are still conforming to that purpose that's stated for the concerns from folks who live in the neighborhood around Leonard Street so we're just going to talk about that briefly I think you've heard from them and they've also requested some extra time tonight so these three parcels excuse me parcels are the ones in question for those who haven't you know been following this process these are identified for that mixed use visitor commercial general planned land use designation density of development than these parcels that are here on ocean street which are identified in the mixed use medium density designation and all of our records indicate that this adoption was done properly and correctly and we have all the records just showed and we understand that there are concerns about this so if the city council is chooses to direct us to make a change here nation we could our recommendation is still that we proceed with the rezoning because that is going to create those height and step backer today and then you could direct staff to consider the these parcels as part of the updates we know we need to make to the ocean street area plan and those will be beginning sometime next year um we also would want to think about these in the context of our housing element update our downtown plan expansion so if there is going to be any transfer of density you know where is that going to go in the city taking a look at the housing element update the downtown plan expansion and the ocean street area plan updates all together as the whole allows us to really take a citywide look at these issues and think about this really holistically and comprehensively so that we can make sure that number one we don't get slowed down right if one if one project ends up heading on a slower track for some reason but then also that we can really think about you know are there other places that we may need to be adding capacity for housing and can we incorporate this you know any transfer of density from these parcels in with that process you know we'd want to look at that in a really um in a strategic and comprehensive way so another piece that we've added this time is a recommendation about transit passes had made a recommendation about transit passes when we um brought this item to them they were recommending that every project over 50 units require transit passes for everyone and at the hearing in august we were we were recommending that we kind of um hold on to that recommendation until we get to implementing with it in parking a lot has signed ab 2097 which eliminates parking minimums in locations that are within half a mile of transit for projects that include 20 dwelling units or more to program to create a contract to enter into with developers so with those two pieces in place it made sense to us that we would bring this back some code language that um for residential projects new residential projects with 20 units or more that are within half a mile of high quality transit they must provide um transit passes to all residents in the development and that that would be handled through a direct contract between the developer or the HOA so the property owner or the HOA um and metro transit and then this is a map of where all of our existing high quality transit stops are within the city so you can see it covers a lot of the upper west side and all of campus and most of almost all of downtown and portions of and now i'm going to invite chat us back to join me to talk about the updates to the street tree standards thank you sarah good evening mayor members of the council i'm travis beck super intended apart and would like to bring to you some updates that we are proposing to the three portions of tonight's item relating to street trees you can go to the next slide um as just a refresher uh there we go we did uh bring street tree master plan before the council um last year and many of the changes we're proposing are building off of that and the first of these is revisions to the tree ordinance chapter 13 30 most of the changes to 13 30 were reviewed in the staff report and presentation at the august 23rd council meeting but we are proposing a few additional changes in order to better coordinate between this portion of the municipal code and the heritage tree ordinance chapter 9.56 so those changes include adding some definitions removing language around tree replacement from one section of the chapter 13 30 in order to allow us to charge in lieu fees for heritage trees that are located in the public right of way moving that language as well as information about in lieu fees into a new section 13 30 0 6 3 and then two notable changes that we're proposing adding to that section are giving the director the ability to waive the requirement to replace street trees which otherwise applies anytime a tree is removed for example in the rare cases where we have an over planting of street trees and it's not necessary to replace also establishing criteria to waive the in lieu fee for a property owner that may be experiencing economic hardship and then finally making more explicit the requirements of the coast local coastal program and how those would apply in street tree replacement and finally clarifying when heritage tree and sidewalk removal permits apply as opposed to a street tree permit these changes were all made since our last parks and recreation commission meeting and therefore have not been reviewed by the commission the second item before you is a new resolution establishing the street tree replacement in lieu fee this was fully presented at the last council meeting but just wanted to bring it up here for completeness proposing fees based on the size of the tree in circumstances where replacement is not possible and this was recommended for adoption by the parks and recreation commission at their august eighth meeting and then the third item before you is a resolution establishing mitigation requirements for heritage tree or shrub removal there is an existing resolution that we use today which was adopted in 1994 and the resolution we're bringing before you tonight uh revises that resolution and would apply one single mitigation standard to all heritage tree and shrub removal regardless of the size of the tree and regardless of whether the removal was approved or unapproved and that mitigation would be to replant three number 15 container size or one 24 inch box container size tree or shrub in the case of removal and that is the primary intent of the mitigation requirements that the removed tree or shrub that be replaced and in circumstances where there it is not that is not possible charge a seventeen hundred and five dollar in lieu fee which is the same fee as for the larger size of street trees that we're proposing in the other resolution and these fees are based on calculations of the cost to purchase plant and water to establishment a new tree but this would allow us to charge the same fees for a heritage tree that's in the public right of way as we would for another street tree and then in the case of unapproved removal we would charge additional penalties if someone did that willfully or egregiously in some fashion so we did bring this resolution before the parks and rec creation commission at our october 10th meeting and they gave us direction for a different recommendation which was to charge the seventeen hundred dollar five seventeen hundred and five dollar in lieu fee in cases of approved removal but a substantially larger fee of approximately seventy eight hundred dollars in cases of unapproved removal in order to disincentivize unapproved removal the reason we're presenting the recommendation above that we are is that after discussing the recommendations with the city attorney's office we were advised that using a fee to create the disincentive is a legally inappropriate mechanism and would not necessarily be defensible since fees are to be based on reasonable costs according to state law and therefore we're separating the fee which is the replacement cost from the penalty which would be the disincentive and those penalties could be anywhere from two hundred and fifty dollars for a simple infraction all the way up to you know thousands of dollars if we pursued citations under title four of the municipal code so i'm joined this evening as well by our urban forester Leslie Keady so if you have questions during the question period we'd be happy to answer those we also have staff from the city attorney's office available thank you i just want to let folks know about the additional community outreach we've done since the hearing on the 23rd so first we created a frequently asked questions response and posted those to our website so those were available to everyone in the community and then we also grabbed all of the email addresses from everyone who sent correspondence to that item on the 23rd and reached out to them via email to make sure that they had the link to this FAQ document that was on the website and also to invite them to the community meeting that we had to go over the frequently asked questions and also then to answer any other questions that they might have you know they might read these might generate some more thinking or more questions from them so we also sent that same email to everyone who had signed up on our website for email updates about the project throughout the two years that we've been working on it so it was a total of maybe 250 emails that we sent out so we also publicized the meeting on facebook and instagram for the city and through the city manager update and through as i mentioned those emails to and the recording to the project website for anyone who wasn't able to you know join join us live and then we also created a summary of the ordinance so you know this is over 200 pages probably almost 300 pages of of ordinance text right and the municipal code is not something that's very awesome right so what we did was we wrote up a summary table where we listed out each code section that was getting amended which department was amending it what the purpose of the amendment was and then where to where which document to find it in so was it part of them or or part of the one that does not include changes to the local cluster program so hopefully people could scan through that summary table and you know find the code section or the pieces that they were interested in and then just go to those sections and know where to find them based on the code number and then just read the sections that they were really interested in so those were available on our website refresher on environmental review the objective standards and development standards the rezoning the public works standards street trees implement the general plan and are covered by the eir that was created for that document certified in 2012 sequa guidelines no further environmental review is required for that existing project and then we also have these other miscellaneous zoning ordinance updates and those are largely exempt from sequa under the common sense to bring this to a close our next steps tonight would be the first reading again of these two ordinances one for the sections of the code that are not part of the lcp the local cluster program and one for sections of our municipal code that are part of the lcp just a procedural distinction for folks following along at home these ordinances would take effect in most of the city 30 days after the second reading which will happen at the next available meeting and then they there are the one ordinance that includes lcp ordinance amendment takes effect inside the coastal zone upon certification by the coastal commission so at our second reading we will be bringing back a resolution for your council to direct staff to submit this packet to the coastal commission for review and then we would get to work in the planning department on implementing the we would begin implementation in january so our next you know next available meeting for a second read would be december 13th and then we would 30 days after that be in the middle of january and we these would start applying to new development projects outside the coastal zone and so we're already working on creating those implementation tools and figuring out training starting to train up our staff so then we also know that we're going to need to come back and amend the ocean street area plan and which will include needing to re rezone 15 other properties that we couldn't or we aren't rezoning tonight um because the height limits that are included in the ocean street area plan next in the general plan that we um had wanted to keep that to remove some language that's no longer enforceable under the state law um and so we'll be back with that sometime next year as well and then um these design standards or that we've written design standards to be used in this manner and so we're aware that we are probably going to find some change and so we're already planning on somewhere between a year and two years from now we're going to be coming back with um some tweets see how these really hit the ground on real life projects and notice that you know maybe some things aren't working the way that we had hoped and they need to be adjusted a little bit dissipating that that was going to be sort of a normal part of you know implementing these standards staff recommendation i'm not going to read this to you it's printed in your packet recommendation that you take action on the requiring public hearings we continue to recommend the streamlined option that instead with these design standards um and then we're also looking for your direction about the options to consider for the um 111 to 119 Leonard street and then of course you have resolutions to adopt relative to street trees and heritage trees so with that um you have a lot of staff here available to answer any questions we missed our mark of 20 minutes but we're ready to talk about anything you want to talk about thank you sarah i appreciate and thank you travis also for your presentation on the trees and the inlu fees i know that uh today i received many emails um regarding the five story height can you talk a little bit about how that was um came to be there were a lot of requests for three stories versus five stories and um i know you mentioned currently there is no height limit so um implementing this recommendation of five stories can you speak to how that came to be sure as we mentioned um in his intro um you know one of the pieces of this project part of the analysis that we did was called a test fit analysis and um we brought the results of that test fit to the city council in march of 2021 and then reiterated that again in november of last year and essentially what the test fit analysis does is it takes this like so we have all of these standards we have parking standards and setback standards and height standards we have a floor area ratio set by the general plan we have a density limit set in the general plan and the zoning code um and like so do all of these things fit together found is that in our residential zone districts they do all of those things work together areas where we have mixed use um especially in high density in the mixed use visitor commercial that have that 2.75 floor area ratio on the stage what happens on those existing standards the development capacity is essentially that developers get to decide how to build their buildings law says is that any standard that height limit is really important because that is what creates the basis for being able to apply all of our other design standards so without that height limit we can't apply we could be in a situation where a developer could decide three stories with no parking and no setbacks and no open space raised with like a partially how they want to build right they can decide they don't want to do setbacks they don't want to do transition planes they don't want to do parking um so it's really the whole zoning code is a lot of recourse to make those standards apply if we don't have an envelope that can fit the full capacity of the development that we know we need to do to set those height limits and setbacks and open space standards so that all of these things can work together with the design standards to create the kind of development that we really want to see so i know we got some correspondence that was really like let's keep the height low and then just let them raise the height if they want to but it doesn't really work that way because it's not just height they could really decide that any of the standards they just don't want to meet them they don't want to meet any of the design standards they don't want to do any parking they don't want to do any set things work together to create an envelope and then stick design standards to it and trying to pull that apart i think is um potentially leaves us very exposed and with very little control over development okay thank you i'm going to i know some other council members have some questions um so we'll continue asking questions and then we will bring it out to public comment as soon as we're done asking questions uh council member golder and council member brown did you have your hand up i did not okay i wasn't sure if i saw i want to hear from the public okay council member golder what's in my mouth so thank you for the presentation and i heard that through the objective design standards we're going to have a quantifiable design it does not increase density it actually shifts development control back to low local jurisdictions um some questions that have come to me um you know in correspondence this week since the packet came out are what would happen if we didn't make our rena numbers and why do cities like carmel the civic growth capitol appear to not have to build as densely as we're proposing and i know i may ask my colleagues to jump in on that as well but um i'll go ahead and get started so the consequence of not meeting our rena number so just for those who may or not familiar with that term the rena is an acronym r hna for the regional housing needs allocation it's the amount of housing the city is obligated to plan for in every eight-year housing element cycle every jurisdiction in the state state has a rena number that they are obligated to plan for so part of the reason that some jurisdictions get um numbers that essentially equate to greater densities than others has to do with a couple of factors economic activity and jobs so the state has a goal of putting jobs near housing near jobs so they assign more another component of cited is based on um what type of