 Is it here? Here? Thank you. Are there any members of the public like any items on the closed session agenda? I will go out to attendees list. Raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or select stand on the webinar attendees. Is it another two seconds? No, we have a couple on early. They're not your closed session. I believe they're with down. So I just wanted to let you know that I'll do this right now. Okay, much. And they can return for public portion. We have one attendee turn if you are curious on any item in the closed session agenda. You can press star nine, raise your hand or select stand on the webinar call on your phone. We will bring it to the attendees now. I'm going to get back to you. For closed session item, and I am waiting, are we ready for closed session? Okay, I'm looking for a motion on agenda item one referral to closed session owned at parcel at 90 meters. Council member beans. I'll move that item to closed session. Motion by beans. Seconded by Myers. I will now ask her to take a roll call vote. Motion passes unanimous. Through a referral to closed session for discussion regarding at least price terms both of city owned vacant parcel at 90. This meeting is adjourned in 1130 a.m. session of the March 8,022 meeting of the city council. And I would like to ask her to please call roll. Right on here. First, I'd like to start this meeting by taking a moment of silence for Koldarena and innocent lives taken by the Russian military invasion in the Ukraine and those living their darkest hours. Have a few seconds. Moment of silence. Thank you. And I would now like to get in. Council member Cummings, have your hand raised. Thank you, Mayor, and thank you for a moment of silence acknowledging happening in Ukraine. I have received a number of communications from any members and been asking what city to do in response and some suggestions have been made around sending letters to our representatives, essentially, the Ukrainian government, Russian government. And I just wanted to know whether or not I'd be able to put an item on a future agenda that would ratify any communications that you might want to send knowing that there's a lot of urgency or if we could have an item based on a future agenda that would allow the council to weigh in on whether or not it would be appropriate. Thank you, Council Member Cummings. Thank you, Council Member Cummings. There is a draft letter and an agenda for March 22nd meeting. Thank you. Also, I don't know if anybody else is getting this, but I'm getting a back move of today's meeting on my, and I don't know if anybody else. I'll figure that out. Thank you. Council Member Golder. Yeah, I just wanted to also thank you. I had to talk to the city manager regarding this, and I think it's super important to remember that originally our sister city of Aleutia was part of the Soviet Union when we came their sister city decades ago, and then they were part of Ukraine up until the last Russian invasion when Crimea was taken over by Russia. And prior to that, I had two different delegations of Ukrainian professionals from our sister city in Aleutia and one from Kiev would stay with me for I think almost a month, each of them. And it's just really, you know, I also feel like a super strong connection. That was why, you know, I originally joined sister cities was from writing letters as a pen pal to students over there as an elementary school student and it's just, I would wonder if anybody from the sister cities committee has reached out to any of our prior delegations that have gone out there. And so if any direction can go back to sister cities to ask them to reach out, I've reached out to the people that stayed with me and I just, I don't know if they could report back with any news. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you, councilmember Kolder. Councilmember Cummings. I'm going to say that I've emailed it went out to the mayor with sister city members included. I was also able to attend a meeting this weekend and a retreat and there was discussion around what to do moving forward. So I would just recommend mayor maybe reach out to some of the members and maybe the chair they could fill you in on that meeting. But I think that one thing that came out was that it sounded like there was a clear interest in seeing the city express our opposition. I just wanted to put out there that it might be worth following up with them to try to figure out what to do. Thank you, councilmember Cummings. Okay. We're ready then to continue with our agenda. And I would like to move on to our first presentation, which is the downtown street scene presentation. We will have Genevieve Lucas Conwell and the senior project manager and Jocelyn Cran director of downtown street team with a presentation. Welcome Genevieve. And Jocelyn, I see there you are. Welcome to this meeting. Hi. Thank you so much for having us. I'm going to share my screen so we can just start the presentation. Well, first off, happy international women's day. Thank you, Sonia, for the start of the meeting with a moment of silence for Ukraine. Super important. So like mentioned, I'm Genevieve. I'm the senior project manager at downtown street team in Santa Cruz. And then I'm just going to be talking a little bit about what we do, how we do it, and where we are currently and where we hope to go. First and foremost, I kind of want to talk a little bit about where we come into play with the current state of homelessness in Santa Cruz. So right now from the, as we all know, the time count happened before the pandemic. So I'm going to be talking a little bit about the statistics and how our model helps to support our current folks. So from the point in time count in 2019, we do know that there's over 2100 folks experiencing homelessness estimated in Santa Cruz County and the primary events that led them to this was 26% of them lost their job and 18% of them actually were evicted. This is all from time count again. So there was only a few surveys that were from the estimated count that were actually reached. So of course all of these are estimates from what we know. So where and how does downtown street team actually play into supporting our homeless population here in Santa Cruz? So our model is a community first model. This is a beautiful function with our other part that our housing first model. This is how we play a part in supporting our folks experiencing homelessness. When we first were founded in 2005 in Palo Alto, our CEO Eileen was part of a survey that was conducted to folks experiencing homelessness in the area. And the survey asked what is the worst part about your population? And the answers came to be that the isolation of homelessness was the worst part about being homeless. And so that is where the need for our model kind of came about. Where we saw that building a community first for folks was really kind of the central part and part of what we do. So as you all may know, you see our yellow shirts walking around those folks wearing the yellow shirts and they volunteer to beautify Santa Cruz. They volunteer four hours a day, five times a week, Monday through Friday, all around town. And while they volunteer with us, they receive a non-cash basic needs stipend. They have access to a case manager, employment services, and while they are on the team, we help them support, expand their support network so that we're not just the only service providers supporting them, but they also have doctors, dentists, any other partners that we can figure out that can help build their net of support. So a little bit about our basic needs stipend. It's right in the title. Our hope is to help support their needs so that they can get to their wants. We want to lift them out of survival mode so that they get into goal setting mode. There is, of course, a list of barriers that can sometimes stop them from getting to goal setting mode. So our case managers are there to support in areas such as obtaining vital documents, meeting with primary care physicians. If they're new to the area, supporting them and getting to know the area, getting to know where are their local services where they get a hot meal. While they're also on the team, our non-cash basic needs stipend covers food, storage, rent if they have any, phone bills, transportation as well. So anything that they might absolutely need to help them get to the place where they want to go. The first step into joining our team is going to our weekly success meeting. So it's in the title. It's every Thursday at 12 o'clock at the Little Red Church on center. And we are folks that are new to the team. It's a chance for them to not only get to meet current team members, chat with the leads there, chat with me, chat with your case managers. It's also a chance for them to celebrate any successes that they might have, something as small as I smoked one less cigarette. I got employment, I got housing. So it's a platform for them to kind of speak about what's going on in their life if they want to. And also to feel lifted. It's definitely the heart and soul of what we do if you've never been to weekly success meeting. This is our invitation here right now to come. And since we have started in 2017, we have grown, which is beautiful to see. We've grown from our downtown team to the levees. We've expanded our downtown team starting yesterday, which is really exciting. We are at the beach, Cowles Beach. We're going to be in midtown coming in about two weeks on the 28th. We're in Emmeline, Harvey West. We're also in the North County area. So we are in Felton as well as Scott's Creek, which is not in the picture. We tried to get all the pictures in, but we have what we have. So with this extension, we're going to have the ability to, and to 50 team members, which is really exciting. It's more people that we can support. And we're very excited about it. So I'm going to take a little bit moment of speaking to our impact that we've had since we've come to town almost five years in August. And so some of the barriers have jumped a little too quickly. So in 2021, we've had removed over 150,000 pounds of debris in Santa Cruz, as well as over 5,000 needles. Barriers to self-sufficiency is one of our metrics that we use. Barriers to self-sufficiency, you can think of how many resumes that we've helped people build. How many jobs have been applied to any, you know, have we helped them with expansion their record? Have we increased their number of jobs, expansion their record? Have we increased their access to transportation? IDs, vital documents, any of that. So we've had over 200, almost close to 300 barriers removed. Transformational barriers, we have 25, so transformational barriers are both self-gun housed, unemployed, have they gone and seek higher education? All of those are transformational barriers. We have removed over 700,000 pounds of debris in Santa Cruz County. We've removed 23,000, over 23,000 needles, over 1,000 barriers removed, had over 100 transformational barriers and over 500 folks have gone through our program since we've been here. A little bit about how people actually feel about our program. Here we have the ability to conduct an anonymous survey, just kind of, you know, take the polls, how are people feeling about our programs or anything that we can do better. So these are some of the answers that we've put together from the 2021 survey results. So 93% of survey participants feel that their case managers are compassionate and trustworthy and able to help achieve polls. 100% of survey participants feel that their project is fair, respectful, and available. 92% of survey participants stated that their involvement with DST has decreased the quantity or improved the quality of interactions with law enforcement slash the court system. 100% of survey participants agree that participating in DST has improved their self-esteem, motivation, and hope. And 100% of survey participants feel good giving back to their community and helping others. That's definitely one of the most important ones that we wanted to stick to because our model is so concentrated on not only coming to work and having something to do every day, but being a part of a community. I mean, of course we're a community-first model. Our whole hope is to not only serve our unhoused population, but how can we bridge unhoused and housed population. So quick final. Really quick ways to get involved is just saying hi. Not only to our team, you have some team members that count how many guys and things, thank yous they get because that's something special that they love getting. But also anybody that is unhoused I think when we see the current situation within our community, I think there's just more bridge community version that we can do and it's just something as simple as getting to know each other. Weekly success meeting for downtown streets team is every Thursday at 12 p.m. So like I mentioned invitation is still good. You can absolutely come by. We have meals and we will absolutely celebrate you. I can maybe even do a little dance when you come in. Those are for the special ones, but everyone's just kidding. My contact information if you have any questions is right here below and our wonderful director is also on the call and that is as well with that that is end of my presentation and I will stop sharing. Thank you so much Genevieve and did you want to say anything Heather. No I'm just thank you for giving us the time to present and Genevieve really was our representation so thank you all. Please stay on I see a couple hands up so I'd like to bring it out to the council for any questions or comments. Does the council member Myers. Justine and I just want to thank you for setting today. I've dipped in and out of being involved with the ESPN great fun work with folks the natural resource program we had for a couple years for the COVID sort of made change but I just think your statistics know that about relationships and helping people get out of home if you believe that full bar solitary and on their own not able to connect with people can help guide them. So I for really telling and it's also telling especially on the impact that homeless a lot of most great on the just appreciate your work so that you're here and I know you're also in so I'm thrilled that you guys are here on this though that you are part a big part of this. Thank you so much very very kind of I also remember coming I just wanted to echo my appreciation for all the work we've all done and actually before the pandemic I had an opportunity to go to one of the six weekly success meetings and it was just great to see you know how far some come and how the people are about wanting to better and you know get the different church move up in the program and so it's really great work and it goes with participants I did have one question I know that you pointed out that there are about 500 or so people who and I was just curious about what are the outcomes for those people where you see people going like how many improving their lives and moving on to having housing those who maybe fall out of the program and I know that there's some people who probably come in and out for a variety of reasons but they just be good to kind of understand of the 500 people come in what does success look like I think that's a great question and thank you for the appreciation from both you and Council Member Myers I don't have the statistics right in front of me but I do have them available I can absolutely send them your way it completely varies from the top of my head I can tell you some of them absolutely get employment some of them it's the right time for them to fully come into the program so they come back again but I'll get you those statistics so that they can say a little bit more thanks thank you Council Member Kellan Terry Johnson thank you yes and I'll ditto what my colleague said thank you for this presentation and for all the work and anytime I across a downtown person in our community they are always so friendly and so engaged so you're doing a wonderful job and they're doing a wonderful job I had a similar question Council Member Cummings but wondering if you could share a little bit more about transformational barriers and what that looks like and removing of those barriers yeah so transformational barriers they are like I mentioned they're the hard ones to get they are the ones that are going to take some time to do for example housing is a big one I can speak to for example we had a few of our team members on one of the slides that recently got housing and I think they're a perfect example as to how it takes the village to really support our team and it was an only with downtown streets team it was with encompassed services it was with wings we all collaborated together to support these folks so I think that example is a really good one transformational barriers is of course it's housing of course it's employment there's also other ones like expungement of records and getting education certification of other ones right now but I'll definitely get you the full list of barriers and there is a breakdown you've gotten housing to higher education et cetera so I can get that list great well that gives a good picture of it and I'm looking forward to coming to a weekly success meeting and hope we can do a little dance let's do it I love it thank you thank you so much I think we see the community first model from your teams and and very of the work and the change that it creates I know I've talked to many folks from through the program and a couple of them who have graduated program and it's just wonderful so thank you for all the work you're doing definitely notice thanks for sharing with us your presence thank you guys alright we are now I'd like to take a moment and acknowledge National Women's Day Copy International Women's Day and we have it's also Women's History Month so I will this moment to read through a proclamation whereas the month of March has been designated by presidential proclamation honor contributions women have made over the course of American history women of every race class, cultural and ethnic background have made historic contributions to our nation and world countless recorded and unrecorded way and whereas women play a critical role in every facet of life constitute a significant portion of the labor workforce both inside and outside home the 2020 Women's History Month team is providing healing promoting hope both attribute to this work of caregivers and frontline workers during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and also a recognition of the thousands of ways that women of all cultures have provided both healing and hope throughout and whereas women have served as early leaders in dancing movements for social and economic justice equal opportunity to write both abolition of slavery civil rights, human rights the environment and whereas there is a long record of local activism in Santa Cruz for the right opportunity contributions of women including an early appearance of separate activists Susan B. Anthony in 1869 Loretta Loret would the first woman city council member and mayor in Santa Cruz in 1971 who advocated for pregnant teachers not be fired and the literature of the recently deceased bell foot along with outstanding contributions by local women and personally every area of human endeavor and whereas despite these incredible contributions that women have made in our world and in our community for achievements and importance has consistently been undervalued overlooked social systems and most common records and whereas celebrating the importance of women and their impact in our world every day across the full spectrum of endeavors science, community, government art, sports medicine, environment education, economy and more has a huge impact on the development of self-respect and opportunities for girls and young women so that they may be fired to write the next chapter's history and whereas day on March 8 International Women's Day the theme break the bias honor the cultural, political social, economic achievement of women around the world and throughout history and to cultivate an ongoing commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and now therefore I, Sonia Brunner, Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz to hereby proclaim the month of March 2022 as Women's History Month in the City of Santa Cruz and call upon our community and institutions to recognize the incredible contribution women have made and celebrate generations of women who have shaped our history and continue to advance gender equity I also invite all citizens to visit our Santa Cruz Public Libraries and local bookstores learn more about Women's History Month event important contributions women in our history thank you alright thank you as we move on I have a few announcements and we will move the regular meeting today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website CityofSantaCruise.com if you wish to comment on an agenda item today call in at the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on instruction on your screen please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen to 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 when it is time for public comment please raise your hand either by dialing star 9 on your phone or selecting raise hand on our calls on your screen please note public comment is heard only on items council is taking action on and not regular updates items that will be open for public comment during this meeting are numbers 8 through 20 with the exception of items 15 and 19 on our address I'd like to ask council members if there are any statements of disqualification today none I'd like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions and deletions I'd like to call on the city attorney to provide a report on the closed session good afternoon mayor brunner members of the city council the city council met in closed session this morning at 10 30 a.m. via zoom prior to going into closed session by motion the council added a real proper negotiations item the property at 9 15 cedar street the closed session agenda items discussed in the closed session were a conference with labor negotiators the city council received a report from its chief negotiator Lisa murphy concerning labor negotiations involving all bargaining a there was item 3 on your agenda is real proper negotiations concerning the property at 9 15 cedar street that the council added the agenda or referred to closed session prior to closed session council received a report from gave to its chief negotiator concerning the potential lease price terms of payment for both and lastly there was an item of pending litigation case entitled city of arcada at all versus gas and electric company pending in the san francisco superior court council received a report from city attorney's office and outside special counsel Michael colin to know there was no reportable act in the closed session thank you city council will now review the meeting calendar attached to the agenda and revise it as necessary I'll call on the city court to provide any updates calendar thank you next up is the consent agenda these are items through 13 on our agenda for members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in if you want to comment on any of the items 8 through 13 and 8 8 is resolution authorizing the city continue conferencing public meetings 9 are the minutes of the February 22 2022 city council meeting 10 is support for california senate bill 843 taxation renters credit 11 is war for enforcement project plans emergency escalator rehabilitation authorization to award 13 is the central close community energy member agency planning implementation and innovation grant program grant acceptance authorization and appropriation please remember to mute your streaming device raise your hand by calling on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is passed by a council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to comment on any items council member coming comment for number 10 item 10 support for california senate bill 843 taxation renters credit anybody else okay you want to go forward with oh council member mires I don't have any other I'm sorry I don't have any I have to take comment thank you I will thank you council member coming council member coming thank you mayor I just wanted to want to express thanks appreciation for maria lena de la garza we actually brought this for our attention for senate bill 843 taxation renters credit this provides well it's not a lot of support the tax credit hasn't been updated since the 70s and this would well it's not a relief for renters who are in that very low class and I also wanted to thank council member and mayor for supporting putting this on the agenda and hopefully our support for this should pass taken into account when this is under consideration on our state level that's all the comments I had thank you for your comment council member coming we will now bring it out to public comment a star 9 raise your hand on any of the agenda items 8-13 I see attendees however no one has their hand raised I will bring it back to council making sure I will bring it back to council for motion I'm happy to move the consent agenda or second it if council member mayors want to make the motion either way council member Watkins I'm happy I'll do the second I'll go ahead and move the agenda 8-13 we have a motion by member Watkins seconded by council member mayors and I ask the clerk for a roll call vote council member Johnston hi mayor Watkins hi motion passes unanimously thank you thank you next up on our agenda is item number 14 public hearing for small housing unit general plan downtown plan local coastal plan and zoning ordinance of state for members of the public for streaming this if this is an item you'd like to comment on now is the time to call in questions 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 return to council for deliberation and action we have I will bring it over now to our planning department I believe we have Butler here is Sarah Noisy also has been okay see Sarah and Matt welcome and I will now hand it to you for that item thanks very much mayor I'm going to give a brief introduction to this item and then hand it over to Sarah and Matt and I wanted to thank Sarah and Matt for working on this work that stemmed from the housing subcommittee and the recommendations that came from the housing subcommittee that then mayor chase as well as vice mayor and council member Brown who are still with us on the council and we had a number of comments from the community and so I wanted to address Sarah is going to go into more detail but I wanted to broadly address those there were some concerns about additional units that could come online as a result of this and the CEQA implications associated with this and I just wanted to note that this number of dwelling units is already allowed under our current regulations through the single room occupancy allowance and in fact single room occupancies those units can actually be smaller and so they would actually result in more of those units and there wouldn't be additional massing associated with this proposal it would be the same development standards apply whether or not rules move forward I do think that this is a creative approach that the team has taken here to addressing the direction that came from the housing that came out of the housing committee and was given as direction from the council back in 2018 or so and I also think that this will help us our general plan and meet our rena targets the regional housing needs assessment targets they would be subject to the 20% inclusionary ordinance requirements and there were some concerns about does this meet the needs of family and at 650 square feet you can actually get a two bedroom unit in 650 square feet and so that would allow for smaller families to have a relatively more affordable option just given the square footage particularly over time as they come online and as they age Sarah is going to speak to you also about some of the details about what we've got now in our housing stock and what we've got with the single family and apartment units in our community and there were some concerns about mixed use and uses that would or would not be allowed and I want to say that is also a very significant concern that we have and something that we really want to promote is maintaining that commercial component both so that we can retain our small businesses as well as for the environmental benefit that come along with having a commercial and retail and job component in close proximity to our housing I want to point out that these would not in the community commercial zoning district residential only projects can be developed right now and so this would not be changing that and I think that was part of the confusion in some of the public comments Sarah is going to speak to that in detail we are actually requiring a mix component in other portion in our downtown and in the beach south of Pearl area and so Sarah will get into those details but wanted to clarify that and for those folks that are interested in maintaining that commercial on our objective standards process we're going to be bringing that information forward to the council in the next few months here and that will be identifying when and where commercial are required when and where live work unit are required for mixed use and when and where residential may be allowed in and of itself so at its basic level this new unit type flexible density units is pretty similar to the SRO the table room occupancy units there are a couple of new differences they can't be as small mentioned how there can be more SRO's but they can be larger can be up to 650 feet which that's what matches with the current small ownership currently allowed it can be rented or sold which is a little bit different you know with SRO's they're just rentals with SOU's small ownership units just ownership so that's the difference the ownership status and then we're also proposing that it can be mixed with other units and those are the big key differences and hopefully that helps frame the detail that we'll get from Sarah as she dives into I mean I could just run presentation and you could just thanks for that introduction as we mentioned I'll get into a little bit more detail here and hopefully this will address a lot of the questions I know I've read all the correspondence that came in and so hopefully I do think some of it is kind of misunderstanding what we're proposing so hopefully we can at least clarify those pieces of it for everyone today so I will go ahead and share everyone see that pressure Lee mentioned that we are at this point responding excuse me as part of the housing blueprint work that was done a few years ago specifically this was direction relating housing supply housing production the direction was staff should view state laws for the efficiency units and share those small ownership units and single room operating regulations that's whether city code changes are needed to help promote the production of smaller units and a variety of housing I just want to pause a minute here and talk about why this might have been part of the direction that was part two bedrooms and larger and the remainder those smaller units are zero and one bedroom right that represents a pretty decent with our demographic in which according to our housing element you know our housing element is pulling from data so I think this trend has probably increased in the last you know census cycle but we had over 30% of our households for single people they were people living alone in over a third of our house then there is some other that's also two person families couples single parents and so there really is indeed in our community for meeting that demand for people who are interested in living alone and not for being able to rent exactly as much space as they're actually to use and occupy so I think that is a key piece of why small units are components that we need to catch up on we haven't been meeting that demand very well it doesn't make sense to meet that demand with a single family home and a lot of our you know Santa Cruz so this is one more tool that we're proposing to kind of add to the toolbox all of these small unit types could really address some of that need for these small households go into a little bit more background definition so we have two a local unit type it was created here in Santa Cruz for 15 years ago it requires that it's a full dwelling so it has a full kitchen, a full bathroom the code is written now the intention is that these units will be for sale and the way that's modified is that a minimum of 50% of the units have to be for sale you can't rent more than 50% of the units at any given moment these units are a little bit larger than really micro units the SOUs range 400 square feet all the way up to 650 square feet they're currently limited to having only one bedroom and there is no density limit that applies to these unit types that exist today is regulated by site standards that's how projects determine how much how many units can fit on a site they have height, they have setback open space standards and all of those things kind of the single room occupancy is our other type of small unit this type of a single room occupancy or an SRO is a type of housing that you will find all over the country they've been in place for many many decades history of needing transitory housing lodging houses but then they also have kind of progressed as these have shifted to being sort of an entry level housing unit in some part tighter urban housing markets 200, 220 square feet our feet are larger I retain a full set of habitability features so after 220 square feet every unit has to have its own kitchen and its own bathroom but when the units are smaller than that typically throughout the country they're rented or in our code for quite as they can be they allow them to be as 400 square feet and in a project a development proposal they have to have an average of 345 square feet for smaller currently no density limit and they're regulated again by site standards to determine how many 40 square feet might look like that's over here video apartments are 140 square feet over here so these are the studios in smaller one bedroom units and then this is an example of an SRO hitting right around 250 square feet so you can see that this is significantly smaller and this is a full unit has a kitchen and a bathroom intended for one or maybe two people this is the existing SRO code and the existing SOU code and in general it seems like the SRO code is functioning pretty well getting used as sort of a few every few years are existing practice municipal code is simply silent there is just no density that's ever established more clear to say explicitly there is no density they're regulated by site standards so we're proposing to add that text to the code and then we also would like to codify that these only be rented these cannot be part of a subdivision or tentative map be sold off as a continuum and that has been our practice historically posing the ownership units the SOUs have been a little bit more challenging seeing two projects in the city in the last 15 years they were sort of created in our code looking around for other examples of types of housing this feature about it wiring ownership was not something we were able to represent it we're proposing to take a look at that as one of the challenges we're also these types of units have been critiqued by the community of sort of creating monocultures where you just get like extensive projects they're just one type of unit and you know why can't they be mixed in with other sizes and styles of units mixed income you know mixed household size kind of itself and then also you know when SOUs were created they offered some incentives for development they required a lower parking standard ownership housing at the time when there was really a demand for that whittled away at we've made changes to our parking ordinance so there's really no benefit provided to SOUs they're not getting any parking they're now at the same level parking as other units of better studios or one bedroom we're also seeing a shift in the market now there really is more demand rental housing and so we're looking for ways to allow developers to meet that demand and then also again I think we're interested in creating communities where we have a mix of housing type and income status and family sizes we just think that creates more vibrant interesting communities our proposal the proposal that's in front of you and so was recommended by the planning commission is to replace the existing small ownership units so we would address the challenges of that 50% for sale requirement the inability to mix other unit types those are really the big land use changes and then there are some other minor issues that we're going to come up at the same time some of these at the beginning the proposed flexible density units to be fully rented or sold and they could be rented by the developer they could be sold to private owners and then rent it the same way that we treat all other types of housing we're proposing to make a slight change to the size so that these features at that 150 square feet size changes we heard about that community so we would allow standard then two bedrooms three bedrooms and then any space that's left by standards can potentially be used for flexing other key things mentioned here that I've got proposing to remove the existing standard that limits these units to only one bedroom we think there's a big opportunity here to allow for small space in need of couples single parents you know seniors who are downsizing and maybe you'll want to maintain or you know empty nesters that are downsizing and maintain space for you know kids to come home at some point so that also helps us address some issues where you know we have some of these large like 600 to 650 square foot units you'll see for to see on site plan spaces that are labeled like study or a lounge and the reality is they end up being used as sleeping space but they're not being built as sleeping space and so there are safety concerns that go along with that like every space that's identified for a sleeping space needs to be built under the building code to have egress in case of an emergency and so it just puts us in this position where we're kind of like trying to find ways you know to work with developers to make sure that you know we're only seeing one bedroom and how are we making sure that this other space isn't really going to be used for sleeping and it's just it's very bulky to regulate things like that proposing to not state the limit and let this side of these are going to be studios one bedroom for even two bedroom units so a few other things that we are proposing to add into this unit type that aren't currently required small ownership units we're going to add a requirement for laundry facilities on site mentioned in our community meeting and so we hold there's a requirement for shared laundry facilities already for single room occupancy so we hold that language in for the flexible density units we're also requiring that stating that flexible density unit and only be used when the project has a minimum of three units we just want to be sure that these really are family or mixed use style development that they're not somehow being used to build like a removing the explicit bedroom we're keeping the zone districts for these four zone districts are the only four zone districts in the city where single room occupancy units are the only four zone districts where we're going to proposing that flexible density unit only be allowed in those same locations I'm going to show you a map in a second and the one thing we are proposing to add which is not currently in the code is a requirement for mixed use central business district is the downtown and the CBBE is the area south of Pearl and so in those places like that's really our commercial core of our city and so we want to be sure that there is an excuse component that is included there the CC zone district stretches way out into all of our other lots of other neighborhoods so the CC is shown here on King on this map and you can see it extends along in the Pearl Street neighborhood over there and then all up and so in these areas there is already an allowance in the CC zone district it requires a larger parcel so it's only allowed on parcels that are eight thousand larger everywhere in the zone district even on smaller parcels in the same way that SROs are currently allowed in all of those locations without several standards in here that are moving straight from the SOE code into the FDU proposal without any change so there would be no specifically assigned density standards the open space requirements are staying the same we did add a caveat about how some of that open space has to be and that again pulling a little bit from an indoor space so added that component but the overall requirement of 150 square feet of open space is staying the same they'll still be required to have one parking space per unit the inclusionary standard is not closed for a change and again as I mentioned they're being allowed in the same zone district lastly we got several comments about this the density bonus process density bonus project a developer bring in a fully conforming set of what we're looking at here is a portion of the front riverfront project that applied for a 35% density bonus and what we see on the top is that conforming base project so this is a project that meets all of the zoning standards all of the area plan standards and any standards that may come out of the general plan we use that to determine how many units we need and then that number of units is the number that we use for calculating the bonus so you can see the change from the top picture which is showing you the conforming base project and then the project pool that was approved which is the density bonus project so in this case they added a little over one floor of height so some buildings went up more than that but the overall height was went from SOUs that proposing to then change the text of our general plan and downtown plan the outreach events last year we had held a focus group with sort of here what their concerns and interests were they expressed some interest in being able to mix the units the bedroom units in them currently don't really make sense for redevelopment start to see places where we really could add the housing stock they did have some questions and concerns to provide and we are not providing with these types of units any concessions from we held a community meeting as well we also heard concerns about parking we heard from some people that there was not enough parking that would be required for these units other people that there was too much parking that was being required for these units they are in these intended to be sort of you know down in our commercial four areas where you know places are within walking distance jobs walking services so we kind of had both sides on that we did hear a desire for increased amenities and you know laundry storage common space we actually added those in in response to that community comment and then we heard a lot of concern just around rent crisis where we find ourselves you know the ongoing cost of market rate housing we went to the planning commission last month and discussed this proposal with them after we had done work with the planning into a place where they could support it so the planning commission recommended that conversation there with the planning commission focused a lot on the aspect of allowing flexible density units to mix with other density other sizes about what that means like our existing zoning code creates a building upper right a building envelope is a imaginary square box if there's a floor area ratio that also comes in and they sit within that box with other size units what that could potentially do is that in these in these commercial locations where these units would be allowed we could be a developer that could match two bedrooms or three bedrooms or one bedroom and then if there's any remaining building they could add more units so we could get more housing built within that existing envelope so without going taller without reducing that we could fit in more housing we would still have a parking requirement for all of that so it is sort of a step in the direction a midway toward a more form-based standard for these residential and mixed-use uses in in those locations and then as I mentioned we do think this could make redevelopment a little feasible to some project and allow them to start creating this housing stock as we mentioned at the beginning in all cases SROs still represents the back home development density created anywhere those units would be smaller and then they are required to not go over a certain median size of average size it's only 224 feet as 150 which are already allowed today 40-50 years so and then as I mentioned the base density calculations for the density bonus are not changing that is that process is staying exactly as it exists today the planning commission voting that we allow mixing and help use this housing type to promote after today there will be a second reading it requires a second reading we will be bringing resolution for submitting to the coastal commission so coastal commission review will have to take place on the downtown plan and the local coastal program and then should the ordinance be adopted we will check out some days after final approval and then the ordinance a little markup of the recommended motion just to acknowledge the general plan is not currently part of our local program so all of the changes that you see here the strikeouts and underlines are just acknowledging that the downtown plan and the ordinance are part of the local coastal program the general plan is not our recommendation is that your council the resolution is amending the general plan and downtown plan the amendment to the downtown plan will also constitute an amendment to the local coastal program to reflect the elimination of small ownership unit use and the addition of the new flexible density use introduced for publication an ordinance amending title 24 of the municipal code regulating small housing units including replacing small ownership regulations and then lastly direct staff to submit the approved ordinance to the coastal commission following the second reading should the ordinance be adopted as part of the second reading as well as the changes to the downtown plan as changes to the local coastal program and are available for any questions thank you for that presentation Sarah council members have questions for planning council member Meyers and then and your muted council member Meyers great I just wanted to so you available own district but there was a restriction that lots of houses so I'd have a lot of ways to build escrows or no sorry that was about next use in order to do next use proposing proposing or not proposing that's the case proposing no change have the demographic mentioned that housing type is during the way that you were able to identify demographic that this or curious about how identified it has highly I'm looking at our housing element you know our housing element was last written in 20 these statistics are not I'll just also say I mean of course anyone to live in a smaller unit if that's not what they're seeking right and then my lot that's my last question we did get a lot of this is all kind of all brand new and I appreciate the production they they seen this I think sometimes I know I lose housing blue work walk-ins background there is from the our time guys work through all of those again just kind of going back at work working effort that went on really just all the different tasks we've really shown that a lot of this town and city fighting on the board you mentions in the staff report that team that market mention this a little bit in the patient do any more deep lives on those projects either in other places or just we're able to talk digitally about the you know the really there's only been projects this log they unit and I know we're you know the proposal is like a unit but I'm just curious if there was a deeper dive at all around those projects and why they of the two existing projects participated in our developer focus group it's really tricky is kind of what it comes down to if the developer can't be certain that they're going to put all of the units on the market for sale at once it's a little bit tricky once you start renting them you get into this really difficult place of like well now there's too many units being rented and banks won't let developer focus group that you know SOUs can work when at least according to the group of folks we had maybe 15 units that's a project that could maybe pencil you don't see that many projects that are only doing a dozen I mean is there any way to understand I mean I think that that's designation you know on the you know think logs that go kind of off into all the different directions into town with the flexible there's interested in there's some interesting projects are also also a lot of interesting smaller projects you know and I know that the cost margin is cost of protection is writing you have to pencil right nobody's not going to be able to basically build a project you know I mean so there's you know flexible ones help this kind of smaller project that makes neighborhood versus going bigger that kind of or there a way to kind of understand you know this new type of basically categorization of how developer with the importance that would change the development when we come back in a few