 Thank you everyone. Good afternoon. Welcome to our 12 30 p.m. session starting late at 129 p.m. of the Santa Cruz City Council and I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. I guess we'll see if we have a quorum. Councilmember Callentary Johnson. Councilmember Golder coming. Here. Brown. Here. Meyers. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Brunner. Present. Thank you. Are there any I'd like to ask the city clerk for any additions or deletions on the agenda. We do have some. We are removing item six which is the unified animal ordinance update presentation. Okay. They have they're unable to attend today and then we are removing item 25. Staff is removing it. The award contract for an environmental impact report for Ocean Place 908 Ocean Street. Thank you for those updates. With that then we move right into our first presentation which would be Parks and Recreation Month and I'd like to invite Tony Elliott, Director of Parks and Recreation to join us. All right. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. It's one of our favorite presentations of the year. So happy to introduce our Acting Recreation Superintendent Iseth Ray to deliver the Parks and Recreation Month presentation today. Welcome Iseth. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to highlight and brag a little on the Parks and Rec Department. We're in the middle of our sort of time to shine which is summer time. We've currently got a bunch of wonderful programs and activities events such as camps in Harvey West, Junior Guards and on the Cal's Beach. We've had some wonderful events in the past. Juneteenth and Woody's on the Wharf and look forward to some more events coming up at the end of the summer. But one more reason to really celebrate this time of year for Parks and Rec is in just a few days coming up here is July and July is Parks and Recreation Month. So if you don't mind, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you. Is that coming up okay for you guys? Yes. Yes. Thank you. Wonderful. So as I stated, July is Parks and Recreation Month. And Parks and Recreation Month, the concept for kind of was born nearly 40 years ago in 1985, where Americans began celebrating Parks and Recreation Month to recognize the importance of Parks and Recreation in establishing and maintaining the quality of life for and contributing to the physical, economic, and environmental well being of the communities. And then we certainly hold those values true today and do everything we can to provide that for the community. Through an effort led by the National Recreation and Park Association, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an official resolution for Parks and Recreation Month back in 2009. I just wanted to quickly share with you and with the community a list of our upcoming July is events that are specifically designed to welcome in the community to try some new activities for us to hopefully plant the seeds for a love of recreation and the programming that we offer. So as you can see on this list, we have a variety of activities. I'm starting with the beach cleanup day, which I'll touch on a little bit more. Or we have several of those things. I'll highlight those in just a moment. We have activities like an archery demo, which is a great activity. A lot of people don't necessarily consider along with the American standards of baseball and soccer and basketball. This gives the opportunity to go out and try something new and unique. We also have a teen glow in the dark beach party, which I think is the ultimate Santa Cruz event. I kind of wish there was an adult one. I don't know if I'd be brave enough to attend it, but ought to be a teenager again. And then also the tree walk with Leslie, which I'm going to go a little bit more into a little bit later here. Some of the role special events that I did want to highlight, as I mentioned, are the beach cleanup days where community members can support their council member of choice or all of the council members and sign up for a day where you guys will be hosting cleanups throughout the month of July and August. There's a couple pictures here. You can see Mayor Brunner with her team getting lots of treasures on the beach. I partnered last year with Donna Myers. It was great to see people coming out. People were really excited. There's a little bit of competition in this event as well. If you can remember from last year, the winner received a original handmade state of the art trophy that was made by our work supervisor, Brett Holberg. I have wonderful news on that. He has recreated another trophy similar. So for those of you that have been coveting that award this year is your opportunity. And if you're not that competitive, this is still just a wonderful event for the community to come out and contribute in a really impactful and immediate manner where you can see the effect of your contribution. So I encourage everyone to sign up for that. We also have on July 16th, we have day in Laurel Park, which is just kind of a simple get the family out, get the kids out, come to Laurel Park. We're going to have a host of activities and games for kids to play and engage in our beautiful park. So again, I extend the invitation to council members, your families, your friends, your neighbors, everybody in the community can join us. And then finally, one of my favorite events, if you haven't yet joined a tree walk with our city forester, Leslie Keady, I encourage you to. She is tremendously knowledgeable. She has a love for the the trees and the vegetation in the city. She works tremendously hard. As you can see from the photo there, she draws a big crowd for this. And there's a reason for that. She is really good at this. You learn a lot of information about the trees here in the city. And I encourage again, please join us for those tree walks. Council members, it's become a tradition now that we celebrate July is Parks and Recreation Month with you by giving you swag bags from our different areas through the rec division, rec and parks division. And just as a thank you to you for supporting us and coming out to our events and encouraging your constituents to join us too. And finally, if anybody would like more information on these upcoming July is events or any of our classes of Parks and Rec, please go to cityofsantacrues.com for Parks and Rec events. You can also use this QR code, which will link you to the website. For any of you that have the current summer guide, our list of activities is right here on the front page. So you can get there online or you can get there old fashioned way through our activity guide. And thank you again for giving me the opportunity to share with you today. Thank you so much for that presentation. Absolutely, my pleasure. There's also bags here that I see. So thank you. I haven't looked inside yet. But thank you so much. Absolutely. Are there any other is does anybody else want to speak? I just have a question, Mayor. Yes. Do you get to jump off the wharf again? July 8th. Mark your calendars for July 8th. Yeah, okay. Is that is that confirmed? That's correct. Yeah, July 8th will be our our wharf jump as part of the big swim through Junior Guards this summer. Thank you. Thank you. What time? On July, you know, I don't want to miss quotes. I believe it's a 1pm, but let me get back to you guys. I can email out the time. I think it's still in in works a little bit depending on people's schedules. So I can follow up with you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. And now moving on with our agenda. And council members, if you want to support Parks and Rock, you can change your zoom background to show support. I will now make a few announcements and we will move on to our regular meeting. Today's meeting is broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, city of Santa Cruz.com. Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left here in person at council chambers. It's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption. And we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside or outside our chambers. Thank you. For the consideration of our community, please stay home. If you have any symptoms of a cold or flu or are feeling unwell in any way. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today and are attending virtually, call in at the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on using the instructions on your screen. Please note your television or streaming device once you call in. And listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming. So if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. If you're calling in for public comment, please raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand feature on the webinar controls of your computer. Please note public comment is heard only on items. Council is taking action on and not on regular updates and reports. The items that will be open for public comment during today's meeting are numbers 11 through 42 on the agenda. I'd like to ask the council members if there are any statements or of disqualification today. And I'm not seeing everybody. So let me just make sure I'm not missing anybody. Nope. Okay. Great. Thank you. I'll now call on the city clerk to provide any updates to the calendar. There are no updates. Okay. And moving on now is the opportunity for council members to report out on actions at external boards, committees and joint powers authority meetings. For future meetings, please come prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that occurred since the last council meeting. So council and public can be informed. Mayor, if I could afterwards, if you can get the city attorney report out. Did I? Okay. Let's, let's go to that first. Thank you. I'm, I apologize. Moving right through my notes here. So at this time, I'd like to call on the city attorney to provide a report on our closed session that we just ended from this morning. Happy to do that. The council met with its staff to discuss real property negotiations related to city owned property behind 412, 412 Woodland way. The council met with staff to discuss real property negotiations related to renovations and a potential lease amendment at firefish restaurant located at 25 municipal wharf. The council met with its labor negotiators to discuss ongoing labor negotiations. Council met with this legal council to discuss providing amicus support in the matter before the United States Supreme court 303 creative LLC versus Aubrey Elena's and the council agreed to sign on to an amicus brief supporting the state of Colorado and that matter. And the council met with this legal council to discuss one item of potential initiation of litigation. Great. Thank you. All right. And so now at this time, council members can report on actions at external boards, committees and joint powers authority meetings. And I will begin with council member Calentari Johnson. Thank you, mayor. Since our last meeting, the metro board met and adopted its budget and the youth action network, jurisdictional representatives met with each of the cities and the county representatives to discuss their other jurisdictions efforts around the children and youth bill of rights, which other communities have taken our lead on. So that's all I have to report. Thank you. Council member Brown. Thank you, mayor. In the interest of time, I'll be quick. The regional transportation commission met at its monthly policy workshop past two weeks ago, which time we adopted the 2045 Santa Cruz County regional transportation plan and the EIR for that plan. That's a plan that describes all of the existing transportation system components, forecasts, funding and identifies needs over a 20 year time span. So we were able to to adopt that and it serves as a guide for how RTC distributes transportation, funding and programs, projects. We also heard a report on the Santa Cruz County's draft regional conservation investment strategy, which is a comprehensive regional conser conservation plan that involves the RTC. I'll leave it there. We accepted our Measure D annual report. I want to thank the voters as always for approving Measure D to help us fund transportation projects in our county. The other interagency board I'll mention is the Area Agency on Aging. Most of our meeting was dedicated to discussing the what to do about the cuts that senior's programs will be they're facing as a result of the core investment process decision making and so more to come on that. But I will say that the the Area Agency on Aging as a body, we are committed to finding funding to meet those critical needs for seniors. So nothing particularly new to report on that, but it's an ongoing conversation. And we're also in talks about the Live Oak Senior Center kitchen and the continued the potential for continued use of that for Meals on Wheels, at least for a temporary short term period. I think I'll leave it there. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Brown. Council Member Golder, Council Member Golder, are you with us? OK, I'll come back to you and I'll move on to Council Member Meyers. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you, Mayor. Just two quick updates. The Mid County Groundwater Agency did receive and put into their budget this year a seven point six million dollar grant from the state of California for the Groundwater Management Plan that our committee also met two weeks ago. We just meet quarterly and it was a number of items to get various consultants up and going with stringaging and other important things to characterize the watershed as well as to, you know, assist with modeling of our both groundwater and surface water resources. And we did adopt the agency's budget for the year as well. And that includes some reserves for operations of the agency moving ahead. And the agency is also involved in the drought task force, which is required by every county in California now does need to establish an emergency drought task force. And those meetings are being facilitated by Sierra Ryan, who is the county's water resources director. And those meetings are available through the county website. But the drought emergency task force is obviously important to folks in our community because of current situation we're in. Our water department is, I think, exemplary from what a lot of people are faced in the state right now. So but people can find that information on the county website in the water resources department. That's the drought emergency task force that has been formed by the county of Santa Cruz. And then the only other committee I'm on is the cows working group. And I think we're on to our third year now of being off the beach bummer list, which is amazing. Thank you, mayor. I saw some of the press on it. And I'm really excited that we're entering summer again with Clean Beach at Cal's. So those are my reports. Thank you. Thank you, council member Myers. Council member Cummings. Thank you, mayor. The Climate Action Task Force met a couple weeks back. The public review draft of the Climate Action Plan 2030 was released today. And so if people go on the city's website and search for the Climate Action Plan, they can find a draft copy for review. And I believe the comments on that will be taken until I think July 25th, but that information is on the website as well. So if you have comments on the Climate Action Plan that draft, be sure to take a look at it and get back to us by the end of July. The planning and scheduling for the public review draft Climate Action Plan webinar has been deferred until later in the July, later in July by the group. Many of the members of the Climate Action Task Force were interested in discussing developing a Climate Action Plan 2030 101 video to introduce the community to the Climate Action 2030 plan. And the city is working with Ecology Action to customize the bright action community activation platform that will launch in August or September after the adoption of the Climate Action 2030 plan. As far as the Association of Honorary Bay Area Governments, we adopted our final 2045 Metropolitan Transportation Plan Sustainable Community Strategy and Environmental Impact Report. And then in addition to that, as it relates to the draft Six-Cycle Regional Housing Needs Assessment Allocation Plan, there were two appeals that were received by AMBAG. And so those appeals will be coming back for public hearing to AMBAG on August 10th, 2022. And that there will be a public hearing that will be held as part of AMBAG's effort to prepare a final regional housing needs assessment plan for the AMBAG region in accordance with state law. And those are all my updates. Thank you, Council Member Cummings. Council Member Golder. I have nothing to add at this time. Thank you. Thank you. Vice Mayor Watkins. Yeah, I too had a number of my outside committees canceled this time. So I don't think I have any updates since the last time we recorded out. Thank you, Vice Mayor Watkins. And for me, everything has, for my updates, has been spoken for. I do want to emphasize thank you, Council Member Cummings, for bringing to everyone's attention. The public review period has opened today for the Climate Action Plan on the city website. And it will be open for the next month. So we really encourage folks to go on there and review the information. And I believe here at City Hall as well, if you cannot access online for whatever reason, there are resources here at City Hall to assist you in accessing that information. And there is the slide. Thank you. Thank you. The draft Community-Wide Climate Action Plan 2030 opens later today for public review and comment through July 25th. And that URL is CityofSantaCruise.com forward slash climate action plan. Thank you. Okay. Moving on with the agenda. Thank you, Council Members. Now is the Consent Agenda portion of the agenda. These are items number 11 through 37 on our agenda. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, now is the time to call in if you wish to comment on items 11 through 37. And instructions will be on your screen. Please remember to mute your streaming device and you can raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls on your computer. If you are here joining us in person and wish to comment on Consent Agenda items 11 through 37, please sign in up here at the clipboard. And you will be called upon to approach the podium at that given time. Are there any Council Members who wish to comment on or pull any items? I have two hands raised. Any other hands in the virtual world? Okay. Council Member Brown. Yeah. Thank you, Mayor. I have questions on item 27 and 32 and 25 was postponed. So I was going to pull that, but. Thank you. Council Member Cummings. I was going to pull item number 16 at comments on 26 and 38 and then the questions on 32 and 37. Okay. So we'll start with the comments on item 26 and let's go to our, pull it up. So item number 26 is an award contract for decking and railing, rehabilitation on the floating walkway at Neri Lagoon. Over the past few years, I've received communications from members of the public who are interested in wondering when this work was going to take place and just wanted to thank the staff for moving forward with this agreement because I think that some folks who live in that area were really hoping to see this come forward and I just want to express their appreciation or my appreciation on their path for moving forward with this project. Thank you. Our next item for comment is item number 38 and that's Council Member Cummings. Let's see 38. It looks like, is that public consent? Oh, that actually is. Sorry. So we're going to, we'll get to that next. Our next, we had a question on item number 27 and that was Council Member Brown. Item number 27 is the consulting engineer services for wastewater treatment facility and capital improvement project. Thank you, Mayor. I'm glad to see this project on our agenda and just had a question about noise related to the project itself and then the potential noise from expanded operations. Just some people in the neighborhood have noticed in the past the noise related to construction, which I don't think we can avoid, but I'm just wondering if you could talk about the noise mitigation what you anticipate. Sure. Mark Dettel, Director of Public Works. The noise that the people in the neighborhood are experiencing right now is due to the Pure Water SoCal project. They're doing the pump system for the Pure Water project as well as the tertiary treatment. This contract or this, yeah, the contract before you is really the design services for future work. So not necessarily as much noise. This is a large excavation and reconstruction from ground up. So it is pretty noisy, at least the deconstruction part of it. I don't anticipate you're going to have the consistent noise from these projects, but it depends on the project. And as the project comes forward, we'll be able to alert you. I appreciate everything you do to try to mitigate those impacts. Thank you. Thank you, Director Dettel. Our next question, we had two questions on item number 32. And 32, it looks like, is the Item Housing Matters Hygiene Bay Remodel Project and Council Member Brown. You had a question. Yeah, I guess I, so I see this is a bid protest for the Housing Matters Project Hygiene Bay. And I see it's a 30% increase on the project. I understand the logic and I've read the bid protest information, but I just wanted to get a sense of, like, is this really special epoxy? I see a head shaking. Maybe it is, just to hear, because that's a pretty significant increase for materials. So I'm Hoyu, I'm Associate Engineer with the Public Works Department. So when an architect team put the specs together, they had referred to a waterproofing expert, and this is the product that they have recommended. And it comes with a joint, so necessary. Thanks. And then Council Member Cummings, you had a question on Item 32. And if you can move the microphone closer to your mouth. Thank you. I had the same question, but then also was just curious about in terms of the funding and where that's coming from, that increase in funds. And it's said from the American Rescue Plan, but I'm just wondering, you know, it seemed like some of those funds have been allocated towards certain things. We're going to see some other adjustments today, but I'm just kind of wondering how that funding has been shifted to account for that increase. My understanding is that there's $1.8 million for this project. So the highest bid was $1.36 million, so. Okay, thanks. Thank you so much. Associate Professional Engineer, you. Nice to meet you. Thank you. A question by Council Member Cummings on Item Number 37, which I believe is the last item on consent. That is Santa Cruz and Jobinus Salmonids Habitat Conservation Plan. Yeah, the question I had on that that came in was just what the timeline was on those permits and getting that kind of moving forward. So I don't know if there's anyone who might be able to answer that question, but there's people who are asking what the timeline for approval for that to be moving forward. Yeah, thank you for that question, Council Member Cummings. I have Chris Berry, our Water Resources Manager, that can address that question for you. Hi, thank you, Council Members. Actually, Watershed Compliance Manager these days. That's a great question. It's been a long road since 2001. We're hoping that the permits will be complete in early to mid 2024. We have to complete the environmental review before the agencies can actually finalize the permit. So we had a meeting recently with the new Regional Manager of DFW, and she was very happy with that schedule. So it's great. Does that answer that question? Great. Okay, so at this point, we have one item that has been pulled. So we will proceed to public comment on items number 11 through 37, with the exception of item 16. We will address that separately. And 25 was an adjustment in the agenda that was removed from the agenda today. So items 11 through 37, with the exception of 16 that was pulled, and the exception of 25 that was removed from today's agenda. And so I will look out to any hands raised from our participants virtually, and then I will address any participants joining us here in council chambers. And I have one hand raised, and that is the name I am watching you. Go ahead and press star six. Welcome. Okay, thank you. As to item 35, there may or may not eventually be no cost to hook up our water to Scott's Valley and vice versa, but many other details are still missing. There will be future financial responsibilities, and I see no clear analysis if this is a good deal for Santa Cruz. I remind we have water rights and water should be a commodity the public pays cost for. What assurance is there that Scott's Valley would pay equitably for any water diverted from Santa Cruz and thereby reducing our water bill with no ill water constrained effect on city residents? Please do tell. Scott's Valley should pay us to drink their yuck water. P.U. They want our clean surface water having no rights to such having blown their chance at that a long time ago before my time. As per item 12, the COVID emergency declaration, we've talked before how the COVID emergency is over. While test positivity cases are up, the hospitalizations are nowhere near pandemic levels, and deaths are really flat lining and absolute numbers compared with winter surge levels over the last two years. Currently the fatality rate is down to the same level about like seasonal influenza. It doesn't rate an emergency declaration. What benefit is it to anyone except granting the city manager authority he should no longer have? What we have learned from various studies is that vaccination protection is quite short-lived, not so effective on Omicron. After five, six months, vaccinated people are now more likely to contract COVID. If there is an emergency, it's the mental state of the drones walking around alone outside with a mask on offering no protection from zero risk. If there is an emergency, it's from the surge and drop dead sudden deaths, vaccine side effects, and worrisome increase in all cause mortality. If there is an emergency, it's that live birds are taking a nosedive in a six sigma statistical decline early in 2022, which is extremely alarming. While I don't know why this is, I suspect these gene therapy vaccinations. When the Philippine nanoparticles contain the vaccine-invaded cells, including buildups in ovaries, heart, brain, and other organs to produce spike proteins, human system destroys those cells, some of which are never replaced. This is the very definition of an induced infection. If there's an emergency, it's the entire government response from day one. If there is an emergency, it's the force corrupt vaccinations of children at more risk from the vaccines than from the virus. So big pharma can get a pass on liability. Timer has run. Perhaps even more. Thank you. Your time is up. Thanks. Wasn't sure if you heard the timer ring. Thank you for your input. I'm going to look out to our in-person participants. Are you here to speak to consent agenda items 11 through 37 with the exception of 16? Great. Will you please approach the podium? Thank you. Item number 10 and item number four. Oh, we got three minutes. So I'm interested in the assembly bill 361, which is consent agenda number 11 and number 12, extending the COVID pandemic emergency. And I walked over here from the county building. This was so dangerous. I would have imagined that just to be a cemetery where the 500 people are living right there. Homeless population. Don't you think if this was really an issue that any of those individuals had problems, that would have come up? You guys are scripted actors. Also, number 13, CZU fires. You know, CNN did a really cool presentation on that in 1985. They were talking about 60 gigahertz as military weapons and lightning as weapons. So this is just kind of a hoax. I could go on for some detail. This is a book about the Fabian society. What was it? Bernard Shaw. Started it. We have a previous mayor. Maybe he's going to be the city manager. This is a quote from George Bernard Shaw. I appealed to the chemist to discover humane gas that will kill instantly and painlessly, dead to the sleep by all means, but humane, not cruel. Got members in here as part of that. Another reason I refer to you guys as actors is I'm going to hold up the backside. Action. Agenda 21, community teamwork in action now. So this is the Santa Cruz local agenda 21, final draft for consideration Santa Cruz County municipalities and board of supervisors dated June 3rd, 1997. You know, but the, you guys being scripted actors goes much further. The city council members and county board of supervisors since before 1917 are controlled by the city and county managers. So I don't know why you guys are holding these things Zoom because if this was a problem, people would be dead on the streets. Thanks. Thank you for your input. Are there any members joining us here in person in the council chambers that would like to speak to consent agenda items 11 through 37, with the exception of 16 and 25. Okay. Thank you. I am going. Move the consent agenda. Great. We have a motion to move the consent agenda by council member Brown. Is there a second? I'll second. We have a second by council member Cummings. May we have a roll call vote please. Council member, Calentary Johnson. Aye. Golder Cummings. Aye. Brown. Aye. Meyers. Vice mayor Watkins. Aye. And mayor Brunner. Aye. Okay. Those items pass unanimously and now we will address item number 16 which was pulled by council member Cummings. This is an amendment of existing contract with the Salvation Army for expanded shelter operation at the National Guard Armory site. Council member Cummings. Thank you. So this item is pulled because a number of people had concerns around. We've reached out concerns around a variety of questions. I'll start with the first which was people were wondering if we could speak to the fact that there's a number of services this Salvation Army included where measure funds were anticipated to help sustain these services over time. And with appearing that measure F is not going to pass we're wondering what future of these services look like and what we can anticipate on you know how we can continue to maintain these services over time. Hi, see we have homelessness response manager Larry and Wally joining us. We also have city manager Matt Huffaker. So go ahead. Welcome Larry. Good afternoon mayor and council members. Thank you for your question council member Cummings. That is correct if you recall in the three-year homelessness response action plan that we presented in March with updated information in May the first year of funding for expanded shelter services is is allocated from both ARPA in the California of 14 million but subsequent years were unfunded and contingent upon the ability to find alternative sources. So the tax measure was one potential funding source as you mentioned it looks like that is not going to pass so we'll continue that we'll have to be a source of of general fund budget allocations in the future as well as we continue to look for additional funding sources from the state and federal government that can be utilized to continue and support expanded shelter operations. And council member Cummings I would just add to Larry's comments that there is sufficient room in the budget both through the 14 million and the ARPA funding that we have available to cover the contract in front of the council this afternoon. Of course we're going to have to explore other funding opportunities with measure F failing to sustain these programs over the long term. Great and then the next question recently we've been receiving information about the many of the homeless hotel programs shutting down it sounded like based on an article in the Sentinel that about a hundred people were placed in homes and the other 600 were kind of just they had to put them on the street and we're giving backpacks and more or less good luck and so and I know of a number of people who actually have were in those programs seniors who were disabled and many people are wondering kind of what the county's role is in kind of making sure that those people have somewhere to go but in addition to that it's been sounding like a lot of those people are ending up in the Benchlands which is going to further complicate our ability to house people and also meet the needs around Martin versus Boise for example so I'm just wondering if there's any thoughts around kind of where we're going from here now that we're seeing a significant amount of shelter come offline and it's great that we're increasing the number of beds I'll say that from 62 I think 135 but there's I'm starting to hear these concerns and people are asking me where can we send these people where can they go especially some of them are seniors and disabled thanks for the question councilmember Cummings and we've all certainly been receiving correspondence from the community concerned about that as well I want to make very clear that these facilities are county run emergency shelter facilities that were stood up during the pandemic with COVID related funding as that COVID funding dries up the county has made the decision to discontinue those programs and that has unfortunately resulted in the displacement of those that have been residing in those shelters over the last couple of years the timing is very challenging as we're in the process of standing up additional shelter beds we're currently essentially reaching capacity as we now move forward with expanding additional beds in part with the contract that the council has in front of you today with Salvation Army so we continue to do everything we can to explore all shelter options in front of us that's the reasoning for this expanded contract today and it was unfortunate to see that folks were displaced from from those county facilities I guess follow-up question is there any has the county expressed any interest or is there going to be any partnerships with the county to expand shelter capacity there continue to be a number of efforts underway in coordination with the county one of those areas is expanding beds and shelter capacity at the housing matters campus the county has committed to funding those operations once the physical beds can come online but almost likely come in the form of additional pallet shelters or something similar so that work is underway of course we would we would always like this these efforts to move faster the armory is is the most immediate expansion of beds and that's what we're prioritizing but we're also working on these other locations in parallel the next questions I had were directly related to the Salvation Army one question that came up was that it was brought to my attention that sounds like the transportation for people to get from the city or from the different stops to the armory is not ADA accessible and also that there are no ADA showers being offered at the armory and so I'm just wondering if someone could speak to that because if we're expanding on this contract one of the requests was that we include ADA transportation and ADA showers for people who are going to be staying at the armory would you like to speak to that Larry certainly yes with respect to the ADA showers the city has purchased an ADA shower trailer a couple of months ago that we're waiting on delivery for that we're expecting sometime in July so that will resource will come online for that in terms of transportation yes shuttle van the shuttle vans that are used are difficult for folks who are wheelchair bound that particular shelter location is not prioritized for people with those disabilities and our outreach team works and looks to place those individuals at more appropriate shelter that can accommodate their disabilities that location up at the armory is is presents some challenges for disabled persons well I think to the extent I mean we're pretty strapped on shelter capacity we're expanding beds it would seem that I think many people would agree that our priorities are around making sure that people who are vulnerable the most vulnerable have a place to go and so you know to the extent that we can include language in the direction today to provide ADA transportation I think it would be you know our ability to show that we're trying to get the people who are most challenged off the streets and then to shelter and hopefully on the road to housing and then I guess the last comment I would make is that I was also contacted with interest in the unemployment insurance which I know came up before and it's not required by the state of california but it sounds sounded like from our previous conversation in the current one that it is something we could include so I'll just leave my comments there and I don't know if anybody wants to provide feedback on that but it sounded like you know providing unemployment insurance for workers is something that is really important to members of our community especially those who've actually worked and provided these services so I'll leave my question in the comments there thank you councilmember Cummings are there any other questions in response to that any other comments councilmember brown thank you mayor uh in in terms of the the question about the Salvation Army's capacity to provide ADA transit transit to the armory I haven't talked with them lately but in my conversations I know that they have issues with respect to their own equipment and so I I don't think they actually have the ability to provide that and so but I do think it's really important to be having that conversation so it would be great to see if there are folks from our staff who can talk with them about what and just get a handle on what those needs are currently because it does seem like a big gap to not be able to offer a space at the armory to people who are in wheelchair not the ambulatory and then with respect to the question of unemployment insurance I it did come up and my recollection is that this is something that the Salvation Army as an employer just does not provide and they are exempt from the requirements because of their nonprofit status so I don't know that we can cause them to do that um I am interested in that as well um but I just wanted to follow follow up on on that comment um but it would be great if and I don't know if it requires a motion but if can we just get some additional information about what it would take to make that ADA um accessible trans yeah thanks for the questions councilmember brown and the and the concern around ADA accessibility that's something that our homelessness response team is aware of and has been an active dialogue with Salvation Army around as Larry had mentioned transportation to and from the site has been challenging part of that is just having access to to the type of equipment that would allow for that full access but it is something we continue to work on and prioritize when it comes to comes to the insurance that's a question that's come up in the past and our city attorney's office has confirmed that as a religious organization they're exempt from providing and we have an inability to require that they provide it thank you I know there was an email that we received um with um some suggestions regarding the transportation which I forwarded on to city staff and the homelessness response team to explore thank you for your input and I hope we I see some more uh hands for public input so we'll be hearing some more input on this item does that conclude your questions great all right I will now take it out for public comment and uh let's see if we have any members of the public that would like to comment on a consent agenda number 16 please sign in here at the clipboard and um anybody in the virtual world you can raise your hand by pressing star nine and following the instructions on the screen to call in and I see one hand raised and the name is recovery cafe Santa Cruz go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself thank you all right good afternoon this is Serge good afternoon mayor brunner and members of the city council my name's Serge Cagno I'm the executive director recovery cafe Santa Cruz we support both the house and the unhoused and being a part of a welcoming community to foster healing and to achieve their goals for stability um I was the one who uh sent a letter to the city council regarding this item two parts to it one is the ADA accessibility um and my question I'm very happy to hear from Larry and Wally that there was a ADA shower that was ordered um but I didn't hear where it was going to be placed is that going to be placed at the armory would be my question and I hope that he can answer um the other question is about transportation um the county actually is renting a minivan that is ADA accessible and since the Salvation Army is renting their vans anyway I'm not quite clear why the city and the Salvation Army can't rent an ADA accessible minivan for those people I hear Larry's comments about trying to place people at other sites it's not the preferable site um I worked really hard to get that person uh placed up there because there were no other sites available uh the loft was not taking anybody they were only taking people from the county's armory program um so I would say that it seems like with slight modifications it could be made accessible uh I'm hoping that can happen too uh on clarification about the unemployment insurance um this actually started from a conversation that I had um because I worked for the Salvation Army and I wasn't able to get unemployment insurance when I left a conversation I had with Captain Harold and he told me that they actually do provide it in places across the country where they're required to do so so I'm confused on uh comments that were that in the contract uh there's an inability to require it I understand that they're not required to do it by their 501c3 status or by their by state law but that doesn't mean we're precluded for requiring it in the contract so if there could be just clarification on that one I would really appreciate it we've had so much we really would love to limit more on homelessness because we've had the pandemic we've had the fire we have the recession and unemployment insurance for low income workers is really one of their lifelines when they're in between jobs thank you thank you for your public comment are there any other members of the public that would like to comment on consent agenda item number 16 okay be I'm gonna bring it back to council and I would like to ask a couple of quick questions uh related to that public comment if we can uh and I think councilmember brown also gave the uh direction to look at making slight modifications or what it would take to have ADA accessibility at the city overlook location so that nobody is excluded from a shelter opportunity and uh the employment unemployment status uh requirement is there is a city attorney is that something you could come back to us with I mean I don't want to put you on the spot right now I'm looking up the past memo on this issue so if you come right back to me in a second great and okay are there any other uh council members any comments councilmember Cummings I'm gonna go ahead and make a motion and then we can get some more great thank you yeah so I'll move the staff recommendation um and include that um um we um including the contract flexibility on funding for um an ADA accessible rental minivan and um provision of unemployment insurance for um salvation on your workers so I have um don't mean to interrupt you um but on the issue of the unemployment insurance um we previously looked it up and the problem was so they're exempted from requiring it as for you know voluntarily opting into it there was an issue with how long the contract is um so uh because there's basically um a requirement that that they be employed for a period of two years or greater and our contract was going to be for I think it's 12 months now six months 12 months so it was less than the two-year threshold so their application to actually apply for unemployment insurance would most likely just be denial denied because of the short length of contract so a minimum of two years is required or correct is that what I'm understanding okay um we we have a motion by councilmember Cummings and I'd like to ask if anybody would like to second it I'll I'll second any discussion here I'll second I wonder though given the um what we just heard about the potential for unemployment insurance being uh conversation um it's I'm not sure that we it sounds like we may not be able to do much now but I do think that so if if the maker of the motion would wouldn't mind maybe amending that to consider unemployment insurance opportunities in the future if with longer term potential longer term contracts um uh explore possibilities for the provision of unemployment insurance in the future uh with potential long longer term contracts I also would like to ask the maker of the motion if um you would be amenable to broadening your term on ADA accessible transportation rather than specifying rental van making it a broader ADA accessible transportation true okay city clerk did you get that thank you we have a motion by councilmember Cummings seconded by councilmember brown uh and can we read back the motion or see it yeah what you have just to make sure does that look accurate councilmember Cummings yeah I think all in the friendly amendment I think it would be um broad term from I'm still cleaning it up okay but did you say there was something else with the friendly amendment that what you were saying no that would oh okay you were cleaning it up so yeah okay great may we just have one question yes um is there a way we can get an update since um the homeless services manager mentioned that we purchased the um ADA accessible showers and that they're expecting to get those