jurisdiction you are so essentially like are you a suburban jurisdiction are you an urban jurisdiction and just the place where we fall why santa cruz is going to look just ministerial review of development projects if they meet a minimum amount of excuse me affordable housing included and so three tiers that jurisdictions fall into based on how well how close they are to meeting their rena in different categories so jurisdictions that have fully met their rena are not subject to sp35 and are never subject to this streamlined ministerial process for affordable housing jurisdictions that have met um the market rate portion of their rena only subject to sp35 for projects that include at least half 50 of the units as affordable to low if you fail to meet some requirement uh the above moderate rena requirement a development proposal that includes 10 percent um be restricted affordable housing units is qualified for that expedited streamlined ministerial process under sp35 in santa cruz our inclusionary standard is at 20 percent so every market rate project that comes in has to include a minimum of 20 percent affordable housing so that means if we fall into that 10 percent here every development is essentially eligible for sp35 and goes through a ministerial process so there are some we have some concerns about that because ministerial means there's no sequa um it also means that there is no chance to use subjective standards which we can use subjective standards to a limited degree on other projects and um those are important because a lot of our area our area plans are not objective um you know they have a few ocean feed area plan is probably the best it's the most modern has a few objective standards um but a lot of them just really don't have any and we would like to be able to continue to use those documents to some extent as long as it's you know within the boundaries of the state law it's not you know changing how much housing can be built but it could still be used to talk about how are you going to do the streetscape in front of this building and like how are we you know you know sometimes these area plans talk about like the window treatments really specifically like the at the ground floor and um we would like to be able to continue to use those and in sp35 applications they just simply don't apply so that's one of the biggest ramifications of not meeting arena sort of legally um the last thing i'll mention is failing to meet arena means we're failing to plan for housing for future generations and i think that's a very big deal i mean we have rental properties out here that are getting 40 applicants i mean that that's just not a healthy housing market and that's a market rate rental right let alone what's happening in affordable rentals i mean i think all of that is really important but it looks like lee has something else thanks sarah um that's a great overview and i also appreciate you grounding that in some of the realities that people looking for housing are facing today um i wanted to point out one thing because um councilmember golder asked um what are the implications of not meeting the arena and you spoke to the category of if we if we have a certified housing element and we're planning for that and we're not meeting the arena targets but i also just want to take a step back and make sure that um the council is aware this was actually spoken to um by rafa sunfield um in the public comments which is the implications of not planning for the um full amount of arena uh targets that we have and the implications of that if we do not have a certified housing element then there are there's what's called builders remedy and um there are jurisdictions that are finding out about the builders remedy right now you can look at um at Santa Monica for example and see uh the four or five thousand units that they got um submitted almost immediately when they did not have a certified housing element and local control is essentially lost at that point cities are forced to approve housing projects whatever submitted when um we do when we fail to get a certified housing element in time so i wanted to add that as well as a separate component of what happens if we're not meeting arena and then there's just like two more things actually that i'll add that i thought i remembered while we was talking we also are vulnerable to lawsuits i worked at the county when the county was sued for not having a certified housing element and failing to provide affordable housing um and then we're also we become ineligible for lots of grant funding if we're failing to meet our arena or if we don't have a certified housing element lots of things go ahead and ask her another question so some so from what i'm hearing tonight is the sooner we adopt the sooner we'll get more control i know there was a couple projects that came forward this last year maybe last year a three one water and the project on pennsylvania that people were really upset about so is that true the sooner we adopt the more control we will have ultimately yes that's true and then and then yeah we're getting applications now and we can't supply these standards they're locking in the standards that we have today which are you know there are no design standards really today so to that end the one where Taco Bell was downtown how many stories is that or how would have that been modified if this was in place well so that one downtown so these these standards apply everywhere except in the downtown so the downtown already has its own design standards that are part of the downtown plan so that project wouldn't have been won't be affected wouldn't have been affected by this and then just another question is there a maximum height with the density bonus or would it be five stories and then you could apply the density bonus for increased height after that so we can't apply maximums to density bonus the way that density bonus works is that they have to bring in a conforming base project and then they run the calculation of either a 35 percent bonus or a 50 bonus depending on you know what they qualify for on the number of units that had they have been able to fit into their conforming project and then they get to fit them on the site in the manner that so they can do that by eliminating parking by reducing parking they can reduce setbacks they can increase height those are waivers so developers are entitled to an unlimited number of waivers to physically fit the number of units on the property that they are entitled to under the law so it's not a direct line i know people have asked this question before so we there's a project down one of the projects downtown on on front street it has a 35 percent density bonus it went up one story so that was on it was it went from a seven story to an eight-story building that was a 16 percent increase in height there's another density bonus bonus project downtown at 130 center that went from being a three-story project to being a six-story project that's essentially a 100 percent increase in height so it's not necessarily like a direct line between like 35 percent increase you know is always this a number it really depends on the site geometry and the type of project that they're doing and so like how the building just fits together i will say typically in in the past we've seen like most density bonus project add with a 15 percent a 50 percent density bonus we just haven't seen a bunch of those projects yet we've only seen a handful and then just finally would there be opportunities to make changes to this in the future or is this set in stone no yeah all of our the the municipal code is a living document we come back at least once a year to adjust and tweak and make edits do council members have any other questions at this time i just want to say i do have quite a few questions but i'd like to hear from the public who often wait until like nine o'clock at night to even begin to speak so and i may have additional questions because i as a council member do want to hear from the community and take that into account before we make our decision council member coming thank you council member brown i think council member brown brings up a good point because i have a number of questions i want to ask but if we go about asking all of our questions we will be sitting here for a pretty long time and many people may need to go put children to bed or might not be able to stay up very late so i'd be happy if we move to public comment and then we can continue with questions afterwards great so at this time then i will bring it out to public comment this is agenda item number 40 objective standards there are seven recommended parts to the motion that we will be considering if you are joining us here in person and would like to comment on this item please line up to the right of the dais if you are joining us virtually please raise your hand by dialing start nine on your phone or choosing the raise hand feature on the webinar controls of your computer and i will begin with the first person joining us virtually and that is rafa sun unfilled go ahead and press star six and unmute yourself thank you very much uh first i just wanted to thank sarah for for the really um well put together presentation i i hope that it was clear for the public um exactly what we're doing tonight and that we're not increasing the density or height limits or anything that is not already available to developers currently today under the law um i think that's a really important point and and i also wanted to emphasize the the part that she um made about or the point that she made about um how uh if we want to incentivize smaller buildings with less density and uh lower height limits we have to provide some sort of incentive for them to uh want to do that and and i think the the option one um the uh the streamline process is really the best way to do that and that's because currently we have a 20 percent affordability requirement um which automatically triggers density bonuses so any developer today can use a density bonus if they want they can add more height they can change the setbacks they can do all of that anyway um and and really the only like reason that they might not take advantage of that is if they think that uh the uh the streamline process is going to be beneficial to them so so i think realistically probably very few projects are actually going to to uh to not use the the density bonus options that are available to them they're going to they're going to have more units more units are more profitable um and and they're going to uh you know wave more more more regulations to make it uh easier and uh and more valuable for them to build so i i think most of the projects that we're going to see are going to have a public hearing anyway um if and so realistically we're not much is really going to change we're just going to have actually more control over our projects as a city and um and and i think we should have some incentive for for people to for the these developers to um have lower lower heights and and uh less dense projects and that's the the streamline process that we're proposing so that's why i think we should go with option one and once again thanks so much for the presentation i hope it uh is clarifying to to the other members of the community who are concerned about uh development in in our time thank you thank you for your comment i'm going to alternate and i'm going to um bring up the next person here in person welcome good evening my name is kate achilles and i live on lennard street and i'm a resident of the central park neighborhood i'm here on behalf of my family and also 100 plus neighborhood residents on dakota may and Leonard who shares similar concerns since 2007 residents of our neighborhood have been actively engaged with the city's planning department to develop an ocean street area plan that enabled development but also protected the integrity of our small tight-knit neighborhood adjacent to the main corridors of ocean and water streets therefore when studying the maps associated with the objective standard proposal we were shocked to learn that several parcels at the gateway to our community along Leonard street had their land use designation change from residential to mixed-use visitor high density which would allow for development that could have catastrophic impacts on our neighborhood and would be in conflict with the city's stated goal of neighborhood compatibility upon learning of this change our neighborhood again engaged with the planning department in city council to discuss the potential negative impacts that these put prior changes and the general plan could have had on our unique pocket neighborhood from these discussions we got an overwhelming impression that these prior changes whether implied intentionally or as an oversight do not make sense and should be remedied as soon as possible to minimize risk to our community to that end central park neighbors request that city council make a motion to one reject rezoning at 111 to 119 Leonard street and two immediately proceed with an off-cycle general plan amendment to change the land use designation to low medium density residential on those parcels to match the rest of the central park neighborhood and make any concurrent revisions necessary to comply with state law that do not impact our or other residential neighborhoods we sincerely thank the planning department especially sarah and matt our mayor and all the members of city council who have taken time to come and visit our neighborhood listen to our concerns and propose solutions that protect the central park neighborhood thank you thank you for your comment i will go to our next public comment is virtual and that is henry go ahead and press star six to unmute good evening thanks for the opportunity to speak my name is henry hooker and i believe that the council should pass the proposed standards that come before you this evening um the county staff has done a great job of describing all the reasons why it's good legislation i agree it's really just an opportunity to create the housing where we want it and what we want it to look like i also agree with staff that the review process should be as outlined option one which is the only option that provides a really strong incentive to follow the letter of the objective standards i wanted to just say a couple of words on the inclusionary rate which isn't necessarily included in this but it seems to come up for discussion every time that we're talking about housing and i believe that the effort to increase the inclusionary rate for new multi-family units is misguided there's good reason to believe that an increase will backfire and discourage the production of new entry-level housing it's tempting to think of inclusionary units as free affordable housing subsidized by the developers in fact the affordable units are subsidized by the purchasers of the market rate units raising the inclusionary rate can make the market rate units unaffordable to the middle income people who weren't too much to qualify for affordable housing and are in effect asked to pay a surcharge for their apartment it's notable and also unfair that no such surcharge exists for the builder or purchaser of single-family homes if we truly want affordable homes and lots of them which i do we need to be serious about finding or creating subsidies for them thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person hi welcome my name is emma i live in central park neighborhood i am eight years old and i am friends with all the kids in my neighborhood some of the kids are really young and some are older than me but we like to play together they are my best friends and we play almost every day we love to play outside and play at central park we love to ride our bikes skater skateboards and rollerblades around our block there are not many cars in our neighborhood so you can play in the streets we are worried that if you build a tall building that it will be loud and there will be too many cars we might not be able to ride our bikes around the block anymore of the some of the kids in our neighborhood would have to leave if you built the building where they live now i also think that our barn owls might get scared and leave i see and hear them almost every night when we walk around the block and they sometimes like to sit in the big tree where the building could go our neighborhood owls are named dakota may and lettered because those are the names of the streets in our neighborhood we love the kids in the neighborhood wait all of the kids in our neighborhood have signed the kids petition to save central park neighborhood thank you for helping us save our neighborhood i hope you like the new cars that i made for you thank you for your public comment our next uh member of the public has a phone number ending in 5690 go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hello i want to know that there's nothing wrong with the objective standards proposed tonight but there is one area that does not need to be included in the objective standards and that's the base height the objective standards do not consider the density bonus why do that the density bonus that makes no sense this is important the density bonus will allow more affordable housing itself in our town this is critical this is what we need so badly the base does not need to be seen we'll put the same results into the density bonus what a developer wants more height the staff and the council can ask for more from the developer more affordable units more common spit more better designs that is profit mitigation profit life to think we need that will help these existing residents because without considering what the existing residents need as far as all these things going on right around all of us we need to think about this and how are we going to get any of these things you have to help an area to negotiate with this is critical the general plan to still be welcome to have the same height so requested in the survey yeah um and you know don't you don't know that there's a state law i'm not going so don't say one year we can review this it doesn't work like that so it's better to have the density bonus bring up the height then it's a win we get more affordable units that's critical we have too much market aid housing in the town the AMI will go up there's research to prove it it also hurts the lowest income residents and those for ones that are very difficult get affordable units built for we cannot make it worse on them we can fully meet the needs of the objective