months with our objective standards we are going to be talking about things that are pushing on that different ways that affect the design of development type this unit type could be useful in some of these smaller projects and maybe it would take them from you know a back potential development of like you know 15 to 70 units maybe they could fit in 20 or 21 or 22 units if they can really fill in that development in a different way I'm going to tip the scales on every single one of these small projects I mean the reality of the 5,000 per foot lot is hard to it's hard to park that's what it comes down to the parking is just a real squishy we are always going to be challenging those sites and we do think there are some locations where this could really help with a little bit of extra density that makes the project work without seeking a full density bonus which then faves our site standards right so this is sort of like a pain to maybe help some of that happen a little bit better there's no silver bullet right when it comes to housing there's a lot of challenges on the market but I see that my carriers are here and they may have some things to say it's kind of the another question it's the thing I think and not to discuss how do we create that acknowledgement that we will have taller buildings eventually in the future how do those integrate with maybe developments that have a little bit of a smaller more you know it's that diversity right not going straight and straight everywhere but maybe some interesting advice developers and owners or maybe are looking for it if I could member Mars I would also share the comments that Sarah mentioned I think one of the impacts that this could have is the developers are typically seeking to maximize that building on both they've got a developable area but if they can't mix the units then in all likelihood maximize that develop area if they've got a du per acre a dwelling unit per acre cap then they're going to have larger units and what this will allow for is instead of having a 1600 square foot in a project they may have a 1200 square foot unit and allow for a 400 square foot FDU a flexible density unit and so that's going to provide some of that diversity that you were talking about and it could actually allow for projects pencil out as Sarah was being too may I bring her head away so I will go ahead and move as long so we'll go ahead and move on through council member Cummings thank you for that presentation first question I have is that one of the things that was stated that this would lead towards relatively more affordable options I'm just curious because this conversation was happening I actually went on and looked at one of our more recent developments in the community and right now skills there are going for 2800 one bedrooms are $3,445 a month which means that if you want to rent a studio and it's 30% of your income you need to be making $9,333 a month or $112,000 a year and if you want a one bedroom you need to make about $483 a month which equates to about $13,500 so I'm just curious you know when we're trying to make units more affordable and bring in more affordable housing we look at what costs of these smaller units are really not this isn't really helping to address our affordability issues so I'm just kind of wondering if you can speak more to how this is going to help with affordability when what we're seeing in terms of following you that's a super important question thank you for bringing that up several components to housing policy that affect state programs this is like home buyer programs things like that that put money directly into the pockets of buyers and housing that exists in the market that for the rent for the pockets that are currently there that is in every decade the house the generations that are coming so there's that piece of it and then the other piece to just sort of remember and understand is that all new housing when it's new is going to be at the top of the market that's just how happens in work honestly this is the envelope we live in just our reality is that developers are a business that deals on a project they're not going to build it not going to get any new housing created and so what we're talking about here is the ability to pay market rate rates for a unit that basically purchased what's important to you is it important to you to live in a new unit okay is it important for you to live by yourself maybe we can mix out an option so what we're talking about here creating more options in the housing market if you were to take those look at a project that were built around the same time that are larger units my guess that the cost per square foot is going to be pretty similar right and so what we're saying here is that smaller units people have to pay for square feet and so we're giving them that choice to ask I think you hit that on the answer I was just going to say that well we can guarantee that this would create a more affordable option it's certainly likely that a 350 square foot studio would be cheaper than a 500 square foot one or a 500 square foot one bedroom would be cheaper than a 700 square foot one so that's what we're really trying to add to that mix creating those housing types and a variety of them sitting on my concern and maybe speak to this is that with the who generated requirements we have yes my understanding based on this ordinance is that there's really nothing this would have happened right and within a mixed use development there's a potential to put in units that are as small as 220 square there's really nothing a developer from having all those that's correct so the inclusionary units have to be the same average size as market rate units that's standard in our inclusionary ordinance that's helpful and for density bonus projects as well okay those are pretty much all the questions that I have I have some comments about there later thank you councilmember Cummings councilmember mayor and Sarah for the presentation and trying to make these changes and make our zoning code legible to us the delay person into council members at least in my case no matter how much I study this and the materials kind of lost so I do have a couple of questions I'm trying to understand what I've been doing is trying to use an example to play out how this would work and so I'm kind of if I could just try to do that ask if I'm on the right track and you can stop me if I'm doing something here so as I understand it then we think about run through an example and I'm using the basis for this came from a member of the public sent in comments so in an acre lot let's say we have an acre lot currently zoned with the density limit of 40 units this is a hypo developer proposes a project with 40 units that don't meet the FDU definition and then an additional 100 units that would be FDU with the proposed range so now we have potentially 150 units on one acre 100 of those units because they do not account for the density limit they're not counted they're counted in certain ways but not in others so now we have 140 units 40 of which meet the current zoning and then that project developer applies for density bonus that's what I'm trying to understand because you're talking about how this is a in between space where a density bonus might not requested and so those rules wouldn't apply but I don't see anything that does they can in the materials I've read so at that point we're at 140 units a developer applies for density bonus at 50% they get to use even though they're not 100 units towards the density limit they then have 140 units with a 50% density bonus now we're at 210 units 210 units once the dense and they request a density bonus that means that all of those site standards which hearing will control to some extent the building envelope not lead to additional massing must be waived the developer requested now we have 210 units on an acre and of that because we can only apply inclusionary unit requirements to the base the developer would be required to give us 8 units of inclusionary an additional and I'm so I've never been even on paper I can't figure it out with the formulas waivers and concessions but some additional units some percentage in order to get the density bonus but essentially there's a possibility that get a project that big that would have maybe instead of the 8 portable units and 12 units could lead to require so we're talking about less than portability projects so am I missing something here? yeah, several things, so let's get into it yeah, totally so first of all I think this is a really interesting example I wish I had computer graphics the first thing to think about is the site standards that we currently have in our code by setback all the things let's forget for a second that our general plan isn't implemented about all the other places where a general plan is forming, which is most of the city standards we have where you would have a density of 40 units 100 square foot units that are two bedrooms, whatever and park it percent of your development and local planning that is there is not a situation that would create that tight limit in the CC zone district is three stories facts are based on what the neighboring parcels are otherwise they're zero housing requires one or two parking spaces per unit parking takes up a lot of space each of those each of those housing units is going to have to have somewhere between 100 and 180 square feet of open space so you have to fit all of that in on your site then really quickly because this is where I'm confused except for you can't acquire any of those we haven't gotten to density bonus yet let's just set that aside for a second we will get to it so let's put a pin in it because this is really really important I think this is what people fail to understand about the density bonus and I understand why technical process the density bonus application is bringing in a fully conforming project so just to bring in a project that meets every one of our development standards only three stories all it's 130 center it shows the vision style architecture right it's meeting all of the density and all of the zoning standards that we have and you fit whatever number into it so we have a one acre site that can fit 40 units that's the whole thing you have to show us how this is a fully conforming project the proposal would say if there's anything left in that density bonus if there's anything left in that building envelope you can fit in a couple of extra units of flexible density units you still have to park them, still have to provide open space you still have to meet all this other you're not going to double the size of the project in doing that you're going to max out if the developer really wants to maximize their profit they're going to build out as many big units as they do and like Lee said you might shrink the size a little bit if you want to fit in a couple more but you're still building within that story building envelope and you still have to park every one of the units we're not giving anybody a break on parking for open space so I think that's going to be pretty hard so once you have and so now here's now the density bonus so let's say 40 units per acre let's be ambitious about it and let's say they add 15 units by thinking about building plans and what things could actually fit in so now we've got now we have a base project instead of being 40 units it's 55 units that's the base density for the density bonus so yes it's a little higher the point of this is to add a little more housing it's not twice as high it's not three times as high so only when the density bonus is put in and we take that 65 and make it 90 whatever the density bonus is we're seeking only then do we start waiving our site so the FDUs could be built as part of a performing project with density bonus and another thing every density bonus project is different projects are really using density bonus just to get production and parking and they're not adding any additional height others are doing the whole shebang, they're asking for parking reduction they're adding the height they're really trying to push it out but every one of them is in a unique different situation thanks Sarah a couple things I would add one, that base project is also what the inclusionary is applied to so in Sarah's example with 55 DU wouldn't be the 20% of 40 to 20% of 55 so all those numbers were exaggerated in the example from the community member which is understandable because there is that concern out there but even in that exaggerated example it would be 20% of the 150 right so it wouldn't be the 8 units 20% and 40 it would be the 20% of that that becomes the base and so I wanted to make sure that was clear and these can also be done, more units can be done with the single room occupancy and that was what we were talking about before you can even have more because it's at 125 per feet Sarah, the base 150 thank you 150 for the smallest hey thank you thank you I hope we're clear and yeah, most of my questions were wrapped up in that example thank you council member Brown council member Kellan Terry Johnson thank you trying to wrap my brain around where I am, I think some of my questions were asked first of all thank you for bringing this to us, I know a lot of information that you've had that boiled down and narrowed down for us so I appreciate that I guess I'll just ask this question that some community members who sent letters and communicated with us indicated that these types of flexible density units have not been implemented in other communities and haven't been tested in other communities so I'm just wondering if you could speak to that a little bit what have we seen in other communities that have been this is kind of a creative approach lots of places that have micro unit development standards which a little bit more akin to see that in lots of encouraged like fixed income development like there are places that have specific standards around fixed income development, sometimes you'll see that you'll end up with studios and two bedrooms one bedroom, three bedrooms, four bedrooms and pack a lot of affordable house projects to do that because these different and so that's not a new idea allowing unit types together what we're talking about is like trying to address the way that we regulate density to allow a little bit more flexibility without going over that limit that was studied in our general plan EIR like that back these units they there are lots of places that are working around micro units and bringing new stuff online and you know it's a mix it's really dictated by like what's the market right like they I think these are units that work really well for certain demographics and don't work well for others and so what we're talking about is like letting part of other styles of development well so that there can be just a few of these units that doesn't have to massive like hundreds of these small units. Okay and I may think you sort of touched on this but how does this as we're looking at diving into our housing element in the next year or so how does this like us up or work into that process a great question if it was I don't yeah so yeah so as you are aware we are going to be working towards meeting our regional housing needs allocation dependent on creating a whole bunch of housing units so we do believe that this is could be one tool in our toolbox to like help us beat those numbers in terms of you know exactly how and what to be I think that's the case for these kind of units but it does seem like there's some interest in the developer community in like allowing something like this and so we're pretty optimistic that this could really help us in getting to our arena and and building it out. Okay, thank you. Thank you council member Kelly Tari Johnson council member coming part of my question was answered related to have we seen this in other case because just be interesting to know like you know there's communities of you know similar geographic location like each communities in California that have they allow for these kinds of units built with like 220 square feet and how much those units are going for I think that would be helpful and form kind of you know what what are those costs like another because the numbers that were before the size of those units and the you know with the studios at 555 Pacific 2800 that's a 440 square foot and then the one bedroom is 660 so that's pretty small and it's you know well beyond anything that's affordable for most working the other question I had just have it all asked in the next session I know that we've been discussing this topic oh just came back to me so what is the potential if the goal is to build up the amount of affordable housing what potential is there to set feed restrictions around I mean one of the things I've heard this notion of if you build it over time it will be more affordable but I think it was last year maybe the year before we had an issue where Cypress Point was trying to build some more units and when we were looking at the events at that location because the ownership had changed some of these older units were actually not anymore affordable due to their age and a lot of that when we were having this discussion it was discussed well they're not being restricted so therefore unless the units are restricted they won't be necessarily affordable over long periods of time I'm just wondering if the goal is to get more affordable housing with what opportunities are there to have smaller units be restricted as part of the ordinance are you you're looking to create a new housing type that can be restricted small units well if we're saying you know there's flexible dense units or flexible units that can go from 220 to 600 square feet what opportunities are there to say units below X size must be deemed as affordable because otherwise there's nothing that guarantees that it's going to be affordable moving forward I mean we just saw 300 square foot house sell for a million dollars right so the one would think that you have this smaller house it's older it would be affordable but in fact not area what else comes with those units so I'm just trying to figure out how we can actually create something that's affordable knowing that in the absence of having that we can build many new videos as we want but if they're all going for $800 a month it's not really providing an affordable unit Thanks for that question Council Member Cummings I think the key here is that we still have our inclusionary 20% requirement and these units would still be subject to that requirement so in Sarah's example for instance say a project that right now 17 units that now goes to 22 that's one full additional inclusionary unit that's deed restricted affordable that would be on the market with that project so we would certainly see in addition to just adding housing units itself incremental increases in those inclusionary units as well through this process One thing I'll just add to that I would be a little bit hesitant to say that all units below a third size have to be affordable I'd want to think about that and sort of analysis on that has seemed like our current standard that we have for restricted units that they can market rate units and I think there are good reasons for that so I'd like to give a little bit Thank you Council Member Cummings I had a question that was also brought forward I feel not quite clear the intent of the SOU ordinance to increase ownership opportunities so the revision here eliminates the ownership requirement can you talk a little bit about that yeah sure so yeah when the small ownership units were originally created the idea was that they were going to create something that was similar to an SRO but can create some home ownership opportunities opportunities for folks for single people for a lower modesty and sort of get on the property ladder and I think that was a great intention and it just has not worked out that with this proposal we would still maintain the option for that to develop projects we're getting a little bit tripped up and other projects being hesitating to go in for sale is very sensitive to hopefully and there are obviously choices that we can make that can happen right like that's why we're all here the idea here is that we're still preserving that option while removing it as a requirement with the hope being that we get these units created do you think there's a market for them and a good use for them providing housing I mean I've mentioned before that new housing is always kind of comes in at the top of the market restricted or affordable housing but if we look at what rentals have from UCSC they're saying that one bedroom apartment condo goes $22, $38,000 that's a wide range first of all some of these smaller units just come in below that upper limit just by virtue of being a little bit as a follow up question was there analysis on or any look at requiring a lower percentage for sale versus fully going from 50% to fully rentable ownership model? Good question there are financing reasons but eliminate that as an option financing individual purchaser say properties for more than half of the units are rented moving to a lower percentage prior to sale like they would have to be all cash fired which I just seen kind of unlikely in that thank you for that all of my other questions have been answered thank you everyone I will pick it out for public comment in addition let's see if you're interested in commenting on the small housing units general plan downtown plan local coastal plan and zoning ordinance update item number 14 on today's agenda raise your hand by either dialing R9 on your phone or selecting the raise and on the webinar computer when it is your turn to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted and the timer will then be set going out to public comment file unmute Council and staff thank you so much for having me I just want to call in support of the changes and then I support more homes and density I think there's been a good amount of analysis on what prices homes are going to be how we can try to share the city with more people and to provide more rent over burden living in overcrowded housing we're homeless right now and I think one thing that I would like to see staff and council more is what's the cost of a mortgage so councilmember Cummings earlier brought up a piece of land with house on it as being a good chunk of change but the reality is that if we were able to build higher density housing on it the individual cost of housing for someone to live there would be less because the difference here is between land between sharing land with people and fundamentally that's the question for us are we willing to share land are we going to make room and that's what we need to do thank you thank you Kyle Kelly for your comment next we have Rafa Sonin-Fell unmute yourself welcome yes thank you very much I'm speaking today on behalf of Santa Cruz MB supports the concept of flexible density units we sent a letter in I think back in October but for some reason never made it into an agenda pack in support of this proposal I just wanted to point out that this is really about providing more flexibility and about trying to some of the barriers that are caused by an overly complicated and some zoning code and this is the exact type of program that we want to implement before adopting a housing element if we want to have a plan that's approved by the state and if we don't make these sorts of changes it's less likely maybe unlikely that the state will approve our housing element and the consequences of that is actually losing more local role over land use so these are the types of policies that we really do need to be moving forward with create more options if we want to work on affordability there are other ways but but zoning isn't necessarily the tool for affordability we can look at local funding sources for affordable housing the city could be acquiring land for 100% affordable housing maybe creating new group housing options or co-housing options but mandating that units be affordable doesn't actually make more housing affordable it just creates more barriers to when we have market rate projects making them harder to finance and less likely to even be proposed so I think it's a sensible thing for us making this simpler this isn't about making bigger buildings it's just about making more options for the existing building envelope that we have so the only other thing I wanted to mention is I hope that we are not creating additional parking requirements or creating additional requirements that can become burdensome this is about removing barriers and I hope that as we move forward with this this is about creating new opportunities and not creating new problems that developers have thank you very much thank you for your comment our next speaker is Zennan Aliateco go ahead and unmute hi thank you council my name is Zennan Aliateco I'm the president of the student housing coalition and I'm just speaking today in support of these proposed changes I think that in terms of housing especially housing students we know that smaller unit types are what are more available whether you're splitting that between a significant other or you're splitting that even two friends those things are much more affordable than the predominantly single family housing stock that we have within the city and so when we talk about allowing for a more flexible use of density within projects I think it opens up a real possibility that we can prioritize like co-op because when we look at the possibility of having shared dormitory style housing off campus that is illegal today in the city's zoning but naturally affordable co-op and communal living situations that we know date affordable outcomes that's illegal because the density requirements actually excluded from happening and so and actually allowing for more flexibility in what can be built what types can be used I think it's really important that we make sure we facilitate that and especially when it comes to burning some parking requirements and all the rest the way we know that we can get to more housing is to be allowed for more types of all houses so with that I really implore you guys to support this and one last thing I want to add a few comments about why there was a reduction in the ownership rate and the state Board of Equalization actually requires when condos are being sold a condo map drawn up for the apartment building and therefore once you sell one condo with the building you need to sell all of the condos so it essentially includes the possibility of a mixed condo and rental building so that's just one last one thank you for your comment our next speaker is Antoine Haddad go ahead and unmute hello my name is Antoine Haddad and I'm with the Student Housing Coalition of DCSE and I agree with this recommendation and I think that as other people now it's just a way of having multiple tools to create types of housing that could benefit us to solve this housing crisis that we have and like Zen talked about to open the door to maybe more different housing options like co-ops thank you for your comment Hunter G you can go ahead and unmute yourself hi are you guys able to hear me yes okay yeah I'd just like to say thank you to all the council members and for your time because I absolutely love Santa Cruz and I'm happy to be a resident here and yeah I just fully support this housing measure I think it would be great for our community especially for creating more types of unit especially like leaning towards the entry level because what happens with a lot of students is they're living in suburban houses which could otherwise be going towards families so in building this type of development it's both good for the families that want to live in Santa Cruz and work in Santa Cruz and also for the students and people looking for more entry level housing so I just really support this measure and I even read through it and I'm also with the Student Housing Coalition as well but yeah a lot of people are watching this even though everyone's kind of busy with finals a lot of young people are working right now but we're all like very like concerned about this as well and are just watching this in support so yeah just thank you very much and I fully support this and hope to see more options like this in the future for our city council thank you thank you Hunter our next is Reggie Meister go ahead and unmute welcome hi can you hear me yes hi Reggie hi I can see a lot of our sort of allies in fighting the OVO are supporting this and I want to join with them to support it because I know that this really affects them in a lot of ways but I do want to point out more density but if the density we're talking about just taking a five bedroom home and making it into five units of housing just kind of adding walls to the problem I don't know that we really accomplished much I mean when we're talking about overcrowding in a house we didn't really achieve much by just like sectioning off parts of the house and then still having people in roughly the same square foot of living I mean that's my opinion on the matter furthermore at 300 square feet if people are aiming for like a price of $1,800 a month or even higher it sounds like between $1,800 and $1,000 was like the sort of market rate goal I mean it just feels like we can do better than that given that we have some bargaining power here we can ask for some kind of strings to be attached it doesn't have to be unreasonable but it seems like we could at least get something out of this because students aren't pulling in $8,000 $9,000 a month not be rent burdened in these units and the units are so small that they can't split that cost among a lot of other students which they're used to doing in single family homes so I am concerned that students might be looking at the $1,800 price tag and thinking that's great or something around there but if this comes in at $3,000 or $4,000 I'm used to seeing students split a one bedroom $3,000 a month between four people and I just I have trouble seeing how this would work for a lot of but that's about it thank you for your comment our next speaker Mr. Sao Caruso go ahead and unmute hi can you hear me hi Sao hi thank you so much I wanted to think up the planning department staff and all of you as council members for considering this I'm 100% in support of this change and the ordinance I feel that this is visionary it is something exceptional and I really hope that it will some cities have you know some other areas but for Santa Cruz who do this it is absolutely outstanding we are in an unmitigated housing crisis not just a beaker shortage but an actual crisis and just based on the principles of supply and demand the more supply we get out there of housing the prices will come down that is a simple fact of economics and this is a brilliant plan and gives people the flexibility to comply with banking standards for financing and create within the existing envelope as finding staff had mentioned within the existing envelope higher density with steel complying with parking standards and other general standards of the code so it doesn't harm anything and all we have to do is walk the streets of Santa Cruz to know how desperately housing so thank you so much for considering this and I hope to all vote in favor of the new amendment thank you thank you our next speaker Ryan Mechel welcome I just wanted to call in in support of this measure I believe Santa Cruz should have more density and we should have more options for our residents something that's very much lacking here right now as you can see at the look at our zoning maps I think it's important again to have options not just for students but also for other community members maybe single who don't need who don't want to live with roommates don't need that much space who would just like have a smaller space those people exist and they don't really have that option in Santa Cruz right now as the previous caller mentioned we also have a housing crisis so this is a great way to add more units to our community which again are sorely needed I'll keep it short and sweet I support this and I hope to see it voted through thank you for your comment our next public comment is phone number ending in 495 go ahead and press star 6 unmute yourself there you go this is Candice Brown I'm part of the transportation commission and live on the east side of the town area I sent in a letter that unfortunately wasn't included in the packet but I just wanted to note that how many how long do I have you have three minutes okay first of all the key issue that SOU is that they eliminated the Mennon lot area which would be 1100 square foot which would include for open spaces and you know the additional infrastructure parking whatever so by doing that you can maximize density and then you can also create waivers sometimes or confessions so the intent was to create very high density without looking at all the implications but to take out the mixed use and then to add it into other projects creates all kinds of convoluted issues first of all by taking out mixed use you're basically saying that the east side midtown area would just not exist you're basically saying that small businesses shouldn't have a place to be and support the local communities that people wouldn't have a place to have a pedestrian engagement environment the pandemic showed that the east side midtown was very successful in offering people a place where they could go where they could be where they could shop and they could do it sustainably this is creating a lot of high density at 555 Pacific the original development cost was like basically 27 million 27 million and some change and the profit would be like over 10 million basically they would get a profit of 36.7% so this whole idea that somehow the developers are suffering to gain profit especially when now a lot of these major developments are being put under an NDA for some reason has never been revealed I think really shows you that there's more to the story transportation a huge issue the amount of density here would require so many different changes and the project who was the architect who just spoke for 908 Ocean Street is proposing 433 units on less than 3 acres and they're stacking the cars so that's the way of getting around this issue full set of issues around traffic flow in a very key part of town this has not been looked at it's not been modeled you're basically also taking out potentially the auto zone impacts of that need to be looked at my letter was very explicit about the fact that you need to have a sequel review here you cannot move forward without that that's what really the motion should be about if you even consider this I actually say we also use zoning should be eliminated it's not providing what we need and I think we do need student housing the way to do that which was not proposed with the dense planning was to eliminate the number of bathrooms and kitchens and have a more cohabitation environment and without that you're not going to have anything for a 30% of this town which are students thank you so much thank you for your comment is that Isadora Aline any of yourself yeah I'm Isadora I'm with the student housing coalition I think as a student there's definitely a really big housing issue and that going forward these changes will make it easier to build more housing and with the amount of people who are in need of building I definitely support these changes thank you for your comment next Andy we have Frank hello can you hear me yes welcome yeah I'm Frank I'm with the student housing coalition I just want to say I support the post changing the housing and that's it thank you so much for calling are there any other members of the public who wish to comment on item number 14 we have go ahead and unmute yourself hello can you hear me yes hi I think I want to encourage on supporting this measure also as a local county worker I think this is definitely important on getting more units for the local class as well as working class in Santa Cruz I believe that a lot of the problem as a working class member and talking about the working class is the availability of housing available mostly in a lot of areas including the west side other areas of Santa Cruz a lot of the units are first dib to go to students and it definitely kind of discourages the working class staying in Santa Cruz and I have a lot of people working in Santa Cruz that had to move out of the increase of housing crisis and also the fact that a lot of units are simply not available also the affordability definitely needs to be addressed more further as well because even though we have a unit available the waiting list is maybe 200 people long for 20 units and that's the reality of units across Santa Cruz when we talk about affordability or allowing affordable units to be allowed in Santa Cruz so I think also well I commented earlier on making more units 100% affordable instead of this very few units allowed for affordability so I definitely believe affordability needs to be addressed as well as a working class local Thank you for your comment we have another your Bode Shargle Hello You hear me? Yes Okay, good afternoon my name is Bode Shargle yeah I'm a lifelong Santa Cruz county resident student associated with the YDSA and housing coalition I pretty much I'm just going to say things that I've said before at meetings like this I support high density housing for economic reasons we're currently experiencing an unprecedented housing crisis density and housing is great for affordable housing and preserving people's access to housing as well as environmental reasons and high density housing lowers emissions due to transportation it makes it so people can get to work easier it improves people's mental health decreases social atomization so for all those reasons I think that the answer for today's question is clear that we need to prioritize flexible housing for high density housing in Santa Cruz so please approve this. Thank you Thank you for your comment Are there any other members of the public that would like to do item 14 on our agenda public hearing for small housing units general plan downtown plan local plan and zoning ordinance regarding single room occupancy small ownership units and a new use called flexible density units for FPU okay it looks like there are no other members of the public so I will return to council for deliberation and action council member Calentari Johnson and council member Brown Thank you mayor and thank you to all the callers and people who wrote letters and who were engaged with the planning commission the presentation was really well made the discussion we had with my colleague here the questions that were asked were really helpful and I'm in support of this recommendation I think the points were well made by some of the callers that this is a step towards addressing some of the housing challenges that we have here in the community and building a variety of housing and a lot of thoughts got into it by staff planning commission has approved it so I'm ready to make a motion to support staff's recommendation and I know there were some changes so if we could put that slide or if someone can share that language with me I'm happy to read it adopt resolution amending the general plan adopt the resolution amending the downtown plan which will also constitute an amendment to the local coastal program to reflect the elimination of the small ownership project in the addition of the new flexible density unit use introduced for publication and ordinance amending title 24 of the municipal code regulating small housing units including replacing small ownership units, flexible density units and making minor clarifying amendments to single room occupancy regulations and then direct staff to submit the approved ordinance to the coastal commission for review following the second reading to the ordinance be adopted as of the second reading as well as the changes to the downtown plan and general plan as changes to the local coastal program and again just want to thank the creative innovative thinking done by our staff in the planning commission to bring this forward okay thank you we have a motion by council member conntary johnson council member brown I'm not going to second that but I do have comments so if somebody wants to second it there is a second on the motion I'll second the motion okay vice mayor watson seconded and now I will bring it for discussion and deliberation so council member brown I want to make a few comments here the first comment I want to make is a public comment I really appreciate everyone who's called in I recognize that there are different perspectives on what's needed here there's kind of a universal understanding that we are affordable housing there is a real difference of opinion I think and I've heard this play out many deliberations over time but I just want to say I'm dismayed I'm frustrated with the ongoing population of density with and I don't believe that supply and demand rules of supply and demand are a fact it's a theory it's an economic model about what would happen under particular circumstances when you increase supply but it doesn't take into account material realities on the ground and those are I say this over and over related much more so that span backed up by the ability to have a limitless number of people in close proximity to us given where we are located geographically with an ability to pay more than a lot of local families, workers people who talk and students that are so I just think that it's frustrating for that kind of that assumption being so widely accepted nothing there's no evidence just that case and we've seen it in other high-end housing and I would add the number because that limit so that's just my sidebar now it's complete of the proposal staff is recommending essentially to eliminate density limit reflect flexible whether they're in standalone project component of another project and while I agree that we need more of a mix of sizes I think that problematic first with the densities allowed in mix by density zones and the current density of zones up to 50% allowing no density on top of that I think it's important to state here that officially declaring no density limit is a significant policy we've heard well it doesn't change any because we're already doing this but it is a significant policy say that in our community in killer zones if you are want to build you know between 250 per feed there's no limit that's significant two the change would make it even harder for people in the community and for this city council to understand how many units the project contains when the data density on the site becomes meaningless and third I want to say that there's been a lot of reference to the housing loop subcommittee where we look at and ultimately supported incentivizing smaller units I continue to support that the discussion at the time was in a very very context it was before all of these state housing laws had been adopted and so we had different different sort of constraints then so we're talking about exponentially higher density than we were talking about when did that work in 28 so I have a little bit different perspective now you know it seemed reasonable but we've seen all this effectively the elimination of local progression over what development and another slate of housing legislation coming this year I've seen that there's those that will 100% likely many of these are likely to pass for sustainability development so why would we eliminate any control that we have particularly when we're not talking about and I will just continue to disagree with anybody who says more affordability there is not city sure that I I I with that because I don't think I get support for a friendly amendment so I like on record and only change that I'm making is that you can pull up that language to approve the staff recommendation with the following pain that we prohibit flexible density development housing unit are you adding this one I'm adding it to the whole thing for all of it prohibit flexible with the following pain prohibit flexible development that's my language the only additional I would say using basically limiting the F designation on the loan project okay we have a substitute motion by council member Brown and a second council member Cummings and thank you for that is there a discussion on we have council member Vice Mayor Martin Watkins your next hand up sure I think given council member Brown's comment I'll kind of reserve some of my other comments for the original motion but I guess I'd like to ask our staff to share their thoughts on some of the comments that was made by council member Brown on the proposed substitute motion in the agenda report as I read it it was assessed early as I wanted to see if staff could as well as the dense element sure thank you Vice Mayor Watkins I'm happy to speak to that and then I'll see if anyone else on the team would like to chime in as well a few things that I would say one we we already do not have density limits for the single room occupancy and the SOUs the small ownership units so in that this isn't a paradigm shift this is proposing as council member Brown pointed out that we have been very clear about this is proposing to allow the units to mix the new unit flexible density units to mix within larger project and that is a change in how we do business the the other point that I would make here is there was a question about it creates uncertainty as to the number of units could be allowed that's the case currently with respect to SOUs and so there isn't any additional amount of answer that I would say from member of the public SROs and SOUs already don't have that so those are some of the key things and just like Matt would like to add point as well yeah thanks I just wanted to add to the unit mix question we did discuss that a lot with the one key thing there was that it is a change but it's a really important change for this ordinance that it actually allows for these units to mix with other larger units and create a greater variety of housing types within a given project that was something we heard a lot from the community too in regards to these you know monocultures and creating one specific project versus another and allowing this mix really gives each project a greater opportunity for a variety of those housing types with potential rents and sale prices well I know we aren't discussing the original motion that we have the substitute motion on the floor at this time but given the input I think is how I understand it allowing for more diversity and I like my experience with experiencing a community that has first people and different stages of mobility lifestyle so for that I will council member Meyers and you're muted I have a quick question for affordable housing does that conclude are you done council member Meyers council member Cummings mayor I just wanted to not going to go through all the council member brown me but I definitely agree with a lot that was stated because in this community the notion that building more is going to result in lower housing costs is something that typically you may assume in many economic models but time I've lived here that's not what we've been seeing and we see new housing come on board we oftentimes don't see the impact that we would initially anticipate from building more density I think there's also an issue with increasing student population on campus how that impacts housing availability we also have one of the biggest global economic drivers over the hill which in our world which as a result having we're making six-figure incomes that really puts the strain on housing availability because people want to buy second homes much easier for them to afford that which then is sort of affordable housing availability and also there's a demand for higher price homes so you know unless we're building in affordability unless we're restricting housing in it to be affordable over a long time then what we'll see is that because of the fact that there are people who are able to earn much more than what people are able to earn here in the city of Santa then we will see housing prices well and one thing I'll point out is that the amounts that I've mentioned earlier around one bedroom $2,800 needing to make $8,000 a year and that being if you break that down on how much you can make a month that's $9,333 a month for that to be to not be rent burden median income in Santa most we can produce is $82,000 so that alone and if we want to say and that's where studio is so median income being $82,000 studios that are brand new $400 square feet, $2,800 a month that's not affordable for people so what we really need moving forward is to really try to figure out how we can cost $1,000 for our workforce to ensure that low income people working class have the ability to live and work so that they serve that being said I also of this motion because what council member Wacken or vice mayor Wacken pointed out that this was this did go to the planning commission and I believe that the substantive motion that was made reflect more clearly what was passed at the planning and so for those reasons supportive of the direction that council member Brown suggested because that's what I'm out of our planning commission meeting and I believe it's a big compromise to various concerns that are coming up around this item of people's council member Callentary and I see that Lee maybe wanted to try I just saw that wait a moment thank you thank you mayor I just wanted to clarify that the planning commission actually voted to support the mixing of flexible density units and with other unit type and that was a lengthy debate there the team here Sarah or Matt I don't know if you recall the vote council is interested and