in July is there a way we can get an update um with the city managers update in August and kind of where these where this is all at happen to do that councilmember Cummings in fact I think we'll be bringing a quarterly homelessness response update in that same time frame there is a lot of work happening on multiple fronts um and I can certainly include that in my CM update uh if it makes sense as well and I have a quick question for Larry and Wally what will the location where will the ADA showers be placed yeah the intent is to put the ADA shower up at the armory building so we'll be servicing that facility and do other shelter sites have ADA accessible showers or is that the only ADA accessible shower um I can't speak I mean for city programs it's just 1220 and the armory and um so we'll have an ADA up at the armory building the shower trailer at 1220 river is not ADA accessible okay for those 30 thank you councilmember Calentari Johnson I just wanted to make a brief comment and thank um the staff for your work on this and I know it's it's been in the works for a long time and it's really difficult to get qualified experienced service providers especially right now um to provide the very urgent and essential services that we need so I just want to acknowledge that and I want to thank city staff for your work on it and um the nonprofit provider salvation army for for supporting our community in this way thank you councilmember Calentari Johnson councilmember Myers yeah I just have a question for probably Larry it may be Cassie I'm not sure who put together the contract with the salvation army and the negotiations that took I know it took a number of months to get that done um with the potential um uh sort of it's not a it's not a directive but with the with the request to try to also have them provide that um unemployment insurance it's part of the I mean do do we see that as a being having a problem with negotiating contracts both longer term contracts with them as an employer um so in other words I guess my question is you know we're hiring them um and just trying to understand what that how that may that cause whether it's salvation armory any other nonprofits um do we anticipate that being a having do we have to participate having problems with that kind of contract language in the in the in the future I'm not sure who that would go to I guess Cassie maybe sorry I'm not sure I understand what do I anticipate the way I'm the way I'm reading the the way I think you remarked that the way I'm reading the the the motion uh is to include um basically for a longer term contract that the that the basically whoever the company is or the nonprofit that we are hiring should be required to provide uninsurance uh unemployment insurance for people who have worked for them under this contract with the city so I'm just trying to understand if that would be if we think that would impact our ability to complete contracts with various vendors I understand the intent I don't I'm not questioning the intent of trying to have everybody have access to unemployment insurance but I'm just kind of wondering about how it may impact our ability to actually attract and get vendors on their contract well maybe I see Lee Lee's head popped up and he may be able to comment on this I can just say generally um because uh they're exempt from requiring that benefit that's something that they're going to be hesitant to provide um and I can say um you know we're in a situation where they live they literally can't provide it because our contract length is too short um you know whether or not we would be able to if we had a longer contract length we'd be able to negotiate but that with them I think um that's up in the air right now okay thank you yeah I add um good afternoon mayor and council members um I would just add that um we would need to have as uh attorney Bronson mentioned a uh minimum of a two-year contract in order for the state to approve that so that would mean we would need to have the funds set aside for the two years um and what I would say is if the um if we were pursuing a two-year contract and talking with them they would likely have um an increased cost they would say all right if you want us to do that for more than two years um and include that insurance then they would pass that cost along to us is what I would anticipate but we would need to have that funding in place for two years and as you know right now we're we're only looking at the one-year contract and only have the funds at this point in time for the one-year contract thank you thank you director Butler council member brown yeah thank you mayor um the the language was simply to suggest that in the future should we be exploring longer-term contracts with a provider that we explore the possibility of including unemployment insurance so I'm not sure why we're going down the road of wondering what the Salvation Army will do if we get if we ever get to that point the whole point was just to say it's a priority to explore that should we be able to in the future that's all in and council member brown we appreciate the spirit behind the request that's how we interpret it we hope to be fortunate to be in a position where we can have some longer-term agreements with our community partners and not be in the situation where we have these short-term contracts and a lot of that's just a symptom of the limited funding that's supporting these efforts so if we find ourselves fortunate enough to have some longer-term agreements it's something we can certainly circle back on thank you for the clarification and at this time we have a motion and a second with accepted friendly amendments may we have a roll call vote council member is count aye boulder coming aye brown aye Myers aye vice mayor Watkins aye and mayor Brunner aye that motion passes unanimously that was item number 16 on our consent agenda okay that concludes our consent agenda items moving in to our consent public hearing items these are items number 38 and 39 on our agenda for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you wish to comment on items 38 or 39 now would be the time to call in using the instructions on your screen if you're joining us here in person at council chambers please sign in up here at the clipboard to let me know that you are here for public comment on items 38 and 39 all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to comment on or pull any of the items and I will look for hands I don't see any in the virtual panel council member Cummings I just have a comment on item number 38 comment on 38 and council member Brown did you have your hand up I had a comment on 38 but I'm guessing it's going to be the same comment but I'll jump in okay great thank you okay we will begin so item number 38 is the second amendment of the 555 pacific avenue apartments development agreement and council member Cummings yeah I just want to thank city staff and the developer on this project for members of the public 94 of the units that are within this project are now being proposed to the small ownership units being converted to 100% rental and subject to the city's inclusionary requirement which was increased to 20% and I think that this is going to provide one it's going to meet the needs that have been set out in our city's ordinance around trying to reach 20% in perpetuity affordable housing units which is something that will help us with our rena numbers and it's something that many people in the community expressly wanted to see and demonstrating that we're you know able to meet these requirements and so I just want to express my appreciation for what's before us today because many people have said it can't happen and we've now seen two projects where we've met that 20% inclusionary and so I just want to express my appreciation for getting us to this point thank you council member Cummings council member Brown did you have additional comment great thank you all right at this point I will now bring it out for our public comment if there are any attendees with their hands raised you can press star nine by raising your hands or choosing the raise hand feature on the webinar controls of your computer I don't have any members of the public that are speaking to these items 38 and 39 let's see and no attendees with their hands raised oh I do have one Jesse B go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself go ahead welcome thank you good afternoon thank you mayor Brunner thank you council members I just wanted to Jesse Bristol some builders just want to say thank you to staff for helping us work with this day really appreciate planning commission as well and also city council so thank you thank you for your comment there is a phone number okay that I think that's it great thank you I will bring it back to council for action on items 38 and 39 and I see council member Myers did you want to make a motion yeah mayor all move these items and I just have a comment on item number 38 which I'm happy to support and along with certainly achieving the 20% inclusionary which is a really really great outcome you know this project has long been vilified in Sam Cruz as this market rate project that was sort of a scourge on the neighborhood for a long time we've had multiple people talk about 555 specific in a very negative way but I think this project is very interesting in that at the end of the day because of the relationship with the success in in both the market rate version market rate period of this housing but then the conversion that we're going to be approving right now and with the fact that that market rate piece actually had to get done so that the project could actually get financed this is the complicated world that affordable housing has to live in and so you know when we we hear a lot of people you know really slam 555 specific and so I want to thank our staff I think they always have their eye on the creative approaches needed I'd like to thank Mr. Bristow and their work in building housing albeit sometimes it's market rate housing but oftentimes we do end up with affordable units through their work and many times it is the building community that is actually building affordable housing and those affordable housing units so housing of any type is hard to do all the times but she with the building costs that we have here of upwards of $600 a square foot so this is another formula of a successful project ending this with with some great outcomes for affordable housing as well as market rate as well so thank you Mr. for Mr. to Mr. Bristow for being here and I'm happy to make the motion for both items number 38 39 on the on the on the consent it's the public hearing thank you councilmember Calentari Johnson second thank you so we have a first and second first by councilmember Myers seconded by councilmember Calentari Johnson may we have a roll call vote please councilmember Calentari Johnson aye boulder coming for me yes aye aye vice mayor Watkins aye mayor Brunner aye that motion passes unanimously thank you have a good day we've caught back up in our timing do we have anybody joining us for this next item we do mayor great I'm Laura Schmidt is jumping on as well I'm wondering if we can just take a five minute bio break thanks great thank you if council members can turn on their cameras thank you for that brief break we've been sitting since early this morning welcome to our guests as well thank you for joining us okay we are next up on our agenda item number 40 collective of results and evidence-based final award recommendations this is the core final award recommendations for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions that will be on your screen the order for this item will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action please note public commented comment will be limited to no more than 30 minutes in addition to the public comment we will be hearing on this item 33 emails were sent to city council at city of Santa Cruz calm so at this time I would like to handed over and I see we have from we have a assistant city manager Laura Schmidt and from the county human services department Randy Morris and who else I'm looking at all my squares Kimberly Peterson thank you great thank you mayor I'm Laura Schmidt the assistant city manager and I would like to welcome our partners in core we have here with us as guest speakers from the Santa Cruz County Randy Morris the director of HSD and Kimberly Peterson a deputy director from HSD they will be taking us through the presentation heard earlier at the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors and the final recommendations for the next three years for our core recipients as well as follow-up that we've been working on with the county that they have been nicely leading us through possible follow-up actions related to transition funding for those recipients current core recipients who are not funded in the next cycle and with that I would like to thank once again Randy and Kimberly and handed over to Randy and I will start sharing the screen. Okay hi city council members again just awkward with this important discussion to be in front of you virtually and again to Matt I want to say thank you to Laura for answering every text I sent sent in the last three weeks which I'm not going to tell you the hours of the day but Laura appreciate your partnership kind of figure this out dual jurisdictional funding is complicated let me start with what happened this morning I'm very mindful that you know we are five six of the funding and you are one six but the one six funding is your money and it's just a byproduct of the timing that you know we have a board hearing in the morning and a vote is made and then we're in front of you and you're sort of following so I just want to take a minute to recognize that that creates a dynamic in and of itself but I do want to make sure for those who did not have an opportunity to hear what happened the board just start with what happened and then you can kind of have that in mind as we walk this through and if there's any implications of your city wanting to go in a different direction which is completely a prerogative I feel like my role is just to explain kind of the interconnected parts and sort of the dominoes that could play out just so you have full information as you make a decision because as I've said every time I've been in front of you this is your money and I know it involves choices and decisions to partner with another jurisdiction especially since we're larger kind of just creates a dynamic so there were really there's actually four specific actions in front of the board this morning one of them doesn't apply to you because the MOU we have with you where your budget gets moved into our budget collectively puts together and therefore there was an action this morning about how our department could move the money forward before we came to the board and the auditor controller so that didn't apply but the three items the more simple one was approved 50 which is to make sure we have a comprehensive report back to the board and if your city wants to be involved we would include you in December with a whole host of report backs on a whole host of things and we've got some additional direction because of concerns the board had about some of the lessons learned already about things that were complicated that might be less complicated if we apply them next time so we've got some very concrete direction to make sure when we do a lessons learn process we apply those we welcome any similar direction from you all of course don't mind hearing things you thought went well but we understand usually what you hear about is the things people don't like so anything you can give direction to us if we want to work together on a lessons learned process and report back we welcome that and that is one of the three things that were voted on this morning the other two are separate budgets the first was the actual core budget and the recommended awards which were modified from Jeep seventh were approved five zero I'll come to that in the presentation but the second was in it really your direction on June 7th the afternoon was very specific and direct to look for other another funding stream to try to help those who are not getting funding and so that along with what we're hearing from the community did find another funding stream and that was a second recommended action and that was voted on this morning to approve with a modification and I will come back to that so I want to let you know everything past some additional direction on the lessons learned exercise a modification to some transition money but the slate of recommended awards including some new ones that are in the materials were all approved so that was this morning so Laura if you or other are moving the screen this is yeah so going to walk through what those modified recommend actions are briefly walk through the appeals process I think there was so much energy and concern about was the process fair was it applied even they just want to make sure to take a minute to let you see that there is a letter letter from the general services department director in the county that outlines a great detail what happened and what was not public is that every one of the agencies that appealed got a very detailed letter outlining the response so that that information happened and then summarize close out with next steps this will be a much briefer presentation last night I promise you okay so the next slide so this is the first of the four recommendations that we have recommended action this morning we were directed by the board on June 7th and I don't understand the process for your city that's up to you all to talk about an hour it was resolved since then we got one direction to remove funding to one of the recommended grantees and specifically directed his county staff to return and recommend how to repurpose that money to something else so I think that's a good point. Number two the RFP structure which your council and the board approved gave staff discretion to come back with recommended awards at up to a 10% adjustment to the recommended award amount that the CBO applied for and in the June 7th recommendations we brought forward 3% adjustment and that allowed us to get a two more medium and two more large tier grants in full disclosure it was in part all of those meetings that we had with the community there was sort of this leaning I wouldn't say consensus but leaning to make the money go deeper it's hard to spread money thin so we did not want to at least in our first recommendation to trim the full 10% because we wanted to have the money go deeper for that those community discussions but clearly between June 7th and to date the feedback was this is really difficult and hard for the community to take that a lot of important agencies weren't funded. So we put that repurposing of the one grant that we were directed by the county to not fund and that extra 7% to stay within the parameters of the RFP we put that together to take the full 10% and that allowed us to fund the next highest ranked large tier application we could not go deeper in large tier because those are such large grants we didn't have enough money to go to one more that made it easy so then we took the balance and we were able to fund four more mediums all in rank order all following the parameters of the process and this is a list of who they are. The large and this was a point of discussion at your council and a lot of discussion in between the 7th and now senior network services aging and community program pretty comprehensive program helping frail older adults stay in their home and it's specifically in their in their application says we will use this money to draw federal and state area agency on aging money which was a discussion item we didn't orchestrate it to make this happen it just landed well that that sort of check that box because that is the largest grant in this new slate and if this is approved as the board did this morning that would check that box and that's the one next largest grant. The four medium grants that then in the next four highest ranked are big brothers big sisters and mentoring program. The family services agency suicide prevention funding which ties to the new federal mandate to have a 988 program and that agency family service agency is the regional provider so that ties well they had shared a lot about the concerns about that with mental health issues that have played out since the pandemic very righteous issue. Community ventures a guaranteed income program that the application identifies 30 low income working families Latinx working families to help them with a guaranteed income program and a whole host of financial literacy programs to help them move off of government support into self-sufficiency and then last was the diversity center which is a package of mental health services for the LGBTQ population. I do want to share that of these five agencies four of the five are current funded agencies so that sort of coincidentally addressed one of the concerns that was raised by many and the one that is not is the community ventures program which since five years ago guaranteed income was a concept and stocked in California that's been getting a lot of attention in the last few years so it's sort of an emerging best practice that was newly proposed and made it in the top ranked. I do want to briefly share that this this package and apologize in advance if this is redundant but the full package is a 11% increase in the current allocation when you put the city and the county money together. Of the slate of recommended awards with these amended awards two thirds of the money goes to current programs and one third is new so I just want to share that just because that question has been coming out like did this just like clean the slate restarted yes it had some big shifts bigger than ever before here but two thirds are sort of agencies continuing to get money and as Kimberly and I presented in June 7th though there is a change in agencies of that one third the analysis we did is there is an equitable distribution by age population by geography race ethnicity core condition and it mirrors what the application volume was there's about three times the number of applications in terms of dollar amount than money but it actually spreads evenly the changes what agencies delivering what and to who but the services are actually a similar mix so I just wanted to share that so next slide haha okay Laura this was your slide so this number two was a combination of your specific direction to your city staff and that's what I think Laura was probably mentioning is that we immediately started talking about you know is there any general fund you have I don't know your budget that's your process as Matt Laura's role to work with you all and you had the direction to come back on the 14th in your budget hearings I think I understand that got referred to today technically in terms of any new money for fun agencies I shared this morning publicly I'm not going to go through it all in detail here but what happened is we county human services that are 88.5% federal and state funded we are heavily dictated by how the state economy is rolling and so the way our budget works is we have a certain amount of general fund approved you know a year ago for the current year budget and that general fund is in our budget and when state revenues come into human services at a higher than estimated our processes then what general funds not needed which is usually not the case but this year it is that goes back to the CAO general fund and it usually goes into reserves or other priorities or we negotiate something so we were able to identify between June 7th and today's presentation and materials when we made them public that our estimates of the state funding coming to human services we can confidently put $500,000 of money on the table because that is the money that's offset by the higher than expected state revenues into county HSD and then Laura and Matt without giving a specific dollar amount had just conceptually said we will share in that to amount to be determined by you all so we had put on the table this new recommended action and it was in complete response to the community-based organization saying between our own push to delay the RFP process because code the omicron variant and we were delayed in being able to get our applications and we are back at the two days before the season closes and then there was a lot of agencies who have been used to this funding a long time so we put forward this proposal with that money which is one-time money and we do not anticipate having it next fiscal year at this moment what our analysis is with that money landed on a three month transition bridge for all current core agencies at their current contract amount that are not recommended for funding so that is what was proposed the check mark of additional material 3a is as soon as we put that money out we realize because this money is not tied to the RFP parameters it truly is money for elected officials to say okay well that's a good step idea but it's not tied to the RFP so what about this what about that so we submitted some additional materials to the board that troops ended up sharing a couple of different ways to use that 500,000 there is a good discussion at the board this morning considerations to look at some of the other ideas we put forward in the end this is what the board voted on they accepted our staff recommendation with one additional direction and that additional direction was to not provide bridge funding to the current core agencies that have a grant of less than 25,000 the motion was put forward by supervisor Coonerty his argument you can go listen to yourself but basically was the dollar amounts at that point are so small the agencies that really need this bridge funding they are more dependent upon this funding than the small agencies to add a couple thousand here and there verses really being able to provide bigger bridge funding so the board deliberated they looked at all and they ended up voting to accept that amendment so the board direction this morning was to fund three months of bridge for all current core agencies except those who have very small grants under 25 I will tell you since the board hearing we've done the math and that adds about 10% of bridge money from that 500 and it allows us to extend the bridge for all of the agencies that are above 25 from three months to closer to four months so I would just want to disclose that to you but we understand you know you might have deliberations or questions on this new action that was in front of the board this morning as Laura or whoever crossed off number three okay that's and then the last was that we would be back for a comprehensive report to the board if your city council would like us to come back to you and we did get some additional direction as it said earlier about really exploring creating some more guard rails and some more parameters because the absence of some parameters like why didn't you wait an applicant's ability to leverage federal and state money higher and said okay fine that that can be added so we were directed to include that in our lessons learned and a few other things the last one is the MOU that we had your city council approved on the seventh and our board approved on the seventh that then allowed your June 14 budget action of your one million and eighty thousand to be approved and it has been actually included in our county budget and it was approved on consent today so that's the full five million nine hundred fifty three thousand core allocation to fund the slate of recommended awards with those five new ones listed earlier so next slide just for a clarification for our council the recommended motion language number three and our city council agenda report that was a detailed nuance that got swept into the action for number four and that's the reason why it struck out here so if you approve the direction for number four it will include a status of agreement when we come back in December okay I think this is the second to last slide this is just a quick summary you can read the attachment that comes from the county general service director we were firewalled out from the processes human services by design we did get called by general services to ask answer a question or two as they did the review but here's the findings there were nineteen agencies that filed appeals they were allowed to appeal on anything they felt they wanted to appeal and so of those nineteen appeals there were seventy three specific items appealed the general services department deemed to be what's called a protest or statement it's actually a technical term in procurement and just to give you an example it's like when an agency appealed you know my agency does really important work in the community and if I'm not funded this will happen that absolutely could be righteous and real it's just not an appealable item as listed in the RFP there are four specific terms so those were noticed and recognized in the response to those agencies where those were deemed appeals but of the forty three items that were remaining that were deemed appealable within the construct of the RFP forty two were denied and there was one partially substantiated and that was one agency noticed that the panel comments that were provided to all applicants that asked made positive comments about the agency's budget but the ranking was in the medium it wasn't the top and so we were directed to give the applicant the top ranking we did that and that did not change their aggregate score to high enough to bump anybody above them so it did not in the end change the recommended award list so that's the summary of the appeals so next slide and this is the final slide pending well based on board action this morning and pending your action because of the MOU we have between with you and if you approve most of this are all of it of course then we have board authority from this morning both to our department human services and the auditor controller who has a role that we can execute contracts immediately and we do not have to go back to the board to show those contracts to get approval and we're allowed to give not to mix up the second check mark but under executing new contracts we're actually allowed to pay providers per county process process three months up front payment while we're negotiating the contract and we have cash flow the second check marks is pending your city council's approval of your share of this which is that bridge payment so we have authorized the bridge payment with that amended action from this morning that I listed the second next step is we will make it public in the fall but we are actually going to start the work end of July and get a whole committee together and do an evaluation process make it very clear that we do not want to want to we want to interview every elected official of the county in the city and this doesn't dictate that we have to do this the same way or we have to continue to share funding we just want to hear what you all think what worked what didn't work harness the concerns and grab it while it's all fresh and then report back we don't think we'll be done with that effort in December but include a status update in December but we just don't want to lose the moment because it's very positive there's much more positive public comments more supporting the actions than there were on the 7th where there's a lot of concerns stated so all of it put together want to harness that energy and figure out how to apply anything that we can and then December and this is where all sort of close out we have a host of things we need to report back on we owe the board and your council as funders of the last five years of the grant a summary and an overview of what the report would come back the lessons learned update where we are and then also kind of where we are executing these contracts if the three month bridge payment goes through with you as well just to give a full comprehensive update to everybody on all of the actions so Laura if you're the one controlling it that closes out the formal presentation and Kimberly who did not give a presentation with me that she did last time because she is she's got a big binder of stuff next to her if you have any questions. Thank you so much Randy Morris and Kimberly Peterson for joining us I you know thank you for running through that summary as concisely as possible in such a short time this was a very new process for myself and some of the other council members and I think for many of the community members that was as you so accurately stated very emotional very hard funding and resource constraints right now are being felt across our county in so many ways and this was definitely one of them so I'm excited to see some of the direction for moving forward especially from what you said the understanding that in the fall there will be a public process or input process to make the process to receive input on the process for the next round for the future is that my understanding what that fall 2022 yes and we can take any specific direction from you how you would like us to govern the process but let me be more precise what we anticipate and this is what we did in advance of the rp is we would have a number of community meetings that wouldn't necessarily be brown act governed in public but invite as many people as possible to participate we would have individual interviews with all elected officials who want to participate and then we would like to bring that information and make it public so that the county board and the city council can then hear the summary of what came of that process give the public an opportunity to make comment have deliberations if we stay on schedule we are not going to have another rp for two years and when we initiate the process but again we want to harness all that now and not wait and have a process a year from now when this is yesterday's news etcetera because now is when everybody is really raw about this so if that answers your question mayor bruner yes we want to grab people's thoughts feelings recommendations now and then air all of it publicly to have public input to a process that helps inform us to what the next rfp cycle look like great thank you I think that does answer my question and making sure that everybody is clear on where to be able to input that process like if once that is established how that will how how the input will be received in person online or a variety of methods and really from not just the elected officials but the nonprofit organizations the programs the applicants and the community members that received the services had a lot of opinions that I'm happy to share as well it was I think 16 million dollars of requests for almost 6 million dollar pot so clearly the needs far exceeded the funding available and this process I think a lot of input came on the eligibility a lot of the suggestions for next time were around the eligibility requirements so looking a little more with a fine tooth comb at that process so thank you for spelling that out and I'm going to bring it out to our council members for questions and council member Calentari Johnson thank you mayor and hello Randy and Kimberly thanks for the presentation and for your work on this I did have a couple of questions so for the bridge funding how many organizations fall under the under 25k that was the amendment from the board of supervisors do you know how many organizations there are it is as if we anticipated one of you asking I think Kimberly has this in an email that came in the last hour am I right Kimberly if so can you answer what that number is I have to go through my email but I think yes Kimberly we have it right yeah so based on the board meeting there are 11 organizations I will state that some of those organizations have multiple programs that were funded under 25,000 and if I and I want to share council member Calentari Johnson and I apologize if I'm getting ahead of you but I feel like this is the inevitable extrapolation this is what used to be called set aside and now they're called small tier so I just want to say I'm looking at that I found the email those grants range from $4,500 for a year to $22,000 and that's the reference and I'm not saying this is right or wrong that's the statement supervisor community made for grants that are so small carving that by a fourth grabbing that and giving more to the agencies that are more dependent upon that was the policy statement made but now we have the numbers and those are $4,500 to $22,000 split up over 11 programs which is one to three for 11 agencies about 15 programs 11 agencies 15 and what I'm understanding is and for clarification these agencies that meet the 25 K are less in the city of Santa Cruz were not necessarily set aside agencies are set aside agencies were different so we had reoccurring small grants that were not set aside so our list is a little bit different than the county's that was going to be my next question is within that how many are city of Santa Cruz agencies or programs and we probably maybe don't have that breakdown it we have I have an approximation and I tried to do this really quickly anticipating the question and let me bring that up for you are you able to read this I'm getting my glasses are you all set there you go okay Laura can you clarify what this list is that you're showing so the amendment motion that passed at the county board of supervisors this morning related to the bridge funding the month bridge funding they made an amended motion for the existing core recipient that were awarded annually less than $25,000 to not do bridge funding and so I did a quick analysis of city of Santa Cruz fiscal year 22 existing core recipients that are underneath $25,000 that were also not awarded in the new cycle okay and this is our city of Santa Cruz that's not confusing enough yeah but then some of these organizations are part of the recommended fund they have programs that are part of the overall recommended funding like for example big brothers big sisters for example diversity center I can confirm and Laura I this is an organic moment because I admit to the the future slate of awards now that we have an MOU and all the city money is proposed to be combined with county money and therefore all contracts will be merged I admit to not having at the ready in my head what current contracts are like Laura for example what you just displayed I don't know if that's standard contracts of yours or if that's your contribution that merges with ours and therefore $25,000 that's part of the complexity of this so I just we don't have that analysis given this new action just showed up five hours ago or four hours ago so we might have to do some quick thinking but Laura I just was that list all city owned contracts or your contribution some of which come to us and we commingle our funds those are fiscal year 22 existing city core recipients not funded okay so I just $25,000 one of the I'm bringing this up just to make sure everybody has all information and I don't know the answers to this but my understanding is one of the reasons we put the MOU in place was to minimize the challenge for a CBO to run one program and have one contract with the city and one contract for county that for the CBO comes together as two contracts even those for the same program so it might be the list Laura that you just disclosed is your contracts right but they might not they might together be above 25,000 so we in our analysis only included those contracts that together so we have to do some digging and I don't know if we're going to have that while we're here talking uh oh maybe Kimberly has the answer I did just want to add that the list that we were going by was started from basically determined which organizations which programs were funded at less than 25,000 dollars we started from the list that was um I think you guys had an attachment 3A and so that was the dates from which we pulled and that list of programs came from a comparison of all of the core proposals that were received for this next round in comparison to the current core contracts and so we did a cross-reference to see who re-applied and then for those that re-applied and were not funded for those same very very similar programs then they were listed on that list for bridge funding and then this afternoon we pulled out those that received less than 25,000 um if that helps okay I think what I'm trying to get at is to zero in on how many of those have the braided city funding and how that impacts it and maybe we don't have that information um and then sort of related to that question if um Kimberly or Randy if you can answer so what I'm understanding is that um the county is setting aside 500,000 from their general funds for the purpose of this bridge funding that is that correct? we put in our board materials and in full disclosure the draft we said to Laura like what was it one o'clock Thursday did not have the 500,000 figure so your materials don't have that but they are on the board because we chose to add the dollar amount literally because we were debating and this is a full disclosure to do we put the dollar amount or just put the concept out and in the end we decided to put the dollar amount so the 500,000 is what we county human services in those machinations that happened because we got so much more state we got 500,000 more state revenue in the last two months that we didn't expect that offsets the general fund that's appropriated to us in our budget so the CIO would normally take that for CIO purposes increasing reserves or other projects Watsonville hospital whatever we collaborated with Carlos our CIO instead given the pressures the needs the quick turnaround we need to put that 500,000 on the table I will let Laura and Matt speak to the words they used and I called them immediately and I just said given this is collective funding and you have a direction from your council to find new revenue do you believe you have opportunity to at least share in the funding so that I can put that in the county board materials Laura Matt hope I'm not going too far down the road they said yes so we didn't commit a dollar amount from the city but we just said we will share in it so we have 500,000 of county money as I described and then whatever we would be contributing to the three month bridge and we did assume that it would be 500 and change from you that would get to that three month bridge amount so yeah Laura and Matt if you could speak to that so does that mean that that were we are contributing within that 500 or we are then going above the 500? No we would be contributing a portion of the total bridge funding of and anything that we contribute we would have to find in the general fund by offsetting it from somewhere else the budget we just adopted and has that been discussed amongst staff what does that look like we have not gone into it in any level of detail we're waiting for council action depending upon the dollar amount based upon how big that is and whether or not we can handle the change administratively we could do so if it doesn't meet administrative fund transfers criteria which is usually around 100,000 dollars and we would have to come back to the council for action okay thank you for clarifying those pieces I'll pause my questions for now because I'm sure my colleagues have questions too thank you Laura I have a follow up question to that and other funding streams have those been explored I know some small discussions have been had for example the children's fund and potentially other options or is the general fund right now the only option at this point to explore it would have to be from the general fund if there were options that it was related to the children's fund that would obviously be something we could take a look at in the future but the general fund probably the easiest location to look at would be the capital investment program thank you councilmember Cummings so I'm trying thank you for that presentation I'm trying to wrap my head around where we go next with this it seems like based on the presentation the county has identified certain organizations that they're going to prioritize that funding to go to and it also sounds like if the city wants to match funding or if we want to also fund those organizations as we have in the past or in any other type of way we need to do that make that decision today is that correct? because I'm just trying to understand how if we're going to be making decisions because I believe that we all have organizations that some of which I think are in complete alignment with the county some of which maybe there's certain councilmembers that want to see funding go towards and other councilmembers don't but I'm just trying to think and see how we can get to our ability to take action today since we don't have all those decisions and we don't have all those numbers in front of us and it's a little challenging without those numbers for us to kind of navigate the situation so I'm just kind of curious if like what is the next kind of the need from us this time Laura I feel like this might be a moment to share something that happened this morning at the board it seems similar enough to what councilmember coming is bringing up the action in front of the board this morning they chose to separate the motions into two independent motions and I want to explain to you why and I can't speak for you councilmember coming but if it's on point maybe this is relevant and I'm going to own that I'm choosing to respond to your comment about county prioritizing because the second item was exactly the county prioritizing the first item and that's where I'll start the choice to bring back the county directed elimination of one grant which created money and we were directed to