standards and yes we do want to speak up we don't just want things to go to the zoning administrator if it needs all of the objective standards the developers need to hear from the people who live here it's still up to them if they want to change anything we know that that it's still important if you don't know how can they even accommodate anything it's it's very democratic that's what we want and the developer they're not going to disregard as much as you think they're going to disregard they're getting a lot out of these subjective standards and they know that what's going on currently in sanity they will be fine and if they have to they want that that's the floor yes that will happen you do not need to raise the price thank you for your comment our next public comment here in person hi welcome good evening my name is Kevin Searhoff I also live on Leonard street and I'm a resident of Central Park neighborhood Kate and Emma nicely outlined an overview of our concerns and has proposed a potential solution we have heard the planning department's recommendation to allow rezoning because it affords some level of additional protections and what currently exists however we've been advised that a motion similar to what we proposed is a better path forward for our community we don't feel confident that if allowed to proceed as presently planned the issue will be revisited in the future and even if it was it may be more difficult to remedy these zoning changes more difficult to remedy if these zoning changes are implemented now to us the benefits don't outweigh the risks which is why we wish to proceed immediately with an off-cycle general plan amendment to change the land use designation to low medium density residential on those parcels to match the rest of Central Park neighborhood we understand that planning is just implementing the general plan that was established in 2012 but as we highlighted in our presentation during your visits to our neighborhood the changes were subtle and obscure enough that even our most involved and diligent neighbors were not aware of the land use designation on these parcels had been changed because if they had we would have tried to address this sooner i want to reiterate that our neighborhood is not opposed to development that is adjacent to our neighborhood but we do oppose potential development that could literally replace existing affordable housing and displace our neighbors many of whom have called this neighborhood home for over 30 years within the entire city of Santa Cruz these are the only residential parcels with existing housing that are being rezoned to a mixed use land designation and a designation that specifically encourages visitor commercial uses like hotels and motels we've done significant research on the general plan ocean street area plan environmental impact reports and much more and it remains unclear when or why these changes were implemented when we reached out to former mayor don lane he agreed that it was never the intent of these land use designation changes to have this sort of an effect on residential neighborhood and was likely an oversight to paraphrase the incoming mayor fred keely when he visited our neighborhood last month the role of government is to solve problems not create them this problem seems fixable and we should do so finally i want to reiterate our sincere appreciation to the members of city council and to the planning department who have taken the time to hear our concerns and work with us on a solution thank you again thank you for your comment our next comment is virtual and it's i am watching you yes hello as a serious standalone question i ask you to consider some time whether constantly prioritizing an oversized housing allocation for below average income for people will be an effective strategy to create a more prosperous Santa Cruz otherwise i'll repeat myself as i personally see little change in this proposed ordinance regarding trees i wonder as a matter of fairness considering these fines and fees if you've ever considered that some properties have a lot of trees others perhaps none it seems that those with a lot of trees would be more negatively affected by these fees and fines etc than those with no trees and given these new costs maybe they'll never want any now nowhere does that fairness as in who's doing their part to provide trees really matter as far as tree rule fees go but perhaps it should as before i objected the mixing of dual use of street tree code applying to both new developments and also applying these changes to existing trees generally in particular to their perpetual replacement fees that would never be applied that way to building codes as it presents exposed factor deficiencies i additionally regard existing street trees and parkway strip spot plan to maintain and liability assumed by adjacent property owners to be their property subject to the appropriate permit regulation issued at the time of planting i regard street trees for sure previously planted to be the private property of those who paid planted and cared for them to do as they wish the city has not earned any ownership stake in them the adoption of large and loofy fees to fund perpetual tree replacement including existing trees is a kind of exposed factor law banned by the constitution the idea an unelected bureaucrat has sold authority to issue tree removal permits or not or require perpetual replacement fees or not at whim and without a detailed list of valid removal reasons requiring automatic no in lieu fee for permit issuance including if a tree is dying or dead for instance those guys has 17 such reasons can be quite arbitrary parkway tree permits are no different than the permits that could be issued to allow street parking of a private property car cars always remain the property of their owners perpetual in a loofy tree replacement liability following one to the grave and beyond is not going to promote tree plantings quite the opposite you should be down on your knees thanking people for planting trees and assuming care for them instead it's all threats it's all stick i found the agenda package staff a response to these kinds of specific tree code concerns dismissive unresponsive and void of any real address of my concerns and overall also such in general a different issue i'd add there's a 40 foot tree in the Beth Bethany curve park park near Delaware that's been dead for years why don't you just deposit that 1700 when you finally get around to cutting it down before it falls down this ordinance should apply to the city also shouldn't it thanks thank you for your comment i will now invite our next member of the public here in person hello at least casby here i just want to say that i'm i'm a very interested member of the community i have gone to meetings that were noticed for the downtown area when i lived right at basically almost at but very close to the intersection of laurel street pacific it was really bizarre because the meeting and this was about a parcel that was going to be developed on front street where india jose is right there right across from the metro station i believe in there the notice went out months and months before the actual date of the meeting i believe it went out in april and the meeting was in july um so first of all i'm extremely interested so i got the notice and i held on to it in a prominent place for months and months and then the meeting took place uh the like the day before fourth of july weekend and so this meeting was noticed to keep people away but if you were like me and you were really really interested and you went to the meeting anyway what you found out was that owen waller and many city staff and the architects and certain people who are very interested in making sure that this development was ramrodded through were present a handful of activists myself included a friend of mine lisa johnson from the west side and others who are really interested in what's happening in the city in terms of development environmental concerns housing issues such as housing from many different classes in the city we were about ten of us and it was all stacked when i spoke up vocally about the lack of community participation that was clearly left out it was clearly not intended that the community really show up for that meeting and i could talk more about who was there people who lived in the area also came to that meeting people who live on pacific avenue for example when i spoke out vocally about my objections to that design and tried to find out more about the design like access to the levy and to the river i was actually treated with such hostility that when i went to go to the bathroom in the back of the room later i was hip-checked by one of the friends of the developer that's where you go like this it's a lacrosse term i was physically assaulted by people who are pissed off that actually showed up to the meeting to speak so i just want to say that i think that an education process should be offered to people in the city who are regular folks and not developers or architects or city planners and we want to know how you do this process how it happens from the very beginning to the end we want to know i want to know what a lot of these terms mean without having to become a total expert in what they mean i'm very disheartened about the design processes that are happening and i think you're excluding the community thank you for your comment our next member of the public is joining us virtually uh laura thank you again i have a question about the bonus part can we can you decide to keep it at like 25 or 20 bonus that way to limit the height that seems to be one of the biggest problems of developers just trying to stack more height and it seems from just listening to this that the developers are in the driver's seat they get to do anything they want they the the bonus could be 35 percent they can change the setback so i'd like for clarity of how the community can have more control over the heights and the ways around keeping development in check thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public is here in person welcome thank you madam mayor and council members gary patin i'm speaking here for safe santa cruz you received numerous letters from us and the last person who spoke in person the last person who spoke online really is why safe santa cruz exists and that is we have felt and i think correctly that the city has not been paying attention to what the residents of this community want and has not been involving the residents of this community in these very difficult planning decisions in a way that lets them participate effectively and that helps them understand what's going on and we're here to ask you tonight in connection with this item that you change that pattern and that you do something different if you will remember when the council and some of you i think probably weren't on the council at this time but when the council started the objective standards a process you said the council said adopted a motion that said the highest priority as you conformed zoning to general plan designations was to protect and preserve the residential areas of the city and to protect existing city businesses when sir noisy gave her a very comprehensive report both last time and this time you never once heard about what was the priority for residential areas and how to protect them you didn't hear about how these might these objective standards might change things for businesses in existing businesses in the city safe Santa Cruz hopes that you're going to take action on that Leonard street issue the way the neighbors want you to because in fact that is protecting an existing residential neighborhood and if you notice your staff wasn't interested in that we would like the public to be included the staff is recommending you cut back on public hearings we don't think you should cut back on public hearings we think you do need to do a little sequel review maybe not a full er but you need to see what has changed in 12 years or 10 since the general plan and the general plan er was adopted we are asking you to break up consideration of this item instead of having seven items at one meeting take a bite size piece at several meetings and let the public really get into it the way the last speaker here talked about we want you not to rezone uh change the zoning to meet the general plan our letter that we've submitted points out why that is an extremely bad idea if you care about the priority of protecting residential neighborhoods and we hope you do our next public comment is via virtual hand raised kyle kelly go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hey it's again yep this is kyle kelly give me just a moment here pull up my notes uh cool so uh yeah i'm speaking today in support of the objective standards i support option one streamlining for development review process and public hearing since it incentivizes projects to fully conform to the standards i think this is really important as we're leading into the sixth cycle arena because we we want to be able to have a compliant housing element done submitted on time before the builder's remedy and i'll say two two main points of why it's kind of like these things are stacking in a sense um if we get the pro housing designation we get our housing element done on time we show sufficient capacity we get access to transit and inner city rail grants right we all we all voted no on d we want to see the rail go in i want to see us get those grand dollars if we lose out on it because we decide that we want to have longer community process that we think that you know we can tweak the numbers for how much money we're going to charge people for building a thing we need housing um like all of those things are going to stack up and the reality of what's going to happen is we're going to submit a housing element to hcd and if this process becomes more convoluted then i and many other people will report back to hcd and say hey they decided to make it more difficult so all of these parcels aren't feasible enough they're actually going to have to zone for even more because they chose not to just meet a bare minimum like what's on the agenda today is effectively like facilitate development of more multi-family and mixed-use housing which is already allowed in the city um and like create standards that help build the housing we need ensure great urban design and and you know align the zoning code with the general plan like we're going to be behind if we don't move forward and figure out the way in which we can streamline that housing and i'll just point out again like i think i said back in august like this is for streamlining multi-family housing we currently streamline the most expensive most luxurious housing site the single-family home and we don't put any iz requirements on it people can just build a new single-family home all they want and if you look back at our dashboard that's most of what our market rate housing is it's actually single-family homes it's not like housing for the workforce it's not four plexus or eight plexus or whatever like we're only seeing like a few buildings going up right now it's barely enough to meet our needs so again like my recommendation honestly all the options are kind of great you can figure out how you want to modulate between them but i would prefer that you use streamlined multi-family housing thank you thank you for your comment our next public comment is here in person welcome good evening i forgot to mention my name last time i'm kandace brown for me some more sand transportation public works commissioner um first of all there's a very complex set of standards and i wanted to mention that downtown update plan was done with a very different process which is really unfortunate wasn't done here because it was done with the planning commission subcommittee they sat down for six months they met at least once or twice a week they came back to the planning commission often it went through an inner process and it was very carefully honed and in this case that was not done which is again very unfortunate but the point i wanted to make is three things one sidewalks sidewalks for collector streets are defined the collector streets are defined by the state so if you're going to define a standard based on a state criteria that's not clear to our public works department when i made my inquiry i think that should be investigated before determining the sidewalk widths also the maps are there's a disparity between the general plan maps and getting back to all these map problems and and the caltrans maps number two um uh events planning is asked for five feet additional and commercial saying that it's really to accommodate retail and that it has no impact on density or intensification of use but in fact that's not true you can have five feet increase and have five feet below five feet above podium parking and then you can add another story you could have a retail with mezzanine lofts and you have more intensive use you can have an office space with storage and you can have more employees where you have more patrons these all increase intensity of use so it does impact that so i would think that should not be added also i would like clarification on the general plan itself because i'm going to read you the general plan it says mixed high density designation allows a maximum far of 1.75 as of right including a maximum of 30 dwelling units per acre however a project that meets a number of specific criteria as determined by the planning commission may have a far of up to 2.75 including up to 55 dwelling units per acre i'm running out of time but i wanted to say that it's not clear that they're entitled to 1. to 2.75 in the general plan you can have three stories 1.75 it shows with the test fit you can even have 2.75 with four stories but they're asking for five stories because of economic purposes and it's not needed and it's really important to consider the height because that does increase the intensity of use and has all kinds of ripple effects with traffic parking you know the quality of life i actually sit and look in a three-story building across a landscape and i'm not looking at the rough but if it's five stories you can look across the whole neighborhood so it does really impact the nature of what we're doing thank you thank you for your comment our next comment is virtual has Zenon Uliate Crow go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi my name is Zenon Uliate Crow i'm president of the student housing coalition