I can't remember if it was 5-2 it was a 4-3 so the planning commission did vote to support this in projects multifamily projects Lee can you speak to the motion that currently on the floor is prohibit the mixed use in mixed use in mixed use and developments with larger multifamily housing unit so what would that look like then if that were the case that would allow for projects that are solely made up of the flexible density unit so 225 is the minimum to 650 square feet they would all have to be that size it would not allow for a project a 700 square foot unit or 800 square foot units to also include flexible density unit and this was the most debated issue at the planning commission and as I mentioned they did ultimate vote to support adding it in and large part for the reasons that Matt articulated earlier with respect to this adding additional options housing this providing different price points and different sizes and potentially mix of incomes development project so this adds more flexibility and can potentially allow for projects to be built that otherwise might not be able to for all those reasons staff is supportive of the mixing and the prohibition of if a project was solely made up of flexible density unit what would the affordability was there analysis done on the affordability in those so it would have the same inclusionary requirement as a project with the mix so those inclusionary which currently 20% of the unit are de-restricted affordable at 80% very immediate thank you but councilmember Cummings and then councilmember Qantary Johnson yeah I just had comment for the city manager this has come up a number of times in the past where items go to commissions and then they come to council but we don't get minutes or the meetings and so I just like to suggest that as we move forward when we have items from those meetings included in our agenda packet to really be helpful for us to be able to review what happened in those final outcomes but the votes were on these items because we just get a small synopsis that report but it would be helpful for us to actually have and for members of the public to review what happened in those I just wanted to put that out there as a comment for our new city under straight councilmember Cummings I appreciate you sharing that and work with staff to explore that going forward thank you councilmember Qantary Johnston thanks I'll just I'll keep my comment brief I won't be supporting this substitute motion and just to be clear what staff is recommending is but ultimately the planning commission approved that's I just want to confirm and be clear about that and just a comment that I think we all especially here at the council level care about local control and I think some of the of the past decisions of our past colleagues elected officials have kind of placed us where we are right now and has given the state more opportunity to kind of bring down laws that may or may not fit our community so if we don't think out of the box and we're not created and we're not innovative we'll lose all of I just I appreciate staff's approach and thinking and helping us build a diverse array of units that we can maintain as much control as possible thank you vice mayor Watkins yeah I just had a few additional comments so I'm happy to make you wanted to have me make those after these or do you prefer I make let's take the comments on the substitute motion and deliberation on this okay then at this point I'd like to ask the city clerk for a roll call vote on the steps of the motion if we can have that pulled up one more time just be clear that's right the motion would be to whether to accept the steps if it passes then you can vote on this I'm ready for roll call member Calentary Johnson no no thanks vice mayor Watkins no mayor Brunner no the motion fails we'll return to the first motion that was moved by councilmember calentary johnson seconded by vice mayor Watkins and are there any comments on this motion vice mayor Watkins yeah no I just have a few brief comments I just want to think I want to think all those that have been involved in implementation of the housing committee and the work that went into that you know in 2018 it really those recommendations came on the heels of a very robust listening tour engaging many elements and stakeholders and individuals group in terms of what types of housing we want and doing so we were able to do a community informed approach to coming up with specific policy recommendations that reflected what we heard from the community in ways that translated to the types of policies we wanted and knowing that our community values and social mobility and opportunity for change in housing types over the spectrum of a person's lifetime albeit from graduating high school to individual living to college or roommate to working and then families to single parents to elderlies you name it everybody and wanting to see how we can do so in a way that's really responsive to really maintaining the character of our community and so what that translated for those who aren't as familiar as I am because I was part of it is really the elements that we moved forward with which it was community engagement and community protection really maintaining character in other ways we can support all the things that we love about Santa Cruz community housing protection looking at how do we preserve our existing housing stock and then housing development and thinking about how we produce more types of housing that really reflect what the community wants and hopefully will lead itself to a more opportunity and so factoring all of those things really comes this chance of various policy recommendations so I just really want to applaud our planning department and the community that has been being through some of these policies and hopefully that will then lend itself to a community that reflects the diversity that I know I heard loud and clear amongst that process of wanting different housing so just sort of to provide this unique policy recommendation in this broader context around what we're doing to move forward with more types of housing stock and how we're moving trying to for all to enjoy so with that I'm happy to have seconded the motion for any further comment on the current motion okay we are ready for roll call vote please first I'm sorry Johnson Mayor Watkins hi hi motion pass 5 2 with Cummings and Brown no thank you thank you to our planning staff the butlers Sarah and Lacey and Matt Benoit for the information and being available for the question next on our agenda is item number 15 transportation and public work mission appointment for members of public we're streaming this meeting if this is an item you want comment on now is timed all in using the instructions on your screen we will begin with questions from council if there are any then we will take public comment and then return city council for nominations and voting to appoint someone to the station and public mission are there any questions from council well I had council member Myers had one question honey was there other other app besides the two that were in the packet yeah we did receive one this morning but that will not be considered that we're going to hold on to that one here until the next and is there was no other app at all for this this mayor that's my question copy after just more honey if he went the how do we go about trying to perhaps only have to accept the ones for coming in on this little bit yeah well there is a deadline there wasn't a set deadline on this one but we did just be set this morning the day of the meeting so I opted not accept it for this but hold on to them until the next thing but we could potentially but we could potentially ask the application if you recall there was a group where we held off filling I can't remember and take the motion I reached to that and couple of stated okay thank you any other questions from council and we will take public comment and I will go to the attendees list you have one person with their hand raised dude like to raise your hand interested in commenting on transportation and public work's mission appointment raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or select the webinar when it is your term it will share an announcement that you have been unmuted and the timer will then be set ahead and unmute yourself council I just wanted to ask I guess this might be directed towards Bonnie I set my application in on Friday was that the one that was not that wasn't the applicant that was not the applicant I don't receive them okay if that's sorry go ahead public comment in addition your question before was that it can I speak a little bit the timer is going thank you for your time and consideration so I'll try to cut down a little bit but I've been a resident Santa Cruz for the past five years and that time I've been both a student at UC Santa Cruz and now an employee at UC Santa Cruz as well and I plan on being here foreseeable future I grew up somewhat locally in Monterey County but in my time here in Santa Cruz I've really seen some great projects through the transportation and public works commission and the benefits they bring for our community so for example things I've used personally and very much enjoyed for the bike sharing program since discontinued but coming back new format which I'm very excited for the rail trail has been a fantastic asset for our community for people walking for biking for families people looking to exercise the food waste and compost effort that is ongoing has been fantastic I've cut down personally this is trash by about half just in food scraps as well as the river walk lighting I'm looking forward to seeing put in as well as some of the work that has been done with the San Lorenzo Park neighbors group I'm part of cleaning up San Lorenzo Park and kind of restoring it a little bit multiple projects so it's been great to see those projects I look forward to seeing many many more come through the commission and I hope to be a part of it I believe I would bring a unique perspective to this commission as a younger person who works in the city and somebody who also relies fully on alternative transportation I do not own a car so I get everywhere on my bike or by bus or by walking so I think there's also a significant number of people in similar situations to myself who live in the city and I think that I could bring their voices to the commission and bring a perspective that is not as visible so thank you again for your consideration thank you our next is Reggie Meisler go ahead and unmute yourself for public comment hi can you hear me yes so I just wanted to call in support of the candidate that council member Myers wants to sort of just ignore and leave the position vacant allowing to fill who is Joy Shendledecker Joy Shendledecker has done a lot for the community very similar to San Lorenzo park neighbors Joy has formulated her own cleaning crew group and sanitation for the people she has part of a local group that is very environmentally conscious called socialists and she just is a very like great person who engages in a lot of local work and I think she would be very appropriate for any commission spot honestly but this one great thank you our next public comment is Santa Cruz Cares hello I'm calling in on behalf of Santa Cruz Cares I'd like to also support Joy Shendledecker for transportation and public work commission as previous caller stated she is a really valued member of our community does a ton of time with the community her work with sanitation for the people is really amazing and if there's council members here that have not interacted with sanitation or looked into it I really want to highly highly recommend you do so and please support her in on this commission thank you are there any other members of the public that would like to comment on item number 15 transportation and public work commission appointment okay we will return to council for nominations and voting we'll appoint someone to the transportation and public work and deliberation we had two applicants that were accepted for this appointment Sabrina Lopez and Joy Shendledecker and let me go back to council and I see council member Meyers and then council member council member Brown yes thank you mayor yeah my intent is not obviously I would like to make then the after the process like the piece maybe bring it back there allow it for weeks get back get that way we have a little more outreach okay we have a motion by council member Meyers to extend the application period for this appointment there a second council member Brown is there a second I'll second that council member Boulder council member Brown I would like to make a substitute motion nominating Joy Shendledecker for the transportation and public work okay we have a substitute motion by council member Brown nominating Joy Shendledecker there a second I'd like to second with a friendly amendment that we move forward with the appointment from the friendly amendment to move forward and was accepted by council member Brown if I can make some comments yes I'd just like to point out that our application period for these commissions go through the end of the year and into early January we have days where we hear from all the applicants and then move forward with making our votes and recommendations this has been pushed out because obviously there's a number or there's a couple of times about the year when you might not have or resign until they concede and I feel that over both applications people are qualified for these and while there's people who run their hat a little bit late I think we're respecting the commissions and the work they need to be doing that I'd like to move forward with correct course okay so thank you for your comment we have a first second on the substitute motion and council member Myers resignation but we wouldn't put it on these for the year there was a resignation but still opening if I could I have to go back let's see applicants in the state these are applicants that they either submitted them when there was an opening or we have had them in the annual appointment process because we retained them for two years so I'd have to go back and look at the dates but they may have been ones that we had on file and they were still interested in my interest in closing the extension for weeks to four weeks is not to date any people who are applicants but we acknowledge that our husband and resignation so just to try to put the word out we all have applicants everywhere and council member calentary oh I'm sorry council member brown and then council member calentary thank you mayor I just wanted for clarification here to say that the application was submitted years ago members of this city council this current council and previous members have not voted for her she has been nominated and she continues to be interested during that period she has a significant amount of work towards our community that helps our city given the lack of capacity and I would argue political will for addressing in particular ways management and I don't see any reason why we wouldn't support her today so in terms of getting more applications I understand the the interest there or the sentiment and the intention but I think we have a qualified application thank you council member brown council member calentary johnson yeah I just wanted to note that I've had a community members of community members who found out a little too late about this one in particular who is a youth and who is really engaged and wants to get involved and as we're thinking about our commissions I know we have some work to do in terms of how we communicate and do outreach but I wasn't expecting this either and some community members haven't heard about it so I think we heard from one applicant today who called who wasn't able to get their application and I know of another community member who I was ready to support because I've been working with this for a while who also wasn't aware of the deadline are you the vice mayor watching yeah I'm comfortable with extending the process to allow more opportunities especially given the fact that we had a residence and I know we've done this before I think we recently received a commission and I know that this was unique and then also just that individuals are interested in serving on our we thank you always and it's an incredible attribute in our community and we welcome you to reach out to us directly so we can understand your well so I just want to offer that to the applicant who are interested in serving on this commission or others that has always helped for us to hear a little bit about your background and we have your paper application that in terms of offering more input as always an opportunity given kind of our circumstances and I feel not only the applicant be considerate I also wanted to just make a brief comment that some of the direction we have been working on from last resolution under the health and all policies is looking at the process for applicants in our advisory bodies and this is a great example of of that process and having learned of a residence you know several applicants that were interested thought they had missed the original deadline however how we communicate out that applications are on file and applications are accepted anytime for any members of the public that are out there are interested on serving on any of the advisory bodies and commissions I encourage you to submit an application now for the application or opening a rise and need build so I just wanted to make sure that was clear and so we will be there's no further comment voting on the substitute motion which is made by council member Brown seconded by Cummings to appoint or nominate or appoint maybe you can say appoint Shendon Dechler and continue with the nomination that did I capture that accurately council member Cummings I guess the amendment was I mean my amendment move forward with one in process okay council member Brown is nominating for Shendon Dechler I think we still since there's other options we want to go through the process for nomination okay thank you for clarifying I mean we have a roll call the council member Callentary Johnson no and for the record allow community members who have an interest to have the opportunity holder? no for the same reason sorry I probably throw you off a little bit I think that's the order Cummings I'm muted my vote is no and for the record I just simply want to have Vice Mayor Watkins no Mayor Bruder no okay so we will return to the original motion to extend the appointment and nomination the nomination and appointment process of transportation and public works commission appointment to we didn't set a date there wasn't a date in the motion you just you want to clarify that yeah I would recommend the seconder now there's March 22nd April 12th April 26th our I know bring it back April 12th the seconder holder yes okay I'm minimal to that so a motion to extend application period the nominating and voting process public works commission appointment April 12th council meeting we have a roll call vote member I'll support the motion I just would like the record to ask that their communication sent out to all council members and send that out to the public so they have a lot of time I motion passes unanimously okay thank you thank you for everyone who did call in with public comment and to all of colleagues comment I will move right on into our next agenda item we take a short break we have someone waiting so I'm going to roll right in it is Randy Morris from the county human services department and if you don't find we can take a break after Randy leaves I'd like to start accommodating I'm Mayor Brunner I feel very uncomfortable between me and you not having a break I am happy if it's a five minute break wait I can be a little late to my three o'clock if that's that's wonderful to hear let's a five minute file break and we will return thank you for your Randy as council members return on your cameras and we'll jump right back Mayor Brunner do you mind if I ask Laura and Bonnie and Tiffany if they're going to do this screen share for me I believe I am okay thank you alright I will go ahead and begin we are now at agenda item number 16 for investments are an update on application process review panels and scoring award funding decisions process and amended appeal process for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want 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 City Council we will then take public and then return to council and I hope please we will begin now with the presentation I was going to introduce to you our sustainability and climate action manager good afternoon Mayor and City Council members the city manager's office and although I prepared in collaboration with the county for today I would like to introduce for you Randy Morris the Santa Cruz County department director who will be giving the details presentation today and connecting it county board of provides being also occurring today so I will turn it over to Randy okay am I coming through okay okay thank you Tiffany and I guess formerly Mayor and Vice Mayor Watkins and council members it really is good to see you all I meeting on these meetings but as Tiffany mentioned there was a presentation of the board of supervisors this morning and we have intentionally through the arc of this RFP process been aligning our presentations to the board in the morning and your council in the afternoon because this is a partnership and we're trying to make sure both legislative bodies have the same thing at the same time I hope having logged in a little bit before and knowing what front of you next this is a little bit of a lighter presentation part because am I is your one plus knowledge very serious this is really more of an update and you have full opportunity as a council to make decisions in June at a recommended award date and at your full budget hearings to make any final direction decision so this is just to look at what's in front of you is not as least as I track it any heavy ask it's in the state I believe in your materials it's really just to accept the report which I'll walk through kind of what was in it and then to direct I guess that would be Tiffany to return in June and I'll explain to you what those dates are but I'm me or our deputy here with you all throughout the way I do want to take the opportunity to say thank you to Tiffany and to Laura and into this after a resignation jumped in and great partner and Laura has been out all of it we become text buddies of all kinds of crazy hours trying to figure out important policy stuff so you don't put either of our elected in a complicated position because you know putting putting a lot of general fund money together is area so the relationship is very important so what I want to cover today if you go to the next slide is of an update on what has happened we were in front of the county board in November in front of your council member when you approve the RFP piece the big shift is because of the Omicron COVID surge there is a request from our community based organizations delay the application deadline because they were all struggling with staff being out and they literally some were saying we can't even apply so we all approved a one month delay so the update today was shifted from what we thought we were going to update back in November because of those changes so there's next item is timeline updates the appeals process which I'll speak in a little bit is something that we've coordinated with your city staff is actually county administered but in partnership so this was mostly an action we need to talk to the board of supervisors to make a modest adjustment timelines in our board procurement policy so this is from this morning's presentation not to answer questions the next is going to give an update on the applications received the applications from our community providers were delayed a month and Friday 5 p.m. just passed so by the time we published materials we did not have information so we did over the weekend scramble and have a slide to give a quick peek at what's coming our way city and county together a quick summary of some of the panel process play out so you're fully aware of what's happening between now and when city and county are back of our legislative bodies with recommended awards and then a couple updates on funding partner updates and this is interesting because this morning I presented saying let me tell you about our partnership with the Santa Cruz now I got to figure out how to make sure that we can see let me tell you about now that was one of the updates but the other two are we were asked by the board and supported by your council to kind of look at the potential nexus of both the community foundation because we have an open bid opportunity there philanthropic funds and then also the local area ages aging which funds a lot of older adult programs and the city and county core dollars and programs for dollars have historically often augment to the AAA so we also did the reporting back and I'm up there so next slide so this is just a quick level set reminder boy I got here two years ago I was told that this C. O. R. E. was four letter acronym there was a lot of energy free behind the efforts to what used to be called community programs for a lot of concern and question mark and worry about our based organization so we spent a lot of time with city and the county engaging in our our partners optimal solutions actually called the Nicole's who you all most know but spending a lot of time engaging in it and I just want to confirm that process remains very driven by feedback from our partners they're very close to the ground and so a lot of the RFP structure was driven by and we that's very forward the total amount available and again this is just a reminder was presented in November is five million eight hundred and seventy nine thousand and you have just over a million dollars and I want to repeat your council and our board has full discretion and authority during your budget deliberations and to make changes this this is just what's out public in the RFP you have ample opportunity during recommended awards and final budget deliberations make changes but this is just a reminder what's in the current RFP the structure of this RFP was based on a look back of how the city and county funded awards five years ago during the last procurement and the agreement of the county board and your council was to organize this RFP sort of based on your approach so that there wouldn't be a dramatic shift funding so there was RFPs and small grant sizes medium large and then the new change was this one targeted impact of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars and there's a moment there to work with your council as we get towards the recommended awards there's discussion in your community programs committee and council about maybe augmenting it backing that and there's opportunity to address that in June and then of course equity is kind of front and center looking at some of these precious general fund dollars where does two legislative bodies want to try to operationalize they make a difference to balance the playing field with some of the populations trying to support so woven throughout this is not just birds but real intent at least build an equity process and we'll keep talking about that especially when we get into the process. So next slide. This is just to go back to what I said at the beginning the community driven process we heard a lot and again me as a new set of eyes those have been tracking this probably know this I was really struck by how much part of the community was history of this is certain community based organization were locked in and guaranteed funding and if new or you hadn't been in the club if you will you couldn't get in and so we spent a lot of time trying to make sure the playing field was level so that all community based organizations wanted apply I had a fair opportunity so this just is a summary of what has happened since the November present public presentations to date. There were 64 training and technical assistance opportunities in all kinds of formats to help any community organization get some feedback and T.A. to help their application and the numbers at the bottom or tell you there was you know 52 unduplicated people but 298 participants that participated in the process on the way and the quotes on the right are just surveys to kind of hear if we're hitting the mark and heard some nice things including it had and some community organizations think like a little differently about how to put them an opportunity so we appreciate that we think we are still partnering with well-based. The next slide this is an update on kind of timeline adjustments as of the COVID surge in the agreement to delay the application deadline and again the right column is still process difference of county and city and certainly again happy to ask any questions if you have any. So the deadline for applications were early February we got approval to extend them to early March was last Friday that has pushed us a little bit from what was planned to come back to your council and our board in May to early June I do want to recognize that just to have created an administrative wrinkle for your council I don't think had an existing published date but we had no way of getting the process done before the 7th so we're trying to line up our recommended award date on the 7th to go to the board in the morning your council and we can talk staff to staff and if you have questions about that and that is because we want to we actually really need to get back to the two legislative bodies by the end of June or we missed the fiscal year cycle which very very complicated and at least board process we are already beyond the two one-year delays of the permit cycle so it could get complicated so this is what sort of backed us up into these dates and then that leads to the appeal process. Board of supervisors did to approve it that is the county board permit policy gives people who want to appeal recommended awards five days to file an appeal we pulled it back to three and then county staff had ten days to respond to the appeal and we pulled it back five. We took the bigger hit stick within the timeline the update for your council is and I don't know if it's in the printed materials I think it is but I want you to know this is that we've worked with your staff or in Tiffany and we the county will handle the appeal process as every grant award has at least some county money in it but we will coordinate the along the way if there's any appeals but the actual technical process this adjustment is the county first level appeal and then very important is this last bullet all of that is sort of moved a little bit in terms of the role of elected officials at the city because you get to ultimate final decision what you want to do with your budget depending on what happens and what you recommended the next slide okay so this is the peak we knew this was coming we did not have this information until after five o'clock but as a reminder we had went to the board and your council and we had agreed to have these sort of weird dollar amounts and the funding that was approved as a structure was what's in the middle column 598 small all the way up actually no over on the right is what we had 605,000 small all the way up to 795 that targeted and the dollars are in the middle what you see is how many applications are received for each of those tiers and the most important point is the middle column much to our surprise we got little bit under number of request than the funding available in the small tiers so we had asked the board this morning for some discretion to work as county staff and partnership with city staff to consider after the rating panels meet to come back to both the bodies with some possible adjustments of dollar amounts and small to apply them to the medium and large given you can see there is three times the amount requested than available funds in large and then also somewhat interesting is there is a lot of interest in the concept of a targeted impact but we only received two applications so I don't know we anticipated a little bit more so I'd recommend we go to the next slide and please ask any questions about this that's our preview of what's in front of us so the panel process that's coming up big push by the based organizations and concept both legislative bodies asked us to try to panel members that were mostly local we want to let you know we have our panel members assembled and it turns out 85% of them are local the 15% are not as we did reach out to colleagues contiguous Bay Area counties that do this sort of work and have been participated in these sort of public procurements for these sort of programs this sort of objective set of eyes we're pleased to say that it's only 15% also want to let you know we created a conflict of interest policy and partnership with our city staff to make this a very small community as those of you know who live for me as a new set of eyes everybody knows everybody so we had to be very intentional in making sure we ruled out anybody being a panel member that had a conflict closely involved with an actual applicant we spend an awful lot of time and Tiffany has been your point person every step of the way working with us a group of people developing sort of a scoring rubric that would help view the panels and rank them and give scores so that staff could then turn around and recommend it towards and further to make sure there is as much integrity as possible in the application of that every single panel member is mandated to go through training we have a whole training process in place support all the panel members to make sure you buy the scores fairly and evenly the next slide so here's where this funding partner updates are so as I told the board this morning partnership with you all so first is we agree with your staff and us that because we've made a conceptual agreement on the second two bullets which is this round of core unlike the first round where your city dedicated a hundred percent some of your dollars on priorities to you that did not have any money money this rfp every contract is anticipated to have a share of county money and your money and then some of them will have only given the dollar amounts so based on that concept we've agreed in concept right now to have the county hold all the contracts just makes it easier for the CBO so they don't have to have two contracts one with you and one with us for the same scope but we understand that needs to be done through an MOU that your legal council and you as elected officials are comfortable with that you feel like can't just be based on handshakes and good feelings it has to be really locked in and then also the comment about the appeals process for there be appeal we don't this the intent of simplifying the appeal process was make sure that we keep within the time frame not to take away any ability of the city through the process to weigh in so we want to put all of that in MOU and then come back to both board and the city council so you can prove that MOU and that would help cover the end of the process and how we would over contract during the cycle so then the two partner update the community foundation was actually a very interesting process because I was with Susan Tru along the way you had mentioned it at your town's meeting where I was present November that we wanted to try to find some type of way to take advantage of them having open funding opportunity and some of the CBO's apply for their funds as they apply for the CBO's and so we had a conceptual agreement to sit down and report back and develop a plan to maybe grade some funding well it turns out the community foundation made a choice to apply to so community foundation is an applicant a consortium of CBO's for the CORE so in conversation with Susan Tru I was given permission to share that we conceptually agreed we needed the optics were very difficult to imagine if just not legally appropriate for them to be both an applicant and behind the curtain with us looking at applications figuring out where to grade funding so that's the update that we've agreed to kind of pause and separate any alignment process of ours and then the last one is the area agency on aging you may be aware just quick 30 seconds of context congress passed the older Americans act in the 1960's California it was codified through the California department of aging there is federal and state dollars that target older adult programs the absolute largest grant is meals on wheels a $500,000 contract so it's a meaningful amount of $4 and for the first time ever in Santa Cruz County AAA is going there required public permit process at the exact same time we are at CORE so this morning at the board the board issued additional direction to us make sure that we aligned our practices we received instruction this morning pull out all senior nutrition applications for because they are concurrently an application to the AAA and the AAA is going to make their awards in April so we were directed this morning to pull out money and wait and see what the AAA awards and then make sure that we align the core money with the AAA select that's part of the C of collective impact versus ending up with different programs that were one so that was a direction we got this morning I can talk to your staff about what that means of course I'm going to answer any questions the next slide this is just a quick summary of next steps and then it's open for questions after today the rating panels that have been assembled and organized as I described earlier six weeks or so are going to be going through comprehensive training and rating process we will be working with Tiffany and Laura every step of the way and then this will lead to our current proposed timeline of coming back to the county board and your council on June 7th with recommended awards I think that's the moment when we will have potentially the biggest set of questions if TBOs think they should have won and they appeal and I think that's going to be the bigger moment then we come back to the board and your council your council and your final budget deliberations and again that is the moment your council reserve is all right your general fund and our county's general fund you have no federal state or local restrictions to make changes we are bringing forward the recommended awards to what I've heard avoid having public hearings be the place where you make budget decisions but have this pyramid process in the middle but you still reserve the right at your budget hearings then we have to work on the contract then we have to make sure that your council agrees and get the MOU in place will be a county process but you'll be aware of them and MOU will govern how you're aware of outcomes or data to your staff and then we do want to make sure we initiate a lessons learned process after we get the contracts done because this is like serious business having six million dollars of general fund money and we want to make sure to engage your council and our board and the TBOs and sort of talk about it now when we do this again because this is at the complete discretion of your council and our board how to use the fund so we are prepared to administer some sort of lessons learned process all done which we'll talk about again and the next slide is just the close out slides and you're welcome to remove the screens and I'm here to answer any questions if you have any. Thank you so much for that information and presentation to council members have any questions for any more needs to leave council member Kellan Terry Johnson. Thank you so much for that great presentation all the work I know it's a tremendous amount of work I have a few just a few questions the applicants who will I mean clearly we won't be able to fund everybody unfortunately since we have just a certain amount of money but the applicants who are we are not awarding how will we communicate with them and will we kind of give them an explanation of why their application aren't accepted and what they can do next time around or with other funders. So I track that as thank you for the compliment to Tiffany shout out to her this has been a lot of work and I think you know some member Collin Terry Johnson on the other end this applicant this is a lot of work to help minimize legislative bodies having to make complicated budget decisions during a budget hearing hours of public comment which I know you are nose so any yes it's a lot of staff time to sort of make that buffer the first part is a little simpler everybody will there's a couple steps first step is if there was a disqualification process the second step you are awarded or not which triggers the bills process your last part I'd recommend we come back to you in June when we have a process fully baked which is how to make sure to give feedback so we have a process in place and we're doing some staff work now and when we bring recommended rewards how to communicate their way with everybody so they can take their own lessons but lost as you know you have to be careful with that during a deal process. Okay that's great and then on the other side I heard you say we'll have a lessons learned opportunity which is great I've already gotten phone calls texts and emails from colleagues who are grant writers who have given me feedback so I would be interested learning more about what that process will be and how we as a council and city can support that lessons process. And can I just be really clear and direct we would value welcome appreciate directions feedback participation from your council and from our board because this is unlike anything else the county human service department deals with federal and state college. This is your money so we are the administrators and staff we want this to be something that makes sense to you for money and something that makes sense to the community based organization so we have some ideas but we would greatly appreciate keeping a list of everything and then when we will come back and we would like to engage in a conversation about how best we can create a lessons learned process because in the end we want to bring it back to you and you feel good and right about how the next process is out. Wonderful that's great and I think we will have the opportunity in our core committee and work with the Nichols and that's really great to hear. That's just my other question is once we have selected the applicants and then given the awards what level of engagement will the county as administrators have with the awardees? What's the expectation for sort of reporting on progress on milestones or outcomes and how will that be with the city and county and then beyond that how will we just engage the awardees to just to ensure that they're successful in their implementation and that we're true partners. Here's the money go do your thing but that we're really in this together. That's kind of a big question. I think I tracked, let me try. The first part in terms of city role I don't want to speak for Tiffany or Laura but I think I'm accurate. We want to make sure that MOU locked in place and then behind the curtain is your legal counsel and our counsel. We want to make sure we can answer that question by you as the because again this is your general fund money. We have ample time now in the finalization of the MOU between staff and counsel legal counsel for you to have that answered in the MOU. I think that bumps up to the second which is probably something that makes great sense to you all. This is your general fund. We have our general fund and we have limited staff so in an ideal world we would all have more staff and I believe this is a lot of contract. So in an ideal world given core COR as far as results we would like to have a collaborative partnership providers and where and if things are slipping that we have the time to work with the providers collaborative not unitive but I just want to be candid that's also staff intent. So we are actually not to get ahead of my budget process from my board but we are looking at whether or not of course to be able to on a county side be a little bit more engaged than we were in the first round in grants in the last two years. So I hope that's responsive to your question but I think if we are true to the purpose of core R is about results we want to have that get collaborative. That's great. That's great. Thank you. Thank you so much for your work. It's exciting to see. Thank you talentary council member talentary Johnson. Are there any other council members that have questions? Mandy Morris council member Brown. I don't have a question but I just wanted to say thank you here and other staff often really really proactive approach. Thank you council member Brown. Thank you so much for laying this framework out before us and running through the details thus far and this process it was very helpful and very helpful. I think there were some good points in there so thank you so much. Appreciate your presentation and your. Are you closing out because I don't think this is a vote and if so may I make one final comment? Yes. Okay well thank you and appreciate the recommendations. I have heard what this was like in front of the elected bodies where I got here very committed to not having that happen to our board again by our process and I do want to say because Mr. Huffaker just logged in I was scheduled if your schedule held to sort of be a partner to Matt and Larry and Lee on your next item with one of the most confounding issues. I just want to take the opportunity because I have to jump off to say Rosemary before Matt because the relationship has been so unbelievable that in the last year I've been here two years and there is not a more vexing public policy issue that I've ever seen about trying to figure out how to deal with filtered but I just wanted to make sure the spirit of what happened with 14 million work we did together and just the whole effort underway is an unbelievable turnaround staff to staff so I just wanted to share that as a baton passes I have to log out very confident that my worries that federal and state would not best in county and city of Santa Cruz applications because we didn't get along that's done we've got a good pathway ahead that doesn't mean the issues are going to be solved tomorrow but I wanted to share that as at his leadership and Larry and to Lee and great partners as Tiffany has been in course so that was okay to jump over to the next item but I have to run to my next meeting that I'm late to so thank you thank you so much see you in June thank you Randy I will be going out to public comment at this time I'll hold in case you have a public comment I'm curious so let's see if there are any members of the public if you're interested in commenting on core investments, art and updates application process review panels and scoring award funding decisions process and amended appeal process please raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hands your time to speak will hear an announcement that you've been unmuted and the timer will then be set in it okay let's go to attendees we have Reggie Meister go ahead and unmute yourself welcome Reggie can you hear me? yes thank you I'm a little confused about what is happening with change it feels like city money is being sent to the county and then the county can decide what to do with it am I correct in that because it feels like there was a city deliberator that's being cut out and then the county staff is the one who gets to choose city set aside funds am I correct in that or am I misunderstanding that like we did respond to the structural the process so this is part of the three minutes of the public comment and I just want to give the opportunity to Reggie to continue and finish out any other public comment yeah I guess if I'm wrong about that which I see a lot of like shaking of heads then I think it would be good to have clarification on that because I think it's very concerning the idea that we would send up sort of social service funding to the county and then we would have to kind of like hope that we advocated for our own general fund money correctly at the county level so maybe I'm just misunderstood thanks thank you for your public comment does anyone else any member of the public have any further comment on item number 16 I do have Serge Cagno go ahead and press star unmute hey this is Serge Cagno quick comment to Randy thank you for you and your team and all the amazing amount of support given the non-profits all of the many class of webinars from the Leslie's and the support and the one-on-one TA time it's been an amazingly easier process for this grant application than others that the non-profit world deals with so thank you thank you Serge for that public comment are there any other attendees that would like to speak to this item okay I will bring it back to Council and I will ask Randy at this point and or Matt manager to answer the question that one of the scholars had regarding social service funding and clarification I think it's probably appropriate since I'm the one who presented that led to that public comment I need to clarify what I meant is that agreeable Matt yeah so the short answer is city has no way shape or form and that was my bad wait or what so ever how it the RFP was both the Board of Supervisors and the city agreed to the process that was at RFP in terms of where any control or say is that's not county staff or really city staff that's panel members to the question of who has controllers we are creating an MOU which the city council has full say on this legal council has full say on to make sure that the way this money is spent is fully based on what the council your elected has a way to make sure that money is spent in purpose the way you want it the city council has an opportunity at recommended awards and final budget final decision about where the money goes then finally to how the contracts are actually managed it was in response to the community based organizations that said it's really hard to have one contract that I have to then have one with the one of the county do things it was really to ease the work of a community organization to get money from both city and county to have it be one contract to have most money all the contracts will have some county money for us to administer it but then again that no way shape or form takes away the city's ability to make sure how that money is spent is based on what you want and how you want it monitored and that will be governed in it so if I wasn't that clear I was maybe guilty of rushing quick to get through this but the council has many opportunities for money's purpose the decisions and also the life of the contract thank you for that okay we will now return to council for deliberation and action on this item any further comments from council we have a council member no I just want to thank for joining us today and providing that update on this item and presentation and I'll go ahead and just move the staff recommendation with the acceptance of the report the collective of results and evidence based investment requests for proposals amended timelines review panel process coordination funders and then direct staff return in June 2022 as described I'll second that sorry council member golder second alright we have a motion by council member Cummings and a second by boulder are there any further comments we'll go to a roll call vote Bonnie Bush we have a roll call vote council member is voluntary Johnson coming that motion passes unanimously thank you so much okay looking I'm going to take a minute just to look at our time here for our next item we've gone through our break we have oral communication scheduled for 6.30 I'm certain now 3.30 talking out loud as I assess our next agenda items okay so our next agenda item is item number 17 homelessness response quarterly update and I would like to ask the council how anyone needs a lunch break we've been going strong since 10.30 brief 20 minute lunch break or just you powering council member Cummings and I've been hoping to have a break I see another thumbs up I know we have waiting for comment on this item and I want to find full of that but I also want to be you're headed and nourished order to often work through this next agenda item so how about we do a 15 minute lunch break get some nourishment and we will return at 45 thank you it's 3.45 and we're returning from a lunch break so much and as other council members then please put on your cameras welcome back we're everyone ready to go staff is back great I will continue then with our agenda today we're at agenda number 7 homelessness response quarterly update for members of the public for spending this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in on your screen please note the public comment created for the below will be for both items 17.1 17.2 public comment will be limited to no more than a total of 2 minutes for we'll have 2 minutes the order will be a presentation of items 17.1 and 17.2 by staff followed by questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action on items but this time I would like to turn it over to our staff almost as response manager math university manager and we'll let you start thank you mayor or is going to bring up the presentation here real brief for this one moment alright mayor and council I'm pleased to introduce and kick off what is our first homeless response quarterly report including a proposed homeless response action plan well as a funding framework 14 million state funding and an update on major response initiatives and work that are currently underway so we have a full discussion for the council and the community this afternoon collectively these actions proposed investments are intended shift our overall response approach from reactive temporary fixes more proactive permanent and sustainable solutions approach you will see that this work aims to balance individual needs managing community impacts the action plan was developed with a sense of urgency acknowledging the growing public health crisis for us and was informed by our regional housing for a healthy Santa Cruz strategic plan as well as employees all of our city departments involved in our day to day response it also responds to council direction campaign services and standards ordinance well as the oversized vehicle ordinance it addresses diverse and albeit sometimes conflicting community feedback that staff and council have received ad hoc and through community surveys that we've conducted over the last several months we will not be doing this work alone that you heard earlier from Randy Morris with county services well as Robert Ratner we've been working with very closely with the county and I would argue that we were working more closely with our county partners than ever before with huge commitment to work together on developing meaningful solutions challenges that we're facing but to be clear all these are important steps in the right direction challenges are complex and decades of making and will not be solved overnight the first step to approach will require continuous evaluation and improvement as we move forward it's also important to emphasize that the work can't be successful without community support to advance these actions as through this journey from establishing additional shelter locations supporting affordable housing development and additional resources to really sustain these services over the long term as we all know long term systemic change and economic response across the entire community and our region with that said we're looking forward to today's conversation and hearing from the community and the council on today's proposals Larry and Walling and our homeless response team are going to be running us through the presentation and then we look forward to receiving questions and input as we move through today's update so with that we'll end it all Larry. Thank you Matt. Good afternoon Mayor Brunner and council members it's to be here this afternoon to share with you this quarterly update on homeless response team we have three component elements of our update for you today first is just providing updates and progress reports on activity and action that's taken place since December 14th council meeting with our last report second item as Matt referenced is the homelessness response action plan that in development third element is the regional update on the regional collaboration on homelessness with our county partners hmm so the first section some updates first set of updates is related to the safe sleeping sheltering and the camping services and standards as you recall from December we've been working with the Salvation Army to establish a program at the Armory building that's a 75 bed program 65 of which the ongoing intent will be an emergency on demand we are in the process and anticipate getting that set up with next few weeks it has been in an administrative process with Salvation Army and executing the contract we've been in touch with them on an ongoing basis and we believe we are close to getting approval at the regional level locally staff from a program is in place to be able to transition over and concurrently we've been working recently at infrastructure up at the Armory building to be able to get the program established and running as quickly as possible so that should be happening in the next few weeks also we set up the first transitional community camp that was part of the plan represented in December that called for two transitional community camps the first one at 12 20 river that was opened in early January so right about two months we reached full capacity of that camp rather rapidly that was the result of a lot of intentional focused outreach with prospective program participants the bench lands from the cemetery and other locations there was a real vetting process for that program trying to engage folks who are ready to really focus on making change and working towards permanent housing it's only been a few weeks but I had a number of notable successes already with this program again it's not just an encampment but it's coupling it with intentional case management and individualized service plans there's been a number of folks who staff has worked with to complete the acquisition of their vital documents driver's license issues like that that will allow them to be able to connect with other benefits for instance so that's been a success we've had placements and exits to better housing situations we've brought a family that was initially in the 12 20 camp connected with a family shelter and housing matters we've had a lot of participants who've been able to get referred and get into drug treatment programs so short time but outcomes also just the last week of February our staff was able to access to housing vouchers housing authority and on a very quick turnaround which also included getting some of those vital documents I've been able to connect a number of participants of the 12 20 river program to get acquired housing vouchers so that's success at this point the second transition to community camp we're still in the planning process and really is looking and learning from what's being successful at 12 20 river and after this short pilot then look at establishing the second one and all likelihood we're looking at the second one being focused around specific subpopulation whether it be a transitional camp or disabled persons or all women sober living environment so that's still under consideration but we're looking at doing the second transition to community camp with that kind of specific targeted focus in mind the other update related to safe sleeping and sheltering is we're exploring a shelter expansion and housing matters we've reached out to them who see how we can expand their capacity for about 30 participants at this program this would be 24 7 program using pilot shelters or similar kind of shelters it would also come with 24 7 ongoing program with case management housing navigation of that full complement of wraparound services that housing matters provides so we're exploring expansion of the city's shelter capacity program there as well next slide please on the safe parking and OVO ordinance had direction to set up with tiered safe parking program so far we have tier one that is operational of the police department spaces also on February 28 we open tier two now operational operating at lots four and five initially we've activated six spaces three at each lot there is potential for expansion at those sites to up to six spaces each and as that program gets off the ground expansion will look at adding spaces there but we're starting small testing the program out and then looking to expand for tier three which is a 24 7 ongoing program we received responses in response to our open RFQ those responses are being reviewed presently and we anticipate the next quarterly updates not a little bit sooner to have a contract to move forward for consideration by Canalsold for a tier three operator alongside the state standing up the state parking programs there's been a process for coastal development and design permit, coastal commission the most recent updates on this front that cities develop and design permit was approved at the planning commission on March 3rd last Thursday so after that approval there is now an appeal period that is underway that not appeal can go either directly to the city council or it can be appealed to the coastal commission so those windows are open again enforcement of the midnight to 5 a.m. the parking restriction that is part of the OVO can only take effect after the permit process is complete on the encampment management front there's been a number of developments since December fall in response to rising waters and potential flooding along the San Lorenzo river the low-lying areas of both Benchlands and up by cemetery the decision that those areas need to be evacuated and we stood up a temporary evacuation camp first at the riverfront garage which had easy access from the lower Benchlands that moved over to Deep Park that encampment was open from December 14th through January 19th and it was intended to be a temporary evacuation shelter and as soon as the risk of additional flooding subsided of closed that camp the individuals there were assisted in relocation back to the Benchlands area also in January 27 where there was an encampment on the lot and around the lot that needed to be closed due to construction for a water project so that took place in January following that temporary camp necessitated by environmental cleanup that work that happened on January 26 the environmental cleanup took about two weeks to complete and at that time 95 tons of refuse and debris was removed from that location and is now cleaned up free of ongoing encampment so in each of those instances it can important to note that in the closure process had coordinated consistent outreach to folks in those encampments to offer additional relocation our outreach staff Chris, Jeremy, they contact with folks in those locations were available on the Benchlands where we had additional space to assist get them set up for relocation there in advance of these closures while a number of folks did move into the Benchlands a number moved up to the Riverwalk and Levy areas that have been impacted associated with some of those closures we are currently in the process working to help relocate folks in those areas as well the Benchlands is an alternative and we've continued the same kind of process of outreach and noticing with folks in advance of those efforts I think just this week Chris and Jeremy worked with about five people to move them into open spots and then the San Lorenzo Park Benchlands itself there's been direction to work towards a closure of that encampments and then when the expanded safe sleeping and shelter capacity in the city will allow us to do that conducting the summer of this year when those additional programs come online we'll have capacity to begin to work towards closing the Benchlands and restoring it to its use for the entire community as a park in addition to the additional shelter capacity there's a couple of other grant funded programs that have been initiated that are working at that location to do outreach, case management and rehousing efforts I believe I've talked about those of previous updates but again the county applied for an encampment resolution grant back in December to support the city council provided a resolution to support that grant to report that that grant application was successful $2.3 million award that will support that outreach and rehousing efforts it's specifically targeted for encampments along the San Lorenzo River target number is to assist 65 people to be able to get connected to housing this competitive process has had an innovation the innovative aspect of that program is really providing housing scholarships as part of their case plan so really providing flexible funding as part of that outreach and case planning to support whatever barriers individuals have that will circumventing them to be able to connect them to housing so that is going to be able to resource that provide support to make people able to make progress towards the San Lorenzo similarly through behavioral health in the streets program is starting it was augmented as well from the county through mental health service act funding so they've made a five year commitment of approximately $8 million of the next five years again with a doing case management behavioral health focus and working with folks connecting them to services and creating greater stability so those are other efforts that are targeting that location so those are the updates related to our ongoing homelessness response efforts so now I want to turn and provide an overview of our homelessness response through your action plan that's been in development the action plan was informed by best practices that are set forth in statewide, regional and local homelessness response work it also reflects input from our community all the departments it also includes employees that are on the ground assisting us with this work every day first of our homelessness response team and then in an effort to jump start this work called two half day workshops with department heads and the homelessness response team to reflect on what's working well isn't working and then ultimately develop a set of action shift approach to more proactive solutions and so here you can see the various inputs into our planning process it was a very assertive timeline when we kick this off to our presentation here today we started with planning and homework reading those background documents those state and regional local plans dance of a February second initial workshop that was gathering ideas and brainstorming then we had the homelessness response team did some refinement with that initial brainstorming organized it then we came back collectively again on the following week on March 9th the second half day meeting and planning session to come up with the draft proposal and so we've been working on organizing it planning it and it's ready to share this evening on March 8th so the contents of the plan so as part of this process we developed statements around our homelessness response work which is that in Santa Cruz our homeless responsible balance individual needs and community impacts and prevention to exit and this work too is grounded in our values specifically our city's response to homelessness centers on values related to health safety collaboration transparency economic vitality fiscal responsibility practicality and resource steward as we engage in this process to process or an element of the process is really envisioning what was successful like you know what are the results as a result of our plan and so as we thought about this conclusion the first year what might we expect the outcomes we'd look towards would be things like more sheltering leading to for large encampments and the ability to enforce the CSSO that will have safe parking programs that lead to fewer oversized vehicles overnight on city streets to enforce the oversized vehicle ordinance that San Lorenzo Park will be operating as a park free from encampments and that there will be a safe environment for all supported by more community service officers now and as we thought about future years we can envision more people in housing and people living on city streets more treatment and support services available for those struggling with mental health substance abuse disorders and just overall a greater sense of both safety wide so these are still broad goals and objectives and in the coming months we'll be working towards some more specific metrics as focus on our specific strategies for tackling homelessness so coming out of that work as trying to organize and refine it it really it got shaped into five possible response action areas the first being building capacity and partnerships permanent affordable and support housing basic support services include things like hygiene, sheltering and storage and community safety so I'll go into each of those in a little bit more detail and also give a few examples of kinds of strategies and activities under each of those action areas so for the first category building capacity and partnerships this really looks at taking a holistic and integrated approach to expand capacity effectiveness and our homeless response work so part of that is increasing our response capacity this means building out our team to be able to provide these services effectively involves re-engineering how we do these services and that's more integrated and holistic to having specific staff members and specific roles it is identifying partners who can play a role in supporting this work involves other specific vendors to help on issues such as ongoing refuse removal and cleaning open spaces involves building a task force of business partners engaged in this work then part of this too is engaging in advocacy for policy form and bringing funding to jurisdictions like Santa Cruz that are confronted with disproportionate impacts with this the second area is affordable and supportive housing this really acknowledges that housing affordability and availability are a significant driver in our region's homelessness crisis so our goals in this area are too among the goals in this area is to meet or exceed arena requirements for low and very low categories as well as executing a master plan for the Coral Street campus and this would include development of a navigation center which would include permanent supportive housing the third area basic support services specific to effective care and support services that need to be placed to help break the cycle of homelessness to support our unhoused population so among activities in this area addressing all levels of sheltering from emergency to transitional to permanent it involves establishing parking programs as well as creating infrastructure and programming for RV waste disposal the next category current stewardship builds off the basic supports and it speaks to our joint responsibility to support our homeless residents but also our responsibility for protection and restoration of our natural environment so within this action area the activities objectives include optimizing our response to mental health substance disorders services creating and partnering to create transitional employment programs to support employment and income generation for our unhoused residents it involves closing the bench lands as I've mentioned and restoring it to its use as a part and it also includes enforcing other environmental protection regulations particularly looking at our sensitive watershed areas and then the final action area reflects community safety and this is about partnering to keep Santa Cruz a safe environment for all so here this includes equitably enforcing behavior operationalizing our OVO and CSSO ordinances as well as partnering with downtown businesses on a community safety strategy so those are the overall in the broad areas and so there's additional activities under each of these action areas and what we begin to do is map these on to timelines for implementation for the plan I won't go into every detail here but you can see is the different the different color coding reflects action areas and each box is a set of a specific activity and we're beginning to look at the timing of when it starts and when it's ongoing in each of these areas and what you can see quite quickly just by the first page which covers the first three action areas is that this plan is really front-loaded in terms of our timeline some of this work is already underway in terms of just the development of this action plan, developing a spending plan for $14 million spoke to getting safe parking programs for tier one and tier two up and running already but most of these activities are really starting in this year and it's a front-loaded timeline it's time to get to work so those are the first three categories and again these are the other two parent stewardship and safety so we're continuing to work on those and build those out we'll be adjusting those timelines based off of reality and learning in the field as Matt mentioned this action plan is going to be dynamic and evolving that's responsive to emerging needs and what we're learning on the ground so continuous evaluation is part of this process and that will inform our timelines and our sequencing in this work so one of the elements that I want to dive in a little deeper on is related to first action area but we talked about building out the city's homelessness response and work involves every single department through the action planning process there was articulated a need for some additional positions to build out the city's capacity to be able to do this work as you can see here we've come to summarize it involves new positions or changes to positions in the city manager's office but also positions for parks and properties and works so color coding here really flex back to those different action areas and roles that different departments have but we'll see within our homelessness response we have a couple of positions that are related to strategy and oversight that work strategy oversight and then program and operations but part of the changes we'll see and Lisa Murphy from Human Resources will speak specifically in a little bit to positions but we'll have a deputy city manager role that is going to be overseeing homelessness as well as other programs there's the homelessness response manager that stays the same we are reclassifying a homeless management analyst to a homeless response services homeless services service coordinator sorry as well as we have our outreach shelter specialists are currently temporary positions and we're looking to institutionalize those and have three part-time people who are working at two full-time equivalent positions we are also looking to add a community relations specialist half-time position to support community engagement outreach locations and that's with all those positions are within the city manager's office parks and rec looking to establish two full-time positions that are dedicated to resource and land management those responsibilities include a response and the treatment of illegal encampments preservation of public spaces and environmentally sensitive areas and restoration of those impacted areas they'll also re-envision them interacting with our outreach team able to be conduit for connecting unhoused residents to services we're also and it calls for hiring and expanding the service officers by two full-time positions and then we're also looking to add a half-time position with the job title building maintenance worker that will be responsible for obtain and repair any of the city shelter or safe sleep parking programs any of the infrastructure needs to those locations so that's an overview and then I will turn it over to you so your action today is that adding 1.0 planning and development you can add recommendation three positions for the homelessness shelter and specialist 1-2 and a 1-2 means it's alternate staff higher lower level of the 1 or the more advanced staff the add one full-time homeless coordinator add two community services deleting a 0.65 position management analyst that one is directly related to services coordinator those two were swapping those two felt that it really needed a general management analyst that we used about the city to be more specified in the duties of the homeless world and also deleting a 1.0 effort for the city manager and for your informational only and not for action today is the existing deputy city manager the city manager it's a 1-2 again meaning it's alternately staff and it's currently staffed at the 2 level because it was combined with the development now that will be reduced to a 1 and that's a salary but there is no action necessary but I did want to call it to what was next slide and then for your future reference as Larry went through it's not for your action this evening I believe it is the 0.5 building maintenance worker the 2.0 resource and land management positions and the half time community relations especially but again that is not on your agenda this evening it is that first slide that I presented and that's specifically under that that's it on the staffing piece I'm not sure Larry thanks Lisa I will speak to regional collaboration on homelessness I believe out there I'm deputy city manager and director of planning community development services and you can go on to the next slide thank you so regional collaboration is really essential for any long-term success in homelessness and I want to start by thanking many people in the city and in the county and nonprofits and those members of the general public that have contributed to our homelessness response efforts and to our knowledge base both with this current action plan as well as previous have fed into this as well as those who are offering services directly out in the community and I'm going to focus on our regional collaboration with the county on various homelessness related issues we have been working really closely with the county on a wide range of these issues we meet with them on a regular basis both staff staff as well as with the two by two which includes the mayor and vice mayor and two members of the board as well as meeting regularly with the county and nonprofit like housing matters and then of course we meet with the county as part of the continuum of care so formally the homeless action partnership and now the housing health policy board and we've built a strong relationship with the county in part based on the mutual understanding that neither of us have the full breadth of resources necessary to tackle the homelessness issue and we've worked towards understanding each other's perspective and part through better defining our mutual roles responsibilities and we're using those common understandings to ground our discussion in how to allocate our limited resources so that we're collectively working towards achieving our goals one of those common goals is better data and we've had successes recently with 1220 river street sample our city staff were recently granted access into the homeless management information system HMIS so that we can track information on the same system that county is encouraging many of its nonprofit partners and our nonprofit partners to track data on and they're retooling that as well in terms of how that costing is being covered by the new continuum of care rather than by the nonprofit encourage more participation and we recently last week even went out and I know that there were at least six staff members from the city and at least four members of the council and probably more that I don't know about across the city who participated in the point in time count last week and that's going to contribute to our collective data resources and we've been supportive of the county in their effort to get additional funding through the HAP to do that point in time count on an annual basis rather than a bi-annual basis so that we can improve the data and just one other point Larry mentioned the encampment management you'll recall that the council supported that encampment management grant back in December and so we another example of a collaborative effort in something that we're excited to get moving on with the county and next slide there Laura so we've of course been collaborating very closely with the county on how to spend the $14 million that the state is providing to the city as part of the current fiscal year budget and the proposed plan includes approximately $7 million infrastructure and about $7 million in programmatic support focused on preventing and addressing individual and community impacts related to homelessness and this was the point where I was going to invite up Randy Morris from our county human services department the director there and as you heard from him earlier he had a conflict due to our timing and I don't think that he is back on but you heard the gist of his comments which essentially acknowledge that we are working really closely together with on a regular basis and do have a really strong relationship and have worked to formulate this proposal together for so I'm going to jump right into that the expansion of coral street campus sheltering that includes some really significant costs related to hygiene repairs to provide a shower and bathroom facilities in an existing building there at campus as well as property conditions on coral street that collectively comes to nearly $5 million we also are embarking on something that I'm excited about from a planning perspective to bring a consultant on board and do a design charrette will help us prepare a coral street master plan and that master plan will then guide future phasing of investments in the coral street area and help inform what land use changes we might pursue in order to facilitate the overall facilitate realization of the overall vision for the coral street area and then we've set aside some really significant funds $600,000 towards environmental remediation efforts and towards pre-development funding for a navigation center out in the coral street area and so that money will go towards things like preparing plans and setting us up to be competitive when it comes to grant and that's something that we really and moving on to the second bullet here with the pre-development funding pool that's something that we're also looking to do throughout the county and so we've got a significant amount of money $500,000 set aside for pre-development costs associated with projects not just within the city limits but throughout the county and that will align us to really leverage that investment to hopefully achieve additional grant monies through things like project home key so we've talked through eligibility criteria with the county and we're really looking at targeting projects that need that initial injection of funds so that they can prepare the plans so that they can then put in a competitive application for grant and that's going to expand our long-term capacity in shelters, in transitional housing and in permanent supportive housing and then finally we've got structural investments to expand operational capacity for proactive response and this includes things like expanding the capacity that Larry was talking about in the sheltering facilities the transitional community camp but it also includes case management services and the staffing necessary for those additional services so that we can help connect individuals with county services and ultimately with permanent housing so that's the 14 million in a nutshell there's additional details in your packet in the attachment with the spreadsheet and I'll turn it back over to Larry great thank you Larry and I just wanted to close again this is the same slide you saw earlier about success really to link this regional collaboration around homelessness with the county and the importance of that alignment that we spoke to that we're working towards the same outcomes and success the same so this work is intention and with that that's our presentation the recommendations that we're bringing forth to you all this evening are two full first we're asking to adopt the homelessness response action plan by motion acknowledging the associated funding requirements including use of 14 million dollars from the state and secondly we're seeking a resolution amending the classification and compensation plans by administratively implementing staffing to support the city's new homelessness response action and that we're happy to answer your questions thank you so much Larry and Lee for that presentation and running through those slides I will now at this time bring it to council for council questions and I will start with council member Cummings and then council member Mike thank you mayor thank you city manager and the staff that have been working on this just thinking back to when we started reopening the conversations around homelessness last year one of the things I was very much advocating for was having us come up with some kind of plan because just having to have one forever and you know trying to pack this piecemeal not a good approach and so I just want to really think that as our new city manager the approaches you've taken with making this priority we've brought off the bat getting this plan to the council and although it's a first step I think it's really comprehensive look at how we can try to address homelessness as a city and I really also appreciate the work of some of the information that's been brought forward in previous reports because so much work has been gone into doing community outreach getting input and I think one of the things that I had heard from community members was just we spent so much money creating these reports and then they just go and sit on the shelf so the fact that we're actually taking what's been some of the input that we received from the community from these reports and now operationalizing I think is really a great step forward. I do have a few questions I'll try to keep it brief but I think that with this being the first step of this kind of plan coming forward there's a number of questions that have come up and so I guess I'll just go ahead and get started one of the things that was mentioned in the report was that at peak COVID about 1,008 beds in the county as a whole the one thing that we've been hearing is that a lot of these coming offline and so I'm just curious if you all have the data on how many beds come offline from the county and then also with that what have happened to those people some of them obviously there's an effort to put people in housing but I guess the question and concern is that we are already at capacity because we have going on at the Benchlands we have what we see in our community and if people are in these programs and now those programs are being closed by the county the sense is that a lot of those people are just going to end up on the streets again so I'm just curious if you can speak to that yes council member Cummings I can speak to some of the detail on that I'm not sure I have all the information on the current status of the county but I'm happy to update you all on what I do know in terms of the county programs you know the capacity is certainly down with the closure of some of those programs particularly around the Armory though the county has been working towards you know increasing it's rehousing they're also looking at how they can find other shelter for folks that they are transitioning from their programs exploring options around master leasing so I don't know the details of where they stand in that my latest understanding is for the programs they closed at the Armory specifically we're looking at close at the Armory they've got alternative placements for all but five individuals we've been in conversations that as soon as we can open up our shelter our shelter program at Armory that would position folks there and there may be a bridge if there's a short time in between so I know the county is actively working with the change in closure of those programs to really final alternative shelter space for folks on the longer term pandemic specific funding really allowed expansion of that shelter capacity the levels that it has not been in and the pandemic has taken a toll and an undamaged homelessness so trying to find the right level of shelter for this community on an ongoing basis there's a target number in the county housing for homelessness plan really set 600 shelter beds as kind of that target number of the county and presently my understanding is we're somewhere around 450 something of my recollections correct from the last update I saw thanks I know you mentioned earlier that there were a number of people who got vouchers I think it's 1220 river street I'm just curious with those people who got vouchers how many of them are actually getting housing because I think one of the big issues is that people get those vouchers and then they can't find them right and then those vouchers expire and then there's that kind of stuck in the same place they were before I was wondering kind of like how many of those people are getting housing and what efforts the city making towards ensuring that the people who get vouchers yes that's a good question so it is too early to tell yet as I mentioned was just the last week February where those vouchers city staff had access to be able to attain those vouchers they were able to get vouchers I believe for four folks up at 1220 so that's in process that's been about a week because you're exactly right it's a laborious process sometimes to be able to find a place to take the vouchers so we will certainly update on the results of how many people are of those four that are placed my next question I'm just curious if you can touch on kind of the how we're defining transitional encampments because there's a number of different definitions that people have used in our community and 1220 river sounds like it's a location that has a lot of support versus the Benchlands which I didn't really realize the city that was going to be in a sanctioned encampment but if that's I just want to make sure that people aren't getting confused with when we say we're going to for example stand up transitional encampment in their neighborhood I really want to make sure that we have and people can imagine what that is and kind of know that there are like well I guess the question is are these safe managed locations provided with staffing or these encampments that are just kind of run where we're just putting people in we're providing them with toilets and yes the transitional community camps is we're setting them up and establishing them they just articulate what they are so they are smaller by design trying to create an intentional community of them so the cap is really around 30 and we have our first one that's what we're doing here we will learn how that works so far it looks good promising with vaults but the model there is creating a smaller encampment where you can build community and it's meant to be self-managed on a regular basis so again as I mentioned for 1220 as an example it was real intentional outreach and selection process for our participants for that particular encampment folks who are ready to then engage and work in a case plan towards getting connected to services and supports and getting on that pipeline towards housing so that's a requirement of that process so that's where city staff are doing the case management with the folks at that encampment city staff are on site at 1220 river every day making contact with the participants and residents there they meet with each person once a week to discuss their case plan make those service connections check in so there's city staff on site every day but they're not there 24-7 a lot of the it really is a self-managed community there are volunteer requirements there's a code of conduct the participants in that program are responsible for maintaining the camp in good order there's agreements on who takes care of what tasks but that's kind of a whole there's a real whole community that's built around that and it is supported it provides as I mentioned that case management so it's not just a matter of creating an encampment and not having those kinds of supports that's member Cummings if I could tell on Larry's comments I agree with all the points he made it's an important question I think from the community here transitional encampment or transitional shelter what they envision right now are the current circumstances that are kind of effective shelter when encampments grow to that size we're not able to provide standard of care service really helps to get those individuals on a path but I want to be very clear for the community as we talk about establishing a shelter we're wanting to get out of the business of the current environment we have at the Benchlands and move to a more meaningful, higher standard of shelter for those other locations and the sweet spot as Larry had mentioned is around 30 individuals where we can provide more hands-on case management services to help those individuals really move on to a healthier path for housing and also you'll see this in the action plan identifies a goal of identifying 20 of those sites throughout the county just in the city of Santa Cruz which allows us to collectively as a region try to meet that goal of with again a higher standard of service provided to schools to really break the cycle of homelessness if folks on a more health path had a legal question around the 10 bed emergency bed allowing for enforcement and I was kind of curious because it sounds like we have 150 beds is not going to reach the need in terms of the number of beds we need to house and I know for years now there's been a lot of discussion about that but it would seem as if those 10 beds build pretty quickly and then as a result we're kind of in the same situation where we don't have any beds available therefore can we or can we not move homelessness I'm wondering if there can be any discussion about that or how those beds are going to operate I don't know Larry really if you want to crack at it thanks this is a good question you know I think the city's goal is to please my understanding is to establish a level of shelter capacity where we can say that there is frequently or always some level of availability so to get to that kind of sweet spot where not availability people can have the option to come in and avail themselves of either shelter or one of these managed camp situations and they sort of always have that and so that's sort of what the goal is to get to that number knowing that not everybody always wants to be in a shelter or wants to be in a managed camp situation but that option is available so hope that answers your question in terms of the number we're seeking to help with the number I think my question is in terms of if all of our if all of the shelter capacity is full because I imagine we don't have we're not going to have full capacity for the number of people with homelessness and then my understanding is that the reason for the emergency beds as was outlined in some of the ordinances were proposed was so that you could enforce some of the these ordinances that are on books my question is if there's not capacity where does that place us as in terms of risk of being sued I think the idea is to develop that capacity plus the 10 emergency beds just to very sure okay I'll wrap up my comment questions I'll wrap up my questions and I'll have some comments for later I guess I'm just curious as well when we talk about case management I'm wondering if you can speak to kind of what that entails because obviously and this is I guess I can make for a question but you know what does that case management look like and how are we how are we targeting different populations experiencing homelessness so the idea here is that we have people who are have substance abuse and mental health issues you have people who are you know maybe they're they're formally incarcerated and have issues with connecting to either family or kind of getting established then you also have people in our community are working homeless and they just can't afford to live in the housing that's available so and those people for example they just need an affordable place to live so I'm just wondering kind of what case management looks like and how we're targeting those different populations yes I can I can speak to that and I think with where we're doing case management 1220 river is is a city our first focused efforts where we're intentionally doing that city staff Chris and Jeremy who've been doing a lot of the outreach work prior to 1220 in Benchlands we're responsible trying to make those connections to other services that may also include case management but we're doing it directly for city role but so 1220 and those participants were the first cases where we're doing that work and what it involves really is case planning is is individualized so there's an individual service with each person so their goals are based off their situation right so it's not and with a one size fits all this is this is what we do for every participant it's really based off what their experiences what their issues are and what's required for them to be able to get support to be able to be in a position to get more stable and permanent housing and that looks like something different person but that's where the goals are set in conversation and interview with each individual it's articulating those goals and then the case manager is playing that role of facilitating and connecting to those support services that are identified in the plan and doing tracking and follow up on on those efforts so if it involves getting them connected to a particular service the weekly meeting would follow up and saying so were you able to make that connection do I have to help facilitate a phone call or help you get to that appointment whatever it may be so that's an ongoing process and it's very individualized particularly with this group that is a little more diverse as we process what we found out of the same but as we spoke to as we think about doing additional transitional community camps there may be a more dramatic focus that might allow us to have a more targeted kind of set interventions with a particular focus like we said for instance abuse or it's around disabilities et cetera it can be a little targeted in the strategies because there might be some commonalities among the population but 1220 river wasn't selected based off of that I could just add to that coming so I would also just share that the goal the idea of that team is really based on the local experience we have had and the best we've had both Jeremy and Chris who were currently doing that work they can tell you today how many veterans are currently housed in the veterans as an example and a hilarious point on an individual basis how best to protect individuals with the services they need and where they are so the goal is to really scale that model realize what's working for us locally and scale that all shelters that are being built to really provide that meaningful pathway again the goal that we all share to permanent housing that's the the spirit behind adding those what we're hoping to I'll hold the rest of my questions but thank you for allowing me the opportunities thank you council member coming okay next question council member Meyers and then council member Calentari thank you um out of the gate all my discussions with members almost off of the list and especially want to appreciate all the work work really come right away in terms of operation on that I just have a couple of questions working with over the last 10 and I just want to recognize the hundreds of letters in but also asked for I think that there's a lot of hope that I want to recognize the county just now but decades of really non-success were really just not understanding the issue for us to feel like all the added higher cost housing did drug and alcohol issues tribal you know what maybe feel like manageable problem problem in problem and so I really really nice help and again I wanted to ask a couple one was I think sometimes when we use birds like and we sort of talked about how we that as a verify we think about that Jeremy and Chris know the individuals a lot of the individuals they know they're facing they know they need to basically make that a different type of service you know a case manager that maybe out of the county with those individuals for example on trauma-based or medical so we say we're not going to be the work of the specialized folks our folks imagine we just want to make so I've seen Jeremy and Chris at work and I've seen these are really are the people that try to act this level that support service structure though remains health and human services that's for the medical the mental health behavioral health other type of service and hopefully get access to us having a physically a person there help folks that's kind of that's correct yes I mean that's and that speaks to part of our conversation with the county as well about clarifying roles and responsibilities that's exactly right but I think as well the action plan even though the city won't be directly providing those services I think within the action plan is a city role working with the county to try to augment and expand those services where they're needed but not directly provide services and talking local and state regional experts on this this is that having someone that goes up every day but regular people feel safe able to that person I think it's really what this role in relation my next question is what's the vision for who may run the navigation also a what does that look like to hear that of the a couple of years ago and who do we look at I would say council member Myers we're open that you have engaged in some preliminary conversations with housing matters that's very encouraging they are a willing bigger partner on this work you'll see in the action plan we're already in discussions around an interim expansion of shelter capacity at the site and have had some great conversations Bill Kramer the executive director for housing matters so we think there's a lot of possibilities there as kind of a follow up to your last question related to the navigations there part of the work is that we're striving towards is also handing the capacity of our community based organizations take on some of this work as well organizations like housing matters compass come to mind so that we can also expand our capacity in ways that's not necessarily just falling on the shoulders of the city or even the county for that matter that's part of our collective work as well and housing matters is a great example I think whatever the whatever the program looks like a navigation center it'll likely be supported by many by guests and as we move through that process that'll be part of the work so would you imagine that that would might even what the model is you know some kind of operation model that may actually look at kind of a native way of going without burdening one but having those kinds of models yeah there are a lot of successful best practices out there that we would pull from we may have more to add on it but absolutely there are a number of ways we would be pulling that from where similar structures have been successful in other courses my last two other questions one other question and then I just have one comment on kind of I'll make a plug I guess Larry and Matt also you know we got several many of letters that said look you know but all this 14 million on the ground boom in one year I wonder how realistic that is and then rather you as you're working through all these various you know basically in the early update where you would you know I looked at your flowchart there Larry and it's like those bars may be shifting I would imagine and so quarterly updates are not only meant to look at the numbers and how people how response pattern is going up that's for at least finding but also scaling out any expenditures get those sliding scales get that kind of where we would push the when you early update the adjustments schedule for example with the yeah I think that's right Donna and with all complex plans had been closed we moved through you all will see a detailed budget as you would for any department or divisions we're moving to the department the budget development process and I think there will be there will be opportunities to explore more detail there when it comes to all the expenses being in year one Larry pointed out in the flowchart all the work being in year one part of that is there's a sense of urgency of wanting to take advantage of the home key funds we can get ourselves into a place where we have a navigation center that's close to shovel ready we've had some good conversations with the county and are optimistic that this project could be very competitive and there's only a window of time that we have certainty around funding being available so we're trying to hit the ground running take advantage of the official funding sources that are available but there's a good chance you know some of that work is going to flow into year two and year three as we move great yeah I appreciate comment in knowing what shovel ready looks like it's not a common term to a lot of the public how these large things really provide that time in those I think I'll end it there I have a couple of comments and and I guess the last thing is to really create potential for looking at different delta models or different delta availability for special populations exactly right ability facing disability not have a dedicated always very that women are living in especially all of you all of you setting the potential in there way too long way too much environmental damage to a part kids or really really ability I'll leave it there and my colleague thank you council member players I'd like to call on council member call entourage also and then council member Brown thank you mayor and I'll also echo my thank to everyone who's worked on this it's been a long year and then some addressing this and I actually also want to acknowledge and thank all of my co-colleagues for engaging in this very difficult conversation this plan that we have for us today didn't emerge out of nowhere years of the 2017 homelessness plan and the patch recommendations and then ultimately the policy directions that we've provided as a over the last year so we've landed here and I think I want to thank everybody for the work that's gone into it a lot of my questions have been asked by council member Myers you know I too talk to a number of community members over the weekend who are appreciative to see everything in one place but those same concerns of needing a little more specificity there's a lot of specificity in the agenda report but not reflected in the plan that we see the plans a little bit more of a step back view so I think council member Myers on that but to see that the next time around and then I also had questions about the navigation center and glad to hear that we are thinking about CBOs and other partners in the community not just for the navigation center but for the service provision of many of these programs that we are helping stand up like I see the city as the entry point the touch point that sets up the infrastructure and then the CBOs and county who have the expertise more capacity everybody's out of capacity and it doesn't have enough resources but the expertise to really provide the services I'm happy to hear that I do have one question that wasn't asked that is that there was a pretty big number in the agenda report and what we have been or are currently spending in response to the challenges that we see around homeless I can't remember the number right now I try to look back at it on my agenda report but that how is that being taken into account as we think about the budget because right if we hopefully the intention is that we're not in crisis mode and we're not spending our resources and time and energy and funds in that way we have this we have this approach that is that we thought through and planned out and so however millions of dollars we're spending right now in the way that we are going to be spending that so has that how is that being entered into the bigger scope of budget that was my question makes sense yes thanks for the question so the goal is to as we move into a more proactive the active response to relieve some of the burden on all of our operating department that are somewhat of an ad hoc all upon this with our homeless response remember that you're referring to the largest pie of that wage really just find staff support but staff that are being pulled away from their other day to day work in an effort to help with this Herculean task of responding to the challenges that are in front of us because we really had no other but as we move into this mode and we make these investments we can eliminate that but our hope is to lessen the impact on the department and over time look at other ways and allow our employees that never signed on part of the homeless response team to go back for other work and have a more focused for efficient team that's dedicated to that work and you'll see that reflected in the budget back going back to your question and and over time reduce the amount currently spending on that okay that that makes sense and that's huge I mean this not only impacts those who are on house community members who are house but our city employees I think that's a really, really point that you're making it is about quality of life for everyone involved so those again my questions were asked that was the wrong question and I have other comments that I'll save for um thank you councilmember calentari councilmember brown and then councilmember watt thank you mayor and thanks to everyone add my thank you to all of the work that's gone into this who have been I know working really hard to try to be more proactive place get organized you know invest some resources and I do very much support for the most part the direction that we're heading in here um I have a couple of questions the first one is a follow up I just want to clarify and make sure I understand this correctly this is the follow up councilmember I have a question about the holding back and bots in a given shelter or encampment setting it sounded like I heard you say that the goal with that is to do that so that the city can assert it's right of course the camping van because we can't do that if there isn't available shelter space according to art and verse I know it's much more complicated than that but that's kind of the so I think that's what I heard you say so my question is will keeping the number of people who are able to access shelter below the actual availability simply to demonstrate that capacity efficient for the purposes of not having exposure to a similar challenge I'm still not convinced of that so I just like to hear more about that and then related to this piece of it another question which is probably for someone else perhaps Descalante but whoever from the team has been working on this it feels best to answer how will how would that work practice how will the know which beds are available I've asked this question before we've been through this several rounds where we didn't really get very far and I will in this case so I'll just ask it again how will will that work practice these know where there's a spot before they issue a citation or move someone along would the person be supported with their belongings on the spot would they have to go somewhere advance which wouldn't necessarily make sense because they wouldn't know that they needed to do that or they hadn't had the contact with law enforcement so I just like to hear more about that so those are two and then I have questions on the budget so I can take the first part and versus Boise's couch in very broad language in holding but it's also narrowed significantly by other language and one of the narrowing aspects of it is that the court said that an ordinance that prohibits camping can be enforced against someone who has access to free available shelter but just chooses not to avail themselves of and so we've heard arguments that cannot enforce our camping ordinance until we have enough shelter space to accommodate all of the homeless people in the city that's a very expansive reading of the Martin case and so far the courts don't seem to be reading it that way as we found when city council vacated the upper portion of San Lorenzo Park last year so to follow up I recognize that but I'm not suggesting it's all or nothing or all or ten I mean I guess I'm trying to put your opinion that maintaining those 10 spots sufficient not an up potential challenge I understand that the courts have not said you have to have one to one ratio for every unhoused person that's not possible and it's always a move to target I'm not asking that question I'm asking is that a side of ten sufficient it sounds like it is in your opinion but I guess I'm not so I'd like to understand for the specific polls not I'm not disputing your reading legal landscape around ways at large that's from a Brown maybe I can add to Tony's comment might kick me under the table but I would just add I think the point is making I think setting aside the ten beds broadly our goal is to get to sufficient capacity as a whole into a point where those that want shelter and Cassie's point earlier not everybody will that those that want shelter we have a bed available that's what we're striving for I know the ordinances have specific language and I know the council has had discussions about having specifically ten beds always available I think more broadly speaking than that I want to get to the point where we have that's in place as a as a region and Larry has kind of mentioned generally speaking that number right now is around for beds give or take have some clothes of course but we're trying to get to that that is the goal that we are striving for to get to that place and you know the plan that you have in front of us I think will get us there for time I guess I would just follow up with that by saying ten beds is is that the fact that ten beds are being set aside is that going to make the ordinance defensible from a legal perspective I look at it a little bit differently which is as the ordinance is implemented are we able to offer shelter to a person on a given day when they're in the field of prior to writing a citation and if we are I believe that the ordinance can be enforced in that situation typically what we've seen is that legal challenges to these types of ordinances are not brought generally to challenge the ordinance on its face they're brought as the ordinance is implemented on behalf of individuals who have been cited and contend that the citation violates their eighth amendment quick thank you for that and I appreciate the the lens which are looking at it I like that lens I just want to I just want to make sure that you're doing this in that so I that but so as follow up then I'll just return to the question about how that would work in practice how would somebody potentially be cited then practice that that on the floor I'm resisting terminology of beds because you know they're not generally beds they're mats on the floor so how will that work or from I know that's something that's probably potentially still in process but just based on what you've talked about so far I can take a crack at that council member round but I think maybe somebody like Larry who's probably in frequent conversations with the county as the city manager mentioned these these programs and locations for shelters are going to be regional so we do have to work with the county and I don't think it's been established maybe with some conversations that Larry's working on is how will that work and how does what does that look like you're right we don't have a mechanism and we haven't had a mechanism to determine if there's any availability in our city and so now that it's going to be more of a regional approach definitely something that we have to work on on how we not only but all law enforcement agencies in the county that will be utilizing I believe those shelters as a housing option and so as far as today I don't think there's a mechanism to answer your question but it is definitely something that we'll have to be touched on and worked on with the county thanks and I didn't mean to put you on the spot I just thinking about it like trying to visualize and envision what will happen in this no it's a great question it's a valid question because often times I always add that to well this is okay at 3 in the afternoon but what is it like at 3 in the morning right so it's a very important question thank you and then my other question is related to and I first I want to sit back and say I wanted to just appreciate the staff at the time to walk through some of this with council members prior to the meeting and so I feel like a lot of my questions answered there and then also with the city manager on Friday but I hadn't read the budget prior to those conversations so I just have a couple of questions there related to some of these line items and you know I think overall it demonstrates that we are serious we're talking about making a real commitment and some of the things that I heard council member Meyers say sort of clarify what we mean when we're talking about you know case management or the people on the ground in the field who are going to be interacting and supporting people in encampments and in shelters I really appreciate seeing this I'm glad to see it and I wonder about some of the costs here in particular and if you may not be surprised that I'm wondering about the non-frontline additions and so with respect to program administration I see here I think I was going to ask about planning and request for proposal specialists but that looked like a short term and I don't understand what that's about but with respect to for example legislative or advocacy an external vendor at 432,000 well half of that because of half time external vendor ongoing what is that about I mean that's a lot of money that's more money than a whole as far as I can tell for outreach and shelter specialists we're going to spend more on legislative advocacy ongoing but that I'd like to hear more about that and then a community relations specialist as well I recognize that there will be a need and I've advocated for a long time that we should get out in front of these kind of things as they come up we should get out in front of it and talk with people in neighborhoods before we do something that may have an impact but is that that what we're talking about here and is that something that's going to be a half time position at that level that seems like an awful lot of money so those are too but I'd just like to hear more about I can speak to the first one Council Member Brown and Mary and the latter the first the idea around that discussion that I've been having all of you around wanting to build a statewide coalition to have a stronger voice in Sacramento on some of the legislative changes particularly those struggling with mental health substance disorders kind of the leg of the school that I feel is on a statewide basis although there have been some emerging developments just in the last week out of the Governor's office that work is time intensive and the idea there would be bringing on a firm advocates firm that has specific experience in that area because it does require special expertise to assist us with building that statewide coalition as well as direct advocates to work with our legislators so that's the proposal there and we may not ultimately end up being that full amount that was kind of an initial flag that we obviously those details will come forward when we're in the budget but just broadly speak the idea behind it the communication piece Larry can chime in on this as well and your point Council Member Brown Elizabeth Smith our communication outreach manager now is just trading water she has a lot of responsibilities thrown at her right now really at her max and so this idea would be around building capacity that extra level of engagement but I know the Council is often asking for on this work and it also helps us adaptive to feedback on the plan that we're rolling out want to know what's working with her and directly to be hearing directly from those we serve that's the idea around that position those dollar amounts probably will prove a bit but that's the idea I'll go back to you well I guess I'll just say my preference would be not and I understand that approving this isn't going to lock us in but I would hate to see us get locked in spending just under half a million dollars a year on the community relations and when there's a lot of need in the field I guess it seems like a lot I'll leave it there thanks Thank you Council Member Brown Vice Mayor Watkins Thank you and I guess I'll just start by saying thank you to the staff who is I think in a really short period of time and you know having been on the council now for five years I remember when we first when I first started there was a subcommittee of the council members working on a plan and recommendations for the council and since then there's been the cash there's also the alignment with a lot of other plans and then there's COVID a whole bunch of other things that happened and then most recently the policy direction given by the council to really think about how to kind of provide those guys moving forward and seeing this in a form of operationalizing guidance and policy and being iterative and looking at how I see it but you have to start somewhere or else you're sort of stuck in a position of inertia and unable to really see a lot of these these great intended plans materialize so I realized that we might not get it right and I realized that we will likely get some things wrong but at the end of the day we're attempting to really address this complex issue in a holistic manner to be able to move forward with seeing people finding more success and more independence so I guess those are sort of my brief comment I think a lot of my questions can be answered but the one question I guess I'd like to reinforce one just the closing of San Lorenzo Benchlands and really providing more access to families I talk to parents on a regular basis at the school that my daughter goes live down there that just don't feel safe accessing that part with their kids and they're expecting kids so I think having that restored is really essential for our community and I'm happy to set in the plan also looking at the subpopulations for the veterans up in the valley area looking at other subpopulations and how to address those I know that was also brought up by my colleagues in regards to really targeted interventions for unique populations although sometimes the housing isn't perfect or the transitional space isn't ideal but it's better than not being out on the street and out of a shelter of some sort so I'm really supportive of looking at how we can continue to prioritize more sheltering. I think there is recognition and really there's recognition from the governor at this point in regards to a certain population that does need to look at conservatorship and does need to look at how do you work with those individuals who are unable or are refusing or mentally not there or in a different state because of whatever substance is how are we able to serve those individuals and I think that will be forthcoming in terms of a kind of a state direction but I guess my question is essentially in regards to really establishing a number of these housing locations or these sheltering locations part of what is in the title is transition so I think how are we working on really ensuring that no matter what that this is not sort of a landing place I think individuals but looking at how I guess it speaks to some of the case management but maybe a little bit further but how are we creating that flow as well of really trying to move people to the more stable and independent living if able and then allowing more space for those that need to transition and I don't know if Larry would want to say that or whoever the title is Yes councilmember Watkins I'm happy to speak to that and you're exactly right the mechanism of the transitional the transition and transitional community camp really is making transition towards permanent housing case management really is the mechanism to work with those individuals on those plans to make those connections get them to supportive services get them into that pipeline to services get more stable housing so that really is the mechanism it is our goal in all the city sponsored programs be intentional from the beginning that that's the methodology in the nature of our work to create those connections and move to permanent housing having that capacity for the next individual to work process so we're looking at initially we're setting four month timeline I think that's a metric very similar to some of the county programs that are looking at success in making a transition to permanent stable housing so that is certainly something we'll be measuring looking at to this process Thank you and I guess my only other comment slash suggestion is you know in regards least ability and contributing to our community as members as fellow residents is how work on work development and ways to build their capacity and their competencies so that they can find success and also belonging in a meaningful way that we all I think benefit from as a community so I know you're partnering with county but you know sort of really factoring in the kind of the career technical I think also be with mayor Watkins I guess I had a couple questions that first I'd like to say thank you as well this has been a huge undertaking and I just want to speak at my understanding in my brief time with the city in this role that this is pretty outstanding the first time really get this comprehensive and take this ownership of investment into services and that are needed to address all the levels and aspects of this issue and our residents that are right and I so much that has gone into this and so I appreciate all the questions that have been answered prior to this meeting but I know that some questions have been from the community and one of the questions I think is that the funding many community members are having a hard time with the large numbers of dollar amount of funding that's not really itemized fine items but more a general not necessarily a plan even though it's all the plan and so if you can speak to those plots of money and I know they've been mentioned before the environmental remediation navigation center and things like that to what point those line items more details will come to surface and how you came to those numbers that you're asking for approval at this point in time from us thank you mayor I'll speak specifically to that line item of the 600,000 and the navigation center and how we got that that was a communication that we had with our economic development director Bonnie and coordinating with her to understand the upfront costs that we could anticipate as you know the city is going through a number of development projects with the metro south and the metro north that are nearing construction phases and so and we also have some phase one and phase two environmental site assessments done which look at the the hazardous material contamination at particular sites and so understanding the type of work that's needed to clean up the sites there are standards that need to be met in order for residential occupancy understanding the level of contamination at the sites understanding the needed to clean up to raise that to residential suitability shelter suitability in this instance and then the costs associated with putting together a whole series of plans not just the conceptual but then looking at some of the more specifics back to plumbing, electrical, structural, mechanical really aligning us to be competitive for and have enough money so that we can get good cost estimates in place for the overall construction and be competitive for getting the right amount of dollars and requesting the right amount of dollars when we go in with project home key so that's how that particular line item came to fruition was understanding here's the cost that we've incurred in other projects that have had similar types of upfront costs and here's what we know about this site and putting those together here's a good estimate for what we might anticipate ending in that phase project thank you and the navigation center acquisition purchase what was that number again or that was a million? that's a three million dollar so that's three million I mentioned five million because there's also a one point nine million which is the hygiene bay which the council looked at the big documents for that in early February so that's an anticipated cost based on an engineering estimate there that's the one point nine million for the hygiene bay and how we came to that for the three million that is a negotiation that is still in the works for property acquisition in the area and our economic development director again Bonnie Lipscomb is leading those efforts and that's what we anticipate being the cost of this there was also a question around received several emails about funding mental health and not giving that money to police and so I just wanted to clarify my understanding was the mental health liaisons for the county behavioral health and they're not they work alongside a police officer can you speak a little more to that role sir that that's correct and I invite to speak to their specific role but you're absolutely correct their employees up the county work with that thanks Lee mayor for the question yes not only do they work for the county but they also as we have to now that work with our staff they actually operate out of their own vehicle and often times respond to calls when it's appropriate on their own without law enforcement or any uniform personnel with them obviously if there's a safety issue we do respond with them to provide safety but the other part is sometimes they will handle calls proactively over the phone with an individual and get them to the right services get them connected based off of the needs at that time so although we have to now and obviously use more they do work for the county they work with us and often times they handle calls proactively on their own and we're not even involved and they're not writing with our option any longer actually due to COVID but I think it's been a really good change and they monitor our radio they have a radio with them often times jump in either assist or take over a call from an officer briefly just talk about the types of calls they respond to and their wool versus Pyramids and crests or other types of services they're more of a crisis mode type of call or yeah I mean that's kind of a tough question I mean a lot of different calls that they will assist on but I think that's the best way of putting it is more of a crisis mode where somebody based off the call obviously is probably in some sort of mental health crisis and so you know or just based off the behavior that's described by a reporting party sometimes they come to the assumption that there might be some mental health issues on so you know there's a wide variety it's hard to kind of give you to narrow it down but yeah they're always monitoring the radio calls and what comes out often they can pick up on certain key words probably that hang on their radar and I also want to add that actually I do hear often where officers respond to a call and maybe there's been a crime committed but the officers identify a mental health issue going on and they will ask the mental health liaison to respond to handle that part of it once we've established if there was a crime committed or not and what are the other resources this individual may need thank you so funding for more mental health reasons in any plan we move forward with is is is a county behavioral health county yes Larry okay that's correct okay the other question was the one one citizen wrote that summary of reporting the transitional camp doesn't include where they were located and at what point in any of this would community involve at all across that what I would respond to the question Amir Burner ties back to the conversation we were having earlier around that of having someone on staff with that outreach work as locations are identified right now the majority on the sites that Larry included as part of his presentation the 1220 river the river the expansion that we have planned at the house of matters grocery campus those are the initial areas of focus but of course one of the largest hurdles to advancing this work is often finding locations that are acceptable to the community that's going to be an important part of this work as we move forward and again emphasizing that I think this more distributed approach also helps to mitigate potential impacts on the surrounding areas where those locations are identified and more conversations but you know identifying locations is always an ongoing work thank you okay that was it a lot of my other questions have been asked I will hand it over to council member and then council member Mayer thank you mayor thank you staff I do want to applaud everybody that had their hand on this a comprehensive well organized more of an outline than a plan I think to be more of a plan I think we're going to have to look at more measurable objectives and some specific language around accountability and things like that moving forward but the fact that we're here to me says a lot of people everybody that worked on it it's really amazing to see something that council member Cummings said earlier just is ways that we can encourage people that have extra rooms or places that they're renting out as landlords or as they reach out to the university with their housing programs reach out to some sort of the navigation center where they could also be taking in people who are ready to become house and just ways for to facilitate that so they won't have to be on Craigslist competing against everybody a couple of things that came up as questions for me during the discussion was when thinking about those project home key opportunities is there any opportunity for the city to purchase properties that are not necessarily located in the city like if they're in the county or something like that but they would be city owned or would they have within the city the short answer is that's a possibility the challenge often comes down to council member Golder of how to resource it in a cost efficient way there's a lot of things to consider with each site whether or not utilize it but in short that is an option and then another question that came up that I was thinking when we talked about this a little bit in our public safety meeting a while back was about the off hours when there is no mental health liaison as part of this to develop so there could be 24 hour availability where someone could be maybe on call or something like that and then when they're not that's one part of the question the second follow up is that when they're not monitoring the radio when they're not responding to calls what does the job look like for those folks and do they ever go out to calls where there's a potential victim that need some crisis counseling if that makes sense so sorry if that's way too many questions in one but that's it I don't know who I think so but I'm not sure if there's not a mental health liaison available what is that is that what you're asking well and like what is the resource available how can we move to have that available 24 hours a day and it seems like it could be a valuable resource on calls where the person if they're not available and if they're not busy with other folks that need them at that moment be available to show up to calls where there's a victim that might need some crisis counseling or some mental health if that makes sense right like I'll answer your second the second part of your question first we are the only agency in the county that actually has a victim it works in our facility and that is her role really so if there is not a mental health component to it we have utilized our victim advocate to either come out to the scene or we bring a victim back to the office and that victim advocate also helps throughout the court process and all of that so that would be more of a role for our victim advocate if it's just victim services and guiding them through that and there is not mental health conditions that we pick up on and then the other question as far as 24-hour service I think that's a great question is the valid question for our entire county to start considering it and the timely question I've had some conversations with our regional 911 center and I know that there's other examples of this across the country where we can implement some sort of mental health crisis support the 911 center which would be the 24-hour care and really it comes down to resources and funding for that but I think that as a community we're moving in that direction but oftentimes after hours the officers have to deal with them if they need to at that given moment they are provided training and are very successful in providing care and getting to the resources that they need after hours as well the only other part that I still didn't quite get was that when they're monitoring the radio and they're not out on a call when they're working what are they working on like are they doing any kind of prevention or other kind of things or are they so busy that they're constantly just driving around I think oftentimes I will see them working on and maybe back to the office and ensuring that certain folks are getting connected to these services and doing the outreach to the folks that are ultimately connecting with some of with some of the the client so there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes to ensure that folks are getting the care that they need and sometimes it's working directly with telecare or other resources that are maybe even outside the county so they stay plenty busy and there's a lot of kind of extra work behind the scenes that they follow up thank you that's good to know because it's hard to visualize what it would look like from their day to day perspective but I think that's wonderful if they're building relationships and then continuing that care like outside of the actual phone call time that's great thank you that concludes your questions thank you member Golder council member Myers and then council member Kellan Terry Johnson questions Holly first I believe so I guess Barry or Pat can you clarify how they work with our neighborhoods and our colleagues those properties that are well away from the hoods or maybe I also recall that I thought that there was also hopefully but actually instead of having 600 people in each camp where in my opinion what crash 5000 pounds in an unmanaged camp can you explain to me a little bit more or comment a little bit more first idea where Larry I think I heard you explain you know we're focusing on trying to get smaller that of accountability and ways by which rather than having the several living in a ultimately suitable for having that abilities and will those first community outreach development and not just showing up in a neighborhood because oh yeah these are going to be a neighborhood and are they going to be in the county and is the idea that these how many keep saying they're going to take on more shelter but again are always short unresolved and long on still seem to me that we've actually been able to have the what is that particular outline you know I'll take a stab at starting so all the elements of your question council member Myers you know the transitional community camps are our initial plan looking at standing up to this is a new model and a new approach for us and so we'll continue to evaluate the 1220 being our first but conceptually these really are designed to be much smaller environments where you can build community and you can also work with people effective which as you pointed out you can't do in an environment with a large in camp so it's really designed with that kind of outcomes focus in terms of constructing the size support services related to that work in a way that's going to generate those positive outcomes and be more likely to be successful and so that's the intent I think as we move forward as Matt mentioned you know looking at locations whether it be transitional community camps how establish other kinds of sheltering location is one of those issues we have to grapple with and certainly doing that kind of outreach is essential to making that successful and we did that as well engage the neighborhood around the river as an example we've done previous iterations with a different model at that location so it's not as new but and we made that concerted effort to let neighbors know what the plan was there and met with some neighbors before we started that new camp new camp at 1220 river so you would that same model at also and are we asking did our neighbor a lot of misinformation about the statements made that we're going to be allowed to be sidewalked I just want to make sure that very care that process site will be first over time that these are people they have to sign a paper that says here's how I will live the situation also is that there is the time limit with the idea that people are able to have any part in for stable environments getting back home to their family whatever it is they need touch of finding out who the person is but again I just very important that our public knows we're not going to create a bunch of small chaos all over we have that already and what I can tell is very unsuccessful in helping so I just want to make sure and maybe a little more clear what that all looks like yes thank you I mean to answer a couple of your follow-ups that I didn't include initially absolutely just there is a participant agreement that is part of this if individuals can adhere to that then they will be asked to leave the program as well as there is through this model in the case management there is an initial again we'll be able to modulate it based off of what we're learning but initially a 1220 river as we're moving forward with this there's an initial 6 month period to work-based management and there's the expectation to making progress those goals and working towards exiting to a more stable housing situation that being said we've built the prospect extension based off of if somebody's making progress towards their work plan and towards that but there's some structural barrier that's you know limiting kind of that transition there is a mechanism to extend that there is good progress but certainly this is time to look at that transition and movement and somebody who's dedicated this plan to make that change I would just add Councilor Myers I agree with all Larry's points I mean it just really is a paradigm shift the way that we approach in shelter and I know the concerns that the City has and some of the concerns you're hearing residents related to what they've experienced over the years and what they've seen in terms of what's defined as shelter we're really trying to redefine how we approach that work going forward based on what's working. Thank you Councilmember Callentari-Johnson Thank you I just wanted to comment that I have a lot of comments around mental health and behavioral health response but I will hold that for there was just some questions that came up and Councilor Golder had some questions I've got some quick around that. Thank you. I think good questions for now Betty then take it out for public comment I know we are really behind on public comment so thank you to everyone who has been waiting patiently to speak to this item we did have four groups that reached out and were approved for extra time Santa Cruz Here's Reggie Meisler Warming Center Program and Fridge Services Brent Adams Stepping up Santa Cruz Serge Pagno and Santa Cruz's other plan if you are interested in commenting on homelessness response quarterly update item number 17 on today's agenda please raise your hand now by dialing star 9 on your phone or selecting the raise hand during the webinar calls on your computer when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the timer will then be set to two minutes as a reminder public comment will be limited to two minutes we will begin public comment period with the groups approved for extra time attendees and looking for my group they're all there I will start with Santa Cruz Here's Reggie Meisler go ahead and unmute yourself I'm not Reggie but I am calling in from Santa Cruz Care's can I just ask a question Reggie Meisler's hand is up which one of you is for the group for the extra time can you hear me it will be me let's restart the timer then I apologize I just wanted to clarify so if our city clerk can restart the timer we will begin thank you so much sorry for the interruption no problem thanks so much for sorting it out I'm calling from Santa Cruz Care's with concerns about the plan use of the 14 million in funding barely half of the funding is being spent on actual infrastructure investment which is what the funding was originally allocated for and what Santa Cruz Care's was directly told it would be used for by council members Watkins, Calentari Johnson, Brunner and Golder this is a reduction plan document which provides us with these cost estimates and line items the unfunded notation is said to suggest that funding will need to come from general fund, new revenue sources or reductions to other services there's an enormous amount of spending on line items which are noted as unfunded after only the year of operation this is because these line items are not infrastructure investments but operating expenses taking a closer look at these operating positions that have already had an existing city department with its own staffing budget we want to specifically bring your attention to the spending on two community service officers the vehicle abatement officer and the two mental health liaison these positions are likely to be put under the umbrella of the Santa Cruz police department which already consumes a whopping 30 plus percent of our general fund having a fund helping fund few new positions for SCPD for just one year which will then have to be funded via the SCPD's budget and general funds in the years to follow anyways is a transparently inappropriate use of this homeless infrastructure funding the vehicle abatement officer and community service officers in particular are members of law enforcement as we repeatedly point out to this council there's a substantial body of research proving that law enforcement responses to homelessness are ineffective, expensive and actively entrenched people with the potential to increase the cost of homelessness based on the city's own estimates the cost of these four positions alone could be reallocated to increase our pre-development budget for permanent supporting housing by over 50 percent we are very supportive of the work being done with regard to permanent supportive housing in this plan and are encouraged that the city is moving forward more support of project home key please reject the city manager's plan and its current state and request modifications that will homeless infrastructure project funding we'd also like to add that after reading the agenda packet it is extremely disingenuous to count the Benchlands camp as included in the 150 emergency shelter beds the Benchlands is located in a flood zone as we saw in December 2021 campers were flooded out without any assistance from the city they were left there to fend for themselves only after tents were completely underwater did the city offer to move people to adjacent parking lot in congruent that the city has a goal of closing the Benchlands camp while also standing it up as work the city has done to give quote unquote shelter the city is woefully behind of fulfilling those 150 emergency shelter beds the city proposes to close the Benchlands in summer 2022 and the numbers listed in this agenda packet do not make up enough spots for people to make up the difference people will simply not disappear because of their camp it's literally just moving people around we'd love to see the city identify more sites outside of the armory 1220 river street in the Benchlands and to use this one time funding for that instead of giving the Santa Cruz police more money thank you for listening thank you so much for your public comment let's see our next her is Frank Adam team for warming center program and footbridge go ahead and unmute yourself hello can you hear me yes welcome hi council or what appears to be 5 out of 7 council members Brent Adams of warming center so good to see you all great presentation this is our 8th year host warming center which used to be a backup purely winter shelter yet now there's not a single emergency shelter bed in Santa Cruz so we're the backup to not hundreds of people orient to us as their only stop gap against hypothermia we activate based on temperature forecast and when we're not open we become the hypothermia geared distribution center offering more than a thousand literally tons of warm clothing and warmers, rain ponchos, tarps as many people as need them but I don't want you to worry about all this material entering the waste we do laundry each month we're doing our 7000 load of laundry and offering our 5000 power this month why do people prefer our showers that put the service center to those that housing matters because rather than 7 minutes of lukewarm water we offer 50 minutes of hot shower, we clean them in between each shower service oriented and instead of fences and security guards we offer the much needed basic including q-tips deodorant, razors, underwear and hundreds of other basic items we believe it matters that our showers are cleaned after each we also host the shower trailer San Lorenzo Park every Friday without incident and without closing a single day during the pandemic we host a secure storage for more than 1000 people with inspiration from the subcommittee on homeless in 2017 we've defined what it means to offer transformative services ever since isn't it remarkable people get clothing embedding from us, door materials and other personal belongings on our property twice daily act we see a free laundry service can you believe we've already been doing this successfully for years and without county support forming center program and I have advocate for transitional commitments for the past 10 years and even pointing the term after 4 years of touring northwest cities researching best practices successful non-profit hosted camp community we kind of wrote the book on it last year city staff promised non-profit would have an opportunity to help share shoulder the load we offered an RF but now the city that's my phone ring I hope you don't have to hear that we offered an RF but now after the city is running its own camp at 1220 rivers let's be clear a city run camp isn't a transition camp it's missing the ingredients of community empowerment, sequence of personal healing it lacks the humanitarian mission we're eager to operate program and demonstrate our vision of what's possible over the years we've seen city parks repeatedly host as many as 300 people in unsafe conditions they have the ability to camp near dealers and use illegal substance day and night privacy in ways they'd never be able to in a residential situation homelessness has become no longer a homelessness problem but a substance disorder problem in a far larger city city last winter we established an agreement in a far corner of harvey west park this community was successfully in place without a single 9-1-1 call six months later moved to a fence area south of where they remained again without incident for another seven months still flooding in december most of those are now in 12 they were primed to begin community we've reached out a number of occasions to city staff help recontextualize the bench to something more like separated agreement camp zone no reply as you deliberate this homelessness plan I'd like to consider that organization such as ours best fully serving our community for years have earned the opportunity to help to a greater degree there's a large pot of money coming money has come and gone many times over where there's a welcome at where's the welcome at that encouraged participation we do all the work for none of the money thank you thank you Brent our next group approved is Serge Cagno with stepping up santa cruz hi can you hear me welcome thank you good evening mayor council my name is Serge Cagno stepping up santa cruz I'm a consultant for homeless services of the county's mental health advisory board because of council member golders questions I'll throw out an invitation to council chief escalante and the public the mental health advisory board creating a collaborative work group with all of the jurisdictions and the community to review our behavioral health crisis system find and fill the gaps in our system possibly using the road map the ideal crisis we had 78 participants at our initial meeting thank you goes to council member Calentari Johnson for attending as 988 implementation for the new suicide prevention behavioral health help line nears we'll be focusing on that subject with our partners I'd like to take a moment for Sylvia Paris the foreground of Mr. Huffaker's building capacity partnership slide our community lost Sylvia recently to suicide who was a beautiful soul always found knitting in community I'd like to mention my great appreciation for Matt for Larry and for all of their staff to work on this very well thought out action plan been reactive and opposed as opposed to proactive long I was a member of the catch and it was this council which chose not to take action the recommendations of the catch for outreach first design as well as creating an city action plan our name was overall homeless techniques action plan created a much as your acronym work that out it was oh snap I'd like to point out that there was a lost opportunity in this action plan to not include the community and those experiencing homelessness and staff meetings creating this plan it is a continuing lost opportunity not leveraging the knowledge of our community and those experiencing homelessness anywhere within the action plan to review and make improvements throughout the next three years I would like to point out a few places where the data messaging is not in line with the action plan which includes all perspectives of our community to move forward as a city I think that it this is a moment we can work together work collaborative to manage the tragedy of those on those struggling in the struggles of our city to do that we need to admit where our services are working whether or not honesty and transparency allows for collaboration I appreciate that. Currently considering the Bench Lens is part of the new safe sleeping places required to enforce the C.S.S.O is not providing the required safe places it's not in line with health in all policies require people to move to the Bench Lens when the city is not willing to guarantee their safety it should not be considered a successful out of 1220 to refer someone to another city. It's not effective to or consistent in values to support low barrier services but not trauma informed care. Our shelters are always full by those wanting help saying it's necessary to make an ordinance threatening with citations to get engagement is not true and will not make the safe sleep sites more safe with those not wanting to be there. The other point of the homeless shelter with only being part time will not allow them to attend collaborative homeless case management outreach meetings provide case management or provide housing navigation which is necessary for the housing bowser. I would like to ask all of these services will still be offered to the Postal Commission or a lawsuit to the C.S.S.O again please consider adding an advisory committee which includes members of our community, members of our community, non-profit businesses and other interested groups to support this action plan with ongoing review suggestions for the success of this plan in our city. Thank you very much and take safe. Thank you sir. Our next group is the C.S.S.O and it looks like number ending in 1705. Hi. I am not representing together. I do want to comment publicly but I am not the representative. I will go ahead and then I will come back to finding. I want to thank staff and council for all their hard work and I recognize that this is a very, very difficult issue with multiple causes and no solutions and so I do appreciate that hard work. I do see a really glaring issue with this plan aside from the funding issues in the subsequent years beyond year 1. I think the biggest problem is that by the city's own commission has one of the highest per capita rates in the whole country. One of the reasons is that we have site services and have a bunch of tolerance and we need to do our part but this plan is even more shelters within the city. What we really need to do is we need to get some of these shelters in other jurisdictions in the county because it is just a vicious cycle but more services have more homeless and shelter folks will come and then we need site more services within the city and the other jurisdictions say well all the shelters in the city of Santa Cruz that's for the services to be so I really think that with all good intentions and I think that should be the number one focus is standing up these services in other jurisdictions not to say we shouldn't do anything we already are doing a lot and we need other jurisdictions on their fair share so thank you very much for hearing my comments once again I do not represent Santa Cruz together Thank you so much for your public comment I will try again for Santa Cruz together if you can press star 9 raise your hand and then you can press stars to unmute yourself or press the unmute control on your webinar for the I wonder they can't unmute themselves until I give them permission to but I can't I don't know who it is in order to grant permission I'm looking at the phone number I think it's 6959 I think that's what I have here on the list there we go I just I don't know if she's okay though Hi there, is this Santa Cruz together if you can unmute yourself let's see press star 6 you're on your phone or device I can come back as well there should be an unmute feature on the webinar on the computer or star 6 unmute yourself okay I will come back and move to the next hand in line Jane Mio go ahead and unmute yourself thanks everybody for the effort and the work that was monumental has been ongoing one of the things the boots on the ground in the Benchland because I am the lead for the best I'll focus on certain camps I just want to go back to Donna's remark the women also the men who have children where they're at and if you set up a camp there needs to be a place where these people can bring their kids and know what I mean I really urge that amount so the more housing the better DST is having technical difficulties so we will back the group that was approved for action time as that is through in the meantime I will continue with the hands raised and it looks like our ending in 0249 I would love to hear your public comment good evening mayor council and city staff this is Carol Paul Hamas I have a few very short comments first we would like to express our gratitude and support for the tremendous amount of work the city staff has put into this plan with all of its moving parts we especially support the city's efforts to span actual shelter and safe spaces we support the original oversized vehicle ordinance and the city council and the county as a partner as a means to increase safe spaces parking with services our questions are all physical the proposal discusses hiring 10 staff and we are concerned about the unfunded liability for these positions going forward thanks to councilmember mayor they don't have to ask the next two questions because she asked them and they were answered by the city the county should be providing and we encourage working closely with the county to make sure that the county provides services that are funded to provide by the state thank you so much for all your hard work on this pressing issue have a good night thank you for your comment and our next for reggie meister welcome hi can you hear me yes thank you what's being done here I like I like the line items about permanent supportive housing I was a little confused because some council members were talking about not wanting people to stay here not wanting them to be permanently here but I mean if we're aware of housing matters their primary goal expanding permanent supportive housing so emperary shelter bed, shelter space, or something like that. So I was a little confused by the comments made by council members, Colin Tari Johnson, and I forget, maybe it was Golder. I guess the main issue I have with this is what Santa Cruz cares brought up in particular that Santa Cruz Police Department is their own city department with their own staffing funding. And they have a lot of the general fund as is. So I'm wondering why we're paying for things like community service officers and vehicle abatement officer with one time infrastructure funding, which will then have to just like ping pong to be paid for with the general fund and funding the following year anyway. So, and I also find it kind of just inappropriate conceptually that these positions are sort of intended to criminalize the unhoused, that we would spend infrastructure money to fund those positions. So I think I'll leave it at that. I'd like a motion to sort of change this up a little bit, reallocate funds away from the police staffing costs and at least put that towards permanent affordable housing, permanent supportive housing. Thank you for your public comment. Next I'm showing, I am watching you. Hey, did you read or note the 105 letters that were sent in questioning the blowing of the whole 14 million in the first year of a three year plan and a desire that the plan should spread it out over those three years instead. Otherwise, this is the government obligating a future more and more obligation when blowing one time money to start up a program and then ask the taxpayers for substantial amounts later and forever, perhaps that starts later this meeting. I count maybe 10 additional staff requested over time and it is little mentioned these positions like one for a lot longer than three years. Why some emphasis in placing these expenses in contact with some other item focusing on explaining a balance on figuring out how to avoid terminal city bankruptcy is a mystery to me. I would love to hear what happens when all these resources are fully expended and the homeless wanna come in. It's a question either no one has asked or for sure no one answered. Are you promising the illegal begging on the standard of buyers are gonna be gone forever if this has to wherever camping? When is the timeline for clearing the bench plan? Are you gonna measure the homeless population every year including all who are on full support? If this does not reduce their total numbers this is a total failure and go to plan B. As I've said many times before why is locating these shelter units just outside the city not a priority option that would reduce the extraordinary density of homelessness in the city relative to any geographic state city boundary in the state. If you build it they will go. It seems success providing unfunded long-term shelter for those who are in sub-shelter so police can hassle or us to leave. It would seem this has an unknown outcome as shelter fills up. Surely some priority effort right homelessness around the county equalize the negative effect and there are negative effects on everyone is missed. Thank you for your comment. Our next caller, I think this might be Santa Cruz together is ending in six nine five nine. Go ahead. Hi, this is Lynn Renshawks together.com. Sorry for the second number at work. I wanna thank Senator Laird for 14 million state funding. Please send most of these funds on permanent physical infrastructure spread the spending over the three years of the plan with the primary objective of replacing all on sanctioned camps with fully managed camps. In 2018, the homeless action part received 10 million. What is there so for that? The grand jury report shows 46 full exited to house and 145 exited to a safe exit like a ticket home. What is the exit goal for this 14 million? Create a dash update at quarterly showing results. Cracks exiting to housing, turning to family, entering addiction and mental health treatment and more. The three year action plan is a plan or plan. The agenda report here is to contain the concrete details, the actual plan. Reducing fire risk could be a clear objective in 2021. The county published a report by a wildfire threat city of Canada. It mapped 142 fires in 2020 with many in the Pogo Nip, Harvey West, housing matters. The report notes, quote, there were 19 fewer fire incidents in Pogo Nip in 2020 than in 2019 due to the clearing of encampments, unquote. We cannot afford to lose additional houses to wildfire. Are the relevant mass metrics or dash? Further, is there a goal to clean up the city and reduce trash, needle, equipment, towns, trash here, other potential metrics? As was noted about cemetery camps and the 99 tons of trash biohouses. I wanna thank everyone's hard work implementing the CSSO and OVO. The city's Bergman survey that came out recently found 73% of residents are concerned about homeless tax on local businesses and neighborhoods. The majority of residents are with you with implementing these two ordinance. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your public comment. If there's other attendees who'd like to comment on agenda item number 17, homelessness response quarterly update, response action plan, homelessness staff and homelessness response funding sources, and press star nine, raise your hand. And I see Jacqueline Patel. Yeah, this is my first time asking a question. I'm not sure it's the right place. Is this public comment just on this particular item? Correct. We will have in about one minute, coral communications. Then I put my hand down and you can call me afterwards. Thank you. Thank you. This is Don Lane. I wanna thank the mayor and council members for this opportunity. As you know, I've been working on this issue for a very long time. It's been a long and frustrating process to create and affect this. And I appreciate that you are each scrutinizing the details of the current plan and set of proposals for major system improvements before you today. Community members definitely need to understand this agenda item. However, I do hope that on your scrutiny, you will recognize what a sea change this represents in the city's response to homelessness. It's comprehensive, appropriately ambitious. There are amazing new components of money and human resources. There's a much improved strategy. The partnership with the county is unprecedented. The plan reflects urgency. We have not yet not seen before in the city's response. And it represents a lot of learning from our past mistakes. And I say how are because I have been a participant in some of those. So I want to thank everyone who has put this very good package together and urged the council to move this forward implementation as quickly as possible. This has taken long enough. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it's damn good. I also want to add a word of caution. The homelessness response system be excellent in every way and will still fail if there is not sufficient housing so that each person, whether it's a school child or a person with a long-term drug addiction can end their homelessness by moving into an actual home of some kind. Homelessness won't go away without adequate affordable rental housing or community. Thanks very much. Thank you for your public comment. At this time, I will have to pause this item if that's possible. We have a time certain oral communications for 6.30 p.m. on our agenda. And as we just saw, there is a member of the public here for that. So at this time, I will go to oral communications for members of the public who are streaming this meeting and you want to comment during oral communications. Now is the time to call in and raise your hand for oral communications. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on agenda. Press star nine on your phone or select raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer. And I will move out to oral communications the first person is Jacqueline Tuttle. Go ahead and press star six. Thank you for your time. My name is Jacqueline Tuttle. I'm a member of COPA, Temple Beth El and Apocos. And we in COPA have recently met with city manager and I wanted to thank you as city for working with the county and developing this long term plan that you talked about. We see that as something very positive. I do have two concerns. One is that there are many, many people who have applied for rental relief through the state. And the state, not sure why, is has not come through with all the funding that people have been waiting for. And therefore, when the moratorium expires, March 31st, I have some great concerns about people who will be eviction proceedings will be starting while they're waiting. And so we have a question is, is there a way that the city and work with the county or by yourself, standing or local, making this eviction moratorium extend for the people that have applied for this funding and are waiting for the money? I just have this vision of people being evicted when the money is on its way from the state. The second suggestion maybe, if that's not possible, I hope it is, but if it's not possible, is there a way that mediation between these people who are waiting for their money and landlords might be recommended so that they'll be away from the communicate with the club? Just so many people, the vision of that is very troubling. I thank you for your time and hope that we welcome further or continued conversation with you all on the city council on these issues. Thank you very much. Thank you. I will now move to the next member of the public for oral communications that is items not on our agenda today. Gregory Cole, go ahead, press star six, unmute yourself or unmute on your webinar. There you go. Is that unmuted now? Yes. All right. Thank you very much. Being an ex-city councilman in another community, I know what you're going through, but nothing quite as difficult as what you're going through. But it is relative what I've called about. My name is Gregory Cole. I'm an architect here in Santa Cruz, perhaps used to drive around my office on the corner on the way to the Crosnes there at the bridge. But all that aside, I am a law breaker. I have broken the law. And that is I have a beautiful, absolutely stunningly beautiful little two bedroom apartment in my own house upstairs, which has been determined to be an illegal unit. I only bring this to your attention because I know I'm one of 650 other ones here in Santa Cruz city limits who may be going through or may end up going through the same thing. And the city of Santa Cruz is losing two bedrooms for the next 20 years. I'm 75. My goal was to be here for another 20 years. So that's 24,000 nights of lost sleep. Those three people who were renting from me upstairs. I bring this to your attention because these are incredible. This is an incredibly beautiful little unit. I brag a little bit about it. I'm looking at the sunset now over the main beach, the lighthouse, the wharf is out there. And I'm on the Santa Rosa River cliff overlooking the boardwalk as well. It's all just a beautiful location for a fantastic honeymoon cottage. It turns out that the people who have created this loss of a unit here in Santa Cruz were on a honeymoon and they'd been there for seven years until I had to give them 60 days notice. I'm sorry to say, as you know, that's something I can do no reason and I have a good reason. But that aside, I think my goal is to alert you to the fact that it is not the fact that this is a dangerous unit. It's the fact that the regulations are tougher than they were when these things were built and maybe tougher than they need to be. Being an architect and you and I have probably slept on those lofts with our grandparents or whatever. I have, as you know, when you're in your bedroom, that's about 95% of the time you're in your bed, your bedroom, you're horizontal. And in my six foot three high bedrooms at the top of some steep stairs, it's perfectly comfortable for that 95% of my night. I'm bringing this to your attention because I think it's a very, very important possibility that there are a lot of units out here we can preserve if we alter the regulations. And we don't make sure everything is built according to what the current code is, but rather modified codes, which allow me to walk up. I'm six feet tall. I walk into my six foot three bedroom upstairs and I wake up with the seals barking upstairs, but now I can't rent that out. And unfortunately, like I say, that's losing 23,000 nights of sleep for those three people that used to be there while I'm here in Santa Cruz for the next 20 years. It should be legal. I'm not a dumb architect and I really do encourage that possibility. My number, very easy to remember, I want you to walk through this unit with me. My number is four two. The rest is nines. I want to show you my unit so that you can maybe think about what I'm thinking about, which is I was never ashamed of this gorgeous unit and the people loved it so much they never wanted to leave, but I had to make it an ending. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thanks for calling your public comment for oral conditions. Our next caller says I am watching you. Yeah, hi. Hey, maybe you missed it, but the federal government declared the COVID emergency over. It seems they have a new emergency to replace it, but they said, well, let's be out to do a most a disingenuous 60 minute spot to wrap things up. I see no reason to delay it as over any longer. Do you really want to be the last erotic paranoid or Bayer else government entity to end their state of emergency? I hope not because the government response Susan got declaration was and is a dreadful deceit and caused a lot of unnecessary damage. As the last meeting sick district and elected mayor election item, you sure didn't answer any of the questions I posed and have really lacked a detailed transparency as to exactly how November's election is going to go down. That mayoral central piece did reveal an answer to the question that there will be alternating free district elections every two years that was missing in the ordinance itself, but questions still remain as to how you will fairly choose which districts will vote first while the rest rolls their thumbs and I suppose the council members with two years remaining if they don't abandon ship to go to the county will pretend to represent those districts they might not even live in. The question is why not put a choice of the mayor's permanent balance for the people to decide which you could still do even today has not been answered. One wonders just how rigged this November's election will possibly become. For that matter, some of the same questions remain unclear as the alternative of the seven district if the six district condition fails or we have a seven district. I missed giving my objections to the renters prior resolution so I can't go into it much here, but that is pure welfare that belongs in the welfare system and renters instead deserve a piece of the property tax deduction instead, regardless of income, since ultimately they are paying most of those and receive most of the benefits from them. The renters credit is more of the state throwing in the towel and individual rights because of inflation like their rent control acts and I don't see a resolution from you condemning the real cause of inflation to prolific a moral exponential balloon debt spending of the federal government combined with a print money happy fellow reserve banking cartel. Government spending money that they don't have before asked for more and more is going around and we don't have to look any further than the next item 20 defined. As to throwing the talent on individual rights as in rent control, I wonder if it has dawned on you that when Cynthia Matthews pulled that purely average three and a half percent large rail increase figure out of her rear, let's say pocket, I wonder if anyone considered now or then the consequences of seven percent inflation in 2021 for so far seven and a half percent in climbing inflation now. Eventually we will have lost over our mobility and loss of housing when investors decide that there being squeezed too much, they fell out. Thank you for your oral communications. Next, I have caller ending in 1-705 for opportunities to items not on the agenda today for oral communication. Hi, thanks for taking my call. I also have a comment on districts, the six districts map. I hope we can get another map for the district options because all three of the maps have just one crazy district that runs from Mission Street on the west side. Two of them go all the way to the limits of the city by the harbor and one goes almost that far. And I don't think that anyone who lives in Santa Cruz that are what your political leanings are would believe that the natural district in any sense. So yeah, I'm wondering, I know there's an option for citizens draw their own map, but it seems like especially in the press time frame that's a little bit impractical or maybe the council could provide direction or provide direction to demographer to draw up another alternative for the, because I just think that it's just, it's just not a natural district at all. And so yeah, if you could give some direction on that to the community and or the demographer, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other callers for oral communications? Items not on today's agenda. Okay, so that concludes oral communications. I will now bring it back to item number 17, Homeless Response Quarterly Update. And let's make sure there were everybody public comment had a chance to weigh in with their comment. I will say in addition to the callers tonight, did receive 124 emails to the city council email regarding this item with various broad and general, I mean broad and comment on this item. So input has been very helpful. If that is it for public comment, I will bring it back to council members for deliberation and action. And this is, there's two recommendations on 17.1 to receive updates regarding council directed homelessness response programs, services included in the certain camping services and standards ordinance and the oversight vehicle ordinance to adopt homelessness response action plan by motion acknowledging associated funding requirements and courses, including use of the 14 million from the state for homelessness response. 17.2 is a resolution amending the classification and compensation plans by administratively implementing, staffing to support the city's new homelessness response action. So now I will bring it to council members. I see council member Cummings and then council member Mayer. And thank you, mayor and thank you members of the public. My colleagues on the council staff for the wonderful discussion that we've been able to have this evening. There's been a lot come out throughout this discussion and rightfully so, since it's the first time this has come to us and the first time the community has had a chance to look at this. So I just really wanna again, express my appreciation of the city manager and staff for pulling this together and bringing this to our attention. I did have a few comments that I'm gonna ask questions earlier but I felt like I had in the essence of time I'll just make a few comments. Throughout the conversation what I've heard from the community, few things that came up that were concerns were a need for clear goals and outcomes. And so for example, I know we heard that Larry mentioned housing vouchers as a success. And I think one thing that would be helpful is if we're clarifying what are good outcomes because while somebody getting a housing voucher uses a success, I think it all would be that making sure that person actually gets into the house probably an even better success. So I think one thing, something that would help would be for us to kind of clearly define what the goals are for programs, especially since we're putting so many resources towards them. There's also been expressed around the need for clarity around some of the positions. In particular, there's a number of positions, for example, like the planning requests for proposal specialists, the legislation advocacy, the advocate that wasn't included. And given that those are some very highly paid positions that are taking a lot of these resources people have expressed wanting to know more about why we're, what the role of those are gonna be. We're gonna be funding them so heavily. The need for clarity around how we're gonna target different populations. And I think to council member Meyer's point and some of the points we heard in public comment, really understanding what are we gonna do about families, women experiencing homelessness, veterans, people who just kind of lost their homes but are working, so really trying to figure out how we're gonna target various populations. One thing that came up as well, I don't think addressed is that I had a conversation actually with one of the mental health liaisons and although they're using their vehicles and that was largely COVID, I actually think that what I heard from them is that that's actually not a good thing because if they encounter someone who has experienced a mental health episode and they can actually take them somewhere to get them help, if these people have kind of, they've defecated on themselves wearing soil clothing, they have to put them in their personal vehicle and that shouldn't be the case. So, I think that there needs to be a deeper look at whether or not we can provide, the city can provide vehicles for our mental health liaisons since they're providing this needed service and they shouldn't be putting not only mileage on their cars but potentially bringing people in, they don't necessarily know and city vehicles might be more appropriate for that. As I really do agree with the point brought up Matt and Wanderer just be emphasized that as we're doing this outreach, really highlighting what has happened in our community, 1220 River Street, what we've had in the past work very well along with some of the other shelter we've stood up at whether it's 1220 River Street or the Santa Salvation Army shelter that we had set up on Laurel. These are all really good models of things that have worked. So as we're moving forward, we're really being able to put those models at the forefront when we're engaging with communities. I think it's probably gonna be to our benefit because we do have models that work. We really need to understand what those models are. One of the community members brought the 988 kind of call service that's moving forward around and told behavioral health and suicide and that's something that we really need to kind of think about in terms of as we're developing programs, what programs might fit within those models that could benefit from that service. And I really do wanna also express that the city should exercise caution when skating with the pendulum is a city sanctioned encampment. I know that we are sending individuals there, but there has been a lot. Just how that camp has been managed, the negative environmental impacts that's had. And the fact that, you know, although the city is allowing people to camp there currently, that is not ideal model for what we wanna have and what the city can provide as far as services are concerned. So really agreeing with what was mentioned earlier by one of the callers that this is, what's at the Benchlands is kind of a legacy of the fact that when the county moved their services up to the armory, there wasn't enough capacity to move everyone from that area up there. And after the court order was lifted, really haven't done anything to move those cents. So as we stand up, these various forms of shelter, any of which will have case management, I think we'll be able to show that we are moving towards models that provide health, safety, security for people who are experiencing. I'll leave my comments there. I think the last thing I would just say is that it would be great to get some clarity around case management, what that is and what it looks like moving forward. And with that, I've prepared a motion that I've sent to Bonnie. Doesn't include everything that was brought up including the comments that we heard, but hope is that there'll be an opportunity for us to address some of those concerns as well. So Bonnie. I don't remember. I wanna know what you sent me a blank. Oh, okay. Well, I will send that and we'll read it. I can get it. I just sent it. There's no subject line in it. And I'm prepared to read that motion once you're able to put it on the screen. A lot of it is, I'll just say right now, a lot of it is in line with staff's recommendation with a couple of adjustments and really wanting to see how we can work towards consensus. Cause I think this is something that we all are supportive of. So the motion is to, and this is in line with the staff's recommendation, see updates regarding Council Direct with Homelessness Response Programs, services including the camping services and standards ordinance, the oversized vehicle ordinance to support the direct of the Homelessness Response Action Plan, acknowledging associated funding requirements and sources including the use of $14 million from the state's Homelessness Response. Number three, include under community safety bullet point six in the action plan, work with the county to prioritize and develop 24 seven non law enforcement alternative emergency crisis response program and explore federal and state funding opportunities. Four, turn to the council for final adoption, five or before the second meeting in April with information on goals and outcomes for programs, services to determine effectiveness, strategies for targeting and supporting the different homeless populations and justification for new roles, costs for including but not limited to community relation specialists, legislation advocacy and planning requests for proposal special. Second that. And I'll hand up there a second, but no worries before. Sorry, I'm so sorry. You can go ahead and do that. I think that wasn't going to happen. No worries. I was busy reading the screen, I apologize. I can't all of it. Made a sure it looks like one is the same. Council member Cummings and two is the same, just worded differently. No, the two is support. The staff also says to adopt and I changed the support to press the we're supporting direction. The reason why I didn't want to move with the top is we adopt the plan. That means we're also adopting the budget and heard the one six, if we could express our support, then when to have it come back with them further around some of these other line items that we can adopt it. That's why number four has returned to council for final adoption. Okay. So I will, yes, go to council member Meyers and then let's see, I see manager Matt Huffer with. I just had a couple of comments too, if I could hear just some initial thoughts. I think everything that's being proposed by council for Cummings is reasonable. I would request for a bit more time on item number four to give us the first meeting that day to bring that work forward and that actually aligns with the next quarterly update that we would be bringing back to the council. Some of that work's already underway but the additional time would be helpful. Then for clarification on point two, council's not adopting a final budget plan, budget will come through as part of the budget process itself. So that helps with some of the current additional details that council's wanting to see. We can certainly commit to bringing that work forward but it may not need to weigh in on whether or not you're supporting or adopting it. That is one of the main factors as well but of course we would defer to the will of it. Thank you for those points. Okay. There is that correction first meeting in May. Are you fine with that update there? And the seconder, okay. So council member Meyers and then council member Kelly Johnson. With the county, I'm just going to find what you mean by the price, not just wondering if it's for price or not clear what emerges. Yes, that's for mental health crisis response but what some folks in the community have been pressing is that there's also calls for like wellness check whether it's behavioral mental health, substance abuse, homelessness, that those are calls that don't necessarily require law enforcement. I think part of the example to what council member Boulder brought up earlier was we don't currently have 24 seven mental health liaisons going out and there's also been indication that there's funding that's available for pilot programs to do this kind of non-law enforcement emergency response. And so the wording around how to frame it I think has gone back and forth a lot in the community and as some people say, well, it shouldn't be just mental health, other things such as wellness checks as I mentioned before and also homelessness. So this is the best way I could frame it. It is intense that the county would actually operate is different than I guess program that they recently started. I'm curious about kind of how it is to share with. Are you referring to healing the street or the mental health liaison program or both? I'm about whether or not this is additive million that was by the county. And for example, I mentioned program called going to be initiative and I believe that would be enough. I'm just trying to understand whether the work with the county, something whether or not there's additional additive that is not visioned with some of this already trying to get us. Yeah, I think the purpose of this is so that it's in alignment and supporting what the county is doing and also creating a role here in the city too because if this is a three year homelessness plan really kind of explicitly pointing out that we also want to have this 24 seven emergency crisis response or mental crisis response because what we currently have is something that's not 24 seven. And so I would actually like to see the staff come back to proposals on how we can better define this working with the community and work with the county that we're not duplicating efforts but we're trying to stand something that that really addresses the concerns of the community and also is working in collaboration. A friendly amendment, perhaps that might help with items. Work with the county prioritizing support, 24 seven non law enforcement alternative emergency crisis response program rather than develop. I think there are several programs. I think it's a build upon effort that we need to prioritize. So instead of support and develop support and yeah, the support and build upon existing. Is that where you're going to? Okay, your animal to that. And I guess the clarification is, I would hope that this has a kernels of a program off. Because most employees would not have information. Then I just have a, if our line there, Bonnie after the word may, council adoption, the action, the word, add, add, okay up there for those are my addition. Also for clarification with the change that council member Myers has asked for that have an effect on moving from support to approval of the action plan tonight. You tell the patient plan came at that date, Jordan and me was to get just a question. Are we talking about the same things? Or one, might that move the needle on an actual adoption of action? Or was that for me, Matt or for the makers? I guess it's a combination of both just a question. Yes, my question is, I feel like supporting the plan. It sounds like there's still some concerns with, for example, the finances and what these metrics are. So I'm just curious how you envision the difference between supporting and adopting. What would that really mean? We're gonna move forward with that. Because I think the big concern is that by adopting it, we're also like as I mentioned, we're also adopting the budget. And I know some of that will happen back, but it does sound like some concern around right of the different positions. And I think that if we adopt the plan and we adopt those roles and positions, I mean, forward with the new classification and other things. And I think there's some desire to have more discussion around that and also have some more clarity on what the outcomes are. So I just wanna make sure that as we're spending a very large amount of cash dollars that we're not only providing the opportunity for the community to weigh in, but also bearing that we're getting concerns that before we're making approving, what will be a very expensive move forward. I appreciate that council member coming. A significant investment that is included in the plan contemplated. The only positions that are specifically being approved tonight are the ones that Lisa Murphy had outlined earlier. It was like hours ago, I think it was hours ago presentation. And then outside of that, there will be a couple of room for the council to give additional direction on final budget through that process over the next months. That helps try to resolve some of the questions about just around the other positions that are not included in the council's formal approval tonight. But I hear the concerns you've raised and some of the input we've, I appreciate your point. I guess I would just, I would lean from the top tonight, reflecting on some of the, for Mayor John Lane's comments, I'll complete the change and actually had this kind of programmatic, but it may have very, very different impacts. Like in the ground, we adopt this act as for those, those actual implementation, but what if like in the council, there is room for the council to find the staff, but I do feel like it is important. Pression state, Senator Laird and members of the council, was no other state of California that homeless, and this effort already garnered funding in the, I'm going to campaign, almost campment grant come in. And I think that's my sort of the driver behind all of this is be seen as a city that's doing that ready. That's both as well as programming, software programming that has metric and ability to express any rightfully in the commenters asking, but I would make her the motion that all of these things out of process and take adoption. I had a motion that would have had and make decisions, got to get it done. No. Mayor, I guess before, I mean, I guess I'll, I know that there are other council members who want to comment, so maybe they'll pick their comments and then I have some, but do you want to hear from other council members? Okay, thank you council member Cummings and council member Myers. I will move on to council member Calentari Johnson and then council member Brown. Thank you mayor and thank you to member Cummings and Mayor for massaging this motion. And I just want to comment and note how far we've come in the last year to crafting this together. So I really appreciate that. I'm supporting the direction that this is going. I'd be that I think that we do need to put a stake in the ground and that we do commit and adopt this plan knowing that some of the friendly amendments I was going to make were made knowing that there is some specificity that's needed in particular around metrics that are around the budget narrative and that's in here. So we know that that's coming and we know that we can continue to work on that. And I know council member Meyer already quoted Don Lane, but it is a sea change, unprecedented partnership that we're showing and we got a forge ahead. So I would support that friendly, I don't know if someone may I think the reminder is made the friendly amendment if that to adopt rather support. I wanted to just make some comments around either a health topic that's come up over the course of the discussion. I have been meeting with community members including new members who are on the mental health advisory board and colleagues at the county who work at behavioral health director of behavioral health and there's a lot that's happening right now at the county that's in the works and it's in the process. Haven't seen implementation yet. That's why we haven't seen outcomes and results but there's a lot that's currently happening and there's a lot that are way. I think that for us as a city to be that entry point makes sense and then for us to really integrate with work with the county so that they as experts are providing the services is very, very important. In the last year, we've applied to a number of grants. We, county as a community, we've been successful in 100% grants that we applied for and it's about $15 million over the last year and a half that you're specifically around mental health, behavior health and some of it overlapping with homelessness. So that's encampment, outreach, suicide prevention, step down services including babies, children's crisis stabilization and residential programs and crisis response. So what I recently learned is that we submitted a $3 million grant date and we were actually awarded $0.9 million because they thought we were innovative and they thought we were doing a lot of work and we were ready to receive the resources and be in action and that $3.9 million is going to do exactly what we are talking about tonight, exactly what some of the callers called about increasing mental health liaisons, having co-responder model with emergency services, having a peer crisis support team, having a mobile emergency with news. So it's happening and it's really exciting. So I think we're in a really good place. There's also stuff happening at the state level. There's AB 118 which is community response initiative, strength and emergency. That's being established. There's a stakeholder group right now that's at, how do we have alternative salon for us? How do we get crisis response really fully robust crisis response integrated into communities? CalAIM, how we think about funding behavioral health is coming down the pikes. Round three of top 47 funds with the state neighborhoods and schools act and then Newsom's air court. So I'm just listing all this because I think we're in a good position. So let's not waver here. We've started on this journey a long time ago and seven of us, community who's been engaged in staff a year ago, let's commit to this because there's a lot of opportunities. There's a lot of doors that'll open if we are primed and ready and I think we are. So that's it. Those are my comments. Thank you so much for comment. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Well, I'll start out by saying that I have a strong preference for support at this time. I think that there are, I'm just not willing to adopt a plan that says we're gonna spend $216,000 here on legislative advocate without any other. I, for example, there are other areas. I guess I'm gonna ask this as a question. I think it's a rhetorical question, but I'd like here because I'm hearing this insistence that we have to adopt it, let's move. And so I guess I'm wondering what would prevent our staff, council members, people who are involved bring this forward from continuing to move forward at the same pace, all of the same activities if we support this plan versus adopt it tonight. So I'd like to hear from those of you are suggesting that we must adopt it now in order to get things done. How supporting this and asking for more information before an official adoption would prevent that or undermine that? Would a, would Matt Puffaker, city manager, like to speak to the work of adopting the support but city staff would continue or not be able to continue that different? A few thoughts and thoughts to that council member Brown and I appreciate the question. I think it does a couple of things. One, it sends a clear message to the community and the organization that we have a firm plan in place. The beauty is eager to move forward with this work in earnest. It also gives Larry our homelessness response team the ability to take the direction tonight and come back with that detailed plan that the council is asking for. There are additional details we need to bring back to council and I appreciate the questions about the conditions, just the conditions we need. And I also just want to make sure that this is going to be an ongoing conversation with council with lots of questions for the course of this work. And I also admit it's a big, complex, multi-layered plan that we're asking the council support on tonight. I don't envy even in your role and having to make it, I'm just out of time but it would be helpful in our work to move these various actions. Again, if I could just, I still don't understand what they're not gonna be able to do if we say that we're supporting this now as opposed to adoption. And perhaps this is just me, I would really like to support that. I would like to speak a unanimous vote but I cannot in good conscience vote adopt a plan that includes, again, $116,000 for a legislative advocate. Hiring community service officers, for example, as part of this budget without knowing what that procedure will be for hiring, will they specifically be dedicated to homelessness response or addressing public space where their issue is related to our unhoused. And I don't need all of my questions answered but I think those are pretty fundamental questions. And so I don't, they're nitpicking kind of questions. They're pretty big questions about a pretty significant amount of money. So I guess I'm just again trying to understand what can't be supporting this as opposed to adopting it. Which I believe, yes, it sends a clear message but it sends a clear message that you're committed to spending money on that I'm not ready to, I mean, we're not adopting a budget, of course, but we're saying this is a plan and that's part of the plan adopted this. If we wanna adopt something, then I'll start picking it apart and talk about the things that I think make sense to adopt right now because a lot of work has gone into this but there's kind of bells and whistles and some fraction there that is not in here. So I guess I just, no, I guess I just don't feel, I mean, we're being told that adopting is important as a way to send a message to get moving and I guess I'm not entirely to that message. If it, well, some of this stuff is gonna, I can't really tell you about this. You know, and I'm sorry, it's difficult about this. It's a really big deal as everybody's saying and I just don't see, like, saying we're gonna support this right now, we could do an official adoption. Got some of that in the back. It just doesn't seem like, I mean, it's either it's a big deal and it's not a big deal is what I'm hearing. And so I'm still just, what will we not be able to do? Yeah, so I appreciate the directness of your question. Customer Brandon, right, this is an important decision and I think most specifically and most importantly, it would delay our hiring of the positions we're asking for tonight, which will to a certain respect hinder some of our work as a team start getting fully resourced up. It would delay some of that work until we bring back that decision of the council. So that's a specific example of what would be delayed by not having a final adoption tonight. If there are specific questions related to the CSO, you know, as an example, we will do our best to answer those tonight. Council feels comfortable with the positions that we are requesting, but your question, it would delay moving forward with the organizational structure that we're proposing, which I think will, by extension, have some facts on which we can do the work that we're proposing. All right, then I guess I have some questions. Sorry to say. Okay, so one, can we get some additional information about the plan for the two community service officer positions? Will they be using this team? The job description, will they be hired in CSO pool and just in other two additional officers, or will they be specifically dedicated particular tasks related to homelessness response? Alongside that, I guess I wonder, where are we at having all of our CSO positions filled? I know the police has had challenges with retention, and so I don't recall what they've, I know we've had updates, but I don't know where it's at right now, so I'd like that. And I also would, yeah, so I guess those are some, I'll just start there. So I can get additional information. Yeah, thanks for the questions, Council Member Brown, I'll pull Barry probably to go on to it back into the conversation. It can help speak to some of the intent around those additional CSO positions. I'll kick it off and then turn it over to others. I think part of that is providing assistance to address the instances when people do need to move in the location where they are. I think the approach, starting with outreach and or the land and resource conservation staff and having those individuals recommend these people move and there's a place for them in the shelter facilities and that timelines for that, if those individuals aren't complying with that, then the CSOs vary a little bit more weight. I see it as a sort of a progressive approach and I welcome Bernie's, sorry, Interim Chief Escalante's comments on how he foresees those resources or Larry's thoughts as well, but that's how I envision that sort of a progressive approach happening. And so that would be dedicated CSOs who are specific to this staff or just whoever gets called. So we're basically just adding, I mean, are we adding to the pool for CSO officers or doing the same work as every other CSO officer and it just happens that they'll receive a call just like any other CSOs? Again, I'm really trying to understand this because if it's coming out of $14 million grant for homelessness response that was tended for infrastructure and I recognize there are significant needs around services, but we're gonna pay for it and then we're committed to it and the city will continue to pay for it out of the general, I just would like to know, are we just essentially hiring more CSOs and they'll get intention is that they'll get more calls in general because this. The expectation comes from a Brown is that we would be adding two full-time equivalents so it's adding to the pool, but having a total of one of two dedicated commissions to assist with that response work that Lee was describing. So they often working in them right now with some of our public works and parks and parking, but the vision going forward is to have these commissions to be able to support in a more dedicated way that assistance work coming alongside the resource and land management team, that's vision. In addition to that, it would also allow for any presence downtown CSOs that have been doing some of that work recently in our effort to try to assist with some of the behavior challenges that have been occurring in the downtown area and using them as a bridge to connect individuals that come across with services. So that would be the vision for that role against the end of the CSO team, but the expectation would be that there'd be more dedicated service by what we were describing. Okay, thank you. I would just add that I would expect that as these individuals are regularly addressing these homelessness-related needs, they are going to gain a stronger familiarity with the county services, for example, and they'll be able to make some of those referrals and provide some of those connections similar to what we would expect as a regular basis from the outreach folks. But I think that just by virtue of that regular exposure, they will be able to also provide additional connections to services for us. Yeah, I think that's, I'll leave it there. All right, are we at full staffing now on CSOs? So we, or is that, maybe, Gascolante? Yeah, I can answer that question. We are currently budgeted for 13 community service officers and we have nine and we are actively actually recruiting for additional CSOs, but the CSOs, they do a variety of tasks throughout the community. So what we've found is that when we can dedicate a couple of community service officers to this assignment, working alongside other city staff or Chris and Jeremy, and they're out there providing service, providing direction to other alternative, we're not, we don't have to pull them away from that particular assignment, we commit them, they know what they're doing. We'll be looking for those skillsets that will provide them a higher level of success of working with other groups like Encompass. They work with them now downtown, but oftentimes we have to pull our CSOs away from that or whether it's traffic control and a traffic collision or other duties in this particular case, they could be solely dedicated to this particular task. And so I, yeah. That's really helpful. Again, really trying to understand this. Okay. So another question I have is, this, you know, we're kind of saying, well, everybody agrees to have some outcomes and metrics for determining success. But when can we expect have some of that firmly established provided? Council member Cummings brought up a point related to this and I'm just in the interest of transparency, accountability and understanding if what we're doing is working and fiscal responsibility of taxpayers. When are we gonna, when will we see about expert of full, you know, how is the section eight vouchers actually getting used? You know, there's, I mean, I can think of all kinds of things I've played already. So I won't go on about that, but overall, it would be great to have a sense of like, when can we expect the, or of that, that be in May as well or at the next quarterly meeting? Quarterly report. I appreciate that question Council member Brown. We had some conversation with the team and up to tonight with some of the feedback that we were receiving around wanting to see meaningful metrics that you like, the report on regularly. Yeah. There's two things I would say to that. One is we're feeding up into larger regional housing homelessness strategic plan that we've partnered on with the county. There are very strong metrics put into that plan. I think we can forward and apply it fashion plan that we were discussing. And then I also think, and as we've been talking about all afternoon, our own local experience, there are some other metrics from the work we're doing, vision we have, moving forward to add to that. And I would suspect we would have that to Larry on the spot of what's a reasonable timeframe, but either in May or as part of the quarterly report. Also, Matt, Larry? Yeah. Yeah, I'd agree. I certainly, we can have a framework that has some metrics and outcomes benchmarks for the next quarterly update this in May. That's definitely doable. Okay. And so I'm jumping around a little bit here, but I just try to get things that are really, I have concerns about in killer address, vehicle abatement officer, where would that be housed? And what, I mean, it sounds like it may be an expender. It may not, and I just like to understand that more. I mean, I don't really support it in general, but I just want to know what we're planning on for here. Yeah, Larry, I want to jump in, but I think the intent there is to have a vendor on contract and provide for some of the necessary work included in the OVO ordinance. I think you're pointing out some of the grounds to last report on a mechanism we want to have to utilize, but it is a necessary component to implementing the OVO, having that resource available would not be in-house position on contract. And so that's not something that we currently have in place. My understanding is we have a vendor and then the vendor, we didn't have a place, to send the RVs to oversized vehicles. And so, we've been sort of in a little bit of limbo. Do we have a vendor? This in addition, the expectation is more towing happening. I want to speak to that. I think Bernie, Chief Escalante has info on the vendor they have towing, which is a little bit different than, a broader role enforcement, I think Matt, are you articulated in terms of what we're looking for as it's passed around the OVO, but I can't speak specifically to the vendor we have towing. Yeah, we do have a temp employee. They are technically a community service officer as the vehicle abate. They are a temp employee. We do have a vendor that we operate with, but our current vehicle abatement officer, primarily focused on 72-hour abatement issues around the entire city. So the anticipation here is the potential increase workload around the enforcement of the OVO if it gets to that. So that's what we currently have now and what they focus on. And like I said, they are a temp employee, so we anticipate if the workload increases and there's going to be a bigger. I wanna go back to another, see if I can get some resolution question about calling Anne Lorenzo, the Bench lands sanctioned encampment and counting it towards the number of thoughts that we, trying to think of the worst spot. I'm just gonna call it the spot, they can't say beds. I can't say beds. So like if we're, but that's gonna close so why is that in there as an encampment to count towards a number that the council has set as a minimum when it's not really a place to stick around and I think it's very clear that that's it's not an appropriate location for long encampment. So I'm not objection to that, but I'm just wondering, I mean, that's in the land, that's in the plan here, right? That's in the language of staff report. And I don't want to, I don't want to adopt a plan that says that's part of our plan. I appreciate that. I appreciate that point, Councilor Brown and as we talked about this afternoon, we are moving away from Bench lands serving as suitable shelter space. So the target that we're aiming for that talks specifically about 150 beds around a minute course or beds on a regional level. The goal is by the summer, the Bench lands would be demobilized. Those beds would not be obviously counted as part of that work for standing up the other shelters that we have very, I've described today. 1220 River, the housing matters in terms of the farmery as examples. Those are the beds that we're counting for. And we're permanent target, right? Thank you. I don't mean to be difficult here. I just really, we're gonna insist on adopting, I'd like. You're a valid question. Thank you. That concludes your questions, Council Member Brown. For the sake of us all being able to sleep for four hours tonight, yeah. I have plenty more, but. Thank you. Okay, I will move on to Vice Mayor Walker. Thank you, Mayor. And yeah, I, you know, I get the discussion and I think, you know, at the end of the day, it is about kind of saying, it's time to go, right? And I really just want to say how much I respect the work. And I haven't always agreed with John Lane and I think he knows that, but I've always respected him and I've always known no matter what is committed to supporting our most vulnerable population. And I think it's really telling when he calls in to say, gosh, you know, I haven't necessarily been as effective, not for a lack of will or trying for ultimate dedication he really had, as long as I've known him and has known his positions in public office. But at the end of the day, it's about shifting from reaction proactive, right? And it's go time. And it's about trying to get things moving. And I think that's really telling to what this proposal says in terms of embracing how we want to balance it to our most vulnerable population in a meaningful way, as well as responsive to the media at large and how to balance that. I think it's hard to say yes. It is really hard to say yes. These are really challenging, you know, proposals before us. These are difficult financial decisions to make. And I think the lack of ability to say yes to hard things has been a state of inertia. And I think we need to go and we need to move forward with an adoption. So I'm supportive of moving forward with incorporating that word. I think that also, if we think about fiscal responsibility, we also have to think about shifting our mindset from a reactive fiscal response to, you know, the tons of leftover trash that we're having to pick up for our criminal justice system that is now embracing having to be the first to respond to an unmanaged situation. So if we're thinking about how we're gonna be more prudent, but also really investing in upstream and intentional, proactive policy programming and partnership, I think that's what's different here before us. So I know it's not easy. I don't think anybody really wants to be in a position, but I, you know, if in a perfect world, we had everybody doing well and thriving and health and supportive, I think that's where we want to be, but moving forward in a way that is pragmatic and is responsive and is thinking about the unique subpopulations and all of the different components that when you have funding that you need to have in place in order to adhere to getting them on, right? Like you can have the best programming, you have the best of funding, but it's give nobody to do the work, then what? And I want to thank former Mayor Myers for her legislative advocacy, because what that led to 14 million and in response and in collaboration with our state legislators, right? So if you have good legislative advocates that small drop in the bucket during what you could potentially get in return, same as to the concept with a grant writer, right? Like you put money into supporting grant writing, then you hopefully get the return. So I know the questions that feel really hard and frankly, some of them might not work out, but nonetheless, it's really shifting our mindset from saying we want to be in a feeling not fully prepared to a state of not being able to paralysis by indecision or enough to say, gosh, we have a pretty, you know, we have, we have our lane here. We're going to try to do our best to stay in the lane. You might fall out, that's where the data component comes in. 100% of that for capability. But at the end of the day, we're going to figure out what doesn't work. At the end of the day, we're also going to figure out what does work. And ultimately, what that leads to is for a healthier community. And so I guess my comments are, you know, more at large, but I guess I think it's really important that we think because it's important that we keep moving. And I think that working in this phase is also a priority. The last thing I think I will say, and I think that's what my hand went up originally for, was really the notice and, you know, identification of really prioritizing subpopulations. That was outlined right away. And I just want to make sure that that something that was kind of in the, that I feel really strongly about that also written into both the ordinances. So just making sure that that's also reflective in our, you know, our adoption of this plan is thinking about how are we supporting our most, how are we not targeting or further harming people like women who are struggling or transitional age families or single parents or those funds that are really, really needing our ultimate investment and wanting to support them. And that was something that was pointed out early on in this guess. You know, I know in the interest of time, just because I also have the standard agenda, you know, I'm comfortable with making a substitute motion and transferring really, I think it's just really one word, right, from support to adopt. And moving this forward, knowing that we're going to have updates, we're going to have refinement, we're going to have a budget adoption event. We're going to have further information to move from as well as accountability metrics to learn from. So with that, I'm going to make a substitute motion really essentially keeping the same language that was presented in the prior motion, but shifting from supporting to the top. That's my... Is, okay, instead of an amendment doing a substitute motion. I mean, I think if the amendment was welcome from the motion maker and the seconder, then that's, I'm fine with doing that. But if not, then I think I've got a substitute motion. So we'll go ahead and I'll go ahead and withdraw my substitute motion in hopes that an amendment would work for it to now reflect that we would be adopting instead of supporting in the interest of trying to resource really a lot of these priorities that we've had out to accomplish in a meaningful way as opposed to sort of spending the time like. If that's accepted by the maker of the motion, yes or no, that's fine. If not, then I'll go ahead and make maker of the motion accept this amendment. I know that the council member Myers had brought this up to one thing that I had expressed was just wanting to hear from council members. And I think we're almost there. So that's the only reason why I didn't... Hold on. And I think the city clerk misunderstood or maybe I misunderstood that your word of support and adopt not related to item three, but two. No, I'm just copying it. I was just copying and pasting it to adopt the action plan, right? Yes. Yeah, I'm just copying and pasting so I have some support with. That's it. I'm gonna stop hearing my... I think I might need to... I think that I've been really mimicking. Yeah, we'll get. And I just had, I had some questions. I'm not, I mean, as I think we're all trying to work towards consensus here. And I think we're pretty close, you know, because this is, if we get behind the fence, think wanna feel good with, especially because next item we're gonna be discussing is moving forward with the revenue measure. And if we're not on, you know, if we're not able to reach consensus on how we're gonna spend $14 million towards homelessness, what confidence can we give our community when we're saying, hey, you should be voting on increasing our tax. So that's, so I'm not, not that I'm opposed trying to see if we can get some questions to answer if we can get there so that we can also have support as we're moving. Thank you, Councilmember Cummings. So is it my understanding? Can we scroll so it's smaller so we can see all the entire motion? There we go. So number two is what my understanding is Council Vice Mayor Watkins for Friendly Amendment. I think Councilmember Meyers had made that, moving that forward, that suggested forward earlier. And one thing I asked Mayor was if we could hear from Council kind of just see where we're at. And I think we might be pretty close. So I had some questions. Who I raised my hand because I wanna be. I wanna respect the order at this point. I was just saying that's why my hand. Okay, thank you. Appreciate it. Well, I guess I'm a little bit confused in that and what the request is. I think, you know, as at a certain point, but one, I think, you know, I adopt means that we give firmer direction to move forward and knowing that it's gonna come back for refinement. And that's sort of where I'm at. And I think from what I've heard from a couple of the other colleagues I'm happy to list the others for moving forward. That seems like that's where they are at as well. So I don't ask answered at this point or if there's sort of a conflation of this item with the next item because I feel like what I've witnessed over the past, you know, various iterations have been a lot of discussion and hope of trying to move forward. And then maybe one thing will not do that, right? And so I don't know if that's the interest or intention of you, Councilmember Cummings, what you're wanting have happened, right? In order to sort of feel the confidence that you need for the next item. But I'm sort of, I'm kind of a little bit confused about what, where we're at. So I mean, is it a note? Maybe is that what it is? Or can we see the friendly amendment? I'm not seeing the whole, okay, great. Great. So your friendly amendment was changing item two from support staff. Yeah, given what we heard from our staff really as well as in trying to move moving and as really our ability to stay competitive and be able to kind of also be able to yield some of the things we want to see. I think adopted, I heard that too overwhelmingly is an important component. So I'd like to move forward with that tonight. And I'm happy to make either a substitute motion or if we want to postpone that, that's fine. But at some point, I think we're gonna have to make a decision. Okay, so there's a friendly amendment by Vice Mayor Watkins on item number two. And is the maker of the motion amenable to that? I'd just like to say that, again, Council Member Myers as the second of the motion had said she would want to move forward with the top. We asked, I said, maybe let's hear from the council members. I don't know where my hand is at this order. But I just had a few questions. And I think that if I can get some resolution on my questions, I'd be willing to entertain the second or the friendly amendment. I think so, Council Member Myers, Nat, and then Council Member Cummings and Council Member Brown. And has it, Council Member Myers had framed it more as a question, whereas Vice Mayor Watkins did a formal friendly amendment. That's why I'm asking again if you're amenable. We can continue with the discussion and hold it here. Before you, if you want to continue with the path we're on. Just to sort of frame it here. If the friendly amendment isn't accepted, then the motion could be framed as a motion to amend the main motion or a substitute. Well, it's neither accepted or denied at this point. You know what, here's what I'll do. I'll accept the friendly amendment purposes of continuing the conversation. And is the seconder okay with that? Great, thank you. Okay, Council Member Myers and then Council Member Cummings. Yeah, I guess I just wanted to maybe talk a little bit about my thoughts. I had a lot of questions about this. You know, this legislative, I think Council Member Watkins, excuse me, Vice Mayor Watkins really did out the effectiveness of active legislative. We have the effect of the legislators that we have at all levels statewide as well as national. That is, that's something that a lot of parties don't have. So I think I respect the managers. I also, you know, is the realization that the legislature has a close call. When I was Mayor, there was, I did have colleagues out, others fall close, much larger close population than even, you know, for a capita than a large city and obviously much less resource. I think there is a lot of interest in our city manager. Also, to be able to work in quarantine with the coastal cities by nature, whether it's weather, whether it's cities that end up trying to accommodate folks that are realizing that on a sustainable situation for small cities or whether it's environmental advocacy. I know there's a lot of people that are very about water act violations that are basically associated with, you know, not just homeless camps, you know, a long riverways and water corridors. I mean, I know a lot of water advocates that are sort of fed up with the amount of garbage they're getting washed into. So I think this legislative is very strong at this point in time and it is well worth the best. And it can give it ends in terms of really understanding and getting assistance today. You've already seen the state for the kinds of things that we've talked about. In the last year, the news put money on the ground to help. I'll try to talk to you about a per course development to help participate in areas trying to keep the risk. Dedicated funding to this last one, starting to try to dig in. So the severity of mental and behavioral health issues, how do we make, how do we have when they're struggling? So the work done over the last year is signals all over Sacramento that we're on the right track. So, this is all investment as our city. It could be a lot less. I mean, with the right kind of approach, very much of cost share type of situation. Also cities in California raise so many factors for the state of California that you are a force and we need help. And that sustains our little budgets. So I just want to make a plug to that. And I just wanted to clarify. I think it's very, very, I'll stop there. Thank you. And I do accept the, yeah, sorry, the amendment. Sorry, I already did that. Nevermind, sorry, Mayor. Get tired. Thank you. Council Member Cummings, there's Council Member Brown and Council Member Golder after that. Thank you. So I'm just going to stay really focused on planned for us. And I know that what was in the agenda report isn't necessarily what is accomplishing this plan that I understand. Maybe I can get some a nod that's based on, okay. So what we're seeing in the report is kind of an update on what's been happening versus what's in the plan with the outlining kind of what is the pathway forward. And so the reason why I've put the stance on support versus stop is this is $14 million one time funding that we're receiving. And I just want to acknowledge that there was information in this proposal that was lacking when we have this budget chart with number of different line items. There was an explanation on to what the roles would be and why we're spending money on those roles. So that's the reason why I was moving forward for versus action plan. Now that being said, I guess my question around wanting to use support or with taking action on this plan first or how we're gonna vote on this item. I guess more for me or with this. I'd just like to know some clarity around when we adopt this plan. And I know I mentioned it before, but what exactly are we bidding to tonight in terms of what money we're gonna be spending, what we're gonna be spending money on because the two things what I see is that there's a total variety of action and action areas. In addition to that, we have the second item which has, it looks like a handful position, but not all the positions that have been laid out in the budget that was impacted. And so the concerns that have been raised is that, for example, legislative advocates $432,000 a year planning and request for proposal specials, $336,000. Community relations specialist $100,000. In that whole category of expanded capacity and partnerships, it's $968,000 to $175. And much of that not been explained in the report that we received, nor is it an action plan, nor is it explained the item that's with us. And with respect to prudency, transparency, we really need, if we're gonna be making decisions on how this money's going to be spent, my concern is, and this is why I'm saying this in relation to the revenue measure, the next item on our agenda is we need to make sure that, we need to make sure to understand that it's clear what we're spending their money on. And so we take action tonight. I just wanna know what exactly are we spending money on and what exactly are we committing to and do these positions which haven't been defined, but those included what we're gonna be moving forward with. Thank you, Council Member Cummings. It sounds like there's three positions you're specifically calling out as we've heard about in the information we've received. And for you to feel comfortable moving forward with an adoption of the plan, those positions need to be clarified. It doesn't even have to be those positions. I just need to know what are we approving in terms of what we're gonna be spending money on because at the same time, the positions that we've outlined resolution, there's only, you know, I think add one or seven positions, looks like that we're adding. So planning, community development, ad position, city manager's office, add three positions, add new classification and position for a homeless services coordinator, add two community service officer positions and then delete management analyst, lead assistant city manager. So that's clearly defined in that part, but it's not clearly defined what the roles of these other folks will be. Are we approving those positions tonight? And so I'm just trying to get some explanation around what exactly we're dedicating that we're gonna spend money on. Yeah, so Council Member Cummings, do you have that right with the list of positions that we had identified earlier? Those are typically the positions that we will be moving forward with tonight with the approval and adoption of the plan. Some of the other items we've talked about, like legislative advocacy, that'll be done contract that would come forward to the Council at a later date and for consideration at a later date. That's also true of the supplemental vehicle abatement, vendor work. Specifically tonight, crystal clear is the positions that we identified just listed off. The other items will come forward as the part of the word retail plan as well as the budget for final adoption. And I'd call on Leader Larry if there's anything to share that they'd like to share. But that's what to ask. Hopefully that has clarified your question, Council Member Cummings, there's specific city positions that would be approved to move forward night if we adopt the plan and be contracted out, identified as would come forward at a later date for our consideration. But they are here in the framework as identified as a very helpful component framework. Is that kind of? So I guess if I could finish. So moving forward tonight, we would be approving these positions and then I guess when would this be coming back? Because it sounds like there's a number of questions asked in terms of returning with information. And I would, and part of that is also asked the information and justification for the roles and costs which would come back at that meeting in May so that we would be able to determine whether we want to move in that direction or not. Right, so yes, Council Member Cummings. So we are committed tonight to bring those additional details to you no later than May. I will say it's not to say that there may not be any elements come forward sooner as we try to advance that work. So I want to make that clear as well. Ali and Larry, for instance, on some of the pre-development work related to the Coral Street master planning, there could be contracts that we expedite and bring forward to the Council consideration sooner. And I would expect that that would be, Council would be supportive of that. But yes, outside of that, the additional details we would have no later. Okay, so I just like to say that that is helpful for me. We want to move forward with supporting this because what it's saying is that we are not committing those positions. And tonight the only thing we're really committing to are the positions that are in 17.2. And until these other items forward to us around even the case of the Armory, sheltering, transitional camp, all that has over the $100,000 limit. That correct? That's correct. I would also add that the additional time will allow us extra scope being around alleged advocates in particular. Now that that's a special interest to the Council and some of the community feedback we've received. We can start conversations that we would, some of the legislative advocates in terms of that work can come back with a harder number. You have better sense of that as well. And then to your point, anything that's above administrative authority ask you a matter of process that will be, as I mentioned earlier, lots of opportunities around down the road that's the way in on it. Okay, yeah. And so I guess one more time for clarity for the community service officer. This is, these are dedicated positions that are going to be specifically working on homeless response in those roles. All right. Yeah, as long as that's clearly defined, I think that's, I'm supportive of moving that direction. I did have a question though within some of the spending. I know that in previous conversations that we've had along around homelessness, one of the things that had come up was dumping for RVs, creating a kind of dump site. And I don't see that in here. And I'm just wondering kind of where that that, like how that fits, because that is a critical piece of infrastructure that the community has expressed over and over that they have. So the people aren't dumping their black water or gray water in the streets. And so I'm just wondering where that fits. Yeah, there is a reference in there that you could have missed. I'll ask. Certainly, yes. It's in the plan, but it is included. It's wrapped up under the basic services and safe parking. So part of that includes installing an RV dump station, the infrastructure for that as well. It also includes a mobile pumping service to support safe parking. So that's all wrapped up in there. That is an element. And that number also goes back to the plan that was presented and approved by the Council on December 14th. So that's the same budget. Just extending the time as part of this plan. Okay. And then I guess the last piece is that I would just maybe make a recommendation when this comes back that there might be the consideration of vehicles for the mental health liaisons so that they're not using their own vehicles. That concludes my comments and yep. Thank you, Council Member Cummings. Just one point of clarification. My understanding is that the county mental health liaisons, county vehicles and in-compass outreach workers, I'm not sure if they use their own cars and our city staff with some positions, I'm not sure if they use city vehicles or their own cars, but definitely the county mental health liaisons and county vehicles. I'm gonna stick. I meant for the city's public service because Bernie Escalante mentioned earlier that they use their own cars and the ones that I've encountered it said they're using their own cars and it might be good. As I mentioned before, if our people who are engaging with people who have mental health crisis emergency issues want to take people to places where they can receive help and the people are in such conditions to where they're soiled clothing or what have you and that they can ruin the person's car. I mean, if we're gonna put those people in that position and ask them the same thing, then we should be providing them with vehicles that we can clean the city that are dedicated to those specific purposes. That's just my recommendation. Thank you for that recommendation. Clarify. I'm sorry, Mayor, can I add something? Yes, go ahead. Sorry. That's okay. I guess I wanted to get some clarification from Council Member Cummings. When you say their own vehicle, are you under the impression that the existing mental health liaison drives their personal vehicle? I met a person from Encompass who does one of the outreach workers and she had mentioned that he is currently using her personal vehicle and brought up these concerns because prior to COVID, the outreach workers with police officers, police vehicles, and because of COVID, they're using their personal vehicles and she had mentioned this scenario, which is why I'm bringing it up now and we see. Yeah, no, it's a valid point. Just for clarification, so the staff within Encompass and the county mental health liaisons that work alongside our officers are two totally different sets of both and the two county mental health liaisons that work with our office, they are driving county vehicles. I can't answer to Encompass because they don't necessarily work as directly with our department. So I can rest assured, you know, you can be certain that the county mental health liaisons drive county vehicles, not their own personal vehicle. But that's good. Council member Cummings, we're clicking to that with our original partners. I'm sure that the teams who are working with have the resources. Great, thank you so much. Okay, council member Golder, welcome. I had my hand up for a long time, only because council member Cummings asked where we were at. And just knowing that this is not, like I had said before the plan, it's been an overview with updates that we're expecting to see in the coming months. I'm very comfortable with the DOP at this point, having heard everything I've heard in the discussions. And that's all I have, thank you. Thank you. Any other hands? I guess I'll go ahead and say some comments as well. This has been a really good conversation. I had a feeling it would go longer than we allotted on our agenda for this but it's really important conversation to have. I really wanna thank all of the community members that emailed us as well as all the callers tonight. Your input is really important to hear and did help inform very specific point to really move this forward. That being said, this is quite the investment from our team, our city in a way that has not been invested in before and investing in care and shelter teams and land management and resource teams, partnerships with county and regional, really coming at it instead of just an enforcement way but really getting to a support model for folks that are unhoused in our community. And I really think we've made some great progress. I want to call out the raising standard of the shelter models that we have typically put up and really wanting to be better, models of shelter. And I know the word how it shelter was brought up. Very earlier or Lee had mentioned or some other types of shelters. I think it's important to stay open to different options of shelters. We've had some community members that have reached out about some engineered models created and want to help and contribute. And I really love seeing those types of our community want to help with this. So whatever the shelter model is not and Benchlands and really full connecting the resources they need for better well-being and for our environment of a healthier environment. So thank you so much for all of the work that has gone into this plan and these elements thus far. So I look forward to the next update. And so now at this time, we have a motion on the floor with three friendly amendments and they're really quick if I could. Laura kind of consolidated all the friendly amendments and everything to go into just ocean language to make it maybe a little more clear. So I'm gonna put up that. I'll let the give a minute to read it through. The amendment. Correct. So I put the county to prioritize support. Number three. I tried to develop that one. Yeah. The amendment. The support. There was a lot of use of the word support throughout the discussion. I wonder if we can also prioritize in there. I, yeah, as my friendly amendment, I thought it was in there. So yeah. Okay, we're gonna go back to that. It was good. It was just prioritize and support instead of prioritize fellow. Yeah, I think you're there by adding one word. If you wanna go back to that Bonnie, it was good. So work with the county to prioritize support instead of prioritize fellow. So delete develop. There we go. Thank you. Is the maker of the motion and the seconder of the motion? I think I'm in for return to the council on or before the first day because city manager did say that there is the opportunity for an aspect that was in the original. So the number of forces buyer before the first day. Yeah. A reads a little strange identification of relevant metrics tied to the county's homelessness strategic plan and additional ones measurement of outcomes for our. There it is. Yeah, it's in the language that was just put before. So there's a bunch of information about the county and I don't think that was the case. Would you like me to spot that progress? No progress. That would help. All consistent. Yeah. So A with a pace. Right. But that whole section regarding timeline goals. It's sure we have to make sure we have the original. There we go. Are you saying to delete that? Yeah, that to delete it and swap it with the first part of that progress. Or could these are maybe just the whole section? Hard to figure out where to. Why don't you just do the whole section Bonnie? Or it looks like maybe you could end after. Oh, sorry. Before it got to the positions. I think the intent of this was to make it easier for everybody to read, to get rid of all the friendly amendment addition. If everything you guys see here is accurate. It, this is what I would. I think Laura just did this to make it a little more like make it clear. Yeah. I think we stuck with the met the actions we took. I think it also helped the flow of seeing where amendments were made that way. We don't leave anything out. Because otherwise we're just going to be going through and cutting and pasting or viewing for another. Appreciate the intent though. That's why Bonnie is the city clerk. Thank you, Laura. We have a motion with refriendly amendment. And there's no additional comment. So I will ask the clerk for a roll call vote. You may. I'm sorry. Mayor, the resolution for the human resources items is missing. So that needs to be added. Unless. Oh, is that going in this motion? It should all unless you guys going to do another motion I'll be there because we need the human resources personnel component be approved. Thank you, council member Myers. So we'll continue. So is that a separate motion then? Yes, that's okay. Break it up for council member Cummings. We just added to this because I thought that when we started item, we were going to hear both items at the same time, public comment all at the same time and make a motion because otherwise. The only problem with that is that particular recommendation fell under 17.2. 17.1. There are two separate items in our agenda management system. So it just seems to me that are unless. We'll proceed with this item, 17.1. The motion, there's a motion by council member Cummings and a second by council member Myers. Re-friendly amendment. And so we'll do a roll call vote and then move on item number 17. Council member Cummings Johnson. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. Motion passes unanimous. Thank you. And now we will go to item 17.2. This is the resolution amending the classification and complication plans by administratively implementing staffing to support the city's almost every council member of Myers. I want to make a motion to talk to the council. We have a first by council member Myers and council member Callentary Johnson. Do you have a second? Yes, I'll second that. Any discussion on this item? Okay. If we can move to a roll call vote. Council member Callentary Johnson. Vice Mayor Watkins. Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Deep breath. Thank you everyone for entering through that work. Good job everybody. That brings us to, we had two items that we continued and not discussed. So we've gone through already oral communication, earlier at 630. We are now at item number 20. Resolutions requesting the placement of the skills and use tax ballot measure on the June, 2020 California statewide primary election. And before we begin, I'd like to call a 10 minute break. And then we will come back at 840. I'll give everybody a minute to get back to their cameras. Hopefully get a little stretch in. Back to you. Is clerk, buddy. Okay. So we will resume our meeting. We are at the final item on base agenda. Agenda item number 20. Resolutions requesting the placement of the sales and use tax ballot measure on the June, 2022 California statewide primary election. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you want to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and return to the council for deliberation and action. Okay. So, we will now begin the presentation. And I will be seeing us off for presentation. Okay. We, I'm speaking on half of our ad hoc budget and revenue can be myself, Vice Mayor Watkins and council member Brown. And really some brief background. We are recommending this item. We started, next slide please. We started with a review of some background and exploration of different types of revenue for the city to explore and really looking at a way to keep our city of Santa Cruz the essential services intact and continuing despite the loss of revenue during COVID, during PZU wildfire impact and other challenges. And did someone say anything? And so some of the background for the revenue items that we did look at were property taxes and sales and use taxes, service charges and assessment fees. We looked at revenues from other government agencies, rent of public property and development impact fees kind of went through a whole spreadsheet of options and associated descriptions, potential annual yield and administrative overhead. You know, looking at other fees as well and other jurisdictions. And so really the goal is to be able to maintain and expand our whole city services. And we decided to do a poll. So next slide please. We started after the November full financial status update. Transitioned our council members in February were the most revenue results and projections as well as budget. And we really put a lot of evaluation into the possible revenue source for the highest impact. So the poll that was conducted was in January for a potential sales and use measure. And that poll is done by an outside consultant. And it's done with a randomized selection of voters in the city. And those analyzed poll results came back with other risk factors as well. There were questions and communications with businesses including downtown businesses, hotel years, community-based organizations and conversations with a couple of people in bargaining. So what the poll results found were that 61% of the randomized voters selected felt positive for a successful passage in support of sales and use measure and really wanted to see support in areas of housing. And I think our resolution did a great job in summarizing what we found in the poll results. Really, that the residents wanted investment in housing, especially for low and middle-income residents. Problems around addressing those unhoused and mitigating the number of wildfires and water supplies, public facilities, and recreational areas. Those were the top focus from the poll results. Next slide. Next slide. So this is, again, we were shown this slide previously, the mid-year financial outlook improvement with structural deficits remaining. So really looking at what our path is without any additional revenue sources. And at the bottom there, you'll see the assumptions at the bottom. So this came to us at our previous meeting. Next slide. And already with the reductions, there have been expenditure reductions and hiring freezes, early retirement furloughs, reductions in services, and so on. And so really, we're at a point where we need to not only replenish our reserves, but be able to fund our essential services in capital and continue to build back up. So that's next slide, why we looked at some of the risk factors from the polling and knowing that we have some ongoing uncertainties ahead. And next slide. I'm going to hand it over to Vice Mayor Watkins to talk about the possible use. Thank you, Mayor. And I want to thank our staff and my colleagues for Brown and Mayor Bruner for really diving into this. So yes, we looked at some of the possible uses and really thinking about how we're going to move forward with alignment with our previous plans and ultimately just values and hoping to move forward with some of these investments and really looking at the guiding principles of sustainability for our community and community and equity and well-being and essential service delivery. Okay, next slide. Looking at some of the kind of pending projects we also have, we have 50 units of all portable supportive housing coming online at 314. Jesse Street, speaking to our, really our value and commitment to equity. Same with our Coral Street, very exciting with a number of 120 units of permanent supportive housing and there. And gosh, that really, so exciting about what is possible for our community north and I know a lot of have been afforded and are moving forward to make this come to fruition. And as the slide really indicates we have 94 units, 92 of which are affordable 25 supportive really just transforming our downtown and providing really much needed housing for our community. And our transitional shelter really thinking and gosh, we just kind of had a in-depth conversation about this, right? So really think about how we can make this come to fruition and how we can make this come to fruition. And so, I think it's a great opportunity for our community and our community to be able to make this come to fruition. And I think it's a great opportunity for our community to be able to make this come to fruition. So really think about health, prioritizing health, prioritizing these services that we just in-depth which I know all of us are committed to being moved forward and some of which include our hygiene and moving forward with our transitional shelter. And then our community meetings really thinking about how we're engaging with our community and how we're engaging with individuals who are experiencing homelessness and a loss of housing and thinking about how we're supporting them and their individual needs and pathways to find, you know, really independent and hopefully healthy well-being for their future. Next. And our homeless responses to management as well as how, you know, we are in certain barriers. I really hope we're thinking about investing in supporting these individuals and our and our connection and integration into this network of care and there I think I'm trying to I can't quite make out on the picture but I believe it's Jeremy who has told to our community and to our response and a really great demonstration and illustration of the work. And Matt, I see that you came on I'm trying to see I'm not sure exactly I don't have my other I didn't get it I don't have my others who were wanting to jump right in. Okay. Okay. You're doing great. I just wanted to confirm that was Jeremy. That was Jeremy. Okay. I could tell but it was kind of blurred. So, thank you. Yeah. So I can continue here and then I'll pull in Sandy after this there you know, it was almost fitting that downtown streets team have their presentation earlier at the start. We started off our meeting with a presentation from downtown which they had booked already or made a request for a presentation or a council and it just aligned coincidentally the same date with this item our previous item and here but in you know having investment not only in some of those services but also in the the partnership like community services that are that exists. So downtown Literary Batement Crew services has various teams that hopefully will be able to expand on because they definitely are part of the services that our residents are asked for. So next slide and that's just another photo for them. There's been part of the the health and well-being. It's a win-win situation next slide. And then wildfires safety was a huge was one of the top items of concern where our residents hold and really wanted to be continued investment and services around wildfire next slide and vegetation management of course. There's a big business and recovery component to this and a desire from a lot of local businesses from the west side to midtown to downtown that really are still being several challenges and really not just within their business but around their business and really need support with various aspects of their business depending on the type of and so there were several meetings with various types and stakeholders and next slide. Safety and maintenance was a very critical part of having not this is a wonderful picture but I think what also fell under category were roads and sidewalks just residents feeling that those basic services to be able to still fund and address those needs of safety and maintenance in our city throughout our city in various places. Next slide and there's roads and sidewalks. Next slide and so Sandy I will hand it to you what our summary recommendation Council Member Brown. Thank you Mayor Bruner so and I also want to my colleagues on the budget and revenue staff work with us plan together and I'll save my other comments for a little bit later but we did agree that this was a solid recommendation for Council tonight the recommendation is a general sales tax increase which would add $5 purchase groceries encryption medicine diapers and feminine hygiene products for them talked about that visitors also pay the tax and a significant portion of our sales tax actually comes from tourists from tourism dollars so visitors pay the tax and so half actually a little more than half of sales tax paid by visitors so that's the recommendation and do we have another slide yes but thank you so here is the ballot language that generated for your consideration and so we did here but I'll I'll just point out that for me this really is about protecting quality of life through programs and really through supporting our cities I just want to say I think their city's workforce is they provide services whether it's picking streets maintaining our parking recreation facilities wildfire risk reduction and obviously all the work with our climate action manager and working to fight climate change and then just the overall about service reductions so the question then is shall the city of Santa Cruz authorize to augment general fund by levying half of one plus tax raising about $6 so here's that council act recommendation which we also have in your wonderful thank you so much at this time I will bring it to any questions from council members council member coming thank you I'm wondering if you could put the slide back up not the last like the last resolution so it might have been the ballot language there's a draft ballot language so we had a question maybe this is city manager city staff I guess a couple questions one in particular what terms of the fighting fighting climate change I'm just curious what types of strategies what will we be funding when it comes to like our ability to fight climate change because I know that having been on the council seen a number of our different climate action plans west cliff management plan there's a variety of things whether that's kind of reinforcing some of our cliffs versus the need to start investing in if we have to have managed the need of some of our areas especially like beach flats and our low income communities that's something that we should probably be investing in now and so I'm just curious in terms of how we're going to be approaching fighting climate change as an example of this what this funding would go to support potentially thanks for the question councilmember Cummings we've got some other folks on the call that may want to chime in well I think you're right I think a large piece of it is around resiliency and adaptation projects planning for the inevitable impacts of climate change thoroughly being as susceptible as we are on the coast those are not significant projects as we all know some of the areas along along west cliff are good examples of that so and you know we're broadly speaking we have about $300 million non-profit capital special projects that are part of what you're describing outside of that the investment programmatic area that Tiffany brought forward of the National Plan as a whole she is a one-stop shop on our sustainability climate planning front and rich very thin so additional resources would allow us to advance the network and support the strategic way she's working with the region to move this effort forward I don't know if that answers your question we could probably call on Mark Fiddle and others that could speak to more specific projects if it's helpful I'm happy to also just share when we we're talking about the interim recovery plan really screening that in our intentions to build it around health, resilience, sustainability and I think in all things that we do really it applies and how Tiffany's position is funded and I'll let Matt refine my response or correct me if I'm wrong is that it really is part of our general general fund budget so having her and having that as a priority for investment is something that we can build into our strategies moving forward with this revenue stream and then also I did want to just also add and I didn't bring it up earlier is that you know having been on the council now many years been through a number around and I know we're facing a lot of really tough decisions in terms of finding so what this is also going to do is allow us to move forward with a number of our priorities and to continue to provide a lot of the services our community is really wanting to provide. I think I would also add a lot of services that already for you know when we got into the services that already exist that we don't want you know go down that path so it's not even about adding additional necessarily but main services that make a big difference in ours Mayor Burner it's that more we I know this is well known to the council we've gone through multiple rounds of productions now into our services we're at the point now we're faced with really hard decisions as to what services need to sustain many of our departments are stretched very thin we're asking a lot of our employees which is simply not sustainable to continue in our current mode and what that means is without additional resources we're talking renewed erosion of the quality of services range of services we're able to offer and I think our community has come to expect from the work that we do and so the low-hanging has all been needed to project a structural deficit and we need to look at renewable revenue sources to get us on can I ask a follow-up question? Yes go ahead council member one I was going to see maybe Matt and having some other folks kind of comment on that I'm a change piece I'm wondering if anyone who can follow-up on the first question I had and then I'll have a follow-up question Sure Mark Director of Public Works would happy to comment on that I know a lack of communication of the fleet is something that's very of interest of the council and although our refugee service is a rate-based service that would be up to be worked into the rates but this is a general fund tax our general fund vehicles are then three vehicles and those kind of things that your general fund this would supplement some of that one of the things with a general fund tax is you don't have a lot of specific then you have flexibility in it so it's not a specific tax that's and allows it to pass a percent plus one so I think it's it really does allow us to retain the services as Matt said we are looking at significant cuts and this would allow us to retain and continue to provide the services to the community Thank you Mark Yeah and I okay so follow-up question or another question that I have and this is somewhat related conversation that we've talked about around homelessness so you know prior to some of the policies last member of the situation for our finance that if we weren't to do anything and receive ARPA funds we were going very far into black in terms of revenue generation over time and however we have moved down this path of providing services in our community which we need to all that being said I'm just kind of wondering if this is going to bring in $6 million annually how much of that is going to go toward homelessness versus and supporting those kinds of programs versus all the other services that our city has been putting or on the verge of putting trying to think about this context of you know getting support this and then also knowing that we have broad range capital improvement and the maintenance of other services some of which have been cut and need to come back some of which can't really risk yeah so I appreciate that question come from our communes especially on the heels of our discussions around homelessness first and foremost I think it's going to be really important best these dollars in ways that are what the community is telling us is most important to them and we continue to hear it loud and clear over again that in capacity have more effective approaches for homelessness response along with affordable housing top of the list so having said that looking at the proposal for the homeless response action plan you also see that in the outlier have some of the programmatic investments funded so the intent would be for a portion of this revenue to sustain some of those additional services we're standing at as well as reserve for operation as a whole the last thing I'll mention and I don't think this is great almost all the other jurisdictions in our county are likely to this is well and clearly in our county our county partners around homelessness response we have a shared commitment of leveraging those funds in a way to support our collective efforts to sustain this new approach discussing that for now so I see there be an opportunity there as well that we can bring those efforts better in a way that allows to say that all has to be $3 that's another element to this and that's been part of our ongoing discussions and I appreciate those comments because I think one thing that we want to make sure it's clear is that the approach that we're taking on providing these services towards homelessness and the funding that's going to go into that is not just going to come from the city that we're going to be looking and exploring ways to maintain those services and I think as part of that as we're standing up services I think that we need to have clear expectations on what we can provide what we can and really be mindful of how money is going to be spent so that we're not you know so that we're able to keep all the other services provide well supported as we move forward those are all my questions and comments for the moment and so thank you thank you council member Cummings council member Meyers and then council member Calentari Johnson it's also important to invest cover and read things also acknowledge that I hide everything all the way down hide everything and I'm encouraged again by the lives of all the clear community member ballot decision strategy thank you council member Meyers council member Calentari Johnson and then council member Cummings thank you yeah I'd also like to thank all of you who worked on this and forward this recommendation and just to comment on what Matt Huffaker just said that it's hopeful to hear that the other districts including the 20 are looking for measures provide approach across the city and and these efforts you know what one city does and another city does but it'll all build on each other so I'm really glad to hear that and it's even more motivating for us to take this action tonight and really builds on what the last agenda item we were talking about as you said for us to really be able to accomplish some of these robust goals that we have we need some additional funding and this will further time us and prepare us as there are other opportunities date and the federal government to jump in to address some of the I'm losing steam here so to to take take the opportunity and be prime and ready for when funds come our way we will show that we're ready as community I'm going to stop there because I'm talking in circles now I'm losing steam Thank you council member Callantari Johnson council member Cummings and then council member Brown Thank you and I'll also just thank the revenue committee for bringing this forward I'm sure that you all have a number of different options and weight them and the fact that we were able to get to something today just makes me hopeful about our ability as a governing body to work together to consensus the one question I do have that in order for this to be effective there's obviously going to meet me the substantial amount of outreach community I'm just wondering whether the subcommittee wants to comment on this or the manager but just wondering what the strategy is going to be and has there been a strategy that's been outlined so that we're really sending clear messages to the community because obviously there's opportunities for people to say that this is going to make it harder for people for low income families to buy groceries which it won't afford to buy medication which so I'm just wondering what the communication strategies try to get on board with this there definitely is a framework and I will pass it to city manager Matt Huffaker to talk about some of the framework that we discussed and the outreach needed to go forward thank you for bringing that point up yeah it's an important question I would make clear for starters so we as a government entity are prohibited advocacy so we have an outreach plan in place to help be understood what the ask is and why why it's hidden what our fiscal situation is and what the possible uses of and outside that I know that there are members reporting that work as well we and we've also been working on TVWB across the measures those who who's assisting with guiding them as well so short timeframe we're going to have to hit the ground running if there's work from the council tonight thank you does that conclude your questions council member coming I had one more but I forgot okay we can come back late council member brown thank you mayor I just wanted to ask it seems like we're comments portion council member coming asking questions but I do have some additional comments I'd like I thought go out public so okay I just wanted to make sure that there okay great but this time if you are interested if you are a member of the public and you are interested in commenting on resolutions requesting the placement of a sales and use tax ballot measure on the June 2020 California statewide primary election raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or select raise hand in the webinar polls on your computer when it is your time just you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted and the timer will be back in a minute I will go out to our T-list that's definitely shrunk if is there any member of the public that would like to this item raise your hand okay seeing none I will bring it back to our council for deliberation and action so council member Myers and then council member Cummings yeah thank you I do have a question if I copy ballot statement how that who does that but whether or not that needs to be signed tonight together that does that I see those on the ballot a ballot measure you that's something that you or is that something how do we help with that council can or the mayor direct an ad hoc committee draft the arguments in favor and can authorize that to refer to the mayor the mayor can designate that okay thank you can't hear me Bonnie I'll have to test my stuff anytime I'll yell okay did that answer your question yeah I'm just curious about that thank you I did want to there was an attendee whose hand went up right as I went out and they just took their hand down so I just want to make sure they do have the opportunity to speak and great their hands back up so I will give this color the opportunity to speak color ending in 554 and if you can unmute yourself by pressing star six or unmute on your webinar polls item number 20 resolution hi there good evening council mayor Brunner the issue tonight is not supporting important services programs the issue is how best to raise those revenues raising the sales tax by half a cent of the time for policy I find it harmful a significant portion of the community when students poor and working folks just trying to get their heads above financial waters add an additional financial burden top of the highest inflation in 40 years sales tax increase will compound this cycle sales tax called the regress tax as opposed to a progressive tax that puts the bulk of the financial responsibility on those most able to afford to pay I ask how much business will be lost increasing the sales tax done that study this sales tax increase plans under the guise will emerge an emergency is by the dictionary definition serious and unexpected and often dangerous situations requiring immediate access over nine months tax also had the opportunity to place other revenue raising measures before the voters such as a COT for a property transfer tax neither of these revenue supplements caused by financial harm marginalized struggling community members the city's fiscal ailments were known long ago long before COVID and the fire upper management administrators still make a scene salary pouring money down rat holes PR hacks and consults trying to damp through a boondog about turning the war into Disney Central West another wasteful project fiscal emergency is not an emergency rather one of the city's failure to act because it strongly encouraged council to place on the June ballot the long overdue two to three percent entry transient oxygen tax so it makes good sense to join the county to place both of the COT increase at the same time on the June ballot and if all else fails it's always November 2022 with a sales tax it's November 2021 thank you for your time and thoughtful consideration thank you for your public comment our next caller Barbara Meister go ahead thank you mayor I appreciate you reopening public comment because something was happening that I wasn't catching that so glad to be here I'm Barbara Meister I am a parish member at Holy Cross Catholic Church and also active in COPA with the pandemic our parish serving over 300 families a month struggling with lack of income to lots of jobs and we've also been working through COPA to help people stay housed through accessing the rental programs and as my colleague earlier during your public comment I had mentioned there are over 2,000 people who are still awaiting consent from the housing program specifically for the community I bring that up because I notice and I do not know what COPA's position will be on the proposed sales tax we'll vote affirmatively tonight but I bring this up because what I didn't see in the description of the ballot measure I saw mitigating the impacts of homeless and increasing affordable housing gap of opportunity there people homeless and COPA through the years and hundreds of people we've been talking to and assisting in workshops assisting in their applications we've learned a ton about the struggles of rent in this whole very high cost living area here we've got a number of ideas started with city manager recently we'd like to be in conversation with you here is a dearth of tenant education legal assistance that would help people just understand what a three-day quit notice can and they could be prevented from many are self-picking out of intimidation and fear and misunderstanding so just that that project in and of itself really beefing up those services for renters and could be a return on investment to preventing people from becoming homeless in the first place so we would like to be in conversation with you if you pass this tonight to think about how could some of that sales tax revenue in ways to really prevent but thank you for your service thank you so much I would like to bring it back to the council and I will council member Cummings and then council member Calintari John Mayor I had some additional question based on the comment we just heard and so first one and I had another question that came to me while we were having this discussion in terms of our ability to raise sales tax this well this half cent sales tax tap us at our ability to be able to raise sales tax moving forward that's correct I just wanted to make sure that's clear to the public that this is less something changes at state level or otherwise this is the last opportunity in the city the other question I had was whether or not there were any progressive tax considered by the subcommittee and if so because I know there's been a lot of discussion around TOT and other tax coming forward later and so I'm just wondering if folks can speak to what other opportunities might be moving forward that would allow for more progressive tax to be considered as well as the research actually pulled the community to play recent work for TOT and there was collective consensus and where things currently stand the fact that TOT increased wouldn't yield the same in total revenues compared to sales tax that if there were to be percent percent of TOT it would make sense to perhaps follow where the county is going but are most likely bringing in June and because that kind of sets the tone for the larger region allow us to see where that goes and if appropriate things are more in November but next year actually but for now the subcommittee and they may have their own thoughts on the matter but it was important to prioritize the sales tax better. Thank you. I just want to acknowledge that there's a lot of community kind of concerned around raising sales tax. Definitely people in our community who see that raising sales tax is a progressive tax that we should be exploring other options given that I was on this revenue committee previously and we had come forward with the revenue measured to increase the sales tax then there's been more engagement with to address other council member concerns on that and you know tonight we're here to consider this once again feel that that we really do need to be using the options available to us try to help us cities fiscal situation and try to do so in a way that we're not putting too much burden on low income middle class residents part of why I'm supportive of this and actually I think part of what I'll be including in my motion related item is that this will also we think about our workforce and the workers and this will also help support some of our lowest workers and I think that we've made commitments as a council to help support low income workers support our workers in terms of contracts over the time that I've been on council and moving forward you know wanna have programs that support low income people in our community in middle class folks wanna support affordable housing this is an option where we will be able to generate a large proportion of this revenue from the tourists it's a revenue stream that will be consistent and you know although I'm hesitant to move forward with this kind of given some of the decisions that have been made that have put us in this situation I do see that you know want us to be able to take advantage of this opportunity while the forest while we have the ability to use this as a way to generate revenue that will largely come from the mentioned before people who are visiting our community and also the fact that it won't be it won't go on groceries or medication some of the things that feminine hygiene products some of the things that really are important for low income so I'm happy to move the recommendation that's the forest that was brought by the subcommittee with one additional change to that which is to and I'd sent the one line item over to Bonnie but the one change that I would like to include that be gather input from council members and bring back a resolution of intent first meeting in April and I think we just heard folks who called in particular the folks from OPA who expressed you know ways in which we can use this revenue help support low income in our community I know that the last time this came before the council there was interest in providing a resolution of intent and what that does is it's not a commitment to how we're going to spend the money but it is expressing community that should about the past these are some of the areas that we would be interested in supporting and knowing that there's a diverse amount of interest in how we spend back dollars having this resolution of intent could help provide some clarity around what we're hearing about the money and did it pass so that's my motion thank you we have a motion from council member coming is there a second I can second that and I had additional comments I had a very similar motion with the last piece that you had up with the resolution of intent what I had added to my motion was that it would be revenue ad hoc committee that would bring back a resolution of intent based on council input just to keep it to keep us moving and keeping it contained would you be able to adding that I think the one why I want to push back on that is because technically that would violate that because we can't we can't talk to more than council members and maybe Tony you could weigh in on this but my understanding would be that all the council members are unicating with revenues that actually could constitute a ground act violation so I don't know who the staff person is or Tony on the way in on how we could that is correct if council members were chiming in on the work that the ad hoc committee is doing however I have the same concern about the amendment motion that you make I don't see how that I guess I'm having a little trouble reconciling that with the ground act just for the record I did communicate with council member Tony Johnson earlier and I thought that the ad hoc committee was a neat option for avoiding a ground act issue while still gathering input with the understanding that council members could come back to the meeting in April and weigh in on the recommendation make appropriate qualifications that was kind of the germination of the ad hoc proposal that Johnson had discussed I guess my question is I know previously that letters of resolutions brought forward and I know that in on previous items sometimes staff reaches out to all the council together so I'm just wondering how that's any different from what things pose in terms of violating the subcommittee of that staff or was able to come to all the council gather input and put together that resolution and then everyone gets to weigh in I guess I mean I think it's a little tricky but I guess the way I got it that if staff were going to accept communications from council members and then base resolution on that would be a brown act if the council were to just or if staff were to just accept comments from all council members and then just bring back a of recommended actions then I just don't know how valuable that is for the council to determine what it's actual priorities are trying to get input is trying to figure how we can work this out sorry if I may council member Cummings let's use this opportunity here to provide input and not risk any kind of brown act violation of the ad hoc committee take this input from tonight informing that resolution of intent I mean we have this pretty robust packet that was given to us a few days ago no hard to read through it all but it's pretty clear from the polls and it was packet where we need to go so if we can have that discussion here and then the ad hoc committee can just take that into consideration that's the suggestion I have I guess my one concern is that we're going to be here for another two hours if we're kind of morning all of our this but you know that point maybe what we could do is of the ad hoc maybe we could just put this in the hands of the ad hoc committee we'll see what they provide want to make any additions and I think the intention of this is that we all want to have a document that has the captures all the positions of where we're at so we're going to add to it then maybe we can save ourselves some time so going back to your original suggestion maybe we can so it sounds like councilmember Cummings you might be amenable councilmember Calantari Johnson's friendly amendment yep promotion yep okay I will we have a motion by councilmember Cummings a second by councilmember Calantari Johnson with a friendly amendment that has been accepted so I guess number five would read well let me just let me just read what I wrote direct revenue ad hoc committee bring back a resolution of intent allocation of funds generated so that's instead of gather input councilmember direct revenue ad hoc committee bring back a resolution of intent and I guess we could leave the same is that about capture what what your friendly amendment is oh yes sorry you're talking to me yes okay and just one more confirmation with councilmember Cummings great we'll take it to councilmember Brown sorry mayor if I could just make a quick comment yes that I didn't mean that we should stay here and deliberate for hours and hours but that in terms of the resolution of intent the pieces really stand out from the polls and the slides that we had earlier and that is focus on our downtown focus on our open space broader housing homelessness response so it's all there the information is there and I trust the ad hoc committee to be able to glean that in their resolution thank you thank you councilmember college does that conclude your comment okay councilmember Brown and then councilmember vice mayor Watkins mayor so I do want to make a couple of comments here before we take the vote as you're all aware I had serious concerns about bringing declaring a physical emergency bring a sales tax measure and put that on the ballot when this came before us last year and I expressed those concerns pretty thoroughly and so I won't look through them all here but I do want to say I remain concerned I mean one of our public commenters raised concerns that I continue to have about who is affected most by a sales tax and I recognize that is a traditional source funding for cities and counties I am disappointed that my colleagues not thus far during my time on the council have been willing to consider more progressive tax measures for example a real estate transfer tax as over 40 cities in California have done many of them in the Bay Area are neck of the woods raising funding I was at a meeting with councilmember Johnson Cummings where heard from the San Jose mayor about how they're using their real estate for tax funds on properties over $2 help support there is the term tiny home but we talked about how it was temporary housing and a small housing for people transitioning out of homeless so we know that is also an effective mechanism we know that that raised amounts of money and I have heard from my colleague over and over that we have a responsibility to allow the voters to weigh in I have not seen that same when we talk about taxation measures that will affect those with the greatest ability pay for whom in many cases would not impact whatsoever so I'm just going to continue to be disappointed about that and express my interest in looking at progressive taxation measures as number Cummings has already stated this evening I any respect supporting moving forward with this sales tax measure clears the path no longer going back that that source so if you want to raise additional revenues after the start there is curious that are in progressive taxation I don't believe seriously have considered many of those so that said I many of the concerns that I had about how the money additional money would be spent and the what I believe I did priorities not really moving in the direct that I wanted to use of new revenues a lot of those concerns been addressed and I'm not going to talk about the dealers of that but I want my colleagues for helping me feel that we are fair priorities and are willing to take those investments and work together to find a way forward so I really that I want to thank our our city manager for you know putting us on you know I believe and obviously not the full hand of the team and bring this together but I really feel like they're very positive direct and we're going to be proactive about some of the critical in spark so I have and then on the revenue and and feeling like have a common set of priorities so I'm you know I'm feeling good about moving forward with this and I am going to support it and you know I want to just send a big everybody and you know continue to advocate finding new revenues places have a lot of a lot of wealth the property market so get there everybody for care thank you member Brown Vice Mayor Watkins and then Council Member Golder well I'll keep it short too because I'll just you know I recognize it is and I too I guess I'll just build off what Brown shared and just really thank you Council Member Brown for your willingness to jump in with our committee and really work out some of these nuances and there's going to be tough discussions we've had them already and there's tough discussions to come and that's all part of the Democrats right so how do we just embrace that and I really do believe a whole heartedly that we all run to serve the best of our ability and that we're elected to do our best to bring that perspective really tough and robust conversations and it's true there are so many limitations to what cities do in California in regards to bringing revenue you know the city of Santa Cruz is in a tough spot and that we have a lot of big city issues with limited resources and we have a sort of a small city right so you know we have to be creative and continue to look and explore different options just in our voters that no matter what we'll listen and we'll work together to do the best in terms of taxpayer dollars so I know it took a lot to get you to this place and I really want to acknowledge and recognize that really encouraged by my colleagues by us all in terms of what possible so I'll leave it there but it's a good strategy Thank you Vice Mayor Watkins I also just wanted to thank the ad hoc revenue subcommittee for their work on this and everybody that worked to move this along I think we all realize that with some of the tax revenue that we lost during the pandemic it's essential that we bring this forward to our community in for consideration for for the sake of you know just keeping services running and I just want to thank everybody for their teamwork and collaboration and open-mindedness and thoughtful consideration when talking to each other and I was going to suggest that if people had other things they wanted to bring up without violating the Brown Act so we run it to the city manager bring our ideas to him and he could bring it to the subcommittee too right me or no we can work okay thank you that's all I wanted to say thank you a member coming yeah I guess this last thing I was going to say is that one of the things that I'm hoping for comes out of this is that some of the funding that will raise this and kind of piggybacking on our last conversation around homelessness and homeless response the fact that we're investing in some new services that could potentially help save money for our community so as we think about the alternative crisis response and how that might save money in time for police and fire that would normally respond to those calls and having folks who would be dedicated to cleaning up some of the campments that we find for the not I shouldn't even say the encampment the remains from encampments or the trash on the spaces will free up Parks and Rec other certain people that do you know more of their dedicated work and I'm just thinking about in fact as we're moving down this path of but approving this ballot measure that we also think about the indirect savings that we will get from support our existing services and other services that are outlined are important based on the conversations that we have with yeah so open that we can include some of that language too and the letter of intent around certain services oh and then I had a question last question is that I'm wondering if some kind of communication go out public so that I want to weigh in on what should be included in that letter of intent for example we heard from folks OPA and they're interested in supporting low-income residents that might also be a way that we include more voices to that item forward and after we take the vote I would like to see if maybe we can comment on I mean whether I should make a comment on this item but I think there was something really important that was brought up during oral conversations and I'd like to ask a question to the city manager city attorney so I don't know whether to ask it now or later we will ask that I'll come back to that item thank you member Cummins thank you so I did want just say I just you know and looking at all of the different revenue sources I certainly learned a lot of what the options are out there and council member Brown I really appreciate you on this ad hoc revenue budget committee I think the three of us are bringing it you know a good perspective representation of what were our goals and what we are hearing from our community and our constituents and brought up some progressive taxes and I just wanted to you know speak a little bit to that and that you know for this context I think really what brought to this recommendation was the the revenue it would bring to the crisis we're in and that six million annually I was just going back through my note I know we talked about transfer tax and and that was estimated at about $500,000 annually so you know nothing comparable to six million in this context certainly you know we always have future opportunities to always assess revenue streams and look at our spending and make sure that we're being transparent and fiscally responsible and I appreciate having having all the input tonight from everyone thank you so with that have a motion on the floor council member Cummings a second council member with a friendly amendment and we could bring that up and then we can go to vote great so there's a motion to accept a report regarding the recent work of the council ad hoc budget and revenue committee and adopt a resolution making emergency findings placing a general one-half of one percent retail transactions and use tax measure on the June 7 2020 collection and adopt a resolution requesting that the validated June 2022 California statewide primary election included general one-half of one percent retail transactions and use tax measure and support the measure for the purpose of raising arguments provide direction regarding the authors direct city attorney there are the impartial analysis and providing direction city manager regarding the preparation of the fiscal analysis as appropriate and five gather input council members bring back a resolution or five is to direct the person may we have a roll call vote sorry John I hear what I have motion passes unanimous okay thank you for we adjourn we will go to we did have oral communications used in at 630 and council member comments you had a question or comment about that yes thank you mayor can't remember just been so many timelines now with the eviction protections but I do remember at one point I don't know if it was with this group or with another maybe city that I'm on but there was some discussion around people who had applied for the rental assistance and them not being that there were laws in place that said that if you had applied for rental assistance then you could not be evicted even after the eviction protection fired and I don't know city manager's office might have any like information on that or get some information on what the current protections are because if those if I'm incorrect people who are awaiting rental assistance might face getting evicted after March 31st then it might be appropriate for the city to see whether or not we could put additional protections in place those people who are expecting rental assistance from the state so council member comments we are investigating that you're also concerned about planned exploration of the state protections on March 31st and Tony and his team as well as county council are reviewing what local authority might exist and what options might have at your disposal we've also been engaged with the county regarding and one of the speakers spoke to this just around more robust rental assistance part of the challenge has been how slow the funding has taken to roll out and really I should mention the hands of those that applied and one of the proposals is there were to be a moratorium to have it conditional on those that are waiting that have applied and are still waiting funding all of that needs sorted out on our radar and we'll be bringing more information back to council once we get our arms so I guess you know in terms of trying to meet that deadline you know be for example if the city council were interested in essentially putting some protections in place then we would have a hold on the March 2nd agenda for this item that's what I was going to ask alright that's all we're working through some some more information and there's a hold on the March agenda if I could just elaborate on that a little bit yeah the concern is I've talked to the council about this as well but the past eviction protections that the city council put in place for an executive order authorized by the governor and apparently those authorizations some authorization is firing on and the real question is does the city have the legal authority to enact eviction protections without that authorization as otherwise generally state unlawful law is preempted by the California civil we are aware that city of Los Angeles and perhaps other cities enacted their own regulations independent of any state authority and we're researching whether or not that's a viable option for the city of Santa Cruz and we understand the urgency in March 22 would be big goal to have a discussion on that but as if you might recall when the city adopted an emergency rent freeze ordinance a couple of years ago it was done retroactive and so that's also not able to come to any conclusions in March thank you for the input Tony okay with that I wasn't going to say anything but I was only going to say anything but I would just caution us to also look at if somebody applies does it mean that they're definitely getting it because I've applied for a lot of things and not gotten it before because I wouldn't want to have any of that and if there's landlords that are counting on the money and it's not coming in I wouldn't want somebody to face foreclosure on their home because of us meddling in things and so I just want to look at the whole big picture before I take all of that into consideration if that makes sense sorry put in alright I'll stop tonight I think I can call it meeting is now adjourned thank you so much have a wonderful evening thank you everyone thank you alright bye bye everyone