propose how to repurpose it and then moving the grant awards down to the full 10% trim that was one motion that lived on its own and my comment about the county choosing we applied the RFP parameters which I understand are controversial but it wasn't a commentary what do we think is most important we just went to the next ranked the purpose for that being independently voted on as an independent motion is it kept that through line of hey we had 12 community meetings seven public we created the rules and we also in hindsight chose not to add certain rules that maybe we should have but this is the process let's go at the rankings let's take all money we have within the allocation and get five more agencies awards and we listed those so that motion was considered independent and standalone and the board voted five Randy the next grant can I just clarify when you say that that's the next grant in the scoring rubric in the scoring ranking so we have that they randomly chose correct and that's what I'm different is that we didn't oh my gosh this agency said the most compelling we just went to the next in line based on the ranking okay that large grant to senior network they were literally the next and those four mediums they were in fact two of them were tied I think but that is just literally following the process per the rp parameters within the core allocation now to the five hundred thousand that was considered a separate action and it was a separate motion to help simplify the decision points in front of the elected body and that is where just to key off of what I at least I'm hearing council member coming that was indeed a collaborative staff recommendation between your city staff Lauren Matt myself and Tiffany was on vacation and Kimberly can we find some new money we've got to do something this is really hard for these transition and what do we do with it so that one we for sure came up with this idea as in another new action with a new pot of money we found for one time can we help we came up with the idea of a bridge but we then added the supplemental material because like well this is actually not in the parameter so let's throw out other options because literally this is county and city general fund money so that I'm parsing out council member Cummings because the board chose to separate that and take a vote on the rfp grant slate first and then go to what do we do with this five hundred thousand and the small and they did that second so if that's helpful I just want to let you know that's what played out this morning Randy that that is helpful I think to follow up with that it seems like what was presented with their their applications that were submitted by certain agencies and the programs under those agencies could be you know could be one program or multiple programs so I'm just wondering if maybe we could have that up on the screen or some kind of email can be sent to us because for example I know a lot of the you know for example community bridges that was like elder day and a number of different programs that they offered and it looked like they were one of the recipients I think of the larger grants it's just hard for us because we don't have that information in front of us since the the decision was made while we were in meetings today and so it's hard for me without having it in front of me to be able to just constantly think back to what you know decisions were made what the funding was what programs it supported so I'm just wondering if we at least maybe get something sent to us while we're here or if we could have that back up on the screen I'm wondering Laura if the doc I I admit there are so many documents we tried to produce as much information as possible in hindsight now it's hard to cross reference all of them but Laura the document I'm wondering that might be responsive to council member comings as we put out a document I think it was on the 7th where we listed recommended awards not by rank but just by alphabetical order then a second tier was I think we called it competitive because they scored above a certain threshold and then a third tier was under a certain that would give if that's responsive to your point council member comings that would give you a picture and oh no it's actually Kimberly it's on the 27th because then we added in green the one additional and then you'd be able to see council member comings everything else that wasn't recommended award so you could see the whole universe that that's it Laura if that's helpful council member comings that's the one of the attachments council does that complete your questions council member comings I'll stop there for now I know council member Brown might have a question with regarding this it's yeah I just have a quite I won't interrupt your string of questions but I just want to be clear here that that what was just put up that is what happened what that looks like the same document that we already have but now I'm hearing about changes that were made though that document isn't accurate either well let me let me put it into bucket A and B I guess bucket A within the parameters of the RFP within the allocation the county and the city appropriated for the core budget that document that showed is in bucket A and you already have that materials and that shows the difference between June 7th recommended slate for awards by ranking and then the modified recommendation in front of you which is the five additional one more large based on ranking four more medium based on ranking so that's materials for bucket A bucket B we then proposed three months of bridge funding finding 500,000 city committing to some portion of that and that is a different set of doc that's a different list so depending on if we're talking about A or B I guess just to be really focused it's a it's a different set of lists can I just follow on that so because there are so many documents that you can't really match up and they'll make your head spin if you try to put them all out and cross reference right so I've had some help from a volunteer and we've been looking at and actually put that information into one spreadsheet what I'm looking at now to be able to see what would have been really helpful from the beginning would have been ability to see which programs were you know how much the programs that used to get funded lost because that is whether or not we want to talk about that because we want to honor the process that is the reality that brings us here to have this conversation was the response to that and the concerns about those programs workers jobs services for low income people so I have that but and that's been very helpful but now I'm trying to figure out if these additional changes actually reflected there so like I see for example I just want to see if I'm getting this right because it's hard to make decisions about what we want to do when we're not exactly sure what is that we're doing and these may seem minor but these are very big decisions and they mean a lot to the programs especially the small programs I just I'll go into comments later so for example I see a program so I think advocacy Inc. is one of them that's on our list so that'll work so advocacy Inc. was not recommended for funding and that was $55,525 that they had received in the past they now my head is spinning I've got to say I'm all the way to Z on the spreadsheet so they are going to get it looks like $10,000 bridge funding so then that means that they've lost $45,000 advocacy Inc. am I getting that right another example that may be more relevant senior network services this is a county funded program does that mean that senior network services received more than what I'm seeing in the chart that we put together based on all the PDFs we had before today so what I'm seeing is a loss of sorry I think I'm apples and oranges now so never mind on the senior network services in the seniors council oh no there it is sorry so the seniors council is losing in my chart based on all the PDFs we have and we have scanned them all we have reviewed everything and we'll be losing $151,000 $262 $151,262 however I heard that they're getting funding because you bumped down the into the next tier so does that mean they are getting funded is this over projecting the cut to senior network I mean I'm just how do we figure out you know which pro like for those I guess for those of us who would like to make these programs whole at least the city contribution and that's what I will advocate how do we figure out got made whole based on the county's action and I'm asking this with a spreadsheet in front of me that literally has input into it every bit of information that we've received and it's accurate I can't figure out other than going one by one and asking questions how to wrap our minds around that here now I think I heard two or three or four things and I think that's diagnostic of the complexity of the moving parts so let me start with what I think is the simplest because as I understand it it's only one county core grant though asterisk the city has some money in it from what Laura flashed earlier advocacy ink they are recipient of the local nonprofit triple a they are the local provider of the federal and state older americans act man and I know council member brown you sit on the advisor council I ran the triple a now meet us we both know it from different seats but they you have the federal state money that comes in and in this community advocacy ink has used general fund formerly community programs money as a match a draw and a supplement so to your question that one piece of the puzzle their application did not score high enough to be recommended for award nor in the amended recommended awards did they bump high enough up so that's part one part two they are in our spreadsheet getting more than $25,000 of core money so they will be a recipient of a bridge grant that is was proposed this morning be three months on the county action this morning it increases it a bit to closer to four months of bridge funding that's one moving part when you say senior network services what gets complicated is some of these programs looking in the rear room here had a couple of different core grants and then looking forward applied for a different slate of core grants so it's very hard to look backwards and look forward at the same time when they got well for senior network services they did not get an award until we came forward today adding one more large they are recommended but I think if they apply for more than one then they are recommended for that one but not the other so councilmember brown yes it's very messy but we're doing our best to sort of bundle it all together and make sense and answer your questions but I appreciate it's really hard to put it all the best we could come up with is separating as I said earlier the A and the B and consider the action or not it was agreeable to the board this morning for the slate of recommended awards because it was the process etc if you do like the board this morning that would be one vote then the focus is what to do with 500,000 and can you find more and that could be a that is a separate budget and a separate action okay I thank you I think that what I'm yeah and I get those intricacies as well so it sounds like really to know we just have to ask on a case by case basis but now what I'm hearing is it does sound like Advocacy Inc. will lose 45,000 dollars in funding not all of that was city money but 45,000 total and that is accurate based upon what you just described so I'll try to in my head keep doing that with the others for now thanks Do other council members have questions regarding the funding actions this this morning the process that was presented okay so I will take it out for public comment and then we can come back for action and deliberation on this item and I do see one member of the public here in council chambers are you speaking to this item on our agenda number 40 no okay thank you I will then take it out to our virtual members of the public and I see several hands raised raise your hand press star nine on your phone or choose raise hand on the webinar features first name is Reverend Beth Love welcome thank you Mayor Bruna and thank you members of council and city and county staff first of all I want to say that I do not envy any of you your job this is a very messy and very difficult situation and I think I want to acknowledge that there has been good will all along in terms of wanting to serve our community and I believe that everybody in this meeting whether member of the public or elected official or staff wants to serve the public and so I want to acknowledge that and I want to say that you know a little bit of bridge funding has got to be a tiny bit better than not having any funding at all though I do have a lot of compassion for those agencies that are not recommended for ongoing funding I'm the executive director of eForTheEarth we were recommended for funding and I just got back from vacation to find that the new recommendation is for 7% less and while I well that feels like a it's a large cut for us it's only around $7,000 but we're a very small agency I want to say that it respects the integrity of the process because it doesn't throw away the results of the whole RFP I appreciate that respect and that integrity with the process and that sharing the pain a little tiny bit so that more agencies can be funded is I think a very noble cause and so I just want to say that I don't have any specific recommendations for you all but I look forward to partnering with the city and the county and creating a healthier community that has greater access to the services that we offer and that people can heal their chronic disease by getting support education and dietary intervention so thank you very much everybody thank you for your input our next member of the public is Helen Ewan Story press star 6 to unmute yourself good afternoon mayor, council members, city and county staff I'm Helen Ewan Story acting executive director of the community action board and as you know CAB is the county's designated community action agency charged with eliminating poverty and creating social change through advocacy and essential services we serve over 10,000 low income people annually including through our youth and adult employment services immigration, legal and advocacy as well as homelessness prevention services so today I just want to express CAB's thanks and appreciation for all the work that's gone through this process and let you know that we support the adjusted recommendations for CAB's core proposals which we know reflects a 90% recommendation of our request but we support that in order to stretch the dollars and have more organizations funded and it's still going to help support CAB in helping thousands of low income people including at-risk at promised youth, young adults day workers, farm workers, seniors, families disabled households many many folks access needed services and supports to more fully thrive in our community also I want to appreciate what challenging time this is right now for the city and the community as we're continuing to recover from the pandemic and then the current economic challenges we're facing however we also know that this is exactly the time when safety services are needed the most and so I really want to appreciate all of the thoughtfulness you're putting into deliberations to try to find some additional funding for safety net services that were not recommended but still provide important services many of those are our partners and as you know provide childcare and senior services, mental and physical health services that are important to our community and important to our social safety network and to other organizations like ours so thank you very much and we look forward to our continued partnership to equitably serve our community thank you for your input our next member of the public is Sandy Davey press star six to unmute yourself I'm the director of the Santa Cruz toddler care center and one of the complex analysis Sandy I really appreciate like the reflection of how difficult this is to maneuver all this data one piece of information I think is really important that didn't come out in any of this is that funding for childcare as a sector was essentially cut over 90% from the last four process I don't think that that was an intention of the process but that's one of the impacts of it so essentially the outcome is saying that the city and the county don't think that childcare is an important service for for local people I don't think that you believe that that's true and I agree that the process was complicated and part of the I think part of the impact the reason for some of the low the big cuts to childcare was childcare centers there's many childcare centers that applied and were funded in past cycles that did not apply for the cycle and that was because childcare was so dramatically impacted by COVID that pretty much anybody the directors who would have applied were essentially in the classroom trying to hold things together so the dynamic of the process eliminated childcare from even participating because of the circumstances and I can give you more information about that but the result of it is essentially at this point for the city of Santa Cruz there were there's three childcare centers that I can look at that provides care for city of residence one of them had some funding the total funding of the corp is like about 0.001% of all core funding went to that one childcare center so it's like a rounding error how much actually went to childcare and then there's a toddler center who's one of the few places that provide quality care for children that are younger than three years of age which is in desperate desperate need anybody that has children knows that it always has been just getting worse to have our funding completely cut is unbelievably dramatic as well as I want to point out when you look at the numbers you have to multiply them by three because the court decision is a three year commitment so we got $25,000 that's $225,000 so when you look at it that way you need to understand that and then find some money either Matt our next member of the public for comment is Nora Russo welcome Nora hi there can you hear me yes hi I'm the program director at the Santa Cruz toddler care center co-director with Sandy David who just got cut off so yeah I think what she was saying is that 75,000 times three is our total grant that we are losing for a total of $225,000 and a bridge grant gives us you know right around 20 grand 90% cut is what we're looking at and you guys talked about this being an emotional process yeah it's emotional I'm really really sad right I work with toddlers I know how to name my emotions I'm sad that a decades long partnership with the city and the county is ending I'm sad that the realization during the pandemic of the deep importance of child care for functioning communities and economies has already been forgotten I'm sad that our low income families will no longer have to have access to our high quality child care program and that child care is now going to become something that is only for the wealthy I'm sad that my highly qualified teachers will not be eligible for wage increases despite the high cost of inflation that we're all facing living in Santa Cruz even worse and I'm grateful I am grateful for this idea of the bridge funding but I'm not quite sure how in three or four months I'm going to tell my families that are receiving subsidies that they can no longer receive care at the toddler center do I are they going to be able to work anymore because there's no other programs for one and two year olds they're not affordable because we are mandated by the state to have a very low ratio of teacher to children so that we can provide this quality care it's three times more expensive to provide this than pre-schools which is why it's so hard to find infant toddler programs that are still in existence we're still in existence for the most part because of this partnership with the city and the county this is why we can provide this care but we will no longer be able to have a sliding fee skip without this partnership thank you so much thank you for your input next is recovery cafe Santa Cruz and I believe this is the group that asked for additional time go ahead and unmute yourself hi yes we we were allotted extra time on this one I'll try to keep my comments short though good afternoon again mayor Bruner and members of the city council my name is Serge Cagno I'm the executive director of recovery cafe Santa Cruz we support both the housed and the unhoused in being a part of a welcoming community to foster healing and to achieve their goals for stability we were one of the new agencies to make our first application appeal for core funding we were not selected for funding but we appreciate the integrity and sincerity of staff in the creation and management of this process there have been challenges with the process and for future iterations of the government entities and the nonprofits to use lessons learned to improve this process for where to go from here we would like to state our appreciation for the fourth staff recommendation each of the nonprofits works hard to diversify their revenue streams as you know separate from core city and county departments make contracts with nonprofits for needed services they co-sign grant applications with nonprofits and they see grants which they do not apply to those nonprofits apply presently the fourth recommendation only includes supporting nonprofits who are previously funded by core but are not being funded in today's allocations we simply ask that the city council include in its direction to staff to include trying to find funding for those nonprofits not recommended for funding who have not previously been funded by core this recommendation is a moment to step towards officially collaborating with the city and county and local nonprofits to finding opportunities to meet the goals of our city the county as well as supporting our local nonprofits our ask is for a modification of recommendation number four to both include partnering with the local human care alliance and exploring other funding sources and to include all agencies who did not receive core 2223 funding regardless of whether or not they have received previous core funding thank you for considering this modifications thank you for your input our next caller Maria Cadenas welcome Maria thank you recording in progress and thank you to good afternoon to all the council members my name is Maria Cadenas and the executive director of ventures and we're honored and privileged to thank you for the consideration of funding of two of our programs semiguitas and alas we know that all Santa Cruz residents can benefit from a shared and prosperous economic future where zip code race or gender do not dictate income or wealth and that the pandemic highlighted the fragile financial stability of our economy which is why creating and recognizing the value of creating a vibrant healthy community requires a shared prosperity that will not stop and overnight it will take working together we're honored to work with many of the safety net providers as well as other agencies like the Santa Cruz county office of ed, the entes, first five, united way and others to make sure that we are working towards a better future for all semiguitas provides college savings accounts to all newborns in the county about 40% of those come from the city of Santa Cruz thanks to this funding we are able to partner and extend our partnership with the state to make sure that children get additional funds as they grow up and that parents get additional education to find financial stability and mobility our alas cohort has proven that within six months we could get families not only financially stable but to increase the household income an average of $1,500 a month thanks to the use of the funds for transportation to new jobs healthcare and other services I have great news today I have found out that University of Santa Cruz Blum Center will be partnering with us to fund the evaluation of alas which means that the funding today will help create valuable lessons learned for the future of the city and the county thank you again for your consideration the thoughtful approach of this process and for this extension to those that were not funded for future partnership thank you for your input our next member of the public is Reggie go ahead and unmute yourself welcome hey can you hear me yes hello I just want to direct this at folks listening in today I'm hearing a lot of like non-profit service providers people who serve the poor homeless feeling like this is normalized this is like the city did everything they could and this is just how it is and I just want to let people know that this doesn't have to be how it is we have money it's just going towards other things if we cut the police budget by just 10% we could probably fully fund a lot of these services Santa Cruz police self report 80% of calls for service are about homelessness that they can't do anything about we are passing laws like the camping services and standards ordinance or the oversized vehicle ordinance to just massively increase the police the unnecessary criminalization of poor people at the same time that we're cutting services and creating more poor people we've got city workers protesting outside saying that they need to live in vehicles at the same time we're funding police to take those people's vehicles away and send them to the bench lands at the same time we're talking about clearing the bench lands with no plan at the same time we're talking about kicking people out of Oceana in with no permanent housing and they're going in their vehicles and then we're going to kick those people out of their vehicles and they're going to go in the bench lands and we'll kick them out of the bench lands so I want everyone listening right now to understand how unnecessary this is and if you want to reach out to me find me my name's Reggie Meisler M-E-I-S-L-E-R and let's work together thank you for your input our next member of the public is Raymond Cancino welcome good evening city council thank you for your time I just wanted to just recognize and appreciate the thoughtfulness of the additional transitional dollars that are being presented in front of you today I do think that that is a step forward in helping to support long lasting partnerships that we've had in this community and I just want to urge you that to be more bold and to find additional dollars and resources to be able to do more I think that we know like previous scholar there are additional opportunities and places in which you are making budget decisions and making choices about what is valued in this community and we know that there's a need across our community for many people that have been left out of both as a result of COVID but as a result of just the inflation that we're seeing all around us and right now is not the right time to stop continuing to support services and individuals as you know from the results of core there are many services that are mission critical to ensure the well-being and health of our communities and I hope that you look to additional resources and opportunities to invest in your community to put direction to and measurement to what these kind of loose speaking directions of helping support nonprofits really means I think it's really important to understand that your staff already work with nonprofits to apply for grants many times they're asking us for letters of support to apply together so just saying that we're going to do that is for something that we're already doing and without results is just going to lead to the same outcome that we know is going to happen at the end of this meeting which is some programs will lose and some programs will have to close the door and so I urge you to really understand what the impacts of these closures will mean to your community services are provided to your citizens and understand how you can actually implement that change and invest in those services if that is what you want to see in San Francisco and so with that I just respectfully ask that you look at other funding sources and opportunities to look at the ability to invest in some of these resources and programs. Your time is up. Thank you. Our next member of the public is Joy S Welcome. Hi thank you I called in and commented this morning or actually I was in chambers and commented this morning in support of workers and listening to this conversation is just heartbreaking especially learning I shouldn't be surprised but learning that child care programs have been so severely cut and you know all of these issues with the core funding are also labor issues especially when we live in a place that is so unequal and we have so many hundreds of workers thousands if you expand that beyond city workers who rely on these things how can you have workers when you don't have child care and parental leave and benefits and you know it is very difficult to think Martin Luther King Jr said that a budget is a moral document and that's where this is and I know you're all trying with your best intentions to figure something out that clearly is a mess and it's not just the city that's responsible for this it's made more difficult because it's other people too but thank you for doing what you can to stick up for workers to stick up for working people to stick up for the middle-class families with kids that are having mental health crises that fall through the cracks because they're not poor enough for state benefits and they're not rich enough for the most private benefits there's so many needs who is Santa Cruz who are we and what are we building let's redistribute our wealth our incredible wealth to care for people that are really caring community thank you thank you for your input our next member of the public is Clay Kempf thanks everybody Clay Kemp executive director of the seniors council and I appreciate what the city is trying to do to make the best out of a bad situation so thank you for that I also want to bring to the forefront what do you want to do with these funds historically they've been an effort to maintain a local safety net and now the funding is moving on to be process focused rather than results focused and I think a process that doesn't focus on results is a flawed process the results have to matter so going back to the first comment if the goal is just to be another foundation or grant source and I think that's one of the most important projects here and there that's the path you've gone down the historical way to make sure that the community has a long lasting and sustainable safety that needs to be revisited and talked about in depth and I think that was one of the flaws of the past four years of the core project which I've spoken out about many times I also just need to say and it's troublesome to see a huge amount of money taken away from programs like nursing home protection or ombudsman that go towards an equity project when that equity project does not include older adults can you imagine just imagine that how can you have equity that ignores a significant part of the population except it takes away services from that population in order to fund it so that's I think a flaw to look at this and I just really encourage everyone to look towards long term solutions that go beyond these simple we'll try to get funding from elsewhere everyone has always done that but let's look at what exactly we're trying to accomplish here thank you for your input our next member of the public is David Bianchi yes I'm member of the council David Executive Director for Family Service Agency and you're muted we heard you for a minute but now you're muted David we lost you I see you're now yes let's start over can you hear me okay yes now you're good yes go ahead you can hear me yes okay I just wanted to say that again I appreciate the adjustments that were made the bridge and transition funding and looking for new resources you know my agency has been downtown the last 35 years I think relationship building here is important so that you understand the programs and not just looking reports I'm grateful our suicide prevention program was refunded with the adjustments but we have lost funding for five programs providing unique services that were put together as a result of the merger of four small agencies with us so that we could provide them in a more efficient and cost-effective franchising those over 400 clients children in counseling and women fighting cancer and survivors of child sexual abuse and care facility residents advanced programs we are to integrate and share common mental health objectives and outcomes I am concerned now I have a new concern that what I heard this morning about transition funded funding said organ or not proposals a number of my programs were under $25,000 in the last core cycle and I feel like I'm about to get penalized again listening to it defined as programs so I finally put them together in a proposal which I don't think the panel properly processed or understood and now I feel like I'm about to lose transition funding based upon some of those being separate proposals last time it's got less than $25,000 so I understood the motion thank you next caller is phone number ending in 1705 hi there yes welcome thanks I appreciate the difficulty that council and the supervisors faced making these decisions for all these worthy nonprofits and community organizations but I think the city has been missing a really core function we really don't have a public school and we're talking about limited public funds I would really like council to figure out how to either get Harvey West going full-time or enter into an agreement with the Santa Cruz High School which we paid for that school through a special bond we're still paid and all these social service programs these non-governmental programs are probably great I really think that our limited funds need to also be serving the general populace and I think that's some of what maybe made looks like measure F is failing and I think that is a reflection on people being dissatisfied the average person also needs to be served by its local municipal government and so I recognize this might be time to make this comment since you're talking about cutting funds for these non-governmental nonprofits but you really also need to look at the sort of some basic needs of the majority of the city so I would know that this has been kind of in the winds getting pulled back but we had it for a little bit when the kind of was running it and I really hope you can do whatever you need to make that happen thank you very much thank you for your input our next member of the public is Jasmine Mia or Maya this is Jasmine I am a therapist in the community licensed marriage family therapist and I worked at family service agency and I was just shocked to see that they weren't recommended for funding and kind of just this whole discussion they're not basically being posed if there's not enough to go around and taking some from ones that were awarded and then this extra money that's something and I think that's good but I want to echo what Reggie said in his comment that I think this is a problem that doesn't have to be a problem because if we look at broader sources in general of kind of reallocation of funds and how to get funding for these crucial social services I think there are ways to change up the city budget the police as was stated get so much of a budget that goes towards calls for basically for responses to unhoused issues which are more of a service oriented thing like a lot of the people who need services if they were to have these kind of like FSA or these community organizations would not be in a position where then police are being called where then they need that police budget so I think some of it's looking broader scale and being able to rebalance that budget of well if we take it out of that they'll be less with services there's going to be less crimes of poverty crimes of necessity and so I just think that's where you have to start is kind of services first and these agencies you know are just part of the heart and soul of Santa Cruz and are just super important for so many people and there's no reason they should be not getting the funding they need I think we're lucky to have a lot of these organizations and I want to continue to see them thrive and help people who are underserved or marginalized communities and so yeah so I just encourage you to look broader and not just like this dollar amount in this one category but look across the board and figure out ways to rebalance and reallocate money from other parts of the budget like the police thank you thank you for your input our next member of the public is Rose Klein go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself or choose the unmute option on the webinar features of your computer there we go okay can you hear me yes okay hi my name is Rose Klein I am a graduate student and an organizer with the graduate student union at UC Santa Cruz I just want to echo some of the comments that have been made recently I think it's incredibly important that we cut the police budget if we are going to be investing in a lot of these fantastic programs and these nonprofits we've been talking about how to build a better process and you've been talking about how to build a better process for funding these programs and I think that's really admirable to think about the process for funding these nonprofits at the same time yes there are funds out there you know 40% of the city's budget approximately is sent to the police and I was just the other day at an event where someone got hurt and the police were just standing there and doing nothing the pretty much the entire time that someone was actively in a confrontation and it was the members of the community who ended up actually doing things to make that situation better so what is the job of the police in this city literally what is their job they are getting paid to do very little we spend so much of our budget on them and at the end of the day that money could be going to I think much better sources is what I'm saying to these nonprofits to these systems that support the people in the city in ways that will actually help our community in ways that will actually build us up as opposed to breaking us apart thank you thank you for your input are there any other members of the public in the virtual world that would like to comment on item agenda item number 40 the core final award recommendations I see the name I am watching you yeah I spoke to this last time pretty thoroughly sorry not too much to add but I am going to repeat but I still think your priorities should respect the jurisdictional funding like who pays and where the benefits should go there is really no good reason to fund any nonprofits that operate countywide statewide or national unless they do a majority of their work here in this city and you could consider widening that circle but I don't see just you know whatever the county says they have a responsibility to have their jurisdictional responsibility to the county and I get it that they can fund countywide nonprofits but your mission is different and I don't know why you can't prioritize nonprofits that operate mostly in this city if they are valuable they perform but I don't see just going along with the county so that's all I have to say bye thank you for your input we have members here in the chambers did either anybody want to speak to item 40 just making sure no okay it looks like that concludes public comment at this time I will bring it out to council council member myers thank you mayor and thank you to everyone who called in I also want to say thank you to Randy Morris and also Kimberly Peterson who have obviously done a tremendous amount of work you know this I do a lot of work in Monterey County and I don't think there's a county in California that probably doesn't have a similar conversation at some point hearing unfortunately because in so many ways it is becoming more and more difficult for people to be you know to be in California to find safe housing to find adequate child care to have a good wage and and you know as a small local city government a city of 64,000 you know the money that we have been able to bring into our budget year after year is substantial and we continue to make that commitment you know years and years and years over the decades and I really appreciate the way that the county in the city I have just been privy to this a little bit over the last three years on the council as a council member but really really watching how you know the program is starting to be morphed and designed for impact I think we've learned that there's also critical service aspects to you know what so many of our nonprofits provide as a former nonprofit executive director I sat in people's shoes and watch my funding disappear as well so nonprofits are the piece of our community that oftentimes are the lowest paid no benefits, no unions no overtime these really are the groups that tend to take care of the majority of the people in our community that need the most assistance and that goes everywhere from the seniors down to the toddlers and we can see that in our lists and we see a very compassionate group of service providers and I do wish that we would have more to provide and I wish we will have more in the future we've tried with some investment you know attempts this past election doesn't look like we'll get there but those are the kinds of things that help cities provide impact back into the community and provide support into the community I really appreciate the callers and I do know that the county has done some a little bit of morphing today and I know we're all trying to catch up so I'm going to make a motion just so we can get rolling on trying to put together the recommendations so I'm going to go ahead and make a motion pretty much reflecting the staff recommendation number one which I believe fits with the work that was completed by the county today which is to maximize the use of all available core funds to fund additional proposals across the medium and large tiers in ranked order of scores and then specifically recommending funding that the next highest large tier application as well as the next four high medium tier applications would be supported and those would include the large tier agency of the senior network services specific to the aging community program, the medium tier service providers big brothers big sisters of Santa Cruz County family service agency of the central coast and that would be specific to the suicide prevention service of the central coast Santa Cruz community ventures the a loss program and then Santa Cruz lesbian and community center otherwise known as the diversity center and that would be for their health and well being initiative to provide mental health counseling to referrals to LGBTQ plus community youth and Latinx populations I'll go ahead and make that motion as a starting place and that way mayor we can start from there if that's appropriate thank you mayor I have a motion by council member Myers on the staff recommended motion and I'm looking for a second Vice Mayor Watkins you had your hand up yeah I have a second and I'll second the motion and I have a friendly amendment and a few comments if that's okay it's great thank you and then I'll ask city clerk to pull up the motion no okay we're going to repeat it after the friendly amendment I think we have the agenda recommendation and then the okay we'll need clarification on the motion but let's go ahead and hear from vice mayor Watkins okay or did you want the clarification prior to my comments council member Myers yeah I have a lot of staff in our agenda packet or what was presented by Randy Morris I would could staff speak to I'm sorry I have to amend I was trying to track but maybe staff can confirm whether our motion is tracking or what we need potentially to change I believe the motion as it stands in the gender report should be congruent with what you just read off because the agenda report lists the recommended awards includes at the end of the different categories the green rose which are the ones that you read off in detail so the motion in the staff report says you're basically approving the recommended awards as it's listed in that attachment and the attachment includes items that you wrote off I believe yeah if I can just going back to the complexity of this just to extrapolate from what Laura said and from a budget perspective that would mean that you're $1 million and $80,000 that you passed in your budget on the 14th that would then per the MOU move to merge with the county's budget that was just passed this morning put together that money would then fund the slate of recommended awards including these additional five so that would stand alone if you go ahead with this and vote for it period then there's a discussion about the $500,000 and coming back to look for new funds etc so that's how it kind of played out this morning and that was what was passed this morning I'll let councilmember Watkins continue then she's been tracking amendments potentially sorry I always on cue I think my dog comes and starts barking I apologize let me just first start by saying how I appreciate I appreciate the staff work I appreciate the folks who called in and more importantly just the everyday work that they do for our community just our safety net services this is not easy it's hard every time it was hard when we first did it I wasn't part of the council when there was just a different type of process so I also really understand and agree with the direction of in the theory behind core and understand that there was challenges associated with that and things that we can do to learn