i just wanted to call today in support of these standards i just want to emphasize on a lot of the comments that we're hearing here tonight that there's a lot of community concern about density and speaking as a student who knows many people actually nine percent of our students at UCSC and countless other numbers of students that are not able to afford the massive houses that are essentially the only mandated form of housing within the city of Santa Cruz this fear mongering against more neighbors more people is simply a fear mongering against people who otherwise would be excluded from these rich housing types and so i really want to emphasize here tonight in a broader picture both in support of these objective standards because they help facilitate the construction of more housing that can help provide for students help provide for families help provide for workers i really want to or in general to the general public and also to the council members to keep in mind that when we talk about density fear mongering when we talk about the idea that oh there's too many people next to us it really is gatekeeping at its finest speaking as someone who will probably not ever be able to afford a home in the city of Santa Cruz just because i happened to move here maybe 20 years before some other people it's a frankly pulling up the ladder it's making it so my generation and the generations that are coming after me are having to have the undue burden when it comes to the cost of housing and so when you take this vote today i really want you to think not just about the people that are in the room now but the people that aren't there the people that aren't born yet the people on my generation who are dealing with mid terms right now i mean i'm literally typing an essay in the background right now um so i really implore you guys to please vote yes on the comments and uh thank you for your time thank you for your comment is there anybody in person that would like to comment on agenda item 40 i'll continue on with our virtual attendees our next hand raised is ryan mechle good evening council i'm calling in support of the objective standards tonight specifically in support of option 1 streamlining for multifamily housing as previous callers have mentioned the only form or you know the most expensive form of housing in the city is streamlined already that single family homes we should be incentivizing multifamily homes which are better for the environment cheaper for families and just overall better for the community if we don't want to see us sprawling out into our forests and open spaces the objective standards will give us more local control over what we see built here as sarah very well explained it's kind of funny to see the coin flipped a little bit and i would not be normally be the one arguing for local control but if we want to you know see the housing that's built in Santa Cruz look like Santa Cruz we should be voting yes on these objective standards i was fortunate enough to be part of one of the focus groups when these were first being put together and i thought that the consultants and staff did a really really really good job of taking feedback from all kinds of different people on all different points of what now make up the objective standards they have resulted in something that ensures really great urban design for our city and all they really are doing they're just aligning our zoning code with the general plan i think it's a no-brainer to vote yes on these objective standards and i hope you'll support option one when you do vote yes thank you thank you for your comment i don't see any other hands raised virtually i don't see any other members of the public in person waiting to speak for public comment so at this time that does conclude public comment i will bring it back to council for action and deliberation i know that there were some more questions to be asked so um i will um i see council member mires with your hand up council member mires you're muted yeah um mayor i would um i would yeah i would like to hear questions i had a couple of questions myself but i'm happy to have other council member scope first i know some i think jessen mentioned he had a number of questions so um i guess one thing that i would like to clarify i heard one of the speakers say um and i just want to make sure this is right there was a statement that our inclusionary requirement automatically triggers density bonus i was wondering if the staff could speak to that and i have one other question and then mayor if you would entertain it um i do have a motion just for the letter street group uh or letter street issue i should say i'm wondering if we might be able to separate that out as a separate motion from the seven motions that the staff recommended okay that would be amenable to you and i'd be happy to do that with questions possibly put that motion on the floor after questions have been asked but i'm just curious about that statement i think it's very confusing for some of the public this relationship between inclusionary numbers and the density bonuses and kind of how those two things interact sarah i don't know if you could help with that sir i can i can try thank you so um for those who may not be familiar the density bonus is a state law that applies throughout california that allows developers to develop bonus density so bonus market rate units in exchange for providing some amount of affordable housing so um the state law applies to every jurisdiction in the state and not every jurisdiction in the state has an inclusionary standard right Santa Cruz does the purpose of the density bonus was to encourage the development of like deed restricted permanently affordable or you know at least for a long term 55 year affordable housing throughout the state so the way that that interacts with inclusionary standards in cities that have them um changes things and inclusionary requirements so that means every development that comes in has to provide every development with more than four units has to provide 20 of those units at a price that is affordable to folks that make no more than 80 of the area median income and then larger units cost more hold a larger family so when we have an inclusionary standard that's already at 20 percent has come in to sort of clarify the intention of the state law it says that that inclusionary standard um towards the density bonus so the density bonus says that at 20 percent of your units in your base project that are affordable to um lower income households you are entitled to a 35 density bonus so essentially every project that comes in in Santa Cruz can request that not every not every project does so i i think i wouldn't use the word trigger but they are entitled to request that and then um we go through a process to evaluate their base project and ensure that it fully conforms and then we consider the waivers that they're requesting so waivers are um can be used to to remove site standards that preclude development so any site standards that wouldn't allow the full number of bonus units to be built the city's obligated to waive so most typically that is height and parking but it could also be setbacks open space other other standards that sort of physically preclude the amount of development and then they are entitled also to a limited number of concession which are um financially based so design standards that might be too expensive to meet or a project like that that's providing affordable housing they can request um to up to three concessions for most projects and four for i think for projects that are doing a hundred percent affordable so um considering the density bonus is definitely part of you know what we're trying to accomplish here creating all these design standards means that we have more design standards that will apply to density bonus projects because they're only allowed to get concessions for four of them and i understand people are most concerned about those waivers right because those are the big ones height parking setbacks open space that is state law that is not something that the city controls we had for a while a local density bonus but it has essentially been completely superseded by the state but the state program provides are much greater and so that those are the types of applications that we that we're getting are using that state density bonus program did i answer your question i think so yeah i mean it's it's complicated but i think that's pretty clarifying i i just wanted to i didn't remember it was kind of the the term automatically and i didn't didn't quite completely think that that was the case so it sounds like you've verified that for me um that was what my main question uh mayor um and again entirely up to you but if you would be amenable i'm happy to do um to put a motion on for regarding the Leonard street issue when it's appropriate after folks questions thank you councilmember mires thank you mayor councilmember brown and then councilmember comings thank you mayor i um so i have a few questions that i i guess there's some of them are follow-up to some of the discussion from the earlier round of q&a um so i'll try to be as clear as i can about it here okay so the first question i have is that you know i'm i'm hearing staff uh frame uh you know some of the community input that has been received as not um the the concern is that um our our standards aren't understandable the package is is too complex and it's not understandable um and then kind of explain why it must necessarily be complex and comprehensive um which you know i don't disagree with uh but but i'm i guess i'm what i'm mostly hearing from people is not so much that the i mean some people who are really following this closely obviously have that concern but what i'm mostly hearing from people is that the package does not help the community understand what the real impacts like on the ground impacts could be for across a variety of neighborhoods and locations and um so understanding that seems to i mean that's a that's that's a challenge and um and i hear you saying you want to be uh have transparency and so i'm i guess i'm wondering what are we doing to address that concern because what i worry about is that we are going to end up with neighbors like the central park neighbors um who are just surprised by this and um not really because it's it's just too much to you know and to be able to as i think um mr patin said um to be able to engage effectively and productively as community members is what people want i'm hearing people want and that's what i want as a public official i am working in the public interest i want the community to be able to understand this um and have a sense of what the impacts are going to be so what are we doing to address that concern uh the neighbor the the required meetings that the developers put on don't really do it i've been to them um they don't really do it the meetings that the city has um you know uh and focus groups maybe the focus groups i haven't been in those so you know maybe those are a space where this becomes more clear but i i don't really get that feeling of clarity when i attend the meetings so and i'm hearing from others that they're not so what are we doing to address that concern so that we um we don't terrify the community every time uh we you know some big change i mean these are major changes and um you know i think we have responsibility to address that to respond to that so what are we doing like what what do you yeah sure yeah so i hear you so i hear you um a couple of things that i'll say relative to this project and i i will say i'm not going to talk about how we handle you know new developments when they come in like that's that's really not on the table right now um that's you know that's not really what we're discussing um but it's so in terms of this process we have been working on this for two years and um i hear that you know a lot of people are just hearing about this now i i understand that that that kind of happens unfortunately with these long processes that take a long time a lot to to kind of take in and so that's why we've we've done things specifically like a year and go in november when we had the draft of these standards and the draft of the zone district we had a community meeting where we walked people through it how we were going to be taking feedback and then they of course could you know email us there were lots of people who just wanted to email their comments rather than going through the structured process which was fine too um and then we set up office hours so that as people were reading the document they could check in and come to us i don't understand why would you do this what is this talking about like what what would this mean in my neighborhood um so we wanted to make sure we presented those opportunities for folks to to come and get that clarification so i think your larger point of like you know how do we kind of keep people from freaking out about what can be built adjacent to them but every jurisdiction every municipality in the nation fan code or a general plan anywhere iowa is going to be different in most cases than what is currently on that site countering people who have never heard of zoning before until they're involved with is one of the best ways to create that transparency because then um if people ever do look at a map they can look whenever we go out as the planning department we are explaining what we do we're explaining land use 101 and private property rights and what we can control and what the whole new group of people and educating them about you know what is a housing element why to plan for this many housing units why do we have to plan for those housing units at certain density levels in order to qualify with the requirements for creating zoning for multiple affordable housing so i think that we are going to continue to work on so yeah follow it i just have i have two more questions and a little it's kind of a follow-up to to this this past question so i i hear you about the standards themselves and you know and trying the education process not everybody is going to spend time doing that but they are worried that they're not going to have any sunlight in their on their home or in their yards or i mean they're worried about a lot of things and i i you know i don't think that it's fear-mongering i'm just going to say i'm it offends me to hear that um from members of the public that anybody who's concerned about the impact on their their neighborhood is fear-mongering that's just that's just an aside i'm oh stop um but the the the challenge is that the the standards themselves don't really make clear um and the and the zoning doesn't the rezoning doesn't really make clear actually what the impacts could be and i heard and this um and so i i want to follow up on that because i want to i had a follow-up question uh to the response to council member golder's question about um you know how much height is would really be allowed um you know so and i had the question with a five-story height limit how many stories will developers actually be able to build so it was a similar kind of question um and as i understand the response to that question it was we really we must allow whatever the developer needs to meet their density desires up to 2.75 bar and um that that can mean one story it might mean or really so let's put aside the far because i know that gets complicated but that really whatever it is they want um and that could mean one story it could mean three stories that doesn't really make it transparent for community members when they're thinking well um we got a five-story height you know we're we're about to adopt a five-story height limit um and that could mean eight stories that could mean 10 stories that you know so um that that to me doesn't seem uh like it's really helping the community understand so how so again how do we how do we deal with that um and maybe there isn't anything more to respond to i'm just going to ask it again as a rhetorical question here um and then i'm going to ask you know a question that you know may sound a little bit glib but if if developers can build to whatever height is needed to accommodate their desires then why are we even bothering with any height limits why are we even doing this sure yeah so i do have a response to that um so i think so so we're mixing things again so um the 2.75 far conforming development that's standard that's without density bonus okay so the response i was giving earlier was in the context of a density bonus which as i said as part of that response is a state law and that is not something that we have the ability to change and yes it's true we cannot always predict exactly how tall a density bonus project will be nor how big the setbacks will be nor how much parking it has or how much open space it provides those are not things we can effectively regulate under the state law so the regulations that we are creating today are what will apply to um conforming projects so projects that meet every one of our standards and i hear you and i hear that the public is very concerned about density bonus projects and it makes it seem like developers are winning everything and it's really intractable and we no one knows what to expect out of any development site and so there are two there are there are two policy choices that the city is making or can make that impact how often density bonus is proposed the first is our inclusionary standard which we have set at 20 which means as i said earlier every project is entitled to request a density bonus they are automatically qualified for 35 bonus if they request it or they can just use that density bonus process to request waivers to cite standards and not take the density bonus units we get applications like that as well that's a policy choice that the city is making and we're not recommending any change to that the second piece is how do you process these different applications so the the two major incentives as folks have correctly identified for developers are money and time so the density bonus increases profits for developers it takes those required affordable units and it spreads those costs over more market rate units so that those costs are easier to bear for housing developers the second thing that developers are looking for is a is a predictable and fast approval process so that is a big part of the reason that staff and the planning commission are recommending option one to streamline approvals for conforming projects because that's really the only tool that we have to incentivize conformance with all of these standards so i understand that folks are concerned have concerns about that and again that's a policy choice and those are the ramifications that we as staff see as a result of those policy choice so height limits only work if you get a conforming project that's right yes exactly that's true everywhere in the city that's true everywhere in california right okay and so another question i have which is um related because it's it's about height um so your background slide um on rezoning i think i have it here so don't maybe need to pull it up but i'll just see let's see um the so the slide says that for buildings above three stories a transition is required for the to the adjacent neighborhood um does that apply everywhere for all neighborhoods because and i asked this question primarily because i've been talking a lot with the central park neighbors and it does not appear to me that they would have the benefit of that kind of transition were those uh those parcels to be developed as mixed or visitor serve i can't remember the acronym but the visitor serving mixed use sure so so the way that that how do yeah how does that work yeah okay i'm happy to get into that so um so the way that that standard is written right now it applies at property lines so when property lines but residential zoning so it applies to mixed use and commercial development that's doing mixed use development when there is um a residential property line that a but then they have to put in that transition plane and um at this point in time that standard does not apply across the street so in the case of you know those those three parcels on lennard that's correct they would not transition across the street for the um for the other um so so that's the kind of thing that would actually make this more transparent for the public to explain that um clearly because when we put it out there as well don't worry we're gonna have transitions you know it it doesn't feel to me like that is the case all over and here's one caveat right the across the street caveat so it it seems to me that we could maybe try a little harder to again explain you know do the analysis and explain that in a way that people understand um trend you know well so um that that's uh it would just be so that that's one area across the street so what are the other circumstances under which this transition that people might anticipate would be helpful would not apply so it applies when mixed use or commercial development is next to a residential development so it wouldn't apply to two residential parcels next to each other we have other standards that already kind of regulate those projects so um it doesn't apply between commercial properties it really only applies if your house is like literally on the other side of the whatever your house if your if a residential properties share the property line so behind a 31 water it would apply in that situation okay uh thank you um with respect to the those parcels i'm gonna ask this question i know i've asked you this question in our meetings which i very much appreciate you taking the time to have those meetings with the council members but i want to just ask it again um so that members of the public can hear this and i can also refresh my memory and try to make sure i understand it um the the land use designation for those three parcels is not housing and but there is housing on those properties now on those parcels no the the land use designation is is mixed use visit right so housing doesn't have to be built there but what i'm hearing the staff say to us is that we well we can't make any change there because we're not allowed to reduce housing uh you know housing possibilities under the general plan um and but it but the issue is that it's not it's not going to be housing that gets built there um it should this zoning go into effect and you know under the general plan now apparently so just again how does that why can we not um change the general plan for this small pocket neighborhood um and why would we what what would we have to move elsewhere because housing doesn't have to even be produced are built on that on those sites so to say i guess i'm just try maybe i'm not being clear but to say no we can't okay great thanks right about these um mixed use zone districts the whole point is that they are mixed right so there could be residential projects that include ground floor commercial but these are also in our existing commercial corridors so they could be commercial developments that come in that don't include any residential development um and so the zoning also reflects that that's part of the general plan land use designation and that's then also reflected in these sites have a potential for housing because housing isn't allowed use right that's right so the um what the state law says is that anywhere where housing isn't allowed use if you're going to reduce intensity on those parcels or change them in some manner that reduces the potential for housing so for example you could make a general plan land use change in this location that just removes the hypothetically removes the commercial component and leaves the residential in place and then we don't have to do any transferring of anything right like you'll want to think about the council want to think about you know the change of like removing some commercial capacity from the city but that wouldn't trigger the state law requirement the state law requirement applies because housing is allowed so anywhere that housing is allowed if we're changing that or reducing the intensity um we have to find a place to put that capacity so that that potential isn't lost there's no requirement that any site in the housing in the city be developed at all right like it can be zoned for high density housing and just not be developed there's no requirement for that but if we choose to rezone that site to just be a parking lot instead of being a parking lot that's currently zoned for high density housing we would have to relocate that amount of density and so i understand this is um this can be sort of opaque to the layperson because this is about maps that that project a you know envisioned future and not about what currently exists on on the ground but that's the nature of laws right they exist in on paper and we are obligated to follow them on paper and so this is what we're doing and the ideal like outcome of that would be that you know ultimately we do get this housing capacity that we've planned for that we do build the housing units that we know that we need so um we can make a change to the general plan your council can direct us to do that that is something we're allowed to do and we will have to find a receiving site for that potential residential development but that's that's where it starts to get a little complicated and this is my last question and if i recall that was um lee said somewhere between like 45 and 60 potential units something like that in our conversation okay so not a whole lot yeah no that sounds about right got it thanks thank you councilmember comings thank you mayor thank you staff for the presentation and for everybody for sticking around so late um i think i think the questions i had around height were have been answered so i'm not gonna really ask about that i did have a couple questions around the street trees so if park staff is here maybe they could answer some of these questions because this has come up numerous times in conversations i've had the years that i've been on council and it seems like if we're moving in a direction to change this ordinance that you know we may need to bring some items back for future consideration but i'm wondering if you can explain a little bit more about the requirement of private property owners to be responsible for damage caused by street trees to private or public property i saw this in in some of the language that was outlined and was just curious if there could be any comment on that because it seems um a bit of overreach to say we're gonna require you as a private property we're gonna require street trees to be put on on properties or new developments but then the private property owner is responsible if anything if any damage occurs to private property and and also there's a lot of mention about private property owners being responsible for the maintenance of those trees and so i'm just wondering if you could speak to that um because i think that's current concern and will become more of a concern with the direction we're going. I've been inside both our a lot of people coming on here but um start with our urban forestry Leslie Keady has experience on both the street tree and the public work side of this and then follow up comments as needed from city attorney Tony and our public works engineer Nathan okay so Leslie Keady urban forestry so um since the mid eighties there has been title 13 which is the street tree ordinance and i'm not sure of the date but similarly would be title 1520 which is a public works sidewalk ordinance so and Tony of course is a city attorney can maybe clarify since i'm not a lawyer but i'm the forester so um under those two titles the adjoining property owner has been required to maintain all the street trees and all of the sidewalks which is consistent with state law which this community has adopted and we have implemented i guess i could elaborate on that a little bit from the legal perspective the state law is in the california streets and highways code and it makes adjacent property owners responsible for maintenance of sidewalks adjacent to their properties has since i think the 1940s recognition of the fact that cities may be a huge fiscal impact to cities if it were required to maintain sidewalks adjacent to individual properties the mechanism under state law allows the city to put a property on notice that their sidewalk is defective and then um and direct that it be repaired and if it doesn't then the city can conduct the repairs and recover the cost of the repairs as a lean on property back in about 2004 in response to changing case law the city council adopted an ordinance that also makes adjacent property owners legally liable for failure to maintain streets or sidewalks including street trees should they should they fail to meet their statutory obligation under the streets and highways code and and it specifically makes the adjacent property owner liable for injuries to person or property that results in the failure to maintain sidewalks and street trees that has resulted in a substantial reduction in claims from before liability from the for defective sidewalks either when a tree branch falls and it's a car or if somebody's injured from tripping and falling on a sidewalk or that sort of thing um so i think in and councilmember Cummings was kind enough to reach out to me before the meeting to ask a question about that i think if there is consideration of removing that requirement it should also include a fiscal impact analysis that's it will likely significantly increase liability claims city costs for inspecting and maintaining street trees and also insurance premiums based on experience in other cities where as a result of adopting ordinance like ordinances like this city's experience modification factor or the formula that's used to calculate insurance premiums has gone down significantly so i know that public works is also available i think um Nathan might have a comment uh thank you but um one other thing that i would like to add that is that you know city staff isn't out targeting homeowners to repair sidewalks um we do work to uh apply for grants to do safe house of school projects or other infrastructure improvements and and also use this utilize these objective standards to um but the improvements on development projects um throughout the city um i would also note that a lot of the older street trees and and sidewalks and infrastructures didn't really take into account some of the you know newer or more modern designs with regards to wider sidewalks or selection of trees with roots that you know would grow down or putting in group bears etc and so um you know with collaboration with parks and rec the planning department you know the what's being presented today as far as proposed street trees and designs is to try to take that stuff into account so we don't have lifted sidewalks or bike or asphalt and bike lanes etc i think and i'll just say part of the reason why i bring this up is because there are street trees that have been planted when i was living in the beach flats um the building that i was living in down there had been owned since like the 70s and the city went in and put street trees in in the late 80s early 90s and now those trees are buckling the sidewalks and so the owner is like well the city is the one who came and put these trees in why am i now responsible when those trees that the city installed are now you know destroying the sidewalk because he had no decision over that he had no control over that decision so i just think that moving forward um you know the city should take some responsibility in that and so i have some some potential direction to see how we can address that or at least have that conversation but i don't want that to tie up everything tonight it's just something that has come up as a concern and i'm hoping that we can figure out a way to come together as a community and address that um i guess the other question i had around street trees was just you know the fact that when plants are put into confined spaces they can become root bound that can have an impact on the health of the plant and in this case street trees could potentially be impacted by being put in these new boxes and so i'm just wondering if you could speak to that a little bit as to um you know what trees are being proposed and um you know would people expect them to become root bound and therefore having impacts on their health that could you know come at a cost to private property owners who have those trees on their sites or adjacent to their homes properties so like a couple of comments and and invite Leslie as well um one is one of our actions directed under the street tree master plan is to work with public works to update our street tree planting details so that's something that we um are seeking to do as nathan mentioned so that we can avoid some of these problems both for the infrastructure and for the trees in the future um and additionally lovely and our working this year and updating our approved street tree list and a consideration of species that historically have caused that sort of damage is something it will be considering as we uh create that list and Leslie the more you'd like to add uh well just to mention two of the points that i was going to make um there is a product that we're looking into that other municipalities have looked at called structured soils and that creates more rude space underground and more porous space they're um somewhat experimental they're a little bit costly we'd like to do some pilot projects in front of city buildings before we suggest that private development uses these technologies but um there are some strategies that work with that and then also to speak to your previous comment of course we do have the heritage tree grant program and that also helps cost share on sidewalk repair now of course with budget constraints that's some program that you know is constantly being questioned but at this time if you're saving your street tree that's a heritage tree or a street tree we would pay and reimburse 50 percent of the sidewalk repair costs and then we also i i work when i give out free trees to people i work very closely with them to select appropriate trees for the side of the or the size of the tree well that is there unlike some of the trees that were maybe done in the 80s and 90s we know more about trees and tree species at this point but i'm also happy to talk to you directly give you more information rather than talking about trees all evening thanks um those are all those are all thank you and those are all the questions i have about street trees um so i guess the um the other question i had was a little bit around kind of transparency and process one of the the concerns i've heard not only on this issue but even some issues that some of the items that came before us was that um you know much of this has gone to for example with this item in particular has gone to our planning commissions our planning commission many of the items that around traffic what have you um to go to our commissions and come to council and one of the things that's been coming up is that council has not been receiving the recommendations that have been made by the commissions and therefore we don't have an opportunity to take those recommendations into account and in the case of the item that's before us this has gone to the planning commission twice and the planning commission has made some recommendations i understand that some of those recommendations have been made uh staff disagree with but i think it is important that we have those recommendations so that we can take those into consideration and the public can know what the planning commission is recommending and so i'm just curious as to why those recommendations weren't included and if and you know for city manager if something or if there's a plan for how we can address um commission recommendations you know and having those come to council when we have um the presentation of these kinds of items and so that's a that's a dual question for planning staff and the city manager because i think this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed i appreciate the the question council member Cummings and i will give sarin um lee butler an opportunity to weigh in as well i do know that typically when the planning commission or any of our commissions for that matter make a recommendation that ultimately is not supported by staff that's clearly indicated in the staff report including referencing the original recommendation that was made by the commission and why staff may be making um an alternative recommendation under the circumstances i also know some of the concerns that have been raised by the public throughout this conversation also had to do not necessarily with recommendations but motions that were made um at the commission level but ultimately not supported by a majority of the commission so i think we're we're talking about two things but i i hear you in terms of wanting to ensure that recommendations made by commissions are brought forward in a in a transparent way and i would welcome um sarin lee to weigh in on that as well if they have anything to add yeah sure i'm happy to talk about this i know that this came up um but the hearing um on august 23rd so the staff report that we brought on august 23rd actually included about two pages of text about the recommendations that had made by in kind of incredible detail interested or not recommending the same thing the planning commission recommended but their recommendation was included it was discussed at length in the staff report and the both the staff reports that went to the planning commission and the minutes from those meetings are attached to that item that came on the 23rd that had sort of the comprehensive background the same is true of the um transportation public works commission it's or in cases where minutes weren't available the meeting summary you know sort of draft minutes because we do want your council to have access to all of those recommendations and really understand diverging from your commission that's really important thank you and i guess i'd just add then that you know because this item was continued it might be good in the future to have you know the minutes or those the previous agenda attached because i think it was mentioned in the staff report that the agenda was attached but then when i looked through the entire packet it wasn't there and so it would be good for us to see those minutes and you know what was discussed at the planning commission meeting we can reference you know to the staff's comments as to why they disagree but i think it's just really important because we don't necessarily always remember exactly what was in the previous packet and if we hear about it at this meeting then we don't have time to look back to it and the community doesn't know as well so it's just a you know um piece of constructive criticism to you know really help provide that transparency and make it seem like staff isn't hiding anything from the public sure yeah happy to do that we um as we understand it the um process for attaching prior council items is to simply provide a link that's the direction we were given by city clerk so that's what we did for this um for this item but in the future we can be sure that we're always attaching those staff reports and minutes to you know every time it comes back i think all my other questions or answer our notes it's getting late and we're probably going to have a little bit of time of packing forth so i'll leave my comments there i do have um yeah i'll just leave my questions there are there any other questions or discussion at this time um councilmember mires thank you mayor uh yeah i'd be happy to uh put forward a motion i believe i i did send it to bonnie if you're amenable to maybe tackling the Leonard street um which is just a specific motion and we can pick up the remaining motions um to work through those so i would make a motion uh that we remove 111 131 15 and 119 Leonard street from the zoning map amendments so that is not the staff recommendation but that is first part of the motion secondly to direct staff to initiate a planning process through the ocean street area plan housing element update and downtown expansion plan to study 111 131 15 and 119 Leonard street parcels with the goal of reducing the residential density and eliminating commercial use for those three parcels and accommodate the lost residential density in another area as required by state law and then third direct staff to return to the january 24 city council 24 2023 city council meeting bonnie maybe you can add 2023 there um city council meeting with project schedule for the planning process for the planning outcomes within one year of initiation report out on the project schedule and return to city council for potential direction to pursue the option of a general plan amendment if the three part planning process described in two has begun to experience an extended timeline unforeseen by staff so just a little bit of background for my colleagues um i spoke a couple many times with staff about the general plan amendment as an option to address this i do believe very strongly that this needs to be fixed and met with these neighbors several times we also talked a lot about the complexity of what the city is faced with with regards to a lot of the new state laws but i do believe between the period of time that the general plan map was and the general plan was adopted and then the fact that the zoning and zoning code was not really not you know immediately brought into conformance with the new maps that this issue sort of really was just remained on the books and now with the new housing accountability act piece of this it's we're really tied up in terms of using a general plan amendment to pursue this but i also want to make sure that something happens here that this doesn't get lost in the mix again and many years later these folks are still worried about this use on their property so i i'm trying to combine um the ability to address this issue because i do think it really is a mistake i'm convinced of that um with also the recognition that things get things can get complicated anytime we're talking about planning in in Santa Cruz so i'm trying to also provide a way to make sure that there is some some way to continue to pursue this should these this other combined efforts between with the ocean street plan the housing element update and the downtown expansion plan if those three part planning kind of process gets bogged down in legal or what other types of delays that we again look back at this general plan amendment as a possible remedy to to the issue so that is my motion and okay we have a motion by council member mires and a second by council member brown and this is the um motion to replace number five essentially in in the staff recommendation yes okay um i had a quick question for staff on this motion can you um hi sarah can you speak to um the process of amending the general plan for these items when that work um like let me let me think about how i want to word this um so there is a direction here in the motion to return to uh council on january 24th um with a project schedule for the planning process for the planning outcomes what does that look like to you to the staff for you is that realistic i want to set set some successful outcomes here so i'm sure sure so so i think in terms of um reporting back to sort of a you know a plan of attack um this seems like a deadline that we can meet you know i think and then on that date we'll have a discussion about like how long it's going to take to execute the the general plan amendment because i think that's where we're gonna you know there might be some rub thank you that answers my question um and then bonnie bush can you add the year 2023 after the january 24th date just so we make sure that's in there thank you vice mayor Watkins yeah i i just want to um really echo what council member mires stated and really thank the neighbors and the planning staff for all their time to help us really understand this unique situation and that's what it feels like to me really unique and so i appreciate the motion on the floor i also wanted to see if maybe we can make a friendly amendment to have um maybe specific language around um including those parcels being designated as low density or low residential density or is that i'm amenable to that i can we yeah i'm amenable amenable to that if that's possible i think that is the intent um with regards to that particular outcome there okay i just want to make sure i okay great i just want to clarify in um number two of this motion it says with the goal of reducing the residential density is um that where you want it i just didn't know if we want to have that language specified yeah to make it more specific in that to have it be designated to be low as low density residential so it would be with the goal of designating of the parcels being designated as low density residential yes correct so rather just for those three parcels just for clarity sure essentially using a number two instead of having the term reducing it would be just to have it the goal of designating the parcels to be low density or low residential density if that works for the maker of the motion that works for me and is the second or okay with that absolutely can i confirm with staff that that language um mate is correct in this context oh lee butler i see your hand up thank you for the opportunity to comment mayor burner um i would just say that um and bonnie if i could share my screen really quickly i could um i can show the general plan map so i just wanted to point out here that the surrounding area here this neighborhood you can see if we click on any of these the general plan designation is actually low medium residential um and so if you were looking for consistency consistency with the central park neighborhood zone so then low medium residential that would feel more reflective but yeah make it more consistent if that works for the maker of the motion it does thank you thank you for that clarification and the seconder okay councilmember golder my only question is i know two of those parcels i think have an apartment complex on them is that going to change i mean what are they they're in this current zoning low that would be okay for that low medium councilmember calentary johnson but just a quick comment that um i'm really supportive of this direction as well and wanted to thank and appreciate the members of central park neighborhood for taking time to meet i think with probably all of us on multiple occasions and for staff to go out and meet and just it was a complicated and unique situation and i also am in agreement that i think it truly was a mistake um in terms of the i'm supportive of the motion um but i don't know if we need to do anything about item four on the staff recommendation or we can get to that when we get to that because we'll we'll have to exclude those parcels but maybe we just cross that bridge when we get to that item we don't need to do anything now so item four is the ordinance introduced for publication and ordinance making the proposed amendments to the zoning map as stayed in the ordinance and as shown in the associated map exhibit and parcels parcels lists for parcels outside the coastal zone and so i think those parcels are part of that map we like lee betler maybe you can comment on that sure thanks bonnie um can you pull that motion back up again please i was thinking that the first item within the motion covered that but yeah that's fine with that uh lee do you mean the motion that was just made or the staff recommendation motion the motion that was just made by council member mires thank you um you scroll up to the uh the first one uh or is that a friendly amendment uh here remove one one one one three sorry the first one yeah stay at the top it looks like number one there you go thank you remove one one one one three from the zoning map amendments yeah i i see that as inclusive of the um ordinance that you're referencing council member count sorry johnson thank you welcome okay are there any further questions on the motion on the floor can i just get confirmation that item one will then replace item five of the staff recommendation is that what you said okay all of it will yeah is there a question not to create any more confusion but just to be clear here so um i think if i'm looking at the original staff recommendations and the proposal item two would address item five original staff recommendation five and then um item one would replace item one just pull item one just just eliminates but i think that other motion needs to stay intact because there are it does need to stay intact this just i i chose to just remove this remove these lantern street parcels but the rest of that is a number four motion which should stay intact so again i was trying to pull the lantern street out as a separate set of motions and then i think the other ones still need action i didn't i wasn't planning to work through those but if but i can if if another member isn't but i would prefer another member before would have to be amended to just say as amended okay to reflect that item one because it's sort of like so staff recommendation number four would have to be amended to reflect council myer council member meyer's recommendation or motion number one that's right introduce for publication and ordinance making proposed amendments to the zoning map et cetera as amended as amended correct uh staff recommended the spot goes away yeah was that clear to everyone okay um okay so any other questions on that motion we'll move forward then with a vote may we have a roll call vote please council member calentary johnson aye boulder aye Cummings aye throne aye meyer's aye ice mayor whatkins aye and mayor brunner aye that motion passes unanimously and now we will continue with um the rest of the staff recommended motions one two three four six and seven sir anybody would like to make a motion on those items i'll do it i'll go ahead i got it i just want to make sure i have it correct okay so i'll go ahead and move the remainder of the items i was just wanting to say that i'm supportive of the of the hybrid proposal um now my paper's wrong in regards to the processes so let me make sure um so i will move the recommendation to reflect the agenda packet as presented in item number one um an item number two and and then i will modify item the recommendation in item number two or point number two to not include streamlined but to include the hybrid option because they have option one which is streamlined and i'm proposing the hybrid for big bigger project for bigger projects correct and then item number number three number four as amended from the prior motion removal of item number five given prior direction and proceed with six and seven i'll second that okay we have a motion by vice mayor whatkins seconded by council member calentari johnson any um further questions discussion council member comings i had a few comments and i actually was writing i was scribbling away which probably should have made this motion before but um i had incorporated some comments that i'd heard and you know i know that for many people myself included this has been a very confusing process it's a lot for anyone to take in and provide feedback on and so going into this process i thought we were really focusing on you know the exact objective design standards for new developments um but it it turned into a lot more than that including um zoning affordability heights you know things that i think many people weren't really expecting so i hope that in the future when these kinds of items come to us we can have more of a better description of what exactly we're going to be taking on when we're making these kinds of changes um one thing that was mentioned tonight that has me a little concern and i think it's something that needs to be like highlighted is that with regard to this you know process what was one of the things that came out in this discussion that was made clear is that the developers are the ones who are looking for a fast approval process not the community and i think it's really clear that you know if we want to have more community transparency um we really need to make sure that that option is available for people which is why i'm supportive of option number two um to clarify also there's a lot of discussion about regional housing needs assessment the rena numbers and this really doesn't have to deal with rena it really is to deal with the fact that state law has changed it's taken away us our ability to set objective and subjective standards on new developments and so now what the state law says is that we have to create objective standards for new developments which is around you know building articulation roofs things like that um and so it really doesn't impact the regional housing needs assessment and our ability to meet those goals um i had somewhat concerns to the Leonard Street neighbors and we took care of that unanimously so i'm very grateful for that support of that community um and then you know what was pointed out by the safe Santa Cruz group is that the council provided uh previous direction that was voted upon to preserve and protect residential neighborhood areas and existing city businesses as the city's highest priority level and encourage appropriate new residential and mixed use development specifically including enhanced affordable housing opportunities at appropriate locations along the city's main transit corridor and what was in our packet that was never discussed was addressing the affordable housing issues um there's a lot of things that were brought up in some of the policies but that is something that we really need to make sure that we have included as part of our objective standards so and some of these recommendations were made by the planning commission previously um i'm in support of them i know that the staff had disagreements but i've proposed a motion um and i'm i'm just going to propose as a substitute because there's way too much in there for it to be friendly amendments so i'm just going to propose as a sub yeah as a substitute motion i'm um i think it's doubtful that i'll get um support to approve it but i just want to make it on behalf of the many people who've been fighting for affordable housing um and the statements that have been made on our behalf about supporting affordable housing and so um i want to propose a number of uh changes to language since this is our first opportunity to make those changes as part of this um first reading of this ordinance so bonnie if you want to put the language up okay okay so um so i also want to add to this um that we include so within the motion we also include a direction that was previously provided by council but move that the staff recommend the staff recommendation be amended to add the following languages highlighted below to the ordinances two four point 08.1345 establishing low and moderate income occupancy add where appropriate and change to the numbering change the numbering to include the applicant shall arrange for the appropriate government agency to verify the rent that was charged the last time the unit was occupied and affordability of those units will be determined based on whichever tenant income or rent is lowest this has to deal with replacement unit housing to number three in the event that a tenant's income is not verified or the last rent charged cannot be verified the assumption shall be that the unit is occupied by a low and moderate income unit household add language to be vacant unit number two the applicant shall arrange to have the public housing authority verify the income of said tenant and arrange to have the appropriate government agency to verify the rent that was charged the last time the unit was occupied for the purposes of establishing low and moderate income housing units number three in the event that the most recent tenant cannot be located or identified and or the last rent charged cannot be determined the assumption shall be made that the unit was occupied by a low and moderate income household 2.24.08.1350 relocation assistance add language to say the relocation relocation assistance shall be defined as two months red add an equivalent market rate and the equivalent market rate security deposit 1a the basic requirement is that 100 percent of all low or moderate income bedrooms demolished or converted shall be replaced either on site or elsewhere in the city of Santa Cruz for combination of both 1e the basic 100 percent bedroom replacement requirement could utilize section 8 housing vouchers to cover the market rate cost for providing the subsidized units and make projects feasible section 24.16.020.8 basic onsite inclusionary housing requirement add the following language to the last sentence under number nine projects with a 30 density bonus shall have a 25 inclusionary requirement projects with a 50 density bonus shall have a 30 inclusionary requirement and then number two so that's that's all the language changes and it's largely to address the fact that the many council members our incoming mayor has stated that for example in the new south alloral plan that we would want a full density of those buildings to have 20 inclusionary affordable housing the way we can get there is by attempting to increase the the inclusionary requirement in projects that get done city bonuses what this also addresses is the fact that the way that the city determines whether or not a room that's going to be demolished is based on the income of the person who lived within that room not what that person is being charged so for example i live in an affordable unit i'm not on section eight if that unit gets demolished it is not going to be replaced by an affordable unit the changes in this language would address that because we're going to start seeing a lot of older buildings where people are being charged affordable rents but they don't fall into one of those like income the affordable housing programs we're going to see a loss of a lot of those units and if our job and our goal is to maintain affordable housing these changes can help address that and so the objective here is to really get at us trying to maximize the amount of affordable housing that's going to get built and require that if older buildings where people are being charged low rents are being taken offline that we're replacing those units in our community so that's the first part the second is addressing the street tree issues so move that the staff bring back an item to amend section 15.20.210 and 15.20.220 and 13.30.060 to require the city to be responsible for sorry it should be for the to consider the city to be responsible for damage to private property caused by city street trees. Number three we'll skip because we just took action on that one so that will be removed. Number four move to amend the staff recommendation to not change the zoning designations along the major transportation corridors except to conform to the specific density and floor area ratio designations in the general plan and then number five would be under the staff recommendation number two selecting option number two for conforming hearings that's it. I'm gonna second that and if I could ask a question so well first thank you for diving in on the relocation piece because we know that all of this new building is going to cause displacement we already see that we've seen projects come through and say oh of course we're going to make sure that the existing tenant has you know affordable housing once you approve our plans and then guess what they just renege on that and you know there are other many other examples that we can think of or at least I can spanning over 30 years now so thank you for that. I do have a question though on the the street tree the way that you're you're the language around the street trees because I I do have a concern about the potential liability but I also recognize that and and do not believe it's fair to place the responsibility for new street tree planting on property owners private property owners without some they have no say over what the city does in terms of that street tree planting so I would like to see some way forward I do worry about the potential liability issues and so I'm just wondering if we could hear about that and but I am seconding your motion so that that's my question. Can I make a quick comment on that before we jump in I think the the whole purpose was to and the reason why it says bring back an item to amend and to consider the city is that I think that the way its word is a little confusing but the idea is that the item come back for consideration to determine whether or not we want to see the city take on some responsibility for street tree damage to private property so I'm probably not the best person to comment on how decisions relating to the installation of street trees are made so I'll defer that to city staff the way I read the motion it would eliminate a liability protection that the city has and has had for almost two decades and so therefore it would have a significant fiscal impact in terms of increased liability increased liability premiums as well as presumably a staff time and equipment component that would be required to be implemented in order to reduce that risk of liability. I think I'll just leave it there because the reality of what's going to happen next year is you know I don't think that working this out is going to be particularly critical. I mean that being said it's a policy decision by the city council if that's the council's direction then that will just be have to be incorporated into budgeting. Sure I guess all I'm saying is I'm interested in exploring what the city can do to try to reduce that you know that potential challenge for property owners but trying to get into the weeds on it here on a motion that I believe the book has already been written on the vote sorry I just have to say that I'm it just there's no doesn't seem to be critical but I am very much interested in finding ways to address the concerns. I'd like to ask if Bonnie Bush can you also scroll back up there's a lot of recommendations in here and I just wanted to bring Lee Butler staff to comment on some of these impacts and how how that how from staff's perspective. Thank you Mayor Brunner a couple of things that I would point out here first the the planning commission did make a motion related to inclusionary housing requirements and I believe it's it's fairly similar to the bottom part of number one in in Council Member Cummings motion right there with the projects with the 30 density bonus shall have 25 percent it was it was similar to that right so I think that component is the the council can act upon I do have concerns with the the statements above being changes that any changes to the zoning ordinance that weren't contemplated that are are substantive you know can require planning commission review I would also say that and so so those changes may actually require planning commission review and recommendation but what I would say is I'm just looking at this for the first time this evening but in quickly looking at it I believe that state law already covers many of those items and so I might ask Matt Benoit to come up here and and taking a look at that Matt because he's one of our experts on the recent state laws did you see anything in that that isn't currently covered in state law that's not to say that we can't move forward with those changes at a later time if they do require planning commission approval to to make sure it's built into both our ordinance and the state law but just wanted to get your read on that I didn't see thank you Lee I didn't see anything directly that's not covering our state law currently the housing crisis act of 2019 which also passed with the housing accountability act which we've been talking a lot about tonight with you know no no net loss and things like that and the objective standards were part of that too the housing crisis acts also approved a number of these requirements as far as replacement housing and relocation assistance so in in each of these we are currently required under state law to verify rent if there is a replacement unit taking place as part of the development and if that if that rent is is considered a lower income or below a market rate then that is required to be replaced as part of the new development and if that if that rent cannot be verified there is already a process in place as well using the federal HUD data to determine what that what the percentage rent would be so for a project that was say was removing 10 units currently and none of the incomes could be verified there are percentages provided by the federal government as to how many of those units would have to be counted as very low income and low income in the in the future project so according to this motion this is saying all units would have to be determined is that the difference no that would still take place for any any project that's having replacement units every single unit being replaced would would go through that verification process and that's an important distinction it's the replacement units so some projects if they're not housing projects then this wouldn't apply is that correct Matt that's correct if it's not a housing project but it if it is if they are demolishing housing units and building new housing units on top of them they have to go through that state replacement process so there may be there could be distinctions in this that we could look to pick up when we update our our ordinance but i i don't think that i don't recall and Matt or Sarah can correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think that any of this was discussed at the planning commission i don't recall that being the case in which case you know we would and i can ask the city attorney to weigh in here on that as well but we would need to send changes like this back to the planning commission provided this was not considered by the planning commission when it when it reviewed the item then yes it would have to return to the planning commission for recommendation can you say that again a little louder yeah thank you mayor okay yes um if the planning commission has not reviewed this language previously then it would have to return to the planning commission for a recommendation and we can't determine that right now or have we determined that the planning commission i believe the planning director has looked at that and that it was not part of the material that was reviewed by the planning commission um i have not verified that myself these were not areas that were discussed with the planning commission it looks like kathryn had something to add yeah this was we did make some changes in the relocation assistance and state law has changed a lot recently and it's gotten incredibly complex and rather than reiterating all the changes in state law into our ordinance we made changes that simply referred back to the state law and i can't off the top of my head verify that each of these um changes that commissioner that council member comings has suggested are in the state law but it's very similar to what i remember all right so um council member calentari johnson um i i just wanted to clarify there was a part of the motion that i thought i heard lee say um was reviewed by the planning commission was that approved by the majority or not approved yes the part right there that's okay um and i i would lean on the team to see if that's the exact language um but there was a motion by the planning commission to recommend um higher inclusionary percentages for density bonus projects and staff had included a significant amount of detail in the august 23rd um report speaking to that staff is not recommending that we do that at this time the the issues there are are fairly complex as they relate to both the the amounts of inclusionary but also how that relates back to the density bonus and the levels of affordability that we get because right now at a 20 percent inclusionary at 80 percent am i developers are often choosing to go to a 50 density bonus and providing 15 of the units at very low income when we start upping that that inclusionary percentage then we are likely going to find that we're getting fewer very low income units um but that interrelation that interrelationship needs to be studied not only from what's going to happen with those but also what's going to happen with respect to the viability of those projects and whether or not we're going to actually get um projects that are um uh able to be built so that's right i am now recalling and i and i remember reading the specific examples that you brought up i think san francisco might have been an example that was in that agenda report um the other question did i hear correctly that this is the first time that you're seeing these proposed um changes in language director lee butler yes the the uh we're just seeing these this evening so with um with the detailed changes there so in terms of process i find that to be a little surprising given that we've had almost three months since the august 23rd session to meet with you um and to dive deep into um what we've heard what we've learned what changes we want to see this is a lot to digest that's coming in now when we've had three months um and if i'm understanding your comments earlier correctly that many of what's been proposed in that first part of the motion is covered by state law i haven't digested all of it yet um i think that some of it might not uh be um because of that um distinction in state law of only housing projects having to provide the replacement housing but i think um you know we would need to do a deeper dive into that to confirm and as as we all know state law is very complex particularly when it comes to this topic so we would need to to look at that very closely to see um if there are things that aren't covered by state law or if there things um that um we we could change to go above and beyond state law thank you i see sarah noisy also has her hand up i just wanted to confirm i went hold the minutes from the planning commission meeting and this motion did pass um so this was recommended by a majority of the planning commissioners in july of this last year and this was the same language thank you sarah thank you for confirming um i have council member Cummings and then council member Myers i was gonna um say that it's a little so what i'm hearing from city staff is that the state law changes occurred back in 2019 um that would account for some of the changes that were made but there have been projects that have come before the city council where we were told that the income of the individuals who lived in the houses if the rent was affordable and those people were not a part of any kind of affordable housing program that those demolished units would not have to be replaced as affordable um in addition to that the direction that was provided um as brought up by um save santa crews um really you know touched on the fact that we were supposed to work to make sure that we're maximizing the amount of affordable units in this plan and so it's i'm a little confused why that wasn't addressed and since we have all this ordinance language coming before us if state law changes were made it would have made sense that language was updated and so that also addresses the concerns that were brought up this evening and is why i brought those changes before us today i will say that i did also meet with the city staff and we focused a lot of that time on talking about Leonard street um and just getting information on a lot of these different things that we actually ran out of time to address some of these issues and as we've seen in our emails we've been getting a lot of correspondence kind of at the very last minute and it's our job to try to incorporate that into our decision making process that is partly why i'm bringing this forward today um and trying to see if we can find some way to take action on it and then again to the point that was just brought up the 30 percent density bonus um and inclusionary increases uh that was voted on by the planning commission and so that has received approval so just want to you know make sure that that's clear for people who are paying attention in the community okay council member Myers actually they are all go ahead and pass um uh my question kind of was answered so i'll thank you though council member brown i just want to add um that language has been before this body multiple occasions as well so it's not new be clear here council member Calentari Johnson i think the other thing that's been brought up is that we need to really do a study on this um and not pull numbers out of nowhere so i don't know where that could fit in and if that could be a part of this motion or the housing element revised but let's let's do a study and see what is actually doable so that we can increase if we can increase affordability we do that and we do it in a thoughtful way we do it with information council member brown we always propose a study um when we don't want to do something i find um and um you know and i've done that too so no you know i'm just saying that's a reality um but i want to just give a oh just a little uh a bit of a history here recent history which some of you may not be aware of but i'd like to just say it um we did a study uh the staff commissioned a study to look at the inclusionary housing percentage and um with the goal of reducing the inclusionary housing percentage which uh five to two council um a different five to two council uh then supported the city was then uh sued and in a settlement agreement uh agreed to return to the 15 percent which the study told us would not be feasible for developers they said 15 percent is not feasible and got the council to reduce the inclusionary percentage to 10 percent once sued and uh settled the staff came back and said we found a way to make this work so i have to say that um my faith in those studies that are done by on behalf of and for developers do not necessarily give us the reality they give us one model of what might what things might look like they do not take into account uh land values land acquisition costs other costs cost they do not take into account variations across different um circumstances and um i believe that the best way to find out if it's going to work or not is to try it and if it doesn't as uh council member golder asked earlier we can always make a change council member Cummings and i guess i'll just say my last comment again is that um these concerns have not only come up in the past but we did provide direction um for staff to um you know encourage appropriate new residential and mixed use development specifically including enhanced affordable housing opportunities this has been going on for years as has been pointed out by the staff it's in our agenda it should have been um it should have been explored during that process and so we lost the opportunity if the if the idea is that we should do a study um and to council member browns point you know we can take action on this and we can see how it works and if it doesn't work we can always come back to it but um there's a lot of housing in our community that's going to be demolished in the next you know few months to years and uh we keep saying we want to increase the production of affordable housing we want to maintain affordable housing and this was one way we can do it um i'd like to call on council member mires and director lee buttler i feel like we're sort of off i think we've drifted kind of into a discussion about affordable housing which i think um we've spent many many years on trying to we i mean we we spent an entire year doing assessment of housing issues in santa cruz under a former mayor then we had a housing blueprint subcommittee and there was about i believe about i don't know lee correct me i want to say there was at least 90 actions that came out of the housing blueprint which was basically optimizing all these different issues that we're discussing tonight um i believe that you know at least in my time on the city council we have been methodically working through those including new adu laws all kinds of things that were in the housing blueprint so we have this blueprint and and for some reason it doesn't seem to exist in some people's mind you know and it and it's it is a policy document that was established by this council it has a number of actions in it that i know our our know our planning staff have been diligently working through it at the same time every year the state of california drops a whole another set of regulations some of which we then try to basically sort of put into a motion that basically state laws already taking care of it so i'm kind of confused on kind of where we're doing but we do have a policy document it's called the housing blueprint and it talks about preservation of existing housing it talks about production of housing and you know with regards to the the kaiser marston study that was done i know that was that had just been completed when i was got on city council it was very clear why the ten percent exclusionary was used for downtown and fifteen percent i believe or it was either fifteen percent downtown and ten percent outside of downtown i can't remember which one it was lee you would know it was a higher report um and the actual lawsuit that was referred to was actually a lawsuit on an approved housing development that we basically did settle we then due to a settlement agreement we raised our inclusionary despite the fact that we had a high housing financial study that said keep your i think it's ten percent downtown rightly it was it was fifteen percent downtown ten percent ten percent the rest of town so we we get through a lawsuit we get to this percentage that has no backing but i want the public to be really i want them to be very aware of what happened with that development that development also provided a adjacent piece of property which is next to the pacific station metro station downtown that piece of property was then utilized and put together with other parcels downtown and we have hundred percent affordable unit projects going in because of that other development so there's no more redevelopment agencies and south in california anymore we're not using our tax dollars to build housing like we did for the tannery and other projects that were built years ago before the 2008 recession jerry brown just killed redevelopment so what we are left with we are left with the private sector of building other affordable housing however i would also point out that the city has been incredibly successful thanks to our you know housing both housing group in economic development and housing in our planning department and we are getting affordable units built now we are getting affordable units you know up and running we hopefully will survive metro and we will have another 125 units of very low income housing coming into our downtown so to say that the studies don't provide guidance they do there's examples of how this is working i just don't i don't agree with maybe that's maybe that is true in some people's world but it's you know ratcheting up our inclusionary is not necessarily going to result in any additional affordable housing um there's we don't have a study that says that and if we are spending city dollars to either help finance projects or buy properties or do anything else we better be under we better understand that that that the that the actual outcome is is what we need as a community but we have leveraged a lot of resource into over a couple of hundred units of housing for people who really need housing and i don't think we should overshadow that with this discussion around how we're not getting anything done we are getting a lot done and i want to recognize our staff for that um and we do have a policy document it's called the housing blueprint so let's dust it off and figure out where we are where we're at because i know our staff's been working through that thank you thank you uh lee butler thanks mayor brunner for the opportunity to chime in here i'll try to be brief um a couple things that i'd want to say i've got a lot of thoughts that i could share on the inclusionary hints and so forth but suffice to say that um when that inclusionary rate was changed um what we saw as the implication of that was the vast majority of projects particularly the large projects are now using density bonus right and the density bonus those affordable units um are the inclusionary units do not apply to the density bonus units they just apply to the base project pursuant to state law and so um there is an important uh interplay between you know what we do with the inclusionary and what happens with the density bonus um and then i just wanted to state that the council has um provided direction back in june of this year um to include um and i said uh staff to analyze and consider the following policies or actions for inclusion in the housing element and one of those was um evaluate whether alternative inclusionary approaches may produce more affordable housing or deeper levels of affordability options to consider include alternative including inclusionary percentages based on differing levels of affordability or incentivizing land dedication versus provision of units on site following this evaluation consider whether changes to the inclusionary regulations should be proposed now that that study itself i want to be clear that study itself isn't necessarily a part of the housing element and likely will not be a part of the housing element what that what the direction is is to include that as a policy or action and so there may be some ability to do some study but um essentially that would also be saying like this is something we should be doing and frankly you know we we can look at this on an ongoing basis you know council member rown's comments about things changing and uh different parts of the city having different um implications we that's that's correct that was what we found as part of that downtown analysis versus outside of the downtown and there are also changes that affect this significantly with respect to like the state law changing with uh with regards to density bonus with market rate projects now being eligible for 50 density bonus whereas previously they were only eligible for 35 density bonus that's made a big difference in the ability for projects to move forward or not so just wanted to to provide that additional information for the council's consideration council member Cummings thank you director butler um and for reminding us about the housing element direction i do again though want to point out that prior to that direction the city council in um in relation to the item that's before us provided direction to encourage appropriate new residential and mixed use development specifically including enhanced affordable housing opportunities as part of um what's before us today and we have that ordinance language before us um the the planning commission has you know weighed in numerous times on this and the reason why these changes are being made right now is because we provide direction and sometimes the city staff acts on it and sometimes they don't and that's why many people have had issues with trusting our city government um it's why we continue to see division it's why you know our city employees don't trust um you know the decisions that are being made by council or sometimes what's being made what's being said by the city manager no offense matt i know you're new but you know this is the the trust issue is something that needs to be addressed and we could have addressed this um you know over the few years that this has been studied and that this has been before the public and it hasn't been and that's the you know reason why this language is being proposed today this evening and it's not to say that we have made a lot of progress i will say on affordable housing and in part we are actually getting the 15 percent um within projects as a result of inclusionary and new projects as a result of us passing the 20 inclusionary increase because before with the density bonus at 15 percent we were only getting a full density of 11 percent so i just want to make sure that that's clear to the public and then also just you know again restate that we did provide direction on this um previously and a lot of people feel like that they weren't heard nice mayor walkins um well i have a lot to say on this but i do know that we've had this conversation as far as i've witnessed several times over the over the years and i know that members of the community are really interested in the action that we're here before us to take um i you know i don't feel comfortable bringing us back to the substitute motion i don't feel comfortable with the language i think that given what we heard from the staff in regards to some of the state law and um not having adequate time to analyze it as well as some of the legal liabilities associated with the proposed changes to the street tree ordinate or street tree direction i personally if we're ready to kind of get going on that i feel like i won't be supportive of the substitute motion um i do want to speak to something that i keep thinking about that councilmember brown brought up which was um in regards to fear mongering and um they're at that accusation and i i you know i don't want to speak to anybody's intentions around um what they're hoping to accomplish but i will say when something is phrased a certain way like to save something from something there is an implication of a threat and so i think if we're wanting to be really clear with language i think that's important for us to really be aware of and so i just wanted to um to share that because it was something that was on my mind given that comment but given where we're at in the evening and knowing a number of people are waiting for us to make direct make a decision here i think i'll just say that i won't be supporting the substitute motion and i'm happy to go back to the original motion thank you are there any uh final comments before we take a vote on the substitute motion okay maybe we have a roll call vote on the substitute motion no boulder no vice mayor watkins no mayor brooder no that motion does not pass five to two and so now we are at um the original motion that is on the floor there was a a motion that was passed by made by uh vice mayor Watkins seconded by councilmember calentary johnson and that was a motion um with the staff recommendations um except changing item two from option one streamline to option three hybrid i didn't know if you were pointing or raising your hand uh councilmember Cummings yeah i just want to say um i do want to acknowledge the staff's work on all this it's been a long time and um we do need to move forward with you know building design objective standards so that we you know don't get gigantic cinder blocks popping up in neighborhoods um so that part of this i'm very supportive of and the work that was done on that um however you know the density of what's before us today and uh it seems like there were some pieces that were added at different points in time a lot of people felt like uh they didn't get the full picture with enough time to provide adequate comment um i will also just say as a comment on um what's before us and kind of the process it's based on the in the in the agenda report i think it was mentioned that at the most recent meeting that was held on this only 12 people showed up and we've been receiving you know close to a hundred or more uh comments on this item which leads me to believe that you know when it comes to these kinds the outreach that's done around these kinds of items we really need to have a better way to communicate this with the community because we know that this is extremely important um the Leonard street neighbors have come out to us and they were shocked to find out about it i think when this was heard back in August and so you know we really i think we really need to do a better job of trying to engage the community and if it seems like what we're doing isn't working then maybe trying to figure out what's the best process to get better engagement and better comments on these times of items and so um i'm while i am supportive of the objective design standards moving forward based on everything that's being incorporated into this and some of the feedback we've been hearing from the community i'm not going to support um the motion that's before us um and i'm glad that we were all able to come together around the how we addressed the Leonard street neighborhood so i'll leave my comments there and we can go ahead and vote councilmember calentari johnson i just wanted to make some comments um as well um i wanted to just acknowledge the years of work that staff have put into this i want to acknowledge all of the community members who came here tonight and spoke and community members who called in um and i think there is fear because things are changing and change is scary um i know that we're not always in agreement with policy directions but it's important that we acknowledge i mean i you know we we just had a measure on our um ballots that i think to some was trying to stop change and it overwhelmingly did not pass so we have to embrace that change is coming but how we work together and how we move forward with change can do a lot for staying in integrity with what we want for our community so i just i want to acknowledge that yes there's fear because change is scary and the unknown is scary but um i'm hopeful that we can work together and and may create the community that we want um there's a need for housing there's a need for us to do it with as much local control as possible given what's happening at the state that's a backlash of past policy decisions that we've made so it's it's moving forward and and um continuing to engage with the community so again just want to thank staff and thank everyone who came out tonight and previous nights and you know we've had three months between the first session of this being forward and now um and i've communicated and connected with a lot of people so just thank you all thank you um this really is aligning our zoning code with our general plan and i know that we've had a small percentage of community members very engaged in this process reading the materials and taking time to give feedback and input and a lot of that has been incorporated and taken into um consideration and um we have to really um you know with with the staff recommendations i know it's taken many um thoughtful hours of incorporating all of that um into the recommendations um i would have even voted for the streamlined option one um because i really feel that would have given the most local control but i will be supporting this motion um the hybrid option um is something that i feel comfortable for a successful path forward for our community and for our housing needs um it's very clear that um our community wants uh more controls and this is the way to get there um and so thank you for the staff uh to the staff um for getting us to some very clear points through lots of materials and um i will pass it on did you have a comment anybody else council member golder i kind of echo the sentiments that you just expressed mayor in that and a little bit of what you shared as well and that you know this is a path forward to get more control right down them we could have um every single family residence could be up to i don't know what it is is it 30 feet or 28 feet but it's not and so it is scary to think that these things could happen but i think in all likelihood the town people acquiring these parcels and this development happening to what some people are afraid of including myself within my lifetime is probably slim to none but i just think that moving forward with giving us a maximum control as allowed by state law will help keep neighbors and community members feeling the trust and um with that with that i'm supportive of the motion okay um may we have a roll call vote please council members calentary johnson i holder i come in no round no pliers all right vice mayor what can i and mayor brooder i that motion passes five to two and that concludes our meeting for uh today november 15th 2022 we will be meeting again for a special meeting on november 29th i believe at 4 30 but that will be posted on this city website four four o'clock thank you have a wonderful evening