from it and improve upon and I appreciate your interest in reaching out to the council members and others to learn right away while it's fresh so that we can really take that into account moving forward I agree with this this proposal at this time I also just have a few comments before and I have additional amendment but one is in terms of you know particularly a sector near and dear to my heart which is child care and I think it's in a really it is an integral part of our society's infrastructure and care infrastructure and so it's it's really challenging to see it not be funded we basically nationally to be quite honest with you for decades in a way that it deserves and I think what happens is now we see child cares and families and cobbling together funding and we're really just not investing and our workers we're not investing in parents and we're not supporting women generally but that being said you know one of the things that I've tried to do is I've been on council is look at ways that we as the City Council can support child care uniquely and that we have our child care developer impact fee one thing that we passed most recently and the mixed use library project for example has in it a proposed design for a child care facility looking at other ways we can support child care but also really thinking the community for voting on our dedicated children's fund to really support our youth and to be this set aside uniquely for that population so in advance of this meeting I had an opportunity to talk to our first five director about our process and how we've overseen those dollars that will be changing most likely no it will be changing because after the voters voted it into into our policies it encompasses now advisory body but that being said absent that being the process that we have in place he was very open to having conversations with the city about how to support some of these child care facilities understanding how to access the dollars which is in the form of early learning scholarship which really speaks to what I heard one of the members of the community speak to which is that bridge funding for kind of an equity scaling system for subsidy based on people who don't necessarily qualify for state subsidy but are working really hard and are just about that threshold to potentially get some of that scholarship dollars to help with their offset the costs so all that to say that's one component of I know a broader network of a lot of multiple supports that are happening from early years of life to the end of years of life and so one suggestion or one addition that I'd like to add as a friendly amendment is to direct our staff to work with first five on how to support child care providers in Santa Cruz City and or those Santa Cruz City serving Santa Cruz City families and or workers accessing the early learning scholarship program funded through the Children's Fund so that's my friendly amendment can you repeat that can you repeat that really quick slower and I do accept that amendment sure no problem can you repeat that so to direct staff to work with first five on how to support child care providers in Santa Cruz City and or serving Santa Cruz City families and or workers in accessing the early learning scholarship program funded through the Children's Fund and I can do it too funny if that's helpful would be thank you and thank you for accepting that and I know it's just one bit of I think a bigger conversation but I think you know we are losing our workers we're losing our families and having child care available is a way to balance the cost of living here in this community so thank you Bonnie else and that's you right now you didn't want to mention first five directly in that I did I'm going to send it to Bonnie it's okay direct acceptable for first five yeah okay and Laura I'm seeing that two additional amendments that we should be looking at not tracking those I see a number two and a number three but I see Randy has this question up to his hand I think depending on how council wishes to proceed if you wanted to disposition the recommended award and vote on this and then move on to the comment conversation related to the bridge flash transition funding that would be how you could approach it and then Randy did you have something else to add yeah just in case this is relevant there was a paragraph in the staff report that is not linked to the item where the friendly amendment was added but hasn't been discussed now so I wanted to share this because whatever the direction lands probably to organize the buckets of activity we already propose that the county health and human service agency work with other jurisdictions we didn't say the name but we included first five in our thinking so you know to immediately after this go work with all of us to find ways to see if there are other revenue streams to try to help support sort of backfill so I just wanted to share that's already conceptually in the report and I share that because whether you drop that in this is about how to fund and close the core of P or you drop it in what you direct staff to report back on as part of our activity it's going to happen so I just wanted to share that that at least in our activities this morning those sort of things got put into a different recommend action which is how we report back in direction for what to do between now and then so I just want to share that case that impacts where you want to drop that additional direction I appreciate that and I'm not really attached to where that additional direction lands as long as it occurs right so and it's really encouraging to hear that the county has been thinking about that and that's something that you're going to actively be working on particularly with some of these organizations that I think can really help be kind of a lifeline to some of these other initiatives and just you know moving forward really you know in terms of the children's fun uniquely I just you know that is there for supporting kids supporting early learning and that's there to support prevention and it's equity centered and I just I'm really proud of our community and I'm really proud of this council and this in the voters here for putting that in place because for years to come beyond my term on council I hope that resource will always go to those and we'll always go to those purposes because the voters voted that it so anyways I'll leave it at that but yeah thanks for me thank you for bringing that friendly amendment up so we have a motion by council member Myers on a staff recommendation in the agenda packet number one seconded by vice mayor Watkins is that correct that's correct and there's a friendly amendment by vice mayor Watkins and let's see I do see council member Calentari Johnson you have your hand raised and council member Brown so we'll have discussion on the motion and then we can move on thank you yeah just a few comments I also want to thank those who called in today in particular nonprofit providers who are doing the really hard work and as a grant writer in this community and someone who's worked with nonprofits it's pretty extensively for the last couple of decades I have been on the other side I was a grant writer for the last set of core funding and I share very intimately the frustrations that our local nonprofits are going through I've been talking in the last several weeks since the June 7th meeting to some of the nonprofits who have been impacted both and that they've recommended for funding or they weren't recommended for funding and they had received funding in the past and so I have pages and pages and notes for you Randy and for whoever else I will be speaking to in terms of what we can do differently couple of things that I just want to bring forward here is just that what I heard multiple times is that even though we tried to simplify the application process it was very difficult to navigate for those smaller organizations who aren't don't have the capacity and the resources to hire someone as a grant writer to help them figure out the language and how to compare the RFP to what they want to say the scoring rubric was really challenging and I think we can do more there in terms of expanding the parameters of the scoring rubric and looking at the scoring rubric differently in terms of the different sizes of organization and communicating the scoring rubric and criteria to interested applicants ahead of time and then the timing of the funding is something else that we can pay attention to as well I know that there was Community Foundation had deadlines at the same time so those are just a few things that I wanted to bring forward here I do want to share that the other piece that we can do differently is to work really closely and directly with our local nonprofits on sustainability and looking at other sources of funding just here in our community I named Community Foundation Small Pockets Dignity Health Community Health Trust of the Paharo Valley Monterey Peninsula Foundation so there are a number of other resources here in our region that could be a fit and I think if we can make that part the core program workshops that we have that would be I think beneficial to everyone and then aside from that helping nonprofits navigate the state funding that we have available the state has a surplus a huge surplus right now and they will be allocating funds towards some of these very essential services that we have all discussed mental health being one so again just the role that the city and county can have in our process in helping our local nonprofits navigate the other resources that could be available is something that we can do in the future and so with that said I know that this is very difficult and as I said I've talked to a lot of the organizations out there and will continue to have the conversations but I would be in support of moving with this first motion that's put forward and given that our funds are braided I think it would get really difficult and tricky if we went line by line score by score I understand the thinking behind this that we went to the next years in terms of how the scoring landed and we've already said there's work to be done there but I would be in support of this motion with the friendly amendment to really focus on child care thank you council member brown okay so actually can I have a couple of questions that I'm just trying to figure out so can you go to council member Cummings first thanks council member Cummings I just had a couple questions I was just wondering in terms of what I was taking some notes earlier I'm trying to see if there are a line with what is occurring right now because I'm trying to understand how this aligns with the county's decisions on what to fund I know we saw some recommendations earlier during the county staff presentation so I'm just also wondering how these aligns since actions were taken today that might not have been exactly with what was put in our agenda packet so I'd just like to better understand how these are lining up currently so my understanding thank you council member Cummings my understanding from what the county board of supervisors asked they adopted their budget as it relates to the total five plus million dollars including our 1.08 our budget was adopted during the budget process and what this action would do is disposition that little bit over one million dollars for the city and disposition it to awardees as listed in attachment one the list of recommended items to award in addition to the friendly amendment that was just added to it so if council were to disposition that you would be in alignment with what the county approved the change that the county made if you disposition in a second conversation the bridge funding for transition the change that they made this morning in real time at the board of supervisors for transition funding so that would be the united way of Santa Cruz county to create a career community bridges meals on wheels Santa Cruz county Dientes community dental care semiitas from Santa Cruz community ventures second harvest food bank Santa Cruz county and then we'd be adding the aging and community is that correct and then big brother big sister Santa Cruz county suicide prevention services from family services agency alas in the diversity centers health and well-being initiative those are the that's what's before us right now the council member coming Bonnie Bonnie if you can bring back up your it's a much larger list late it's more appropriate we can keep the motion in one grouping that might be easier I'm happy to continue to to make the full motion if necessary is your question answered council member Cummings the five additional you listed the awardees plus those five additionals that you I was just trying to get the clarification so yeah council member Cummings I just want to clarify because the list you read is a small subset of the entire package of recommended awards that include your $1 million and $80,000 these five that are I'm seeing up on the screen are the newly recommended from the slate proposed to the county in the city on June 7th but the full list is available in that attachment and it's much larger than the list you just read and the reason why I brought that question up is because I'm trying to understand which ones have been funded what are the new recommendations and what is not being funded because we're going to move into conversation about where we want to see additional funds allocated it helps to know which ones are funded which ones are not going to be funded and I think it's also very transparent for this process because this has been obviously a very you know with decisions getting made and then there are decisions coming to council not being before the public trying to make sure that we're as transparent as possible with how this money is getting spent is something I'm trying to strive for and being able to visualize and see what we're deciding on is what I'm trying to do right now because I don't even know 100% exactly what we're deciding on which is why I'm trying to see if we can get a list in some way to see what we're spending our money on how much is being allocated because this is just a list we're allocating towards each of these organizations so my intent right now is to just be transparent because I'd like to support this but I really just want to know if there's something missing would that be something we want to include or if it's already included in this larger list Laura I'm losing track of what attachments were June 7th and June today but we had a list I think it's Attachment 3 or 3A that listed the agencies that are currently funded but not recommended for award I don't think it's this one No but the motion right now that Council Member Myers put forward is related to this list so it's the recommended award so what she put forth is an idea for the council to vote upon approving this list which adds up to the city's 1.080 million commitment to the new core model and the items that she listed out specifically are the green items that have been added since June the 7th but we're in the June the 28th packet from the beginning so that is what is on the floor right now the rest of the conversation and the questions coming from various council members relate to what is not on the recommended list and would be part of the conversation of how the council wishes to help other agencies underneath the transition slash bridge funding and that would be like the next recommendation in the agenda report which is not one that Council Member Myers put forward yet which is my understanding Laura is number 2 on the recommended motion in the staff report correct? correct but that's where the county did something a little bit different at the Board of Supervisors meeting and I think the conversation is going to be quite involved so you could either try to combine them or just position this out on the floor for conversation right now and that's why I did not because it did seem like things were changed a little different thank you for the clarification you're welcome did you have any further questions? I guess the next question I have is if we're going to go through these recommendations one by one or if we're going to go through them all at the same time because it's a little confusing but well currently there is a motion for number one and so we can after we discuss and decide on number one we can decide on the following recommendations and I do see Council Member Calantari-Johnson I just wanted to point out that that these are listed in our agenda packet they're trying to pull it's online but it's where so the list of the additional recommended agencies and their dollar amounts are in our agenda packet I don't have the page in front of me but they're in there thank you and Council Member Brown for this report beyond the attachment it's in the agenda report as well it's on page 40.4 thank you so it's all in there are you ready Council Member Brown or do you want me to go to the next? well now I want to ask the question I thought I knew what we were talking about so it's on page 40.4 or whatever in your books it's attachment 3 I just read it online that includes programs that may have gotten bridge funding but we're not talking about that until item 2 am I getting that correct? bridge funding we're going to have to go back to the list for another shot okay I do have some comments on this motion that's on the floor yeah I think I'd like to make them now okay so I'm having a hard time supporting this because I am concerned about kind of I guess I'm thinking about some of the things that I heard said by members of the public about the fact that this is not inevitable I guess this isn't just the way it is and you know we have to do this we have the ability to make a different choice and I think that choice should include additional funding for community programs I don't think right now is the moment to talk about each one of those I will make comments later but I'll just say that it's very difficult for me to support moving forward in this way without talking about the realities of the consequences for these programs but I'll I guess be continued for additional motions to come okay are you able to pull the motion up and may we have a roll call vote Council Member Calentary Johnson aye Golder Council Member Golder is currently absent Cummings aye Browne aye Vice Mayor Watkins aye aye oh great Council Member Golder that's an aye that motion passes unanimously okay and now we have the item of bridge funding there was a recommendation to approve three months of transition funding for all core programs that applied for and were not recommended for funding there were some dollar amounts that were approved by the county board of supervisors this morning 500,000 was additional funding unexpected funding that was applied to this purpose and we also have two other recommendations directing staff to return with the county human services department with a report of all agreements executed as well as any agreements with a revised dollar amount or where negotiations exceeded the September 30th 2022 deadline and the last recommendation is to direct staff to return with county HSD which is human services department by the way and when I use that acronym with county HSD on or before December 13th 2022 with an update on the three month transition funding the newly established contracts and performance tracking mechanisms efforts to explore other funding sources for current core funded agencies not being recommended for award and progress on the lessons learn review of the request for proposal the RFP process so council member mayor brunner yes so before you all start on this my apologies but number three related to the September 30th you do not need to disposition that will be incorporated if there are any issues with the contracts we will incorporate that but if you recall in the power point we had struck that one out so please consider what you read off as number two and number four it's just something we tried to consolidate between the versions with the county thank you great is that clear for everybody wonderful council member comings so I have a there's a number of motions that we're going to be getting into but something that came up at the last meeting that we haven't addressed is the fact that the council took no action on harm reduction coalition and they were recommended and so I'm going to make a motion right now that we fund the harm reduction coalition at the full amount recommended in their initial proposal second okay we have a motion to fund harm reduction program council member comings and seconded by council member brown randy morris I just wanted to make a technical clarification in the june 7 awards all recommended awards that were made public for the june 7 hearings county first city second every program but for the 7 that did not propose to cert city of Santa Cruz had dollar mouse listed that was the county share and the city share and I think the formula was the city share something like 21% so I just want to technically make sure council member comings when you say at the full recommended application amount the county board passed 50 to eliminate the county share which is about 79% so I just want to make sure everyone's aware and that is your jurisdictional decision that the full application amount was split that kind of you know 79 21 basically just to make sure everyone understands that I'm just speaking on behalf of the city's contribution that was listed in that report thank you for that clarification so council member comings motion is recommending not cutting the 21 to fully fund the 21% the city share of harm reduction in the core process and I can just comment on that you know we initially at that meeting people spoke to process on how people were how these organizations were receiving funding I think that and then after speaking to process there was a motion to deviate from that process under the under the notion that harm reduction coalition violated some policy at the county but no policy had ever been described and nothing had ever been explained about what they had done and they had been approved by through this process and although we're going to be making some changes I also believe that they have an evidence based approach of how to provide services to our community they went through the process just like every other organization and were approved and I believe that we should support them as well and allow them to demonstrate their ability whether it's and I believe that that group has an opportunity to demonstrate to the community how they can provide services and based on the outcomes of those services we can determine future funding but they went through the same process as everyone else and it's only fair that we also support their efforts let's see council member brown thank you mayor just a couple of points I'd like to make about the harm reduction coalition I support for restoring the recommendation for the city's portion of their funding this is an evidence based data driven program widely seen as having using best practices they have received what I would consider to be a strong show of support from federal and state agencies and that they have received significant funding they scored very highly the decision to cut their funding was from my perspective entirely political and ideological and unfortunately personal as well it's been really ugly the things that I hear people say about harm reduction coalition locally and the work that they not the work they do it's just been shocking to me so this is a political decision if the majority of the council wants to make that political decision it's not my politics it's not a decision that I'm willing to agree to I think they deserve funding I think they deserve to receive local funding I believe they do tremendous service for our community and those who don't I think have their blinders on and just can't look me on their politics here so I'll leave it there for this one Vice Mayor Watkins what I my understanding is that you know the board did and I'm not in the weeds at the board level but is that they didn't find that their policies were in conformance with board direction and have yet to establish certain policies that they had already requested of their agencies so it's not about the work that they're doing for me at least it's about the ability to work with the government agency that's in partnership with them until that's you know until that's repaired then I personally don't feel comfortable funding that this time so that's sort of my that's sort of my opinion on this at this time Randy Morris I just want to clarify because I am I don't have any history on this program I don't know them I feel myself apolitical on this but I clearly know this is a lightning rod issue for my colleagues at health and the county board and now I'm sort of in the middle of that because it's a core funded agency so I just want to start with I feel like I'm in a benign place just observing the energy I want to confirm that as council member Cummings said something about violating board policy I want to own that I said that and what I was messaging was two comments that anybody can go watch at the board archive on June 7th supervisor McPherson mentioned something about board policy and then supervisor Coonerty mentioned something about not about board policy but duplicate services because health already has a program I don't remember if it landed on which was what I own that I only mentioned the verbal comment that McPherson made but it didn't recognize another policy comment I don't know if that's relevant but I just want to say it was not as narrow as I own I message because I only shared a message from one board member so whatever it was whatever it was the end result is the board did vote 5 to 0 after McPherson's comment supervisor Coonerty's comment then they had a vote I just want to clarify that because I feel like I was part of this not knowing what I was stepping into when I shared one part of a board comment and my question is there any data that supports their their decisions to bypass this process? I don't know either way I just know it wasn't discussed in the public meeting that I was you know staff presenting on so I don't know that would be a health care my colleagues in health care I don't have the answer myself. Thank you council member Brown did you have another? No. Okay we have a one motion and if there's no further comments or discussion we'll go to a roll call vote mayor I'm not sure we don't have our interim finance director on if you would need to direct staff to find funding because it's approximately $30,000 and it is not appropriated that would be the 21% city share approximately the yes the exact amount was $29,956 and 72 cents council member Cummings is there any additional direction you'd like to make regarding funding? No I imagine I would I guess one comment I would make is that you know part of the recommendation at the previous meeting to have our budget coincide with this meeting is because we're going to be making a number of recommendations today on funding from our budget to help support these programs and so although we've approved our budget you know there was an effort to try to have this meeting coincide with our budget so that we can make these recommendations in conjunction with the decisions on our budget process so just want to make sure that that's also clear for the community that wasn't that was you know voted down and so here we are today and I imagine that we're going to have to back to us with more recommendations in the future for a number of items that we'll be making decisions on after we vote on that. Thank you. May we have a roll call vote? Council Member Callentary-Johnson? No. Boulder? No. Cummings? Aye. Brown? Aye. Myers? No. Vice Mayor Watkins? No. And Mayor Brunner? No. I think we have allotted the one million eighty as a total package and the previous motion we have we're moving forward with this process to support these programs so thank you. Our next item is recommended item number two and four on our agenda packet and I'm looking for a motion and discussion from our Council Member Council Member Callentary-Johnson. Thank you Mayor. I would like to make a motion to pull it up. I'm going to move the motion number two which is to approve three months of transition funding for all fiscal year 2022 core programs that applied for and were not recommended for funding in fiscal year 2023 so that according to the MOU and amended for this direction the county can pay the full three month transition contract amounts prior to the agreement being finalized. And I'm choosing not to include exclusion of the organizations that the city would contribute to that were funded under 25,000 I think that it's really difficult for small nonprofits and it's difficult for these small programs that have small budgets and even if it's just a few thousand dollars I would like us to support them with these bridge fundings. Vice Mayor Watkins are you seconding? I am seconding and I agree with that addition. Okay council member Cummings. One of the things that I think would be really important is that we're helping actually I have a question before I make my motion. There were a number of agencies that were mentioned earlier like Advocacy Inc CASA were those included in the full funding amount from what the county made its decision earlier. I was trying to highlight things as we were going through the county's presentation earlier and since this isn't in our agenda packet I just want to double check on that with the county staff. I think there were the stroke center as well, families in transition community bridges. So I just wanted to double check on. Council member Cummings are you asking specific to the three month bridge funding which agencies did the county vote to approve three months of bridge funding? Yeah or some of these organizations were included in the earlier funding. Okay so the the motion you just passed unanimously to approve the additional five grants with the ones brought forward on the seventh that list of people who are funded and I know just given two names you said Advocacy Incasa they grant applications were not ranked high enough to be in the slate of recommended awards. So then that moves to what I kept call Bucket B which is we have staff had proposed to the board this morning to fund every agency including Advocacy Incasa that had been funded today that was not recommended for award with a three month bridge. So that was what was in front of the board this morning. What got nuanced is then that in the moment additional direction to take those funded at 25,000 lower out and so that's the part that passed this morning. I'm going to ask Kimberly who probably has the list in front of her if you need to have specificity but I believe Advocacy Inc. Kimberly is in the group because I know Advocacy Inc. was at the board and said thank you and I don't know about CASA but Kimberly could probably answer the specific questions about which ones were in and because of that board direction which are below the 25. Kimberly do you have that? Yes I have I can answer based on what I have at the moment. So Advocacy Inc. definitely yes is included in the full three month transition funding if they were receiving more than $25,000 previously and the other one you mentioned CASA they also they had a couple programs and at least one was would still be included in the bridge funding. And then I guess I was just going to acknowledge that earlier when we pulled the information for those that would be excluded it was was a quick pull we're definitely going back from the same closely to to make sure that we've got our lists correct but please go ahead. Yeah I was so I mean for example community bridges there's the family resource center there's a number of community bridges programs and I'm wondering because this is it sounded like there are certain that there was a recommendation what I'm hearing is that there was a recommendation by county staff to fund organizations that were above 25,000 and is that for that 25,000 that threshold was the county contribution and then I guess the second follow-up question that is was that to fund them for a full year or to fully fund them moving forward I can break that down into moving parts first the staff recommendation that mirrors the recommendation in front of you as written before the board deliberated this morning was every agency we didn't propose a staff any threshold above or below anything every agency currently funded who did not get recommended for award and then to your second parts council member coming for three full months and that's what we backed into and we have 500,000 city county share to be determined what's getting complicated and I do want to use the moment to share with you what happened at the board this morning we could not say to the board with specificity exactly every agency so we said please give us clear direction so we can follow the clear direction given your vote to add this under 25 and over 25 so we have policy direction and we are still doing the analysis so I think it's complicated because we real time until when if so and then we add for back to what I think is your last question council member Cummings having to figure out proportionate shares is I think something where there's probably some toggle room between city and county staff depending on how much money which is between you know your city staff and you all and our money that we're going to have to execute after the policy direction we get to take it I just don't have to speak to get exact because it's just the maths complicated final comment for example when you say some of these agencies some of them multiple programs and some of them have small grants at 10,000 and then they have two that are at you know 100,000 so you know trying to do the math to figure out what their bridge funding is part of the work we have to do next and we just couldn't fly figure it out with that new direction this morning yeah and this is this is the challenge that I'm trying to overcome with how to make this decision today because on some of the attachments we have we have dollar amounts on some of the attachments we have we don't have dollar amounts we've been getting you know a lot of concern from a lot of these organizations and so it's really difficult to know who's going to get cut who's not who's going to get funded and and so that's why I'm asking because you know we're trying to figure out how we can do the best to make some of these organizations hold especially depending on the services they provide because for example or you know Santa Cruz toddler care center I would like to recommend that we try to fund them at the 2021-2022 amount for the next fiscal cycle I'd like to do that for all the organizations but we don't even know how much that would be and it can vary very widely amongst the organizations so I just want to express that that's a challenge that I'm grappling with right now so I guess an amendment that I'll make to the motion is that we fund the recommended bridge organizations for the amount for fiscal 2021-2022 for fiscal year 2022-2023 is um it's an emotional amendment it's a motion to amend so I believe the next step is to vote on whether or not to accept the motion to amend the amendment to the main motion and I will say that for some of these organizations it's like you know advocacy Inc is $13,000 um the CASA would be $18,000 okay and we're going to have to find funding regardless but it's you know I think that we should try to maximize the amount of support we can provide to these organizations especially since they've done a lot of um you know critical help for us during a very difficult time and so that's I'll just leave my comments there it's hard it's hard for us to navigate the space given that um we don't have all the information before us and so you know if we're going to go blindly at this I want to see if we can support these nonprofits to the greatest extent possible or that we put this off until we have more information I just want to clarify your amendment so my understanding on the motion on the floor uh is that it's regarding the bridge funding of three months of funding as a transition for to those that were not did not receive core funding awarded so all agencies would receive three months transition funding and council member Calentari Johnson you made or uh you included that the organizations currently funded at 25,000 or less is not part of our motion as the county it's not being cut out ours is just all all organizations across the board yeah I'm not understanding council member Cummings motion so maybe we can see it up because I'm really not understanding this is regarding the three months transition um that anyone who was not awarded would receive three months of transition funding anyone who was not awarded period or anyone who was not awarded who was currently funded right not awarded period so anyone who applied was not awarded um interesting okay confused with that is that the motion that what I'm talking about the motion you made council member Calentari Johnson my motion was to move forward basically with staff recommendation not integrating with the board of supervisors had added to it this morning that was my motion that's what we're referring to yeah and my amendment was that for those that reapplied that rather than it be the three months and allocated in the 2021-2022 budget cycle from the city and have that carry over to the 2022-2023 a full year of funding and we don't know where that's going to come from we don't know where any of this is going to come from right now well we do have an allocation of $1.8 okay this all falls within that right can you clarify Laura or Matt if you have any input so this is all discussing within our framework of existing allocated funds it's in the budget yeah if you were to award full years of fiscal year 22 level for fiscal year 23 we currently don't have budget appropriation to do that but we do have and carry on in conversation related to the appropriation of a little bit over $1 million that you just awarded and edit that or you would have to direct staff to find the funding elsewhere from an example place such as the capital investment program or other sources another cut in a different service area to offset the increase that we would ask and direct us to do today and city manager Huffaker yeah I think that's right what we're talking about here is an expansion of the total again zooming out of the total allocation that the council has already approved in the fiscal 23 budget which would require that we program other dollars as Laura mentioned the most likely candidate for that would be our CIP program which would allow us to protect against impacts to staffing and programs and services so depending upon final action by the council today we would be reprogramming some of the dollars that the council has already directed towards the CIP which will have some impact on those projects and of course the longer that bridge funding would be the larger the financial impact that probably goes without saying but just wanted to make that clear so it's both so I think what I want to clarify before we vote on your amendment is your recommending not a three month funding but a year funding is that what I'm understanding council member brown thank you mayor so my understanding is and you can all go back and look at the 2122 funded amount for each of these programs in picapedia and you can look at all of those and see what the city gave to the last core round for those line by line each organization I believe what council member Cummings intending is to say for that funding for those programs for a year at the city level I support that and while I have the floor I'm going to say we're talking about I'm going to just I think we should be clear about this that's advocacy and I do have a question about that one but I'll ask it offline the federally mandated program that our city is no longer going to operate if we cut this funding the stroke center large amount of funding from community bridges some cost of funding families in transition it provides rental assistance to poor families to prevent eviction we know that eviction prevention is much more cost effective than dealing with houselessness after the fact the mental health client action network Planned Parenthood Arios Unidos the Santa Cruz toddler care center who you've heard from and hearing that the diversity center received funding back filled there I'll leave them off but that's my list from what I could glean from putting all of this together that's who's going to lose funding I want to restore what the city has previously given them for this year as a stopgap measure to reduce the pain of these cuts Council Member Golder and then Council Member Myers thank you I appreciate everybody's comments that called in and I understand what valuable services these nonprofits provide to members of the community and the community in general that being said I'm just wondering Council Member Cummings where would you propose that we pull the money from to cover this and just after this morning's talks around negotiations in close session I'm really I'm wondering if while times are tough I think that we have to think we as the city have to pay our employees that's their only way they can get money but nonprofits have other places they could grant opportunities and grant awards and while it's really disappointing and hard for people to hear and I'm not saying that these services aren't valued it's just we only have a limited pot of money unfortunately and we have to make these difficult decisions and so I just wonder like do we have a dollar amount but this would cost Laura and if so then Justin where would you say we would pull this from to cover this that's a good question thank you thank you Council Member Golder Council Member Myers my understanding was and you can correct me if I'm wrong either county staff or city staff but I believe the first motion we passed was a directive to look at to get together and look over the next little bit here you know probably next couple months specifically around working with first five I believe that was your intention Council Member Watkins or Vice Mayor Watkins to look at trying to help with for example the toddler center and other child care related cuts that are currently on the books but we were going to look for other resources is there other resources out there that with a little bit of time there we would be able to identify those I'm just trying to understand without a number it's hard to support going back to full funding when we know that we can't fully fund without cutting something else we don't have a revenue measure so we don't have any funding so I'm just curious county staff or maybe Vice Mayor Watkins was that I believe the intent of your motion or your amendment was just to explore support for those back to hopefully those levels or close to those levels I'd be happy to hear from city manager or county staff or Vice Mayor Watkins whatever whoever's best Thanks for that Council Member Myers I'll admit we're waiting through the mud here a bit so I'm going to try my best to try to bring us back to clarifying what we have is the main motion as well as Council Member Cummings amended motion and then what I would see happening as we move forward depending upon whether council moves the main motion or the amended motion so because it's difficult to run the numbers on the fly given the complexity of this braided funding what I would anticipate happening based on the council's direction today is we would return to you in August with a funding plan which would clearly delineate where we're pulling that funding from to fund whatever the delta is the main motion is a shorter bridge period so we're obviously talking about a smaller dollar amount even if that fell within my authority I still think appropriate to bring it forward to the council so we can very transparently show what we're thinking in terms of where to pull that funding to make that happen so I just wanted to make that clear that would be our intent based on the council's direction and those would be general fund dollars would likely come from RCIP but that would give us time to determine how best to accomplish that without getting into the exact numbers today. Thank you. Go ahead Randy. Thank you for going first Max this is your house I just want to say back napkin math the three points of bridge funding 500,000 a full year 2 million that means there's 1.5 million not accounted for so that's one point that's just the rough. Number two I think what council member Myers was getting at and the specific additional direction from Vice Mayor Watkins is first five and I just want to throw in the other variable that it's always better to find state and federal funding to fund these important anchor programs so that we know exactly where the state budget is going to settle and then the first five so I think to me that's part of the landscape discussion which is is there a way to find resources to support any of these programs of importance to the community that is not City or County General Fund and then what's left how do you backfill the 1.5 million if that's what you passed ish so I just want to throw that in there in terms of part of process. I'll just clarify really quickly also in addition to I think what specific to first five and child care funding you know there's so many I think they describe it as like the spaghetti of funding streams that come into early care but uniquely the city of Santa Cruz has a dedicated children's fund uniquely to support city residents kids and families and providers and workers kids and their child care needs and those who aren't necessarily qualifying for subsidized care which you have to be very poor to qualify for but have a need to get support for child care and so it's this early learning scholarship system and so my conversation was also in addition to what Randy you're speaking about about leveraging state and federal dollars but also looking at how our children's fund that goes through first five with no overhead or administrative cost mind you and I you know kudos and thanks to them but directly back to the providers how that it can also be a part of the solution for organizations like the toddler center and others providing this essential service and that's beyond core that's beyond anything that's in perpetuity based on the voters of the city of Santa Cruz who said they want to see those dollars go to that purpose so that's what I added so it's it's a both and I'd say so I guess thank you everyone for that for that I mean I don't disagree that we should be trying to fund it fully all of our organizations that's that provides services in the city however we do not have a revenue source unfortunately measure F failed at the ballot box by close to a hundred hundred votes and you know we needed full support to be able to get that what was hopefully going to be an eight billion dollar source of funding for the city forever and so we have to live within our means the state has the endiable job of divving up about a 94 billion dollar surplus I think Randy's point is well taken as is our city managers which is we know there's going to be trailer bills in August and trailer bills in September all of that is going to happen with state state funding as well and so I I'm not going to cement support the amended motion because I do believe that you know with direction in the original motion are both staffs at the county and the city are going to continue to watch these funding streams as well as look at resources that are also within the city's control to try to look to see if we can plug those budget gaps but if the back in whether it's a little bit 10% one way or 10% another way a million dollars is just not in our budget and to one of the speakers today earlier we do need to build our bike trails we do need to do the things that help take care of our parks and so we are in this difficult decision right now because we failed in our revenue measure you know there was not full endorsement by all city council members unfortunately on that revenue measure and I'm not sure how the voters responded to that or not but I know the voters looked to the leaders of the community to try to see a lot in terms of weighing their votes so I think we unfortunately have to tell our community that we have to keep looking and we were committed to that but at this time I won't be able to support the amended motion primarily because it's not good fiscal policy to promise things that we can't promise and that we'll have to make other cuts especially to the two over about a million dollars thank you thank you council member Calentari Johnson you had your hand raised my points were just articulated by council member Meyer so I don't need to add thank you okay I want to hand it to deputy city attorney Cassie Bronson I don't want to unduly cut off discussion here but I kind of want to go back to we have a motion on the floor from council member Calentari Johnson I believe and we have the substitute motion by council member Cummings and the substitute motion is I'm sorry we have an amended motion excuse me by council member Cummings but an amended motion is treated the same as a substitute motion which is there has to be a vote on whether or not to accept the amended motion so I would suggest that the council go do that and then so there's it's sort of a two vote process so thank you we'll go ahead okay okay yeah because I just heard council member Meyer say a million dollars and my back of the envelope calculation based upon what I heard from Randy Morris was that and I think Laura as well Laura Schmidt if it's 1.5 million for all the programs and the city is roughly putting in 21% on the programs that are braided funding then that's more like three hundred and fifteen thousand dollars just to be clear about what we're voting on because we can't compel the county to put more money in we're talking about the cities share thank you alright we will take a roll call vote on the motion to amend which is to fund all non awarded organizations at for one year is it up there to award the bridge funding from fiscal year twenty one twenty two carried forward of fiscal year twenty two twenty three maybe I can clarify that language is slightly to award the bridge funding to total the recommended amounts or allocations I should say sorry from twenty twenty one twenty two to fiscal year twenty twenty two twenty twenty three city sorry sorry city allocations bridge funding I'd also say to to recommended core organized programs that reapplied and did not receive funding sorry is it also to cut to take the funding from the CIP is that part of your motion no it's not part of my motion because the staff will need to go find that funding and that funding could come from a number of different sources so no no suggestions I would say this has happened in the past where the council has moved forward with programs and I would imagine that even I would imagine that the direction this motion is going in is it's likely not going to pass but in the next motion we will still have to go and find some of those funds if we're going to give funding to all the organizations and so we will have likely this discussion again of where this money is going to come from but I'll leave my comments there so in your amendment I'm not seeing the year that you mentioned and that's the difference with council member Calentari Johnson is the three months of transition funding and I guess is that spelled out in the when you have fiscal year that's the intent but to clarify it to award the bridge funding for one year so after bridge funding for one year to total the recommended city allocations for fiscal year 20 yep all right may we have a roll call vote is the seconder okay with that okay thank you may we have a roll call please council member Calentari Johnson no Boulder no Cummings aye Myers vice mayor Watkins no and I appreciate the intent with that motion let's see we are now back to the original motion which is to fund the bridge transition funding for three months as recommended in the staff report I had a question actually for clarification I thought I heard that it was to fund all the organizations that didn't receive funding was that the staff because I think the oh so it was the staff recommendation not in alignment with the county right council member Cummings the distinction there is that this would include all previously funded but not recommended for this cycle regardless of whether they're above or below the 25,000 threshold and just for the council's information to again this is rough math but we estimate that price tag to be around a hundred thousand dollars for those three months the city's share I would like to add if someone would like to add a friendly amendment for to direct staff to return in August with that funding plan I think you can make the friendly amendment I'll make the friendly amendment the staff return in August with funding recommendations for a funding plan keep it general and for the record you could have made the friendly amendment the mayor can make friendly amendments thank you please do mayor all right is the seconder okay with that friendly amendment the first and the seconder yes thank you may we have a roll call vote council member council member Johnston aye I that motion passes unanimously thank you everybody and I look forward to refining this process and the input in the fall the reports out of this and I'd like to make a motion I didn't that motion include two and four I believe so two included three can you four included three and now you have to do four and I'd like to I thought council member Calentari Johnson made a motion to approve staff recommendations two and four it was number two it was solely two okay so now my apologies I had two and four written okay so now we are on item number four and council member Brown would you like to make a motion sorry I just didn't want to get lost in the mix I know it's hard you're looking all around I don't mean to be aggressive but there's a lot going on so I just want to make a comment here before I make a motion about this process and when I say this you know I don't take this lightly because I think that what I'm about to say is going to sound some people aren't going to like it but I feel the need to say it and I want to say it with all really with all due respect I think that the staff that have been involved in this have the best intentions I know you care and you're trying to do your best with a process that I believe has become over engineered costly unvalued and really has produced some pretty disappointing results and a conundrum for elected officials on well at least some of us about what to do here these are going to have a significant impact particularly the smaller less source nonprofits and it's really negative impact and and so to say that it's emotional or you know they're upset is I think diminishes the gravity of what is going to happen in people's lives real people's lives who have jobs right now who are going to lose their jobs people who have jobs right now including one city worker that I know of who's going to lose her child care as a result of what we're doing today and I could go on these are really they're a big deal when I hear council members talking about a few thousand bucks yeah that makes a big difference for some of these programs especially the under-resourced ones I have lots of notes that I'll be happy to share when if you still want to call me when you're doing the assessment but what is our goal here is our goal to have a robot safety net or is our goal to operate like a foundation that really hit me when a member of I think it was Clay Kemp said it and as a long-time grant writer myself I see that foundations are always looking for the next shiny thing I want a robot safety net I don't want to be another funder that's like while the panels we're talking about real people's lives so I'm going to make a motion to basically move the staff recommendation here with the following addition to return with an estimate of costs for consultants and administrative staff time for the 20 to 23 core funding cycle what it costs in consultants and all of the staff I know it's going to be challenging but I'd like to get some even a back of the envelope assessment because I can tell you now as a member of the community programs committee meetings for years prior to being on this council the staff time involved in the previous process we can call it imperfect we can say anything we want about it but it sure did not take a fraction of what time that is being spent now to micromanage grants for these programs so I want to know how much that costs so again I'm going to step back my motion is to move the staff recommendation with the addition of a return with an evaluation of an estimate on the costs for consultants and administrative staff time to oversee the core 20 to 23 process councilmember Valerie Johnson do you second that yes I second that and just had some comments after councilmember Brown is complete great so we have a motion by councilmember Brown and a second by councilmember Valerie Johnson so item number number 4 of item number agenda item 40 is The motion is to direct staff to return with County Human Services Department on or before December 13th with an update on the three month transition funding, the newly established contracts and performance tracking mechanisms, efforts to explore other funding sources for current core funded agencies not being recommended for award and progress on lessons learn review of the request for proposal process with the addition of returning with an estimate of costs of consultants and admin staff time spent on the core process. All right. Councilmember Cummings. Yeah, in other states since I didn't get to say my comments from before on this process I do want to thank the staff and community members who've provided their input on this process and we've worked through this process. I will say though that to councilmember Brown's point to many other points out there as someone who runs a nonprofit and who writes grants for nonprofits, you know, one of the things I think moving forward that we really have to be focused on is impacts and be an impact driven, have this be an impact driven process because if we have organizations that are having positive impacts on our community, cutting their funding to fund a new organization or to just give other people a chance I think can have detrimental impacts and impacts that are unforeseen because the people who they serve then will no longer receive those services and many of the people who are working for those organizations might not have jobs anymore. And so figuring out and determining that criteria if organizations have been performing good services and have positive outcomes and they're having positive impacts on the communities, how we can keep those organizations whole should be first and foremost as we're considering to bring on new organizations and create new pools of funding to get new organizations started because, you know, we're taking a risk right now with, you know, funding some folks who are in the unknown, not that that's a bad thing, but, you know, it's coming at the potential cost of cutting organizations who we know perform good work in the community. And so my hope is that during that three month bridge process that we also work to help those organizations find more funding and I don't know if that has to be, that should be included in the motion, but as part of that bridge funding process that the county and city staff work with the organizations to find additional funding. I'm happy to add that in this friendly amendment efforts to explore other funding sources. Yeah, that's what I figured. So, you know, that's already there. But my hope is that that we can continue to fund these organizations and we are not, you know, that they're funding that the loss of funding isn't coming at a cost as a cost to some vital resources for our community and services for our community. Thank you, Council Member Count Harry Johnson. Thanks. Yeah, just on that note, that was a comment that I made earlier on in this in this discussion that that is that should be part of our lessons learned is that sustainability is a conversation that we have with all organizations involved and to outline and help navigate what other resources and sources of funding there are. But the other thing I want to say is just thank you, Council Member Brown for your addition to that motion. Obviously, I second it. So I'm in agreement and I just I want to speak for myself. I'm part of the Community Programs Committee. And as I mentioned before, I've been a grant writer. I've also been a grant reviewer. So I understand all parts of this. And I think for me and for us as council members, like we we all have a role to play. And so moving forward, my role as a Community Programs Committee, I'm going to dive into this a lot deeper and those council members, my colleagues who aren't in the Community Programs Committee, you're included in the process as well. You know, it's it's one thing to to come in at this point at this juncture and give feedback. Of course, we don't know what we don't know until we get there. But I think it's important for all of us to really be immersed in the process throughout this happening. I mean, county staff, city staff, this was a big lift. The consultants we brought in, this was a big lift. And you did a tremendous job. Were there things we could have done better? Absolutely. I think we all agree on that. But I just want to name that it's also my responsibility as an elected official and as a community leader and someone who cares about these organizations and nonprofits, that I stay engaged and I stay involved. So I'm committing to that and moving forward in whatever the process should look like. Thank you, Council Member Calantari-Johnson. I think it is appropriate that a lot of this input and work go through the Community Programs Committee as we move forward that committee. That is, you know, a huge part of that function. So thank you for serving on that committee and for the direction. And I think before we have a vote on this motion, you know, sustainability was really the key word that was brought up several times. And it's definitely been made clear that many of these programs and organizations are all vital, have not had sustainable funding to maintain and have relied on this award funding from the city and the county. And, you know, it's understandable, you know, the city itself. We are also looking for funding sources to fund all kinds of things. You know, we've made reductions across every department. We're, you know, reducing what we can as well. So it speaks very highly to the pandemic and the increased needs in our community and the reduced funding and resources for everybody. And so I'm really on the glass half full, happy that we were able to manage to put over a million dollars towards this. We would not be having this three hour discussion if we had, you know, funding to fund all the programs. I think we would all agree that would be an easy motion to make if money was not the issue. All of these organizations offer amazing community benefit that we're all in agreement of needing support. So I look forward to seeing what other funding sources we can help these organizations. Find as well as what other funding sources we can contribute to these other, to these organizations. Core is just one funding stream out of our city general fund. So there are other earmarked sources and I'm glad the children's fund was an example of one of those other funding sources. I would like to ask for a roll call vote if there's no other. Really quick. I heard very quickly the words friendly amendment after. No. Okay. Thank you for confirming. Council Member Calentari Johnson. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Brown. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. And Mayor Bruder. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you so much everybody who was able to join us. Randy Morris, Kimberly Peterson. Thank you to Laura Schmidt. Thank you for all the work. And I look forward to the updates. Okay. We are moving on to item number 41 on our agenda today. Item number 41 is the resolution ordering an election and requesting the county to conduct the election and requesting consolidation of the election to be held on November 8th, 2022. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you wish to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from council. And then we will take public comment and return to council for deliberation and action. In addition to the public comment, we will be hearing in person and virtually. We also received 119 emails to city council at cityofsantacrews.com and those are also considered public input and public comment. We have two organizations approved for extra time. Cindy Dawson, the yes on empty home tax and John Hall, our downtown, our future. Okay, at this time now, I will hand it over to our staff for presentation. Thank you. Mayor, really quick. Before you, we're going to start with a presentation from finance based on the staff direction for a fiscal impact report. In your packet, you had the county's verification of the petition, qualifying them for the ballot. And then you'll have a resolution to call the election with the city attorney's office is going to speak to that when we get to that point. Great, thank you. My name is Marisol Gomez. I'm the assistant finance director. And the council has had ordered us to have a fiscal impact report for the empty homes tax citizen based initiative. In your agenda report, we have a summary of impacts based on elections code section 9212. We worked with our internal departments to get some summary on those items for you as well as internally in the finance department to get some estimates to put against this to provide to you and the public for our best estimate on revenue measures and cost measures on the citizen based initiative. So let me just dive right in. We'll go right. I don't have a formal presentation here. I figured we'll just talk some of the highlights and then get some feedback from you guys. All right, so as you're well aware, we have the empty homes tax for consideration by Santa Cruz voters if you guys pass this agenda report here. And we were told to report to you no later than 30 days after election official certifies the efficiency of the petition to the city that has been done. So number one, a fiscal impact. What we did here, as you can see from the screen, actually I should be sharing my screen. I'm sorry about that. Go, sorry about that. Are you guys able to see the? Yes, thank you. Then back report. OK, so what we did here was start with a absentee properties list for our basis of calculation for the revenue estimates as a starting point. So what that means is we looked at the city of Santa Cruz parcels and the absentee list provides mailing address other than Citus, which is other than the physical location of the parcel. So we started with that as a basis for what we would assume would work for this measure for estimates. From that, we took away some of the, we audited the list to make sure that there wasn't any duplications in the address. You know, those that were abbreviated accounted for that. And then we also reduced that amount by homeowner exemptions claimed, which was left on that list. What we also did as far as estimating what an exemption percentage would be, similar to the city of Oakland and their vacant homes tax measure, we provided a range of exemptions. So we don't actually know what, who and what, and how many people will qualify for the exemptions under this ordinance. So it was best to provide a range so that way you guys can have a range of estimated revenue here. So the basis of that range was we took some of the information from our long-term rental program, and they have certain exemptions on that list under that program as well. And we found that from that list of exemptions that approximately 30, 34% were on the exemptions for that program. So we used as a lower measure for our range, and then we had four estimates, a higher range of 60. And we chose that range just to show you the range of estimates that we needed to provide based off of that. A lot of the other information is based on the cost associated with what we feel the cost associated with implementing this ordinance would be. From the ordinance, there are some stipulations where 15% of the revenue would go towards the committee, the commission that needs to be established, and 5% of that could be set aside for homelessness and hygiene services. And the rest of that was supposed to be, sorry. And then we have some other information on startup costs and also ongoing costs, but split out between the commission and what other costs would be besides that. So let me pull up the museum in here. Sorry about that. So we provided the schedule because we know that you guys like to have transparency in how we came across, how we estimated some of these costs. And we also broke it down by startup costs, which would be those one-time costs in the first year. Ongoing committee costs, because as I said, the committee costs don't have a cap on them. The administration does, aside from the ongoing committee costs. So we broke that out so you can see that these ongoing administrative costs are capped at 15% per the way the ordinance is written. The measure is written. The ongoing committee costs are not under that 15% cap. So that's how we decided to break it out for you just to provide a little more information. And with discussing internally about what departments might handle some of these administrative costs and how much time we estimate each person would be allotted to these activities annually, we utilized our budget numbers for fiscal year 23 to grab the fully burdened hourly rate. So those are for certain positions in these departments. Some of these departments up top here show multiple positions. So we're a very collaborative group when we have to implement something or track something. We're working across departments. It's not just one person or it's not just one department. So some of these costs are multiple people in these departments working on some of the administrative costs as an estimate. So that's how we got the fully burdened hourly rates there and then estimated some hours on these tasks. So we talked with our departments, we talked with the auditors, we talked with our legal team just to estimate and try to gather and put up some hours towards some of these related costs. So what we're looking at here is a grand total startup cost of 607,000. That is this first section here of just the startup costs. Ongoing committee costs we're estimating here at 126,000. And again, we separated that from ongoing administration because that's capped at 50% of revenues. And this could fluctuate. One of the reasons why this is an estimates because even the current ordinance, the way it's written is that the committee meets no less than one time a year. But just based on the way other commissions are where they're meeting monthly or they might have special projects or special meetings. So we have to build in that estimate for time. And so some of that is what this estimate is entailed in terms of hours. And again, sort of like we do currently for our budget and revenue ad hoc committee, it's not just one person in a department. It could be a couple of people because they're overseeing some different tasks. So we try to utilize some of what we do now to estimate who will be involved in that committee. Of course that will have to be set up if this passes but that is our estimate. So that's why you see multiple departments involved there as well. As far as ongoing administration here, we have some of these based on the portions of the proposed measure on what needs to happen, annual audit adjusted annually for CPI changes. We need to negotiate payment arrangements or plans and we need to have a process for exemptions and how to verify exemptions. A lot of that we talked with our revenue manager who oversees the audits team currently for TOTs and short-term rentals. So we try to utilize those hours as a basis of why we have some hours here on those ongoing pieces, those tasks that will inevitably come if this measure is passed. So that is the breakdown of the cost. We have also the breakdown of the revenue there but I just wanted to highlight sort of the report and what that means and why we broke it down by those sections. Some of the other pieces here regarding the general plan, a lot of, there's a lot of good information here. What we're basically saying if the revenue does, sorry, if the measure does generate enough revenue beyond the ongoing administrative costs, there is a potential to fund these housing, any housing objectives that would be had, right? So the general consensus is, yes, if the measure has potential to raise funds that can be used in the creation of additional affordable housing and in regards to the affordable housing creation of promotion, this does coincide with our general plan and housing element. There's nothing that contradicts what's in place now. Some of the other areas here, land use and housing. Again, if the total tax to be collected associated with, if the net positive is, if there is a net positive, that's how we know if there's gonna be a benefit or not. A lot of what we have here is estimated but we have a statement here saying this would be good if there isn't a positive. The committee would have to figure out a way to wrangle these funds and work with the finance department in the city to make sure these funds are kept for these purposes and determine those purposes. But overall, that is the general review on these items. So impacts for infrastructure, right here. Unlikely to have a direct impact on existing properties because of vacant home taxes is sort of administering against existing properties. It's not requiring the creation of infrastructure. It's only if we have generated enough revenue to work in affordable housing. Business attraction, retention and employment. Again, if the ongoing revenue here could positively impact the community. If the revenues exceed the cost of administering the program and staffing the commission established by the measure. Vacant land, the initiative will not have any appreciable impacts on vacant parcels. That was vacant parcels were omitted by the proposed measure to be taxed against. And whether a unit is vacant or not doesn't really have an impact on whether to develop land. So that's one of the items in this section of code that doesn't seem to have an impact. Again, the ordinance is the proposed ordinance is related to existing properties even though in the future we could see that this has would have an impact if it generates enough revenue over the cost of the annual administration and the startup costs, then it can begin to build some positive impact in all of these areas. And looking at research for this, we did try to reach out to other cities that are doing this, Oakland, San Francisco. A lot of them didn't return some bid responses a lot of them had just responses on the ballot measure that we were able to get some information from and how their measures pulled in that type of information but we didn't really get any helpful insight on from those people directly on how they did their analysis for revenue and cost estimates. However, I did want to make a side note that the city of Los Angeles and more locally the city of Caputola were having discussions on whether to add this type of tax to their November ballots as well. They don't have anything as far as I know in their agenda on their agenda review yet, but that is a side note just more locally cities are looking into this. A lot of the information from San Francisco and Oakland started during since the ordinance started during COVID and San Francisco actually delayed a portion of their ordinance. It was really hard to get some of that data that would have been helpful from those cities knowing that they didn't really have what we would consider a normal sort of process for this data and research. So that's also something that we wanted to know we did try to reach out and get some information here but it is a newer type of tax and even though some of these were implemented before just the times that they were implemented was not helpful in this data gathering. So that's the overview of the empty home tax impact report is presented by the finance department. And I welcome any questions. Thank you so much, Marisol Gomez. Appreciate the information and the dive into this impact report. I did have a couple questions and then I'll bring it out to council members for questions. We did receive a lot of input in emails. There were some specific questions around the estimates on the revenue were underestimated and estimates on oversight committee are overestimated. And so how do we, can you speak a little more to that process in attaining and determining that information when there's the question of underestimated and overestimated in this context? Yes, absolutely. So a lot of the estimates and sort of where the bottom estimates are I think start with the exemption. So again, we don't know exactly how many percentage or units would qualify for exemption. So we had to have a range and sort of show range of what that would look like. That exemption range was based off of our current exemption range with the long-term rental program just sort of having like a like data set to estimate from. Some of the other things, we started with properties on the absentee list. Again, that is properties that the property tax bill sent to other than the physical location as a good basis of if we have people are in their homes they're typically the property tax bill sent to their home. And so that was the starting point for this estimate. And then from there we took the estimate of the long-term rental program as well. So the long-term rental program we have to assume that some of those that have the property tax bill sent elsewhere that they have long-term rentals there so they're not gonna be vacant. So we reduced by an estimate of our long-term property program. So we worked with the planning department and got their data set there and used that as an estimate. So what we're doing is trying to, we start with that list of properties and try to think of which ones would be exempted under what the ordinance reads, which ones wouldn't qualify for the 120 days or more being vacant and further reducing it there. That's what we have. And your question on, did you have a follow-up here? I know you had a question on the oversight committee. Yeah, the underestimate and the overestimate question was, yeah. So the oversight committee, again, we sort of based on who we thought, what positions we thought would be pulled into these meetings or needing to be working on reports, annual reports, ad hoc reports. There's gonna be a lot of staff time in agendas and meeting minutes and just as we do for the other commissions and the council. So those estimates were from the current sort of what we do for the revenue and budget committee. So again, these are estimates, but they're based on what we do now and what we feel would be the hour spent on this program. I know the ongoing costs are aside from the committee. Again, those can be reduced, but we're trying to show an estimate. So let's say if we absolutely know there's only gonna be one meeting a year, then that would reduce it, but we're assuming there might be other meetings that we're gonna have special meetings that we might need to convene on how to spend some of the funds that have been building up. Thank you. There was a question about the litigation response budget included in the startup estimates. Yes. And the question was that there's no indication that it would expose the city to a high level of risk for litigation. So is that amount in startup costs unwarranted? In the finance department, we don't believe it is. We have, you know, part of finance, we have our internal service fund, the risk department. And speaking with in the fiscal year 23 budget, we have some estimates for the risk and the liabilities and working those in. So those estimates are already in the budget and they were based on what was known at the time. So this is a new ordinance. And speaking with our legal team, being a new ordinance, it's always subject to have some sort of lawsuit and whether or not the measure itself has some cause, anyone can sue the city. And even if there's not a good case, when talking with our risk manager, there are costs associated with having to go to court and get those cases thrown out. So we sort of are trying to approach this whole, sort of wholeheartedly, like, what other effects will this have? And we chose to put it in the startup costs because we don't believe it's gonna be an ongoing cost. It couldn't be a cost that we set aside and add to the internal service fund for risk, because it hasn't been there for the specific purpose. So that was one of the reasons why we chose to put it in the startup cost. And we did work with our legal team to get an estimate on what this would be. This is a conservative estimate. Thank you. I was curious if that was standard and based on anything that we currently have in place. Like you mentioned with the oversight committee estimates based on other committees and what's currently in place. The one other question was on the web portal in the startup costs. And the question was, since the city already has a web portal built, is that, does that need to be since one already exists? Is this an additional web portal? What is that web portal cost? For the cost on there, I believe we have a $5,000 flat fee. So sort of like with our current software system, if we're adding a new module or a new some user-defined fields, it's gonna have a cost. So that was a close estimate to what we recently implemented in revenue. For some online payment. So we've based things on what we've had in the past. And then there's always, if we have a new portal, we're gonna need to test it, we're gonna need time with IT, we're gonna need time with our revenue team, just testing these things all around. So these estimates are just, it sounds like if we were to need a new portal, this is what it would cost. But it's not saying we do need a new portal. Yes, and even if we have changes to the portal, we're gonna need to account for staff time to test that and implement that with IT. Yeah, I think the difference between the changes and the new portal is significant cost. So I think that helps my understanding in that you're just laying out the estimates if it were to go that way. Not saying that we do need to have this in order to implement this. And Mayor Berner, if I could chime in, just to zoom the conversation out here a bit, because I'll admit there's a lot of details that we're throwing at you related to these estimates. The cost allocation plan itself is a complex matrix. As we look at the services being provided across the departments and how we account for that staff time. So broadly speaking, I would say that the estimates included in the study are conservative ones. Staff took a conservative approach when they look at what the potential administrative costs could be, and the same is true for the revenues. So as we look at the potential here, could the revenues certainly exceed what's being estimated? Absolutely. Could the costs that are being estimated turn out to be lower than what we're anticipating? I think the same could be true. And some of those efficiencies, including the example of being able to utilize the portal that we already have in place, are certainly examples of that. But to be safe, staff included those estimates in there in the event that we would need to go through that additional standup cost as part of the program. So I just wanted to make that clear that these are estimates, and certainly we could see those revenues come in higher than we're expecting. And we may find ways that we could administer it more efficiently, which would, of course, reduce cost. Thank you. I will bring it out to council members. And I saw council member Myers and council member Brown with hands up. I think mayor council member Brown's hand was up for me. I know you were having to go through the two different realities. So I'm happy to have council member Brown either way is fine. So well, I actually wanted to ask a question about the timing here because I have many questions about this spreadsheet and thank you for the transparency, but it's causing me to have a lot of questions. And I know there are people who I see a lot of hands up. I have the participants are open. And I'm just wondering if we can, like I can wait on my questions. I just realized at six 30 and we have a time certain oral communications. So I would like to recommend pausing this item so that we can go to our time certain oral communications. And I just asked because there are people who are gonna be now waiting a lot more. Will we come back and then potentially have another hour of council member questions before people are able to speak? Or can we, I'm just asking if we could meet. Then public comment. That's a good question. It's a question for you though, mayor, because you're the chair, presiding officer, if you would be willing to let people speak before we hash it out. Does that. So when we come back from oral communications to go right into public comment and then to have. Yeah, I think that's a great recommendation. Thank you. Always trying to be mindful of everybody's time. I know these meetings are long. So at this time, we will thank you, Marisol. And hopefully you're okay to pause right now as we go to oral communications. And let's see, let me go to my notes. So oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda. For members of the public streaming, if you wish to comment during oral communications, now is the time to call in. You can raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls on your computer. And once you see the screen with the instructions. If you are members of the public who are here in person and wish to address council, please line up to the right of the dais to my left. You will have two minutes to speak if you could sign up on the clipboard and that way I know who's here to speak for oral communications. And can we get instructions on the screen for those that need to call in for oral communications, please. Please remember, this is a time for council to hear from the public on items not on our agenda today. We are not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public, but when we are able, we will address questions raised after oral communications has completed. And now I will, we do have, it looks like one member of the public here joining us in chambers. So please come forward to the podium and make sure the microphone is close to your mouth. Good evening. It was nice to speak here earlier. I kind of need to apologize. Some of my wording I should say most because it certainly doesn't apply to every single person in the room. You know, not to speak about things that have already been discussed. You know, the Santa Cruz County Local Agenda 21, this is only 85 pages. Imagine if this were a piece of tempered glass on your driver window. Sort of shatter it into a million pieces. So I'm sure this has stuff to do with the agenda, but I'll be loosely specific. I'll make a comparison between the county of Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors and what is spoken about here. I don't know if it's like Santa Cruz is some kind of an island. There are things going around all over the world and in the United States as far as shortages. And I don't think there's been much mentioned about since the beginning of 2021, over 120 fruit production plants have been destroyed. Seems like we're having not only just a diesel shortage, but we're various things that diesel motors need. People I think are somewhat beguiled if they think that most of the electricity generated in the United States isn't generated by coal. If we don't have diesel, those locomotives can't move the coal and we're facing some serious situations that it just seems that Santa Cruz is an island is a very special place, but it is connected to the United States and planet Earth and there are things going on that are just not being talked about. Seems like people are gonna be in a big shock when certain things catch up to smart city Santa Cruz. So thank you and thank you for respecting the time because I got multiple places to be. Thank you, good to see all of you. Thank you for your oral communications. Are there any other members of the public for oral communications in person? And let me go out to our virtual attendees. And it looks like a phone number ending in 7003. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. This is for oral communications. Good evening, can you hear me? Yes, welcome. Good evening, this is Darius Moseley. Interesting presentation. I would caution about the methodology used to estimate the number of parcels that have a tax bill sent somewhere else and to get absentee. Darius, I will have to stop you. We are taking oral communications on anything not on today's agenda. It sounds like you're speaking to item of the empty homes tax, item 41. And we will be- I'm sorry, I'm sorry, go ahead. Is that true? I'm sorry, I didn't hear that last part. Are you speaking to empty homes tax? I thought I was, but I do have an old, I do have something unrelated to the agenda if it's too late for that. Okay, this is oral communications to clarify so you can start over if you're speaking to an item not on the agenda. Okay, I have a couple actually. First of all, I'd like to give a shout out to our new city manager. I listened to him being interviewed by Robert Norris at the public safety meeting about a month ago and he was extremely poised, extremely professional and exhibited extreme restraint in being interviewed. So just a shout out to him. And yes, indeed, there are a few of us that do listen to that show. Second, I just learned that the Santa Cruz War, the pier is the longest port in pier, I think in the country. And there's absolutely no indication of that that I would love to see a sign at the end of the pier, say something like, congratulations, you've reached the end of the country's longest wooden pier or something to that effect. It could be the equivalent of the Santa Cruz equivalent of the Las Vegas, welcome to Las Vegas sign appearing on Instagrams and Facebook and so forth near everybody. Anyway, that's all, thank you very much and see you in August or September. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public that would like to speak to us on any items not on today's agenda for oral communications? Okay, that concludes oral communications, thank you. And I will now return to item number 41 on our agenda. And there was a recommendation to have council questions after public comment. I did have one clarifying question. I wasn't sure if we were gonna get a staff presentation or maybe it was mentioned about the hour down time in our future. I wasn't sure if the staff portion of the presentations were over if we're hearing that as two separate items. Are you talking about the impact report? In addition to the impact report, the library item that's gonna go on. There's no presentation for that one. Okay, I will now look for public comment. If you are joining us here in council chambers and would like to comment on item 41, please line up on my left and sign in at the clipboard. And if you are a member of the public joining us in the hybrid fashion via virtual world, then please raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or choosing the raise hand feature on the webinar controls of your computer. And if we can bring the slide up one more time for calling instructions, if you're calling in, the phone number should be on your screen. And this is for agenda item number 41. I guess I will start with you since you're at the podium. Go ahead and just make sure you're talking into the mic. Okay, I had four minutes. You allocated four minutes to me as John Hall Chair. Oh, great. Thank you for identifying. Far down time in our future. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, council members and other people. Today, our downtown, our future requests that you put our petition measure on the ballot for November at your May meeting, ODEV strongly endorsed the motion that the city engage a consultant to conduct an impact assessment of ODEV's measure. Despite the delay in finding a consultant and the resulting delayed impact report, we continue to encourage the city to find a highly qualified consultant that we can assure provides a completely objective and unbiased analysis. It's our understanding that your decision to engage a consultant includes two important principles that we'd like to affirm publicly. First, in order to ensure a balanced and objective report, the city staff and consultant are expected to engage with our downtown, our future, concerning the measure and its impacts, we propose that such engagement include the co-chairs of ODEV and the members of its architecture and urban planning team. Second, because ODEV's measure, if passed, would establish an alternative approach to that being pursued by the city, the consultants analysis should incorporate comparison of the present plans for downtown's lot four use, mixed use project detailing costs and benefits of both alternatives. In particular, considering the lot four project for fiscal responsibility, the consultant needs to assess a realistic timeline for securing parking garage bond financing and payment of bond debt by the city given that the parking district is years away from achieving a surplus of revenue over expenditures. According to the city and county clerks, 4,912 registered Santa Cruz city voters signed our petition, more than 1,000 more than the 38,48 required. Today, we especially wanna thank the more than 60 volunteers who made it possible to complete a verified petition without the use of any paid signature gathers. We wanna thank the city and county clerks and their staff for their efforts and the more than 1,000 people residing in the county who wanted to submit their signatures in support of ODEV but could not legally do so and most of all, the 4,912 city voters who supported making ODEV's proposal a matter for voters to decide. Our measure is straightforward. It keeps the downtown library at its civic center location, allowing the full renovation of it proposed during the 2016 Measure S bond campaign. It requires to the maximum extent feasible for housing equity that 100% affordable housing be developed above the ground level on eight city-owned parking lots downtown. And I would note simply doing affordable housing on one of these lots, lots seven on Front Street would result in at least 50 more units of affordable housing than promised in the lot four project, plus with room for a childcare facility, community rooms and other amenities and social services. It establishes a permanent location for the downtown farmer's market at its present highly successful and beloved location on Cedar Street, thereby preserving a public space that ultimately can become a downtown plaza. And it avoids putting 60,000 cubic yards of concrete and unsustainable 24 million pounds of carbon dioxide into a parking garage when future parking needs can be handled through transportation demand management. We believe that we are charting a better, more sustainable way for Santa Cruz and we believe that we all owe it to our community and future generations to choose this path. If our downtown, our futures measure passes, we look forward to working with the city to ensure that its planning framework is implemented and done so in a way that benefits the community on all fronts. Thanks so much. Thank you so much. Okay, our next member of the public in person. Hi, welcome. Thank you so much. Thank you for your time and attention. And I also wanna say I love seeing all of the parks make life better backgrounds and I heartily agree. In 2018, I stood here and addressed Mayor Tarazas and the then city council members. I let them know that by then I had already attended many meetings about the future of our downtown library and the measure S funds and our downtown. I let them know that I was strongly opposed to the proposal to move the library and combine it with a parking garage. At that point, there was no affordable housing in the proposal. And here we are in 2022. And while we could well have had a fully renovated library by now, had the city not kept insisting on this incredibly expensive project, I'm encouraged that the voters will indeed have a say in these important and far-reaching plans for our downtown. I support our downtown, our future, and I look forward to voting yes on that ballot measure in November. Thank you so much. Thank you. Hi, welcome. Are you ready? I can go out to a virtual member of the public and give you a minute to... That is a suppressed report that they have not received since it was issued. Can you clarify what your... Yeah, the name is Gary Richard Arnold, and I want to congratulate you on keeping the communist and Marxist direction that you've had. I know Don Lane as mayor gave the key to the city to communist Angela Davis, who was the vice presidential candidate under communist Gus Hall, who called for the slitting of Christian children on an altar. Yeah, they said, if they love to sing about the blood, let's give them some. So anyway, I want to thank Don Lane, who was the campaign manager for Leon Panetta, and we all know about Panetta Gate, right? There's not one of you that doesn't know about Panetta Gate. Panetta Gate was when Leon Panetta Gate... Are you speaking to item number 41? It doesn't sound like you're speaking to the agenda item. This is... We've already... We've already concluded world communications. We are on item number 41. Neil Coonerty, who is a fading socialist, and as George Bernard Shaw said, I'm a communist. Not a member of the Communist Party, but Stalin is a first great failure. And your continuation... Sir, I'm gonna have to stop you. Thank you for the handout. Please stop. Can you please... Thank you. Thank you. Okay, at this time I'm going out to our virtual members of the public for agenda item 41. And I see hands raised. We have first hand raised is Cindy Dawson. And this is for extra time. This was a request for extra time. Okay, hello, council members, can you hear me? Yes, thank you. Okay, thank you so much. Good evening, council members. My name is Cindy Dawson, and I'm the volunteer campaign manager for the community-driven empty home tax. We'd like to thank you and city staff for compiling a fiscal impact report. The empty home tax is bringing part of the solution to our affordability crisis. And it's imperative that public have accurate information to inform their decision in November. Unfortunately, the fiscal impact report is missing some critical analyses and contains information that is factually incorrect. The over 6,000 voters who signed our petition urge you to correct these areas before accepting the report into the public record. The report's revenue estimates are significantly underestimated. The report does not provide details on the methods it used for calculating revenue. And it does not use the California Department finance numbers, which report over 2,000 homes may be eligible to pay the tax in Santa Cruz. This discrepancy needs to be addressed directly in the report. It's also important to note, however, that the report finds the empty home tax will generate $2.5 to $4 million annually. This should be considered the low end of the revenue despite the fact that the finance staff failed to mention that in their report. The report wildly overestimates the cost of the oversight committee. This report estimates included over $100,000 to hold one annual meeting of the oversight committee. The committee cannot meet more than once a year without city council approval. And the committee is modeled after the 2016 measure the oversight committee so you can get exact estimates from the county. The report does not make a case where it's inflated $100,000 litigation budget line. The city doesn't provide any evidence with the increased legal risk. This is an unsupported budget line and unnecessarily bloated startup costs. The city already has a reporting web portal for its transit occupancy tax and short-term rental. The report includes not $5,000, but over $40,000 to develop a web portal and make changes. We call on the city to be efficient and modify the system we have instead of creating unnecessary costs. Startup costs are over inflated and not supported by case study. The city of Oakland is over six and a half times the size of Santa Cruz with a much more administratively expensive empty home tax. Yet their startup costs were estimated at $100,000. There's no reason to believe our administration costs would be six times that. We strongly urge you to direct staff to update the report accordingly before accepting this report. We all know why we need an empty home tax. There's skyrocketing housing costs and stagnant wages that are pushing our friends, family and neighbors out. We're not producing enough affordable units to meet the demand. We must create a revenue stream to fund the creation of these types of units. The empty home tax does that and you can take action today to publicly support this community-driven solution as being reasonable, fair and effective way to subsidize the creation of affordable housing for the lowest income levels. This community has stepped up to bring forward a positive part of the solution and it's ready to do our part to keep Santa Cruz accessible and thriving. I encourage you today to step up with us and support the empty home tax. And I think I have a couple of seconds that I did just wanna thank legal staff for responding very quickly to our notification that the proposed ballot language in your agenda packet had significant errors when compared to the impartial summary before produced by your lawyer. And we really look forward to the updated language they'll be proposing for your consideration. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your input. Our next member of the public for input is Logan Haug. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Welcome, Logan. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, my name is Logan Haug and I'm a member of the Student Housing Coalition and I will be a rising sophomore at UC Santa Cruz. I'm also a Santa Cruz voter and I urge you strongly to support, come out publicly, support the empty homes tax. It's a community-driven initiative and it raises critical funding streams that the city desperately needs to combat the housing crisis as well as the homelessness problems that it's so clearly facing. If you decide not to support the empty homes tax, you'll be missing out on somewhere in the range of $5 million annually. And I just also wanted to say that the estimated budget is clearly laden with administrative bloat that is completely nonsensical as Cindy brought up in her comment earlier tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Our next member of the public is, I am watching you. Okay, thanks. The empty home tax is brought to you by the same mindset that gave us Measure M, like the extremist democratic socialists, i.e. wanna be communists who don't respect private property and in their wet dreams would like to abolish the entirety of private property ownership. Think globalist class Schwab, in the future you'll own nothing and be happy. I take Darius at his word, he has investigated this and the few number of properties that might qualify for such an outrageous theft, oh I say tax may never pay for a legal administration ratio. The analysis here is pure guesswork. Nor will this measure compensate for the loss of personal property rights that the empty home tax proposes. This lack of practicality uncertainty isn't what makes it so objectionable. It's the deviant politics and ethics of central control trying to erode every private property owner's rights. It figures it's also brought to you by a council member who infamously said something like just because the people bet it down that your aim doesn't mean we can't implement parts of it, which I neither forgive nor forget as a total public patrol after which mass protest followed in which large parts stuffed that idea along with certain other council members, which for that and other reasons were recalled in a historic recall first. Now, some of what I have to say next is partly hearsay relying on what I have just told or read but I always found it alarming even if only half true. The story is the same council member supposedly had a close personal quaint not only with an author of measure M who posted videos advocating the end of private property but also a person I won't name but his name most certainly appeared as the admin of a Facebook page that was associated with a Marxist organization known as the public school. That person's page was a dedicated Marxist reading website where members organized to meet supposedly to read the works of Karl Marx locally in Santa Cruz but I suspect are or were actually activists not unlike the Democratic Socialists who want to destroy American values liberty of private property and replace the tyrannical central planning state worship to parliament for your comment. Our next member of the public is Jasmine. Welcome. Oh, sorry. Okay. I urge you to adopt the empty home tax ordinance tonight. In fact, one of the steps of a city initiative states that you can adopt the ordinance without alteration as opposed to calling an election and I want to make sure people realize that. The other thing is the empty home tax is so crucial because Santa Cruz is in an affordable housing crisis. I witnessed many coworkers and friends have to move away or survive in vehicles due to the outrageous price of housing here. The simple facts are essential workers including teachers, healthcare workers, childcare providers and service workers all of whom we need in our community. As a mental healthcare worker here I see members of our community being financially strapped and pushed out of the city. It is unacceptable and the empty home tax is more than reasonable. I often hear the argument it's my property, I should be able to do whatever I want. However, given the housing crisis we are in the good of all people needs to come first. If people can afford a second, third or other numbered home such that they aren't even occupied a third of the year certainly they can do their part and pay a tax to allow for more affordable housing. Otherwise they're restricting housing supply. They're holding housing off the market which also causes market rate and prices to rise both bad for our current housing crisis. I won't go into how staffs report seem to be inaccurate and biased except to name that. And I would hope they would be consulting with the SNMP home tax just as our downtown our future is getting consulted with. And even with the bias report there was a net revenue. Thus this should be a no brainer decision to support it. As long as we can get a funding stream for affordable housing we should. It may be a smaller dent at first than what we want but it's going to literally house people who need to be here. It makes all the difference to the individuals and families that will benefit from the extra money that can go toward affordable housing. Again, I implore you to adopt the empty home tax tonight without alteration. There is no reason not to do this and every reason to do it. If you want to adopt the ordinance at least call for the election to let voters have their say. Thank you. Thank you for your input. The next name is, oh it just switched. Joy S. Thank you. Hi, this is Joy Shandeldecker again. I would just like to echo the comments that the cost estimate seem high and the revenue estimate seems very modest. Donna Myers, council member Myers made a comment earlier that about the measure F failing and so we need revenue streams and it sounded a little like blaming some council members for not supporting that. In canvassing for the empty home tax one of the things that I, one of the questions that I got a lot and I wasn't counseling people on measure F one way or another, I was just informing them but when people heard that it was going into the general fund and that it was a sales tax, they were like, oh no, no, no, no. It needs to be dedicated funding and it also needs to be a progressive tax. So I really think that people are either themselves hurting or aware that a lot of other people are hurting financially. And just regressive sales tax and regressive taxes just aren't gonna be very popular with people. So I think progressive taxes on wealth, any way that we can redistribute wealth throughout our community. And this is a theme with SEIU labor negotiations and core funding, wherever we can find ways to redistribute wealth to the people who are doing the boots on the ground work to make our community run, we should do that. And I think that voters, put it to the voters, support the tax and see what people want. We think that people will support it. Thank you. Thank you for your input. Our next member of the public is Bodie Shargle. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Good evening to the council members, city staff, everyone in attendance. My name's Bodie Shargle. I'm a lifelong Santa Cruz County resident speaking with YDSA and the Student Housing Coalition. I'm bummed that the council can't adopt the empty homes tax tonight due to California law, but I think that it's still a very good initiative to support. We talk all the time about how extreme of a housing crisis our city's in right now and here the community has brought the council a fantastic step towards a solution on a silver platter, essentially. So while you can't vote to adopt it tonight, I ask that council members support it and endorse it individually going into the November election. Additionally, I ask that the council correct or amend the fiscal report that grossly over exaggerates expenses and underestimates revenue based on population. If our costs are proportional to Oakland, we will be under $100,000, nowhere close to the amounts estimated. I don't know how a single meeting annually of the oversight committee can cost $126,000 unless you have butlers handing out champagne flutes and canapes at the meeting. So I think that that deserves at least an explanation for how those numbers were arrived at. And I'll reiterate that I ask council members to individually endorse the empty homes tax going into the November election if they believe in the American values that we're trying to improve upon here. The right to housing, which is a human right, housing is an integral part of a human's ability to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And that is what the empty home tax is all about. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your input. Our next member of the public is McLean Watson. Go ahead and unmute. I am a rising sophomore at UCSC. And I urge you to take action today to publicly support the community driven empty home tax ordinance. Our essential workers, including teachers, healthcare workers, childcare providers, and service workers cannot afford to live in our town. We want our neighbors and essential workers to be home. We want community. We want Santa Cruz to be accessible. We deserve to have Santa Cruz be accessible. We want economic diversity, which drives racial and cultural diversity. These are the things that make Santa Cruz special. Please keep the Santa, please keep Santa Cruz vibrant and support the empty home tax today. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Our next caller is phone number ending in 6793. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. We heard you for a minute. Hello, can you? Yes, now we can. Okay. Thank you. My name is Nikki Winkard. And I'd like to the council to really take a look at the staff estimate of the cost for the empty home tax measure. As you know, this is something that goes on the ballot. It's very important. And some of the other people have pointed out that the stakes are very high here because we do have an affordable housing crisis in the city of Santa Cruz. And I know that you want to address that and the empty home tax is one way. So some of these numbers, they don't seem to be supported. There's really no way even to dispute them since we don't know how they were arrived at. Like the work isn't being shown and that there are other examples of Oakland with a startup cost there. Like why is this estimate so wildly different than that? So those are questions that we depend on our elected officials to ask the staff. And I hope you will ask those questions and get a more realistic assessment of the fiscal impact of this measure. And also I want to keep in mind that a lot of market rate housing is being approved right now. And some of you are on record as being in favor of maximizing the amount of market rate housing in the city. And I view this measure as a way to both, you know, prevent all this new housing being used for pied-à-terre or not people using it as a second home. And I just want to make sure that if somebody is using their, this new market rate housing as a second home in Santa Cruz Vacation Home, that they are at least paying into affordable housing for our essential workers and other people who need that. So those are main, main points. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much. I'd like to ask Vice Mayor Watkins to take over the next two hands. I have to step out for a minute. No problem there. All right, our next speaker is Rose Klein and you are committed to speak. Go right ahead. Can you hear me? Yes, you can. Okay, fantastic. Hi, my name is Rose Klein. Again, I am a graduate student and resident of the city of Santa Cruz. I am a member of the graduate student union and organizer. As I just want to point out that council member Myers very accurately said earlier today that unfortunately it is becoming so much more difficult for people to be in California to find safe housing and to find a living wage. I apologize, council member Myers, for using your words a little bit, quoting you here. But I think you made a very excellent point, right? And this is something that is a huge issue in the state of California, in the United States even. It's sort of the issue of the decade, which is why I think this is so important. There are a lot of different solutions that people have proposed to solving the housing crisis. Getting rid of single family housing zoning. And that's a thing that I would also support. Changing around city funding and just generally funding affordable housing. The hotel tax was approved recently by the voters of Santa Cruz. So clearly the voters of the city understand that this city should be built for the people who live here, right? And that the people want better housing in the city. And I think the reason why I'm here really, and that I want the empty home tax to succeed is because it is a ready-made solution. It is, as Bode mentioned it, on a silver platter for all of you. You know, the group behind this has already done the research. If you haven't seen the report, please go to the website. You can just look up empty home tax. We sent you emails. It's a great thing to pass. Please support it and help voters vote for this. Thank you, Rose. I think your time is up. We'll go to our next speaker, which is Erin and you're permitted to speak. You can either press star nine on your phone or the raise hand feature in the webinar setting. Good evening, council members. My name's Erin Toomey. I've lived here in Santa Cruz for 23 years and I'm a homeowner. I'm also a clinical social worker who works for the VA supported housing program here in Santa Cruz. Over the years I've observed, you know, my neighbors, people I work with who have lost their homes, have either left or ended up without a home here. Since I've been in Santa Cruz, the number one thing elected officials talk about is increasing low income housing. And yet mostly what has happened has been increasing market rate housing. Most often the reason for not building low income housing is that it doesn't pencil out. The money raised by the empty home tax could help to fill that gap. Even the lowest estimated annual review, 2.5 to four millions by your own report by the staff's report could go a long way to fill that gap in funding for low income housing. The empty home tax is a very reasonable ballot measure. The threshold is very low. A home has to be empty more than eight months to pay the tax. If someone can afford to leave their home empty for more than eight months a year, I believe they can afford to help support building more housing for our lowest income residents. You all have talked constantly about supporting the creation of low income housing and we are handing you part of the solution. I hope you will do your part and publicly support the empty home tax today. Thank you for your time. Comments, our next speaker is Joe Thompson. And Joe, you can go ahead and either press star nine or unmute yourself. Great, thank you, council members. And this has been a long meeting, especially for y'all. But thank you again for taking the time to talk about these important issues for the city. My name is Joe Thompson. I am a UCSC student heading into my sophomore year. I'm a member of YDSA and the Student Housing Coalition. And I'm here today to talk to you as about the empty home tax and why I think you and most community members here are supporting it. It's a great ballot measure that is community driven. Not only was students a large process in part of collecting signatures and supporting this measure, but when I was talking to community members doing some door-to-door canvassing, we actually were knocking on someone's door while they were getting evicted and they immediately signed the petition because they know that the city is facing an affordable housing crisis. And when we were talking to them about the issues that were facing the city, it's very clear that the city is not doing enough to address the affordable housing crisis. And it's affecting renters, it's affecting homeowners, and it's affecting students. And it's an issue that we can all agree upon that we need to build more affordable housing. This is the question is, how do we do that? And that's why we have the empty home tax. This tax is a very small tax in large of it that is going to be placed on homeowners who aren't in their home for more than eight months out of a year. So it's a very, very modest tax on the people who have second homes, vacation homes, investment properties that actually help not only alleviate the affordable housing crisis in Santa Cruz, but throughout the region. And that's why we need to adopt the empty home tax is because it will actually help pointing out that these issues are affecting everyone. It's not only just going to be affecting renters, but it's going to affect long-time owners across the entire city. And not only did we get people who were homeowners assigned the position, but essentially everyone we talked to about it wanted to sign because they believe that the city is not doing enough to actually address the concerns for low income affordable housing. In my hometown of Lincoln, California, me and my mom live in a low income apartment housing complex that was built a few years ago. And as someone who has dealt with housing and security for most of their entire life, I think that most council members can agree that this is an issue that really impacts everyone. And Santa Cruz having the highest homeless rate per capita in the entire country is something that we really need to start addressing. This is a crisis. And when we say crisis, it has to be an emergency crisis. This empty home tax is just the first step in alleviating this crisis and actually going to address all these problems. I couldn't hear the buzzer in it. And I think your time is up. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. Okay. And our next speaker has phone number ending in 6959. And Renshaw with Santa Cruz together regarding this item, we understand that the council has the option to assign a person or committee to submit the argument against the empty homes tax DHT initiative. As an experienced and organized campaign committee, we respectfully request the council designate Santa Cruz together as the authorized group to file the arguments against the ballot measure. We submitted a letter making this request. And that's all. Thank you. Thank you, Vice Mayor Watkins. Our next caller is phone number ending in 1705. Hello. Hello, can you hear me? Yes, welcome. Hello? Okay, great. Thank you for taking my call. I support affordable housing as all the callers have previously do. And if Santa Cruz had a large vacancy rate, I think in some sort of empty home tax would be appropriate to consider. Anyone who has any ounces of intellectual honesty knows that there's nowhere near nine or 10% vacant homes in Santa Cruz. The issue proponents are completely dishonest. We can start with the Stockings opening statement where she claims that 6,000 voters signed her petition. Well, in fact, over 2,000 of those were invalid signatures, but she repeats that lie. As far as her 9% vacancy figure, she's not, they used to claim the census. Now they're claiming the Department of Finance. The Department of Finance gets its numbers from the census. And the census number, that's a point in time count. That's very different from the empty home tax, which is a year-round vacancy. Completely apples to oranges. When you're talking about a point in time count, that's any given unit at that point in time that has nothing to do with whether that unit is vacant for eight months or more. So they're using bad metrics. The city has an ordinance that prohibits condominium conversions if the vacancy rate is less than 5%. That estimates the current vacancy rate of multi-residential properties is 1% to 2%. And once again, that's a rolling vacancy rate. That's not a year-round vacancy rate. So the empty home tax, it's not going to raise significant amounts of money for affordable housing. What this is, is a play by the proponents to deflect attention from their own culpability in the housing crisis, because they're the same folks who vote against every single affordable housing and market rate housing program. And to point it at a tiny minority, it's a scapegoat measure. They're trying to blame this non-economic population that doesn't live in Santa Cruz for housing problems they have nothing to do with. They're very, very few. Your time is up, the buzzer rang. Thank you. Our next speaker is Spencer Holmes. Welcome. Hi. Can you all hear me? Yes, thank you. Hi, my name is Spencer Holmes. I am a graduate student at UCSC, and I'm calling to support the empty home tax as the majority of people have called in to support. As other people have stated, this tax is only going to affect a very wealthy minority in the community. These aren't just homeowners in a notoriously very expensive housing market, but these are people who own multiple homes who don't even live here. So I'm assuming that they can afford a tax to create housing that will be used for people who will live here. And I guess an additional point I want to pose is that if they're, and as other people have noted, this is a crisis. This is a overwhelming crisis for the working class people who live here. And if it continues like this, something has to break eventually. There's going to be a moment where the working class people who run the stores or who are teachers or child care workers cannot afford to live here anymore. And then what is going to happen then if we just still have these empty homes that aren't being used and not being taxed? This is just one step in creating a more equitable Santa Cruz where people can live and actually thrive. And yeah, I mean, I've just seen firsthand what this struggle is like just for students that try to live here. It's a constant struggle of every quarter or for some people they have to find a new living situation. And this just isn't conducive for people to thrive and live here in a comfortable sense. And instead it's catering towards a wealthy minority of people where instead we can put the funds to create something that will ultimately be more equitable and for Santa Cruz in the long run. I don't really have anything more sophisticated to say about the tax other than that I support it. But I hope you urge the council to consider it and enact it as soon as they can. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Our next speaker is Pablo Velazquez. Can you hear me? Yes. Hello. Hi, my name is Pablo Velazquez. I've spoken here before. I used to be a UCSC student. Now I'm just a regular renter in the city of Santa Cruz. I'm here to speak on behalf of the empty home sacks in support of the measure and to ask the city council to at least endorse the measure itself even if you can adopt it today. I think it just makes logical sense to not defend the wealthy minority who don't spend the whole year in Santa Cruz, like myself included with many other students and many people who work here in Santa Cruz and provide to the economy of Santa Cruz. It just makes sense to actually not only have the wealthy minority to pay their fair share for houses that they don't even occupy throughout the year, but as well it makes sense to help support the working class within Santa Cruz. As well, I asked the city council to re-examine the starting cost that seems to be grossly overestimated. It doesn't seem really logical that that would be the starting cost for a city of our size. And I also am not understanding why there's some callers defending people who don't even live in Santa Cruz. It doesn't really make sense to me. And even with this tax, it wouldn't really affect them personally. So I would just ask the city council to at least show support if you do care for the working class of Santa Cruz and to really, if you actually support ending this housing crisis, even though this may not be the permanent solution, it is a start in the right direction. Thank you. Thank you for your input. Our next member of the public is Whitney Ramos. Hi, I'm Whitney Ramos, policy manager with the Santa Cruz County Business Council. I'm here to express our support for the downtown library and affordable housing project. Specifically tonight, we support and respectfully request your aye vote on item 41's motion part 3 to amend the May 24th council direction related to a report on the impacts of the DOF initiatives. We believe extending the deadline benefits the community by giving the study appropriate time to evaluate the potential impacts of the measure, including and beyond stopping the downtown library and affordable housing project to immediately prevent at least 100 units of affordable housing from being built. Santa Cruz faces a housing shortage that affects workers at every level of the economy. Santa Cruz County Business Council member Fortress and Flourish is an HR strategist company. They shared a story with me that highlights one of the economic impacts of our housing shortage. A Fortress and Flourish client went through their whole interview hiring process to find their best fake candidate. When they did, the company and the new employee were both so excited to move forward. But when the new hire tried to find a place to live for this new job opportunity, they were completely unable to find somewhere to live due to the high demand and low amount of housing here. The new hire had to rescind their acceptance of the offer, putting the company behind on filling the position and losing out on that talent. And it affects more than businesses when they're hiring. It affects companies able to retain the talent they already have, high school graduates deciding to stay local or move away, and our college graduates taking local positions or using their degrees somewhere else. More housing, both affordable like the downtown library and affordable housing project and market rate helps make Santa Cruz a better place to live and work with more vibrant communities and businesses. Thank you for your time. Thank you for your input. Our next member of the public is Zenin Oliate-Crow. Hi council, thank you very much. My name is Zenin Oliate-Crow. I'm president of the Student Housing Coalition and a strong supporter of the empty homes tax. A few calls back, someone was talking about how, you know, the empty homes tax is being used as some sort of herring for the actual issues. And I actually disagree with that. I think that the empty homes tax is a serious part, the whole host of things that we need to be doing to combat the housing crisis, because we only have a crisis when everything goes wrong. In order to solve a crisis, everything needs to go right. And I think that the empty homes tax is a huge part of that, just as is building more affordable housing, building more market rate housing, things like rent control. These are all part of the bigger picture. And I really implore the council to view the empty homes tax and personally as council members, endorse this initiative as it is a bigger part of that puzzle and really represents an issue that we can work forward on together as something we can all collaborate around, especially going into the November election. So again, I really want to reiterate my support for the empty homes tax and ask you all to personally endorse it. Thank you. Thank you for your input. Our next member of the public is Kyle Kelly. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Here we go. Okay. Sorry, I had to pull up the side of the road. I'm on a bike. Yeah, so I just wanted to state my own support for the empty homes tax. I do want to point out to folks, I think it's important that people recognize that really there's two outcomes for somebody who's going to pay for effectively a vacancy tax or, you know, whether it's on their second home or whatever, or if they've been land banking, is that it'll cause either them to pay the tax or to put other homes back in the market. So it'll cause turnover for market rate homes. Admittedly, I think that's great. It's going to provide some more options that we wouldn't have otherwise. I think we've seen good amounts of success in Oakland. And I do applaud the signature gatherers, those that have proposed this initiative because it actually went after really where most of our empty second homes really are, which is a lot of the single family homes closer to the beach. I know for my community, for other people that they feel like their communities have actually been hollowed out, right? That there's not families nearby. There's not people living nearby because they're living with a bunch of really homes that get used as vacation homes. I understand that for a beach community, but I think it does really make things tough if there's not enough housing for everyone and if some are left this way. And I think especially when you look at the, how we do property taxes within this state of California, the only way to get back some of that revenue is to have a house get transferred to someone else. They purchase it or whatever else. And so doing this helps claw back some of that money that we're not getting otherwise that somebody can hold in perpetuity. So I just wanna kind of point out some other things. I don't know if everybody's looked at this for their own analysis, but I do want people to kind of have a reasonable policy debate about this and think about it. Thank you. Thank you. Our next member of the public is Reggie Meisler. Go ahead and press star six to unmute. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, so, you know, of course you probably know me at this point, I support the empty home tax. I just wanna be very clear though about this whole city staff impact report issue. I feel like it's not minor and it shouldn't be glossed over. I called in several weeks ago when this impact report was first being requested and I said I had concerns about city staff being biased and how they did their impact report. And the reason for that is cause in 2019 I worked with council member Cummings and others to develop a very detailed request for a rental increase and notice to quit tracking ordinance. And so this is something we kind of came up with after the failure of rent control to hopefully give us some more information about how to move forward. But then what staff came back with was a voluntary data collection program which obviously ruins the policy by introducing significant selection bias into the data collected. And so here we are today, staff has given us an impact report for empty home tax that includes estimates like $100,000 for a single meeting. And the notion that this would require its own dedicated web portal. And I mean, as someone who's a professional software developer, I just think this is outrageous and honestly embarrassing. I mean, this is an executive branch who's supposed to be unbiased, who are supposed to trust, to like give us real data to like implement things in a like honest way. And this is just so shamelessly, just not accurate bias like bloated. I mean, it's just sadly more evidence that we can't trust city staff to treat progressive public policy fairly. And it's absolutely council's responsibility to correct this bias before this impact report goes into the record. Thank you. Thank you for your input. Our next member of the public is phone number ending in 0249. Good evening. Thank you for taking my call. This is Carol Paul Hamer. How are you? I oppose the empty home tax for a variety of reasons and I won't repeat the ones that have already been stated but I would like to make a few points. The data, first of all, I think the staff report did was a pretty reasonable job considering all the moving parts. And I appreciate that they took a stab in what they thought was possible. I actually thought their vacancy estimates were very high. I've conducted my own research over the last six months and I've talked to the housing authority. I've gone through the HUD figures. I've looked at the census data. I've looked at the rental data that somebody posted a few weeks back. And I've looked at the short-term vacation rental data. My estimate is that there may be 1.7% vacancy rate which boils down to about a hundred homes. So that's my own personal vacancy rate data. A lot of people mentioned empty homes on West Cliff. Except that short-term vacation rentals which is what most of those homes are are specifically excluded from the empty home tax. I'm concerned about the bureaucracy. I feel like even the staff report didn't highlight this enough. Only 15% of the costs of running this program can come from the proceeds. The rest will come from the general fund. And as we heard earlier when talking about the core situation our general fund is in trouble. Our sales tax didn't pass. And we're, we don't art in a position to pay $600,000 for the first year of running this program which is what the staff estimate is. On top of it personally, I have concerns about privacy. I'm not into a big brother situation where I have to report to the city every year how many days I was home. That's a nobody's business. This will be hard to change. It'll require another election. And lastly, my cousin lives in Vancouver. Thank you. That's your time. Our next caller. Thank you for your input is phone number ending in zero or seven zero zero three. Good evening, Darius Mosnian here again. Look, I'm a landlord. A lot of folks know that I'm also a tenant as well. And I see both sides. Okay. And also, I'm just an average citizen who knows how to, knows his way around Excel. And you've seen my work. I hope you read my last recent letter. I took accessor database. I did pretty much what the city did. Accessor data, the assessor database looking for the F&T parcels. Cross-correlated that with the city's own rental inspection database. And limited those cross-correlated it with the SDR, short-term rental database. Remove those 308 that were there. Cross-correlated it with the ADUs as reported by the assessor database. I think there's 80 or 100 of those. I ended up with 583 potential parcels that have advocacy owners not in any previous categories. Well, and one thing, and the city came up with, their report came up with like 487. So we're in the same ballpark with our methodology. One thing they did though, is they made an estimate of those homes that are rented. Well, it turns out the majority of those 583 homes are actually rented because they don't have to solve reports of the rental inspection database. I know of many homes that have active renters that are never inspected because A, the rental inspection program aren't, vigilante is going and looking for them. Now, on another note, I spent a month ago, this database, to all of the supporters of the empty home tag, saying, help us out. Let's all work on this together. Let's go, here's a walking map organized by streets of these empty homes I have found, these parcels I have found. Let's work together. Let's go and take your 140 volunteers that gather signatures, send them out and have them look for instance-like homes. I went through mail boxes even, looking for evidence of emptiness. Thank you for your input. Our next caller has phone number ending in 3485. Caitlin Gasey, and I'm a 23-year resident of the city of Santa Cruz. I'm also a homeowner and a parent of two teenage children. And I know that my children and their friends will never have the opportunity to live in Santa Cruz, or own a home in Santa Cruz at least, as my husband and I have been fortunate to do. The crisis in housing affordability is facing California and Santa Cruz in particular can feel very, very overwhelming and disempowering. But this is one specific practical step that we can take in the right direction. I urge you to support the empty home tax and put it on the ballot so the voters of Santa Cruz can decide. Thank you. Thank you for your input. Our next member of the public is Joe Thompson. Our next member of the public is Portia Lewis. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Thank you so much for taking my comment and for sitting through all of our comments. We appreciate your time. I just wanna say I'm a supporter of the Student Housing Coalition. Community member and an employer whose job is actually funded through families in transition. So I just wanna make a comment that you just defunded my employer for the next year. So I know, but also I do support the empty home tax and I would strongly like to see that on the ballot in November. It did not go past me that in the same conversation where we're looking for funding to fund programs to build affordable housing, we're discussing whether or not we should be creating those funding sources. And I just wanna highlight that and strongly support that. We do create those funding sources to fund the programs that our city needs but to also fund the affordable housing that our city desperately also needs for our community and for the people that live here. And including myself. So thank you so much and thank you for your time. Thank you for calling in. Our next member of the public is Lisa. This city has failed time and time again to make this a place where its workers who fuel this city's economy can actually afford to live. We as a community have declared that by taxing the people who are rich enough to have an empty million plus dollar home in this town, we can start to actually build the affordable housing that our working class needs. This is something that cities across the state and even within our own county have also realized that we need. We just listened to all during the previous agenda items struggling to find out how to find the funds to support the community. This is doing that work for you. Even looking at the conservative numbers that the city's reports have measured, this will create two and a half to $4 million in revenue every year versus the 400,000 estimated costs. This is going to fund building affordable housing. Even the staff said that if this comes out with a positive revenue, that this will be a good thing for this city. There are families, coworkers, children, our neighbors that are being forced out of this city. Clearly this provides a positive revenue to affordable housing. And if folks don't want to pay the tax, they can just rent it out and help alleviate the housing crisis that way. But any way that you look at this, empty homes are hurting our city and we need this tax to help our community. I urge you all to come out publicly and support this tax to help our city. Though honestly, who are we kidding? Santa Cruz together is bankrolling most of your campaigns so we know exactly how you're gonna come out on this no matter what. Thank you. Our next member of the public is Sabrina. Hi everybody. Excuse me, good afternoon. I would just like to say that of course, like much else of the public, I am in support of the empty homes tax. But really what I wanna talk to y'all about is like your stance and your position, right? We've heard the city for years and years and years say that houselessness is like the number one issue of Santa Cruz. And yet every year it gets worse and worse and worse. What are y'all doing about me? You know, you say the money's not there. We just gave you money. We just said, hey, here's a great possible solution. And it's interesting to me that the funds can't be found when things like the police budget get increased. It's real interesting to me. So what I think we should all implore, think about is if this comes out and y'all do not support the empty homes tax, which is a very simple, easy way to essentially tax the rich so that less and less people are getting shoved out of their homes, shoved onto the streets, shoved into houselessness, which is what's happening. I hate to break it to you. It is happening every single day. If y'all still don't support it, can you just say it with your chest? Can you just be honest to the public that you do not care about the working class? You do not care about people in poverty. You know? Like can we just be honest in how we represent ourselves on the city council because it's really a no-brainer. And the fact that this estimate came out it was like so grossly inaccurate. And it just seems insidious. Like it seems insidious. It seems biased. It seems gross, especially because like we're supposed to trust you, you know? People vote you in. Like you have constituency. You are responsible for it. Thank you for your input. Thank you. Have a good one. Thank you. Our next member of the public, it looks like Hunter Gizaman. Hi, can you guys hear me? Yes, hello. Okay. Yeah. We lost you. Try again. Oh, can you hear me now? Yes. Hello. Okay, thank you. Yeah, it's always nice to see a lot of turnout from the community and just so many people passionate about this beautiful place they call Santa Cruz. So I don't have much to say. I'm gonna keep it short and sweet, but I would like the city council to consider supporting the empty homes tax, at least putting it forward to voters because this is an issue that a lot of people are really passionate about. And I'd love to see the community continue to have dialogue on this issue, especially with like the potential changes in the environmental impact report and everything. I just really wanna see this go forward to voters and also some support from the city council. So thank you for your time and yeah. Thank you. Our next member of the public is Sabina Holber. Welcome. Can you hear me? Yes. Hello, good evening, city council. My name's Sabina Holber. I'm calling in support of the empty home tax. I think that it's common sense. I think that if you're looking for funding, this is where you get funding. It's not a lot of money for people that own such expensive houses that they're leaving empty. Also, I wanna address talking about the general fund. You guys aren't great at spending money, like out of the $14 million that you got for homelessness issues, you're giving a half a million dollars to consultants instead of to people that really need it. For instance, 41 seniors were just evicted on Friday and were given backpacks and told to go to the bench once. So you're not helping people, like literally, sorry, I'm out of breath. I was watering my garden. I ran inside so I could talk to you guys. The other thing I wanna say is I implore you not to give that space to Santa Cruz together. As other callers have mentioned, they're bankrolling a lot of campaigns here, specifically, Chevrolet Cowan-Harrie Johnson who voted for OVO, who voted for CSSO. The people that run Santa Cruz together have so much money. They back you guys, they wanna keep that money. And you know how they made that money? They profited off of the housing crisis. They are folks that are realtors. They are folks that are property managers. They have terrible reviews when you go look to see how they maintain their properties. No wonder they don't want to have to pay any taxes for empty homes. They want there to be a housing crisis so they can continue to jack up the rents. So giving a gift to Santa Cruz together to have this on the ballot, it's straight from your campaigns. It should be considered a campaign contribution. Thanks for your time. Please vote for the empty home tax. Thank you for your input. Are there any other members of the public that would like to speak? Okay, we have an in-person. Please step to the podium and make sure the mic is at your mouth. Hi there, I'm Cynthia Mathews and I'm speaking this evening representing a recently formed campaign committee known as Santa Cruz for Real Library and Housing Solutions. We've been formed specifically to support the onward progress of the proposed new library and affordable housing project for downtown Santa Cruz and to oppose the ODOLF initiative. Contrary to what a previous spoker said, ODOLF is far from straightforward. We believe that many of those signatures were gathered with incomplete misleading or inaccurate sound bites, but the fact remains they got their signatures, they qualified and your job tonight is to set that for election. We understand that. We think their proposal is based largely on conjectures, ideas, without substance or stakeholder consultation and if passed ODOLF will be truly damaging to the future of Santa Cruz. It will put back any progress on a downtown library for several years and result ultimately if passed on a library that's smaller and inferior. It will kill a project currently in development with trusted community partners for 125 units, permanently affordable housing for low income residents. It will kill other investments in the project that benefit the surrounding downtown area that contribute to our community for current and future needs, including I should say, other affordable housing projects in the immediate downtown area that depend on this project for support, including replacement parking for parking currently being lost to other development and street parklets and a childcare center. For all these reasons, we think ODOLF is damaging to the future of Santa Cruz and our campaign will be fighting it. Relative to your proposal, we ask that you designate our committee to be the official signer for arguments against the ODOLF measure and we support your extension of the deadline for your report. Thank you. Just take a breath. Thank you for everyone's public comment and input. It looks like that concludes our virtual and in-person public comment on agenda item number 41. I will now bring it back to our city council and I'm looking for emotion, action, discussion, questions. I have many questions. Great. When I have another. Great, council member Brown and did you have your hand council member Cummings? Okay, thank you mayor. Yeah, first I want to appreciate, I'm going to speak primarily about the empty home tax, fiscal analysis and I want to appreciate Marisol for taking on this task. I know it's not easy to try to come up with something that projects an unknown process and not a lot of experience from other communities to draw from. I'm sorry to hear that you didn't get more information from some of the other jurisdictions that have adopted these about their costs because I think that it would have been really helpful in for you and for all of us to see an analysis that was based, I think less on, well, it's a real, it's a Cadillac budget. I'll just say that. So, but I understand that it was probably not easy to come up with the various pieces of this and so I appreciate the effort and I appreciate the transparency. I do have, because this is now a public document and I am quite sure it will be used by opponents of the measure to, you know, to as a deterrent, you know, as a message to voters that it's going to cost millions of dollars and, you know, we can't afford it. And so I just, I don't feel comfortable even receiving this report without better understanding some of these items. And so it's going to be a little tedious, I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to, I have to ask these questions. I think that this needs to go into the record as well. So the, and I have many questions about some of the little items I'll try to not, I don't want to be, keep us here forever, but I do want to try to get an understanding here. I mean, I'm seeing for, so in the startup costs, I'm seeing some things that are, I guess I just, I'm just wondering how, you know, what the basis is for this. I mean, so for example, revisions to the website at almost $40,000. Where, how did you get the number of hours for that, that's a lot of money to revise the city's website, which is quite extensive. So I'm just wondering how, where that came from. I can ask them all if there's somebody who can answer them or try to take a stab at answering them. I can, is that, would that be, would you prefer that Marisol that I just go through and ask them all? And then. Maybe one by one might be better. Your brother, do you have a preference? That's fine, thank you. So yeah, website 40, you know, we've got quite a, quite a large budget for revising our website for the empty home tax. So $40 plus thousand dollars. Yes, so the hours were estimated based on talks with some consultants who have done ordinance implementation before. So I base those estimates on there and discussing. So it's not just the physical, okay, we're changing this. It's all the discussion that goes into what needs to be changed, what pages, what links. But the hours were based on consultation with external parties. Okay, and so I guess I'm just gonna guess that that's what I'll hear when I ask about many of these other items. Yes. So I won't go through them all, but I guess I'm, well, okay, so then I have a, I'll just go on to some of my other questions and try to reformulate on the others. But I, so in terms of the estimated cost for the ongoing committee, this $126,000 for one meeting per year, that is coupled with some narrative earlier on in the report talking about how this could be 1,000 hours. This could be many, many meetings. However, the language in the ballot initiative says that the committee would meet once per year, more than once per year, would require council approval. So I guess I'm just wondering, are you, you're assuming that the council would just allow for whatever this committee wanted to do? So there is some estimates made there on the committee. So I don't assume the council will approve anything the committee wants. I assume there will be a discussion. But also as part of the proposed measure, there are also community meetings that were discussed and it's not really clear whether that, those community meetings are part of that one meeting that would need to be added to additional meetings per council. So if there was some assumption that we'd have more meetings than just the one. Okay. Like, may I ask, did you happen to consult with the Regional Transportation Commission about their Measure D Taxpayer Oversight Committee? That is what this was modeled upon and it's a very different structure than standing ongoing commissions. And so I guess I'm just wondering if we did provide that information to potentially to ask them what their costs are. I didn't do that because I thought that would probably happen through staff and it doesn't appear to have happened. But so I just want to clarify, did you talk with the RTC about their? No. Okay. Yeah, because it's, I think that would give you a little more clarity on what the potential costs are, you know, might be. I'm going to go back to the litigation item. I heard you say that ordinances generally have to go through legal review and that a reasonable estimate is $100,000. And so I just want to try to understand that because I've never heard that. I've been here and voted yes and voted no on many inordinates. We've never been told that costs $100,000 for legal, potential legal risk. So I'd just like to hear more about that. Do you want me to comment on that? Sure, thank you. I wasn't part of being that estimate, but I think I can step in here. So yeah, so the estimate was $100,000. I can tell you that if there actually was litigation, it would probably be more than that. $100,000 is a pretty low estimate for any litigation. So I think that estimate was taking was estimating that there might not be litigation, there might $100,000 might be a reasonable estimate. And I would also just point out the fact that this is a tax. And so we could also have tax payers challenge. And that has happened before in our office, for example, challenging the TOT. And so that might not even be a full blown attack to the ordinance, but it might be a legal challenge that's put in the way of, well, this is unlawful as applied to me. And those can also get to be expensive. And so it's litigations notoriously hard to estimate how much it's gonna be. I think if there is litigation, it's gonna be more than $100,000. But I think $100,000 is a reasonable number to estimate. So, okay, thank you. I guess I'll follow up on that question with another question related to legal. On what basis were you determining the likelihood of lawsuit, I guess I'm just still having a hard time wrapping my mind around factoring that in. We never do that. We get sued on ordinances all the time. We've got, well, we know. And we don't talk about that as a cost related to that work. And so I'm still just trying to wrap my mind around that. And I just disagree, I guess. But I would like to hear what work went into evaluating the potential for a legal challenge given that, like, did you find other jurisdictions who were saying, well, we're being told we're gonna get sued. What evidence is there that there's a legal challenge in the making here? I mean, the attorneys who reviewed this were our experts at what they do and worked very hard to craft an ordinance that would pass legal muster. And so I'm just not, I guess I'm a little more sanguine about the potential for a legal challenge. But mostly I just wanna understand why we would build that in when it's, you know, what's the likelihood and what was a methodology for determining that likelihood? Thank you. So I did a consult with our legal team as well as outside counsel just to talk about a new measure in general. And they mentioned some of the potential litigation for that. But not only that, that this is something that we are, you know, there's not a lot of cities doing this, a lot of California cities yet. And that was more of the basis as to, and I think you're right, Sandy, that these types of things are not dispensed and within the discussions with the budget and listening in on the budget team and just having, just knowing where we are, we thought it would be best to have that potential cost listed here. And whether or not counsel wants to accept the report or amend the report with, you know, for that item, I think it definitely differed to you guys. But I did wanna present what we felt would be a potential cost. Thank you. I have more questions, so I'm just gonna keep going. But if you have, go for it. If I may just chime in real quick, Council Member Brown, and I appreciate the questions. So as Marisol was mentioning, this is still a relatively novel program. There's only a couple other cities that have them in place. And even in those jurisdictions are relatively new and not in full swing because of delays related to the pandemic and challenges that we've all been facing. So I think these are numbers that reasonable people can debate on either side and, you know, Marisol's efforts to try to put some best guesses as to what the numbers may look like. We really, the truth is, won't have a full understanding until we get to a place where we have the program in full swing and we get a better handle on what properties really do qualify as empty. And then of those, the percentage that were really successful in being able to collect the taxes contemplated in the initiative. So what was brought forward is our best attempt at that. The committee time that's devoted and reflected in that cost table is also a guess based on the number of responsibilities that are contemplated in the initiative beyond just having the annual meeting. That includes community outreach meetings, subcommittees, reports and analyses that could be ordered throughout that process, the annual report. So trying to take all of them into account and look at other examples, you know, my time in Watsonville, we had an oversight committee that for a time was meeting more than four times a year and that can ebb and flow. So without really knowing, we had to assume that some of that additional work would take place beyond just an annual meeting. That's in totality what's reflected in what is still a relatively new idea and some best guesses based on those assumptions. You'll notice that I'm not asking questions about your analysis of the potential revenues. I'm not even gonna go there because I get it that there's a lot of unknown and people can, people have done their own studies but have different ideas about what that might look like. I'm not even gonna go there. I'm gonna keep asking about costs. So and I'm gonna make a recommendation that the staff return to us to give us updated information about the potential costs for an oversight committee after speaking with the Regional Transportation Commission about their measure D oversight committee. I just think that we'll have a very different picture if we can actually get a picture of what the likely level of activity will be for that committee. I see multiple line items related to vetting and developing a process for a set of principles. I can't remember what the term was for vetting the, how the money will be spent. And so I guess I'm wondering how you see that in relation to, I mean the funding will go to affordable housing. It'll go into the affordable housing trust fund. And so the cost seems very high to develop a system, monitor a system that is essentially going to be putting money into the affordable housing trust fund for the city council to determine how it will be used. So if I could just hear a little bit more about that. There's like three, there's multiple line items and because we don't have this in spreadsheet form, I can't tell you what rows they are, but I can try to find the titles. But just in general, I see, and I'm sorry because I really need a magnifying glass for this, but develop process for vetting use of funds. And I see for that one, vetting the use of funds, I think that's like seven, 18,000. And then ongoing every year, there's one other place I can't find, but another one was- Council member- I'm sorry, yeah, I'm sorry, this is really challenging, but I'm very serious about this because this is on the record now. And if this council is gonna accept this report, that is the number that's gonna be used throughout this campaign. We will not be involved in that, but I'm serious about this. So the motion, the recommended motion is to receive the report and to certify the signatures and put them on the ballot tonight. So receiving- I'll move the recommendation. I can, I still have the floor and I'd like to- Does that mean that- I can stop asking the questions and I'll just make the motion. And based upon my assertion that this is a wild overestimate, but I think I should be able to ask the questions about how these costs were, how it was decided by staff that this is potential cost. I think I have the right to ask that. Yes, you do. And I have a clarifying question. I just want to clarify receiving the report, does that mean that it codifies the report as accurate? I mean, I almost think that you know, there's a lot based on public input and based on council member Brown's questions, some of the emails we received, some of the questions I asked earlier, there are a lot of questions on these estimates in the report. And so the feeling of receiving it, does that mean it's accepting that those numbers are accurate? Because there's clearly still a lot of refinement and unknowns and so I just want to clarify what that means to receive the report. Count, City Court? For the elections code, when I drafted the agenda report, per the elections code, it is you guys provide a direction for staff to present to you the fiscal impact report and that is what the code specifies, that they are presenting it to you. It is not a matter of you accepting it, you approving it, you authorizing it, none of that. That was the direction of them to present it to you. So does that help clarify? Does that... I mean, it clarifies the technical aspect of this, but it doesn't change the fact that the staff report says things like it will cost, this will cost $600,000. It doesn't say it might cost that much. This is an outside estimate. It doesn't say that. It says it will cost. Right. Is that something we can work on to refine as we move forward? And for... I have a motion in that vein. Oh, great. Are there... I'd love to have you make your motion then and we can move forward with discussion. Okay. So my motion is to... For number one, to replace, receive the fiscal impact report, ordered per elections code 9212 for the empty home tax initiative petition, to replace that with direct staff, to return to the council at the earliest possible meeting with a revised fiscal impact report based upon gathering additional information about potential costs, to administer the program. And I have... I'd like that to be a general thing, but in particular, in the following areas. Ongoing committee administration for distributing tax funds and startup costs... Sorry, startup costs related to the online... The web portal? The system, yeah, the web portal. Thank you. I couldn't remember the... Yes, the online web portal. Okay, our items two, three, and four. There, great. So we have a motion by council member Brown. I'll second that. Can I... Sorry, I hate to interrupt. I think there was one thing we didn't do during our staff presentation because of the timing issues, which was talk about amended language around the empty home tax issue. And I really wanna make sure we sort of address that before we're moving deep into motions, if that's okay. Yes. So Bonnie's bringing up the language. So the empty home tax folks gave me a call and there was an inaccuracy in the proposed measure language. So it's super important that we correct all inaccuracies. And so I went back and forth with them and they suggested some changes and some of them were more stylistic, some of them were more factual, but this is what we came up with or what I came up with, listening to their concerns. So to just go through some of the changes here as compared to what was in your agenda materials. So most important thing to change was, well, first of all, I'll go through it in order. So we changed it to empty home tax because that's the exact language used in the ballot proposal. So singular, so not empty homes. And then it's on residences that are in use less than 100 days per calendar year. And so there was a mistake in the proposed ballot language. We had that they were vacant 120 days or more, that's not accurate per the language. So in the amount of $6,000 per single family residence, $6,000 per parcel with six or fewer units and $3,000 per year on condominiums and residential units that didn't like the word apartment. So we changed it to residential units with seven or more units with revenue allocated toward affordable housing projects, 15% for administration and 5% for homeless sanitation services. And they wanted a clarification that is sanitation services, which we can do that, overseen by a community oversight committee. So that's what we've got there. It can be a challenge to fit everything within the word limits and have proper English, but that is what I would propose. Is the maker of the motion amenable to that proposed? Yes, and thank you for jumping in on that because I in my zeal to ask the questions kind of forgot about that piece. So thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay. Mayor, I'm not sure how to do this with our downtown or our future, but I was hoping to offer some language change to that ballot. I just not quite sure how we're doing it if we're taking those as individuals or not, but I was contacted about the description is there is a incorrect description in what the project is apparently now being called. Under which item? One. In the ordinance with the ballot language. Three. It's the other ballot thing on this item. It's within the resolution. So it'd be under number four. And so. Thank you. Okay, I'll wait till then. Thank you. Well, are we taking it all once or are we? Can you do, is it maybe a friendly amendment because the motion is all includes all four? That's fine. So it's on. No. We can also separate it if the maker of the motion. Okay, so the maker of the motion would like to separate out number four in agenda item 41. And so your motion that's currently on the floor is items one through three with the direction of staff to return to council with a revised fiscal report based on additional gathering of info in particular in the following areas. Admin costs for distribution of admin costs, costs for distribution of tax funds and startup costs related to online web portal. And then also the revised language from the city attorney's office. So those are items one through three. Council member Cummings. I have a friendly amendment to that language. So as it relates to bringing back the revised report, have it say including but not limited to before the ongoing communication costs or ongoing committee admin costs, et cetera, just because if there's anything else that needs to be incorporated, it's not limited to those four items. Does that make sense? Yes, you're suggesting to add in in particular the following areas instead of in particular, including but not including. But not limited to. But not limited to. That makes sense. Thank you. And another friendly amendment would also be to include methodology, because that was something that members of the public brought up, they were curious about, you know, how is this done? Like where did this come from? And so having some kind of methodology about who was consulted, how this was brought forward, I think really helps. Yes, thank you. So what is that friendly amendment on methodology or where does that fit in for city clerk to be accurate on that? You got it? Great. Yeah. And that can go like at the end of that whole sentence around including but not limited to. Can we pull up that motion and then go to a roll call vote unless there's further discussion on items one through three before we move on to four. Vice Mayor Watkins, are you speaking, you're muted. I am speaking. I'd like to hear what the staff has to say about this because I heard from them that it was very general and these were estimates and I'm not quite sure the level of accuracy they anticipate having given sort of the content and information they have. So before I take the vote, I'd like to hear perspective personally. And then I'd like ideally a break because we've been going for like a long, long time. After this item, yes. Sure, so I appreciate the question. I guess, again, I would just say that these are best estimates based on the data we have on hand. So Marisol and our finance team in consultation with all of our departments as well as some outside consultants did their best to estimate as well as based on our own local experience of supporting committees, commissions, oversight committees of what time would be involved. I certainly understand Council Member Brown's concerns and the spirit behind those questions raised. I would describe it as going back to sharpener pencils on the costs associated with those. I don't know whether or not that will yield reductions in what's currently contemplated in the report. I think both on the revenue side and the administration side, this being basically a brand new program in the state, there's going to be a lot of unknowns and we'll continue to be regardless of additional work that we do to refine those numbers. But, you know, we defer to the will of the council if there's interest in wanting us to continue to fine tune those numbers, we could certainly do so. Thank you. Does that answer your question, Vice Mayor Watkins? Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, yes, I think, you know, I understand that we have before us is sort of just to receive the report. So I'm not sure what that's gonna move substantially but yeah. I think the motion language includes based on gathering of additional information that was suggested. There might be some updates or refinements. Can I just ask for a point of clarification? Are we, is the motion to move items one with your proposed revisions, two and three and to wait on number four? Okay. Yes, okay. Council Member Calentari-Johnson. We have the motion language again. Sorry. Yes, City Clerk will pull that up. Council Member Calentari-Johnson. Yeah, I was actually gonna also ask for the motion language because what I'm hearing City Manager Matt Huffinger relay is that these are assumptions in general, general analysis. We don't have a whole lot of information. It doesn't seem like there's gonna be much more new information. So we're asking to put this back on a future agenda. But what we were tasked with tonight is to vote to put it on the ballot or not and let the voters decide. So I'm just, I'm unclear about what additional information we are looking for. Are we just asking staff to do another analysis because we didn't like what we're seeing or what I'm hearing from city staff is that there's not much more information out there. So we're just gonna bring it back to City Council for us to contemplate when it's, if we vote on it tonight, it goes on the ballot and the city voters will vote on it. So. I think. And I wonder if, yeah, if Matt Huffinger or somebody, what else will we, I guess it's the same question as Vice Mayor Watkins. What else will we will be highlighted? How else will we be enlightened? And how will it change us putting this on the ballot or not? Cause that's what we are tasked with tonight is to put this and our downtown or futures on the ballot. And also just to remind my colleagues that we have all been asked and requested to send our very detailed questions ahead of time. I understand that we wanna ask some of those for the public to hear, but pages and pages of questions, which I also have, I send to staff ahead of time. So I'd like to encourage us all to do that. Thank you. I think my understanding based on the motion language was the information and based on City Manager's comment the impact report is based on information today and that there was a direction to, upon additional gathering of information. For example, the RTC Measure D oversight committee was one example of information, additional information that could be looked at to help inform some of the fiscal impacts. So I think my understanding is rather than just receiving it as is, knowing yes that these are estimates and that just a little more refinement would be appreciated. I just don't understand why we need to be debating this again when this is gonna go before the voters. All right, Council Member Brown. So, well, thank you, Mayor. You kind of shared one example of additional information that could be gathered. The reason that I am asking for this now is because it is information that is going to be used in a public electoral campaign to the voters. And if the city says this is the cost and people out in the public, we know there's gonna be a group that is gonna oppose this and they will use that number as the city's numbers and it is based on incomplete and I would say overestimated projections. I understand that it's necessarily incomplete because there's not a lot of experience here, but there is more information we can get. We can find out how much it costs to the taxpayers for oversight of measure D one. We can ask the Economic Development Director if these line items in here that are all, the multiple line items that are dedicated to multiple departments being involved in making decisions about how this money will be spent, how that interfaces with decision making around the use of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and why it would be that it's gonna cost this much more for this particular chunk of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Just two examples. I have more and I can go on, but the point is that I would like to get if we're gonna have a report that lays out the potential cost that it should be as accurate as possible and it should be based upon the best information we can get. Thank you, Council Member Brown. And I think at this point, we'll never have a perfect fiscal impact report. However, it sounds like there are some examples of more information that could help inform the fiscal impact report before it's, received. I did have a follow up comment on that too, which is that our job is to do the public's work in public. And through public comment today, we heard a number of issues and concerns that were brought up by members of the public and it's our job to acknowledge those concerns and raise those concerns in a meeting in public. So I understand that we should have as many of our questions answered before the meeting, but there were some questions that came up that I didn't have, that came up by members of the public this evening and I'm trying to help get their concerns addressed since that's who we're here to represent. In addition to that, I thought I heard some folks say that there are cities in the Bay that have empty home taxes already and so would be interested to understand based on their impact reports because they brought up Oakland and all that and I think they brought up a couple other cities. So there are other examples out there where we're not gonna be the first city in California to do this. And so being able to have references, if we talk about data and scientific method, just references for where does this information come from? What is it based off of? That helps people understand so they can go back and look up that information well and see how they can make their comparison. And I didn't wanna belabor this, but at some point I do have a question that is related to this but not necessarily to this exact topic, but also the motion was, my understanding is within one, two and three. It's also to include the amended language, is that correct? Yes, it is. And I think I just wanted to be clear for members of the public. We're not delaying this. Like we are deciding on this right now to put this on the ballot. We can't delay it. So those are all the comments I have on one through three and yeah. Okay, we have a motion that is on the floor and I think we've had our discussion. May we have a roll call vote? Council member is Calentary Johnson. Aye. Boulder? Absent. Cummings? Aye. Brown? Aye. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkins? And Mayor Burner? Aye. That motion passes six ayes and one absent. Council member Golder absent. Moving on to item number four and that was council member Myers. You had a motion? I'd be happy to do the motion. I'd like to look at the one change in the our downtown, our future. Which is on page 41.5. The, let's see. It looks like the ballot language is, so the ballot language for the art downtown, our future references for hippie construction of the proposed downtown mixed use library project. And as far as I understand, based on the current designs and also the beginning of receiving public funds that that project is now called the downtown library and affordable housing project. So I would respectfully request that the ballot language reflect the actual project name. And so I'd be happy to move that the motion to adopt a resolution or an election to be held on November 8th, 2022 and consolidating the election for the purpose of attaching two measures to the ballot, empty home tax and our downtown, our future with the proposed change to the ballot language for the empty, for the our downtown, our future. I'd also like to add to this motion. I'm not sure if this is the place to do it. So please correct me, Cassie. I believe I see in the staff report, there is mentioned in the last paragraph that the council may provide guidance and appoint signers for and against the measures if desired. I did hear a request this evening from the group who is a campaign team, I think the our downtown, our future folks obviously are for their measure and I believe they will be doing their written arguments unless the city council member is going to represent that or do that work. But I would like to make a motion that the group, I believe the name is Santa Cruz for real housing and library solutions, be able to prepare the argument against the our downtown, our future. And similarly, I believe we received a request from Santa Cruz together, whether folks regarding being able to file and the argument statements for the empty homes tax. So I would add that to the motion as well. Can I have the city attorney's office comment on this? Sure, those all sound fine to me. I think that changing the measure language is fine to make it consistent with what it's being referred to currently. And I think it's within the council's jurisdiction to appoint this group to provide the opposition arguments. I would, just one thing, and I think this is why I asked the question earlier. So number four talks about adopting a resolution and there's, so there's one resolution in your materials that's for both the empty home tax and our downtown, our future. So I know the intent was to include the revised empty home tax language on numbers one through three, but I would ask that you include the revised empty home tax language on number four because it's within the resolution. So hopefully that makes sense. So I will do that, yeah. So within the motion, Bonnie would be to to basically adopt the resolution ordering an election, solving the election. And then the next part would be and with the addition of new language for the two, for both the empty home tax measure text and our downtown, our future measure text. Does that work? Okay. Cassie. I have a clarifying question because the motion before was to change the ballot question for empty home tax, which is on the resolution. So my understanding was we were adopting the resolution with the last motion in order to make that edit. Sorry, but the resolution is number four on the agenda. But the last motion that they just made with the edit to the empty home tax I took it as being for the resolution. Yeah, you did. Yeah, regardless of regardless of the number on the agenda item. Okay, but the resolution isn't addressed in items one through three. So if you're, I would like to have it on both if possible just because number four is the resolution. So I want to make it clear that we're changing the resolution, which is where the ballot question is. Is that okay? Does that make sense, Bonnie? Okay. My question is the fact that the motion before was changed in the ballot question on the resolution. Right? For the empty home tax, it was you edited it. That's the thing I showed. So if I make it my motion that it would reflect that the language in the previous motion for the empty home tax would be reflected in the resolution. Does that work? That's great. Thank you. Okay. 10 hours in, my brain is somewhat working. And I would just like to make sure that the group that you mentioned, I believe their name is Santa Cruz for real library and housing solutions as the organization names. And I believe we received a letter from them. Yeah, I was just looking at that letter. Yes. And then I believe we received both a written and a verbal rec. Actually, I think both groups came today and I've both shown up and talked and requested this at the council. And I have not heard from other folks that wish to do this. And so I'd like to honor those two groups so that they can present those arguments. Great. I was just going to ask for a second. So council member Myers has the motion with a second by vice mayor Watkins and council member Cummings. Yeah, I just wanted to ask a question related to process just cause I'm, this is something I'm unaware of, but when groups submit or collect signatures to put items on ballot, is that general the process that they can, a group can come to city council and ask to be designated as the people who will sign either supporting or opposing arguments or how does that usually work? Typically groups would submit arguments. They would submit, nobody needs to have a designation. If that's what you're asking, are you talking about the request? Yeah. Groups can submit an argument for or typically the argument for are the proponents. They could do an argument against what we did at the last election was we did like a first come first serve if there were multiple arguments submitted. Gotcha. For one measure. Okay. I just wanted to be clear cause I think with the direct elect mayor item there was multiple groups in the community kind of, you know, talking about who was supposed to. That's the one we did the first come first serve. Yes. Right. Okay. So I just wanted to make sure that I understand the process correctly and also the members of the public. So I guess for this item, just for clarification and maybe I don't know if there's a need for any kind of amendment, friendly amendment, but my understanding would be that Santa Cruz together and the empty home tax would be the proponent, well empty home tax for Santa Cruz together against for the empty home tax measure and then the hour downtown our future and the, I can't remember the name of the other group but the hour downtown our future will be for. Santa Cruz for real. Santa Cruz for real library and housing solutions. Right. That would be designated as the opposition. And so is that captured in the motion? I guess I only designated the two groups that spoke for us tonight. Bonnie, I don't know if I need to design. There was no communication from the other groups and the way that I read this last sentence here in the staff report was that under the elections code, the proponents of an initiative measure may file a written argument for. So I just assumed they would and the city council or a person or person designated by the city council may submit an argument against. So I, if the council chooses not to file an argument that any interested person may do so. So I am acting on the two requests that we did get received where there was two groups who approached us and both asked for that involvement in submitting an argument against. So I'm happy to, I don't know if the other groups are going to do the argument for. So I don't want to speak for them because, but it does say that. So I don't know. I'm happy to, I mean, I'd be happy to add them if that's what needs to happen, but. I think you're going off of the requests received and so just adding someone, I think is. For clarification, I would stick with. I'm going to stick with that motion. So then I just, I guess the question, the last question I have then is for those two groups, is there like, there's a timeline. I guess for all the groups, there's a clock for them to submit those arguments, whether they're for or against. And what's that timeline? The calendar is on our website, the deadline for the arguments for or against is August 19th. And if you get an argument for or against, for and against, you can also file a rebuttal. And that's another deadline and I don't know enough to top of my head, but it is on our website. But the 19th is the deadline. Great, and then I guess before we end this item, I just have one last question that's related, but tangentially. I know that there has been talk about us putting a TOT on the November ballot. And I'm just curious about when the deadline is for us to have that language come to council so we can vote on it and move it forward. Cause it seemed to me that we were moving forward rapidly with this because we have to do it before the break. I don't know. Yeah, thanks for the question council member comments. It is our intent to bring that to the council first meeting in August to meet the deadline that's required. All right, we have a motion by council member Meyers, seconded by vice mayor Watkins. May I have a roll call vote? Council member Callentary Johnson. Aye. Boulder, Cummings. Aye. Brown. Aye. Meyers. Aye. Vice mayor Watkins. Aye. Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes six ayes one absent. Council member Golder. Thank you everyone for that item and discussion and information and input. At this point, we have one more item on the agenda, but I would like to call a break. We've been going for almost 12 hours now. So we will return at nine o'clock. That's a good question. Is there any, I mean, is there any way we could, well, nevermind, I was going to ask if we could postpone this, but we're not going to meet again until August. So, but yeah, I was going to ask that question because yeah, we have been going really long. That is an option for the council to entertain. Does it affect? Is there a time sensitive matter with this item? I'd like to ask Tony Elliott. You're waiting so patiently, thank you. Hi everyone, no time sensitivity to it necessarily. He was talking with Matt earlier today. I know that August will be a busy agenda. We do have our consultants waiting in the wings tonight as well as staff from homeless garden projects. So we're ready and willing to go tonight, but defer to the council on direction. All right. If, okay, I see some hands raised. Council member Myers. Oh, sorry, mine was, mine was, I forgot to put mine down. Council member Calentari Johnson. I appreciate the break, but I think we should hear this agenda item given that we have folks who have been waiting and wanting to present. So skip the break and move right into the item. I'm sorry, no, have the break, have a 20 minute break and come back and hear the agenda item. Okay, great. All right. So let's say 905. We will return. Thank you so much for hanging in with us, everybody, and to staff. Thank you. We are near the finish line here with today's meeting. Thank you so much to our city staff and guests who have been waiting. We also have Peter Bejeer, our Spanish translator who is also here and available. I believe there may have been a request for Spanish translation. Peter, are you with us? I am mayor. Great, thank you. How did you want to proceed with this? I assume the Spanish speaker can ask his question in Spanish and I will translate the question for the council and answer and translate his answer afterwards. Thank you. Or her question. Their question, yes. Okay, let me pull up my agenda. And we are now at agenda item number 42 on our Santa Cruz city council agenda. This is Pogonip open space, Pogonip master plan amendment process for homeless garden projects farm and garden and upper main meadow and contamination and cleanup feasibility update and lower main meadow. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you wish to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff, followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and then return to council for deliberation and action. In addition to the public comment, we will be hearing on this item. There was one email sent to city council at cityofsantacruise.com on this agenda item. And with that, I would like to welcome director Tony Elliott and Noah Downing. Right, thank you very much, Mayor Brunner and city council members. Thanks for this opportunity here late on a Tuesday to present this update regarding Pogonip and homeless garden project. So just as far as the project team here this evening from Parks and Recreation, we have park superintendent Travis Beck. We've got our parks planner Noah Downing that will run us through the presentation here momentarily. From RMD Consulting, our consultant on this project, we have Doug Wichard, Ivy Inouye and John Alexander. And then from the homeless garden project, executive director, Dary Ganshorn and board member, Danette Shoemaker. So tonight we'll give a relatively short and efficient but also detailed presentation just on an update on the contamination in the lower meadow in Pogonip and the process with the homeless garden project and the Pogonip farm. So we'll provide a background and summary of a lot of the work over the past six months and more. We'll hear some detail from RMD. We'll hear an update from the homeless garden project and then we'll discuss the proposed plan to continue our steps and process forward. So with that, again, I appreciate your time. I appreciate Peter on the call as well. But at this time I'd like to hand it over to Noah Downing to run us through our presentation. Thank you. And can I just confirm that the presentation is showing? No. Nope, it's not. There it is. Now it is. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good evening, Mayor Brunner and city council members. On September 28th, 2021, the city council directed staff to undertake a planning process to amend the Pogonip master plan to allow for the homeless garden project to relocate their farm to the upper main meadow. The council also directed staff to evaluate the feasibility of cleaning up the lower main meadow to allow for farming to occur. This meeting is an opportunity for staff to report back to you on the progress made and receive direction on the next steps forward. The planning process for the farm's relocation to the upper meadow has been placed on hold. In February, 2022, the homeless garden project requested that the city refocus planning efforts back to the lower meadow for the farm site. In turn, staff did not move forward with the scheduled consulting services and notified the public about the change. Staff intends to discontinue the master plan amendment process unless further direction is received tonight. Leading up to the September 28th meeting, a public concern arose that the proposed farming garden use was inconsistent with the 1988 CalPaw initiative. The initiative provided the city funding to purchase Pogonip and contain specific provision that the land be preserved for parks in open space. Parks and Rec worked with city attorney's office, staff to research the concern. Staff sent a letter to the Department of Parks and Recreation to review the proposed land use. The state confirmed that the farm is an appropriate use under the agreement. Before I turn it over to RMD to present the cleanup feasibility study, I do wanna emphasize that a lot of work has gone into studying the contamination of Pogonip. One major undertaking was a preliminary endangerment assessment which was provided through a grant award by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. They provided in-kind services to evaluate the lower main meadow to determine if any areas are safe to farm. Through that process, they hired RMD as a primary consultant. DTSC's toxicologists helped in the work plan's development. The process evaluated the screening levels for recreation of farming uses. The methodologies and screening levels have also been reviewed by the County of Santa Cruz Environmental Health Division including their consulting toxicologists. Staff was excited that RMD was able to continue work on the project with the city after the grant was complete. From their initial efforts which were focused on the main meadow areas, we have expanded the sampling to outline areas and we now know the location extent of contamination. So I'd like to now turn it over to Doug from RMD who will present more on the cleanup feasibility study. All right, thanks Noah. And thank you council members for letting us present this evening. I think Noah you'll be controlling the slides for me. You can move on to the next one. Just a quick background here. The homeless garden project conducted an initial agriculture soil testing back in 2018 and 2019 once it became known that a historic shooting range was operated in the lower meadow of the Pogonib site. From there between 2019 and 2021 additional soil sampling was conducted throughout the lower main meadow with the primary goals to further evaluate the extent both lateral and vertical of the primary concerns being lead and what's called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs in the shallow soil as a result of the historical shooting range operation. So from there earlier this year based on the information that had been collected to date RMD working with the city and the homeless garden project prepared a feasibility study to evaluate both a recreational and unrestricted or farming use in the lower main meadow and to look at what remediation steps or efforts would be needed to clean up the site. Move on to the next slide please. So a brief overview of what we're talking about here. This is an aerial view with some overlays on it of the lower main meadow of the Pogonib site. As you can see north on this figure is up into the left. The Pogonib clubhouse still sits up there on the top of the hill there and then the current access into the site by the road is down on the bottom right of this image which is the golf club drive entrance as a trail access there. So historical background to kind of orient where we're talking about on the site here. There are two shooting pad arcs that Noah is showing there. There are concrete pads that still exist. So based on locating those shooting pads we're able to orient where an approximate or hypothetical range of the lead shot and the clay targets would have been. So that's the yellow and red kind of fan shaped shading that's overlaid on this diagram where we have the east meadow and ravine indicated. So based on knowing kind of the orientation of where the shooting range was allowed us to expand that the sampling investigation that we did in the last few years and also knowing as you can see in the pink outlines that are indicated that are labeled east meadow, west meadow and north orchard those are the proposed planting and farming areas of the homeless garden project and indicated. It gave us an idea of where we needed to really focus our investigation and to move forward with this. And along the way we also realized that the ravine that we're referring to the tree covered area in the center there the ravine it's a heavily sloped there's an intermittent stream that runs through there. We're able to also collect some soil samples in that area to further our investigation. And it's also a note there's a seasonal wetland that is in the west meadow there is indicated by that kind of blue blob with a buffer around it where either no planting would occur or only native plants would be planted. So I think we can move on to the next slide. So lead exposure again one of the primary concerns out on this site is lead in the shallow soil. So lead exposure is greater is a greater concern for children than it is adults like many compounds. And the pathway into the body for lead is generally through ingestion for children. So you can think about kids out playing in the dirt. They're often putting their hands in their mouth and they're not washing their hands. So that's the common pathway for children is to ingest soil that's contaminated with lead. And for adults it's gonna be more inhalation, breathing in dust. And it's also important to note that lead does not pass directly into the body through the skin. It's gonna be either ingestion, inhalation or another pathway. And lead exposure affects all organs and internal systems in our body. And as a kind of background comparison to think about many of the urban soils in, across the country now have lead concentrations that are greater than what would be considered the naturally occurring background levels due to the widespread historical use of leaded paints on the side of houses or industrial buildings or leaded gasoline use and exhaust pipes. So as a point of comparison or something to think about here in urban soil it's not uncommon to see lead concentrations between approximately 150 and 10,000 micrograms per kilogram. It's kind of to give you something to think about as we move forward. So go on to the next slide there Noah. And as we evaluate the dataset that we have there are things called risk-based soil screening levels. These are thresholds that have been established to be protective of either current or future what are called receptors. So you can think about it as either in our case here what's referred to as either residential or unrestricted use. So for a potential farming use there are certain screening levels that we would be comparing our dataset to. There's also site-specific recreational trail user screening level that was developed as Noah mentioned earlier during that preliminary endangerment assessment. And that screening level was approved by the DTSC for both lead and the PAHs that we see on the site. So we can go on to the next slide and actually take a look at some of what these numbers are. So for lead the background level that's been established and is an accepted number is 43 milligrams per kilogram. For that unrestricted screening level for lead which would be the farming scenario, concentrations of lead would need to be below that number that's 80 milligrams per kilogram. And then for what we're calling our recreational trail user the hiking and biking screening levels that site-specific number for lead is 540 milligrams per kilogram. And for the PAHs since they're not naturally occurring substances there is no background level that's been established for those both the unrestricted and the recreational screening levels. Those numbers are gonna vary because when we're looking at PAHs those polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are gonna be deposited through the clay targets on the site you're looking at 15 to 20 individual compounds. So the screening levels in that situation are gonna vary. And we can look at some of the a summary of the lead samples that were the soil samples that were collected and analyzed for lead. Again, these were samples collected based on expected shop fall range and other field observations. Samples were collected throughout the site. As you can see there, a total of 206 samples were collected after the homeless garden projects initial testing. And of those samples, 85 had concentrations above that background level for lead. 62 samples had concentrations above that unrestricted screening level for lead and 17 samples had concentrations above the recreational screening level for lead. We move on to the next slide, thank you. So for the PAHs it's a slightly smaller data set again, based on the expected clay target range and field observations. Samples were collected throughout that West Meadow area and then portions of the East Meadow and the North Portrait. So of the 58 total samples that were collected and analyzed for PAHs, only 11 had concentrations above the unrestricted screening levels for at least one of those PAH compounds and four samples came back with concentrations above the recreational screening levels. So what does this look like when we put it onto a map and overlay it onto the site? So you can see here, again, if you really just try to focus on the yellow dash lines and the orange lines, those are indicating where we have those concentrations of soil above our recreational screening level. So you can see it's pretty much isolated for lead in that area between the ravine and the East Meadow and then also in the Northern portion of the ravine near the North Portrait. So that generally follows that hypothetical range that we thought for lead that we showed earlier. And then for the PAHs, you see there are a couple of different areas in the West Meadow kind of on either side of the wetland. And if we go to the next slide, you can really see the increase in just area where the unrestricted screening levels have been exceeded. This is a map showing again the yellow dash line being the lead concentrations above our unrestricted screening level and the orange lines being the PAH area above our unrestricted screening level where farming would not be allowed to occur within that yellow or orange area based on the concentrations that we have seen. So I know this is where we get into that feasibility study evaluation. We know if we wanna be farming out on the site, we have a significant area that's gonna need to be remediated, whether that's either just reducing the exposure risk or actually actively remediating and cleaning up those concentrations. So if we go on to the next slide there, we can start getting into looking at the various remedial technologies that we could potentially use for a site like this. This is a condensed version of what we included in our full feasibility study report, looking at a handful of different possible remedial technologies and their approximate effectiveness and cost. So running through them quickly, the options that we looked at and evaluated were phyto remediation. So that's essentially planting specific species of trees that will extract contaminates up through their root structure and remove the contaminates from the soil. Another option we looked at were institutional and engineering controls. This is, you can think of a deed restriction or a land use covenant as an institutional control mixed with fencing or notification signs as an engineering control. We also looked at capping. So instructing a low permeability cap or cover on top of the site to prevent exposure essentially. So that would be asphalt, concrete, or you can even do a thicker layer of soil. We looked at soil flipping. So removing the top layer of contaminated soil, setting it aside, removing a clean layer of soil beneath that, setting it aside, and then backfilling them in reverse. So you put the contaminated soil, you essentially bury it underneath a clean layer of soil. And the last option we looked at was excavation and offsite disposal. So that's where similar to flipping, but we removed that top layer of contaminated soil, we truck it offsite to a disposal facility and we bring in entirely new clean soil to put back on top. So as you can see, the red boxes on the two options that we highlighted, they're institutional and engineering controls and excavation offsite disposal based on the short-term and long-term effectiveness, the implementability, overall protection of human health and the environment and the ability to reach our remedial action cleanup goals and the relative cost. We weighed all of these things and came up with those two as institutional and engineering controls and the excavation and offsite disposal as the two best approaches for this site. Again, looking at in the short-term, let's get this site back to recreational use in as much of an area as we can. And the long-term goal of allowing farming to occur throughout as much of a site as possible. And another aspect of this is regulatory acceptance. So we don't wanna propose something that we don't think the regulatory agency, so currently in this case, the County of Santa Cruz Environmental Health, we don't wanna propose something that we don't think that they're gonna approve and accept. And we can go on to the next slide there please Noah. So what does this look like in action? So our proposed plan for recreational use, this would probably be more of a short-term use, would be the institutional and engineering control. So the purpleish color lines that you see here outlining the, what we're calling the exceedance areas, those yellow and orange lines where we have the contamination above our recreational screening levels, that purple line would be a fence that we would fence off access to those areas to essentially reduce the risk exposure to community members that are out there hiking and biking and using the trail system. That's not gonna clean up the site necessarily, but it's gonna reduce your exposure and allow for those uses to continue. In addition to doing or installing the fencing, we would prepare a site management plan which would essentially provide a guide to the city park and rec staff on how to safely go about conducting their routine vegetation control, site maintenance activities and being protective of themselves. So the project timeline for this scenario would be approximately a year, maybe a little bit over a year. And the factors that go into that are securing funding for the project, preparing a work plan and getting that approved by the regulatory agency. There would likely be some permitting included, whether it's for the fence installation or working near the wetland. We obviously, we would need to install the fencing and we would prepare and record either a land use covenant or a deed restriction, something that says, you know, this site land use cannot be changed unless additional measures are conducted. So that land use covenant would not allow for, you know, the farming used to happen until additional work was done. And a project of this scale, our estimate is somewhere in the ballpark, the neighborhood of two to $300,000. And if we go to the next slide, we can look at, if we wanna go to full unrestricted land use to get to the ideal farming throughout the lower Meadow in areas that the homeless garden project has proposed, we would need to add the excavation and off site disposal component. So as you see here, the green hatched areas that kind of encircle the ravine area and Noah's showing there, those are all areas that are accessible there within the proposed farming garden area and their soil concentrations in those areas are above those unrestricted streaming levels. So that comes out to approximately 10,000 cubic yards covering approximately six acres of land that would need to have a soil removal action and backfilling with clean soil. So there's that piece that would be done. The fencing would stay, it would be modified based on, you know, bringing it in in certain areas to allow for farming whereas soil removal was conducted. And the project timeline for something like this is gonna be pushed out to three plus years, three or four years likely in a best case scenario. And factors that go into that timeline include, again, securing the funding. This would include a more lengthy and involved CEQA and EIR process. Again, based on the wetlands, fish and wildlife would probably be involved and, you know, other stakeholders there. We would prepare the work plan and get approval for that from the regulatory agency. There would be significant permitting that would be involved. And then that would allow us to do the actual soil remediation, removing the contaminated soil, bringing in clean soil, that fencing modification, and then we would, you know, prepare a revised land use covenant and site management plan for the new use. So for the full unrestricted farming land use, we're looking at an estimated cost of somewhere in the ballpark of $5 to $6 million based on today's dollars. And a large portion of that is gonna go into that soil excavation, hauling the soil offsite. And we can go to the next slide and start looking at, you know, what all is gonna go into that excavation and disposal component. So what is included in those proposed soil removal activities would be constructing a temporary access road onto the site, because as the current infrastructure just would not allow for the heavy equipment and trucks and the volume of equipment that would need to be brought into the site to conduct that soil removal. We would remove approximately the top foot of soil based on the data set we have. The contamination in most areas goes down to between six inches and one foot. So we would scrape that soil away. We temporarily stockpile it on a portion of the site that's not gonna be touched while we collect confirmation samples to make sure that the contaminated soil has been removed to the extent that is necessary, both laterally and vertically. We would collect waste characterization samples, which is required anytime that you, you know, removes soil from a site and bring it to a disposal facility to make sure that that soil is characterized properly. And then that last piece of the soil removal is actually loading the soil into dump trucks. So 20 cubic yards at a time, we're talking 10,000 cubic yards of soil, 500 dump trucks approximately, we need to be driven onto that site, loaded with soil and then brought back off the site to a disposal facility. Once the soil removal is completed, we would then kind of do the reverse. We would start backfilling with clean soil. So again, it would be approximately 20 cubic yards at a time. We would backfill into the areas that were, where the soil removal occurred, compact the soil to the project specifications and repair the topography, the slopes to approximately what they were pre-remediation. We go on to the next slide and look at what is not included in our proposed soil remediation activities, restoring areas that are beyond the farming garden. That's the coastal shrub or the oak woodland areas we would need to further evaluate what's going to be done in those areas. An erosion control plan and a stormwater pollution prevention plan would likely need to be prepared. And utility line installation over to that East Meadow area, we're talking water lines, probably electrical line. Those types of things would need to be planned out by an engineer that focuses on that type of work. And then what's also not included the perimeter fencing that would go around the proposed farming garden areas would be something that the homeless garden project, my understanding, they would, they would take care of that portion. And what is to be determined? The County Environmental Health Department has requested additional soil investigation based or in addition to what we have already collected in a few, in a couple of areas, just to make sure that the investigation has fully delineated areas to the extent necessary. So that additional investigation will likely occur later this year or next year. We're hopeful that the numbers that we provided today will not change drastically, but there are potential cost implications based on that additional investigation. That temporary access road that I mentioned, we really don't have a lot of detail on that other than it's something that's been brought up and realized that we would need to, again, bring in an engineer that does that type of work to look at how we would go about preparing that access road and getting the site ready for staging heavy equipment. Sourcing the clean backfill material can be a big challenge on this project. It's not easy to find 10,000 cubic yards of clean soil that can be used for a farming situation. Ideally, that is organic virgin soil. So whatever those specifications end up being, that will be a significant challenge. And then the last piece there is, we need to get regulatory agency approval. We have had initial discussions with the County of Santa Cruz about the overall plan. They have initially provided positive feedback, but there will need to be more conversation and approvals through the regulatory agency. So with all that said, I have one last quick summary slide. Again, we looked at both of what it would take to get the site back to recreational use and the unrestricted or farming use. We talked about the institutional engineering controls in addition to the excavation and offsite disposal for the unrestricted use. For recreational, we're looking at one plus years for the unrestricted, the farming use best case scenarios probably at least three years. Estimated costs can range from two to 300,000 for installing the fencing for the recreational use or upwards of $5 to $6 million for the full site remediation back to or to allow for a farming scenario and then potential delays that could come up. You can see there funding and regulatory oversight review are gonna be potential delays for either option. And then for the full site remediation, that CEQA and EIR process could cause delays and then also sourcing of that backfill material, like I mentioned, that could pose a challenge later on in the project. So sorry, I tried to go through this rather quickly because I know it's been a long day for a lot of you and we're getting late in the evening. So hopefully I made some sort of sense and I will hand it back over to Noah to take it from there and we'll stick around for questions. Thank you Doug. And then in terms of next steps, as I mentioned earlier and I'll just reiterate now, the planning for Parks and Rec staff, we're not intending to perform any more work on the master plan amendment process for the upper meadow. Any unused funds will be returned to the general fund. We're still working with Weber Hayes. There was one sampling point when we sampled the upper meadow did have some little bit of contamination. So we're gonna work with the county to assess that. This month we received a notice that we did receive in another grant award from the department of toxic substances control. And so this would be more than 300,000 to complete a site characterization. The remaining steps of the site characterization, develop a remediation plan, site management plan and construction drawings. We'll need to perform secret review on the project. And then we'll, with all that information, apply for and receive permits from various state agencies by June 2024. And this is kind of exciting that we received the grant because it kind of shows a progression working with DTSC. There was an initial assessment. Now they're funding another investigation, which will get us to a shovel ready state. And then this grant round of funding through their program, you could apply for as much as $6 million for cleanup funding. So it's really great that they're working with us and hopefully that continues. And once we have a shovel ready state, we will apply for grant funding and to perform future cleanups. And moving along, so the staff's recommendation of the night is to motion to acknowledge staff's update and direct staff to continue the next steps towards remedying the lower meadow. And with that, I would like to just pass it over to the homeless garden project for a couple of words. And so Derry, you're available. Thank you. Thank you very much, Noah. My name is Danette Shoemaker. I am the vice president of the homeless garden board. And I'm here with Derry Ganshorn tonight, our executive director. Just very briefly, I wanted to thank Parks and Recreation staff for their work and the informative staff report and this presentation. The information is there. Some of it is staggering, but it shows the amount of work that has gone into the project to this state and also paints a picture where we could be going in the future. We're also very grateful to the city council members for supporting our permanent site at Pogonette. Remediation of the lower meadow will benefit the entire community. And that's what we're hoping for. So since January 2019, when we stopped construction on the lower meadow, the homeless garden project has been presented with two additional permanent site possibilities. And our board of directors is carefully evaluating potential sites, all of which contain a level of uncertainty. And the work of the homeless garden project is inextricably linked to land. So we don't have the luxury of abandoning any possibilities until we have more information. We hope the council will support moving forward with the feasibility analysis for cleaning up the contamination to allow for farming to occur in the lower main meadow. And Danette and I are available to answer any questions from council members. Thanks. Thank you. And that concludes the presentation for tonight and staff and the homeless garden project and the solar available for questions. Thank you so much. Thank you to our Parks and Rec staff and to RMD. Doug, thank you for laying out all of that information. It was actually quite interesting to learn about all the soil and remediation methods. I had no idea. And the recommendations were very clear and laid out and the costs associated. So thank you for that information. Danette and Derry, thank you for your input. And I'd like to bring it out to council members for any questions before we move to public comment and then deliberation and action. I see council member Myers, you have your hand. Just have two quick questions. One is it sounds like the grant that you're just awarded gets you basically all the way through permitting. Is that correct? Yes. Including the CEQA analysis as well. We applied for CEQA. We're still in discussions about that. I do not think they will fund the CEQA component. They mentioned that typically they'll fund up to a mitigated negative declaration but it still is a substantial amount of funding and will help progress the project. And then I know the department of toxic substances they're a department for a reason. And typically they do have fairly good resources because of the public health benefit, obviously that's kind of their work. Do you guys, I know when I've cleaned up a few sites in the last 20 years, there's usually pretty good support there. Are you fairly confident that once you get through permitting that you would be competitive? So I guess my question is, do you feel like the public funding is pretty secure, short of a massive financial issue with the state? But do you feel like you'd be in good shape to continue to receive those grants? I guess it's my question. Not committing anything, but just curious. Yeah, council member Myers, I think we'll be really competitive for that funding. I think it feels like we're on that track already. With DTSC, which is good, so I think we'll be very competitive for that moving forward. And our hope, again, as Noah talked about with an opportunity to get up to around 6 million through that program, our hope would be recognizing that the city has limited resources, that homeless garden project has limited resources for this monumental project. Our goal would be to leverage 100% or as close to 100% grant funding to remediate the project. So that's our hope moving forward. That was my other question was, so I'm hoping that the homeless garden project wouldn't have to continue to raise funds to get back on the land, but that hopefully we could be competitive enough to finally get everything ready and done. Okay, and then I just want to acknowledge Dary and Danette, good to see you guys here tonight. And thank you so much for hanging in. I think the homeless garden project is a really important thing to have happen at Pogonip. I think you're a part of the community that is helping us with a lot of the difficult issues that we're facing in Santa Cruz and a lot of the folks who are struggling here, many of them have found their way back in life and to success through your programs. So I think I know I would be proud to have you guys as a neighbor there. And as people wander around and hike and do the things they love to do there. And it sounds like you are sort of tracking on all opportunities still just because that's what you need to do as an organization in terms of making sure you get a home soon. So that sounds kind of what I got out of your statements. So I just want to thank you for being here tonight and I'm hoping we'll get a home run soon. And I'm hoping three more years maybe goes by in a flash. We'll see. But thank you for hanging in there. It's my comments, man. Council member Cummings. Well, thanks for that presentation. And it'll be interesting to watch how things go from here. I had a question related to the homeless garden project and kind of ongoing operations. I know that when this came to us back in 2021, there was a sense of urgency that was expressed by the homeless garden project because it sounded like the current site was gonna be developed on within a short time period. And I'm just wondering, given that this can take multiple years, do you all have a space to operate between now and potentially when this can be finished? Or what is the future currently homeless garden project look like? We are in conversation with our landlord and we believe that we can stay there or we believe that our state is secure there for the time being at least. Great. I was just kind of wanting to understand that so that if there was a need for help on our end to find a temporary spot for you all to continue your operations that you're happy to try to partner with you all as well. I know the community really appreciates your services. And yeah, with that, I don't really have more questions. It sounds like staff is gonna be working on trying to find funding. And given what we know now about that site, the potential to be eligible for some of these EPA and other kind of environmental remediation grants seems like it's pretty high. And just given the new knowledge that we have on the past use of that site. So just hoping that we're able to secure that funding so we can clean that site regardless of its future use. It seems like cleaning that site is a priority and if the homeless garden project can have their permanent home there, then that would be a great addition as well. So thank you. Thank you. Council Member Meyers, did you have another question? Oh, no, I forgot to take my hand down, but there we go. Thank you. Are there any other questions? I will, no more clarifying questions. I will bring it out to public comment then. Okay, so if you are a member of, what was that? It sounded like someone said something. If you are a member of the public and interested in commenting on item number 42, Pogonit Open Space Pogonit Master Plan Amendment process, raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand in the webinar controls on your computer. When it's your turn to speak, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. Any members of the public who are joining us here in chambers and want to comment, please line up to the right of the dais. You will have two minutes to speak. We request that you sign in to ensure correct spelling of your name in the meeting minutes. However, it's not required. All right, let's go out to our virtual attendees. I'm not seeing anyone in person. And our first hand raised is phone number ending in 3485. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. My name is Caitlin Gaffney and I'm a 23 year resident of Santa Cruz and a regular user of the Pogonit Open Space. I've testified before you in the past about my strong opposition to the proposed relocation of the homeless garden project to the main meadow of Pogonit, which would be in conflict with multiple city plans and policies. Tonight, I wanted to express my appreciation for the city's efforts related to remediation of the lead contamination at the lower meadow site. And also was happy to hear the homeless garden project staff and I mentioned that their board is exploring alternative locations for the project. I continue to believe that an off Pogonit location would be the best option, but I just wanted to appreciate the efforts that the homeless garden project and the staff have put into really extensively exploring alternatives to the main meadow. Thank you. Thank you for your input. Our next member of the public is the name I am watching you. Yeah, hi. I always had basic problems with the city giving away land to benefit a small number of so-called residents. I see no calculation of cost-benefit analysis as in how much land value and proven costs relates to the actual number of residents that might improve their status in life by how much. It's a big per person and no number at the moment, but a casual look at land prices not even in the pricey city proper suitable for farming would value nine acres at about $7 million easily. That would be a pretty nice minimum giveaway, huh? It's a lie, it benefits the entire community. It's a feel good project, but anyone reading even the summary of this knows it has become a bad but mucho red tape, very expensive idea a while ago. It's time to cut losses and forget about it. There are other ways to help homeless people as if that is really the city purpose anyway. The very idea of the giveaway runs counter to protected open space, something the public was supposed to be. I doubt the public will be enjoying any of these nine acres unless HPG, HGP has a volunteer workday where the virtue seeking public among us has to do the work HGP is supposed to be doing farming. I would note that there are multiple landlots that look suitable for farming for sale in Santa Cruz County that currently sell for $750,000 an acre. Maybe HGP should buy four acres and expand their way with their $3 million they claimed they had last time they revealed their balance. For the money thrown at this, I suggest there are other options. You're a hopin' and a hopin', someone else picks up the tab for restoration, but you're not getting paid for the land and it's still a huge giveaway of public land. It's time for this entire idea to go bye bye, feel good or not. The idea of other public uses for money and that land belongs to the public trust. At least get paid for it if you can violate its purpose. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who would like to comment on this agenda item number 42? Okay, I'm bringing it back to council for action and deliberation. Council member Myers. Yeah, I was gonna move basically, it sounded like the staff recommendation which was to direct continued work on the cleaning up of the contamination for to allow for farming to occur in the lower meadow and including pursuing the next set of work with the grant and then additional funding to finalize and remove all the contamination. And I believe, I don't know if there's a motion that needs to be made to, it sounds like, I don't know if you need direction, Noah on that reprogramming of the upper meadow of funding that was gonna be used for that planning work to back to the general fund and them for use in this project. Is do you need a motion on that? You know, if you would like to make a motion, but it's my understanding that it could be returned back to the general fund. The general fund, okay. So I'm pretty sure I covered what was in your one line I put into a rambling like three and a half lines. Council member Myers, I'm happy to second that motion. I just wanna clarify the motion that was pulled on the screen was a little different than yours. So if we can get clarification on what exactly the motion is. So the motion was to accept the report and staffs update and then to direct staff to continue next step remediating the lower main meadow and to utilizing the existing funding and to continue to pursue additional funding to complete the floor of mediation. Okay, city clerk, did you receive that information? And council member Brown. I just wanted to make a quick comment and say express my sincere appreciation for our parks and rec staff and our consultants and to everybody at the homeless garden project for all of the work that you have been doing to try to make a permanent home a reality for you in the Pogo Nip, which I absolutely support and hope we can keep moving in this direction. I wanna comment on the staff report for this item was particularly excellent. It was so clearly articulated. I felt like I could really understand what the steps you went through. So Noah, kudos to you. It was really a joy to read except for the part about potentially $6 million for the cleanup. But it really was clear how much work has gone into this and you just laid it out really clearly for us and gave us a really good sense of what we're looking at. And so I just so much appreciate that. I don't have questions because it was really clear. And once I realized I don't need to understand particulars of borehole seepage, I was fine with the rest of it. So thank you. Just really, really thank you. Thank you. All right, we have a motion by Council Member Myers seconded by Brunner. And it's like there's no further discussion. So I'd like to ask for a roll call vote. Member Callentary-Johnson. Aye. Golder absent Cummings. Aye. Brown aye. Meyers. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes with six ayes and one absent. Council Member Golder. Thank you very much to our Noah Johnning Park Planner Director Tony Elliott for all the time into this and RMD, Ivy John and Doug. Thank you so much. And with that, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor.