 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council is called to order. Let me ask if the clerk would be kind enough to call the roll. Thank you Mayor, Council Member Newsom. Present. Brown. Here. Watkins. Here. Grinner. Present. Melancholy Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder. Here. And Mayor Keely. Here. Having established a quorum we will begin today's meeting. We are initially going to be going into a closed litigation and personnel session. This would be the opportunity for anyone who wishes to address the council on those closed session matters before we recess and go to a closed session to make any comments you would wish to make. This is solely on the closed session litigation and personnel items. Seeing and hearing none, let me ask the clerk to and I will be doing this rather than myself doing it. I'm going to ask the clerk from time to time to communicate with the public about how they can communicate with us. Ms. Bush. Thank you Mayor. For members of the public who are joining us virtually or streaming now it's a time for you to call or raise your hand to speak. You can press star nine or select the raise hand on your webinar controls and you'll hear announcement when you are unmuted. Questions, comments. Seeing and hearing none we will recess into closed session. I will say there are two people who have joined us virtually so if I could, if either two attendees are wishing to speak on closed session please press star nine to raise your hand. Seeing and hearing none we stand in recess. The hour of 2.15 having arrived and passed we will come out of recess and close session and begin our afternoon session. Mr. Condati let me ask you if we have any reportable items out of the closed session. Good afternoon Mayor Keely, members of the City Council. Can I call roll? Very quick. Excuse me, call the roll. Councilmember Newsom. Here. Brown. Here. Watkins. Here. Brunner. Present. Calentary Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder. Here. And Mayor Keely. Here. Mr. Condati. Yes, good afternoon Mayor Keely, members of the City Council. Council met this afternoon at 12.30 in closed session in the courtyard conference room to discuss the following items. Item one was a conference with labor negotiators. Item one was a conference with labor negotiators involving the following bargaining groups. Police officers association, police management, SEIU temporary employees and SEIU service employees. Item two was a conference with legal council concerning existing litigation. First item was a the matter entitled city of Santa Cruz versus service employees international union currently pending before the public employment relations board. There was no reportable action on that item. Item two was pending litigation in the third appellate district entitled grant park neighborhood association advocates at all versus California Department of Public Health at all. Councilmember Golder has recused herself from that item because she is a party. The remaining council members by a vote of five to one vote voted to direct the city attorney's office to prepare an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs and appellants in that case. Councilmember Brown was the the only no vote. Item three was a conference with legal council involving liability claims. The claims of Cohen, Hian, Liam, liberty, mutual insurance, Robert Fleck and Leanne and Hunter. There was no action on those items but they are also listed this afternoon on your consent calendar as item number 13. Item four was a public employee performance evaluation slash conference with labor negotiators. Council received a report from designated representative. Yours truly. There was no reportable action. Thank you very much. Let me ask the city clerk if you would be kind enough to read into the record the way that folks can participate this afternoon and this evening. Thank you mayor for those who are put either called in or participating virtually. I have put the instructions on the screen. Now you would call before your item please you raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand option in your webinar controls and I will flash the instructions every now and then for as a reminder. Thank you miss bush we appreciate that. Let me ask if there are statements of disqualification that any member would like to or is required to make at this time on any matters on our agenda. Ms. Brunner. I have a statement of disqualification for item 24, 24.1 and 24.2 out of an abundance of caution. These these items are the downtown expansion area plan amendment revision and which relates to my employment with the neighboring district of the downtown association of Santa Cruz. Thank you for that. Any other member? Seeing none. Let me ask if there are additions and deletions. Do we have any additions or deletions? Yes we do have an addition of an item and I will refer to Heidi Lukenbach from water. Thank you. I'm on my way. Yeah we are adding a resolution to item six I believe on your agenda that addresses procurement items related specifically to FEMA requirements. I'm happy to speak more of that when that agenda item comes up if that's appropriate or no. Any other additions or deletions? Let me uh. Mayor I will defer to the city attorney but I think we need a vote. We need a motion and a vote on to add it. Yes and we'll get there. We'll get ourselves there. Let me uh me in order to move ahead let me make a couple of comments first. Every member here has uh and the public have observed the tremendous presidentially declared disaster that we have experienced. We've had our city manager declare a state of emergency and disaster. The governor who is in our county at this moment touring some sites has made the state declaration and the president of the United States has issued the presidential proclamation. I had the good fortune yesterday of speaking of receiving a call from the vice president of the United States offering assistance to our community. Uh any such help we may need whether it's a federal emergency management agency or others and she indicated that the administration stood ready to be of assistance to us and we appreciated that. I also want to say that uh every worker in the city of Santa Cruz uh every worker recall uh excuse me was called to duty during these past several days and especially during the cyclone bomb that hit our community and in order to respond adequately all hands were on deck and whether that is our police fire public works water department others everyone responded with the kind of deep caring and humanity that we've come to know and expect out of our city workers as well as our partners in local government the county of Santa Cruz uh other cities in our community as well as a number of nonprofits who stood up as we know they always do. What I'd like to be able to do at this point is uh is give other members I know this is unusual but it's an unusual circumstance if any other members would like to make brief comments about that uh certainly you will be acknowledged. Anyone wish to do that? Ms. Brown? I would uh I just want to put a fine point on the appreciation and recognition of our city workers who stepped in I know that's happening with public agencies around the county but they stepped in and under very challenging circumstances uh worked in you know in jobs that they're not familiar with and and and they've continued to do this during crisis um I don't want to sound like we're in perpetual crisis but you know multiple crises so um I just want to say you know and and the Parks and Rec crew I know that you um kind of just jumped in and were responsive immediately with the civic and Ms. Bond if you're out there listening especially uh who coordinates that uh that space thank you so much for being there and we really do appreciate you. Mr. Newsom. I just want to uh you know just reiterate that as well and just you know state my thanks for the work that the city workers did this past week uh as uh as a storm came in and how they handled the situation and how they stepped up and how they addressed it it was a really great job. Ms. Watkins. Yeah no I'll just briefly also extend my gratitude and thanks I think in these types of instances and these times in crises is when you see the best of people coming forward and not only do you see our workers prepared and willing to go and serve and do what they can do in their capacity but also just members of our community wanting to help in any way they can helping with sandbagging or whatever it is that they can do um you know I grew up in the county and I think the devastation is just it's it's unbearable to a certain extent having been a child being able to access a number of the places that have been destroyed that being said we're an incredible resilient community and we'll continue to do what we can to come together to support each other and these types of challenging circumstances and do what we can to recover from here moving forward so um yeah kudos and extension of gratitude to the entire community for for really rallying to support those in most in need at this time. Thank you. Ms. Brunner. Thank you for the opportunity. I would definitely like to thank Erika Smart our new communications director with the city who really jumped on board and quickly was able to get information out to our community in English and Spanish in this time of crisis I would like to thank our parks and rec crew for all of their work at the civic auditorium as the shelter and the freight depot building at the freight building at depot park as another shelter and our free guide who operated that and our entire community who came together in this time was remarkable thank you to the community foundation for providing disaster relief fund for anybody who needs it and to the family who donated a matching amount of seventy five thousand it's just an example of all of us working together in the most difficult time and as we enter into recovery mode and assessing damages you know the city we have our wharf I know that we have we will be assessing those damages we have damage on west cliff drive that will be assessed and other areas of flooding and I'm so glad that we had no fatalities thank you to our police and fire and the emergency responder crews I know there were several water rescues yesterday so with today's high surf advisory I would just like to remind everyone to stay away from the surf zones and the water and thank you to everyone for the last week of work during a time when our city offices were closed technically everyone did come together hands on deck so thank you thank you miss pruner miss collin tarry johnson thank you for the opportunity my colleagues have made a lot of the same things that I would make but certainly to city staff and parks and rec it was amazing to see everyone come together and work through the holiday week the partnership with the county and and county programs I know that we've coordinated with their EOC and the non-profits who were able to come and support the city or support any other locations that needed the support councilmember bruner mentioned community foundation also volunteer center is all still providing opportunity for folks who want to volunteer and help with the restoration of our community um and thank you to city manager matt huffaker for keeping us minute by minute up to date with what's happening and how we can contribute and support the efforts of the city thank you very much miss golder I don't have um anybody in addition to think other than I really do want to express my thanks to the staff who worked tirelessly in the months before this to clean up the benchlands because I think if that was part of the emergency it we could have seen a lot more loss of life and so having the foresight to have that encampments cleaned up and those folks relocated seeing that the the river reached all-time highs it was really a lot of a lot of work in advance of this that was also super helpful so thank you to the workers who did that work and thank you to everybody who came together in the community to help out those in need and I'm just happy that everybody for the most part was you know safe and healthy and um yeah very good thank you thank you all so very much what is the appropriate motion you're looking for sir here I need to explain the basis for the motion um due to uh threats to city facilities and infrastructure that came to the attention of city staff over the course of the weekend after the agenda was posted in the need to take urgent action to address the the critical immediate ones a resolution has been prepared that authorizes emergency procurement of goods materials and construction services during the existence of the local emergency what this is intended to do is to give city staff the ability to move forward immediately for some pressing needs there will be additional projects that come forward over the over time but in order to make sure that we get started quickly and that we comply with FEMA and other regulations necessary to hopefully get reimbursed for the costs um this resolution is being added the recommendation is to um is to remove item number seven from the consent calendar and consider this resolution in conjunction with the resolution that's in your packet for item number seven and in order to add this as a matter of subsequent need it requires a um a vote of five council members is there a motion so moved second by miss walk and this is second by miss calentary johnson debate or discussion oh i'm sorry excuse me i'm getting used to voices and uh so on not just the voices in my head but the actual voices okay thank you miss brunner for the second it's their debate or discussion seen and hearing none clerk will call the roll councilmember new some and this is uh this is to add to add i brown i what can i brunner i calentary johnson i vice mayor golder i and mayor keely i the item is added now further on the we are now on the consent agenda let me ask if there are additions and deletions in addition to the addition we just made any additions or deletions to the consent agenda i'd like to pull item number 14 at the request of staff is that correct funny i'm looking at item number 14 will be pulled and that item will become item 21.1 um no it'll it'll still be 14 excuse me it'll still be 14 we don't remember um when they get pulled oh we don't well this is very different than the board of supervisors all right it'll remain but we will take it up uh after item 21 further on the consent agenda miss calentary johnson item 12 item 12 it is uh it is pulled others did you need to have item seven pulled as well in order to have that added okay i'd like to pull item seven item seven others others on the consent agenda anyone with us today who wants to pull an item off the consent agenda i'm sorry to comment on the consent agenda please do please do um would this be the moment to come make the comment make a comment on consent agenda sure can you please speak into the mic that mic right yeah thank you want to um comment on item number 20 the laguna creek diversion retrofit project i live right next door to that project and so i um know it really well i walk that part of the creek all the time and um i've watched the work and especially the revegetation work and i just want to share with you because i don't know who who i should be telling this to if anyone but i'm just just a word to the wise um the revegetation work that has been done um flies in the face of um much of what how a forest grows um how trees should be planted in relationship to each other and to light and um so what's happened is that there little um groupings of redwoods and other plants that have been revegetated um where they have very little chance of uh growing and they have to be watered by water trucked in to laguna creek right where laguna creek is now i'm sure all of this is in some kind of compliance with some regulations but um but the bottom line is that the owner of that property where this work has been done intends to pull all of that out in five years when the project is no longer uh no required to to be maintained and um so i'm just wanting to let you know that that seems like a terrible inefficiency and maybe there's some way to intervene in those kinds of decisions and revegetation projects thank you thank you very much anyone else wish to comment on the consent agenda miss shendledecker good afternoon hi happy new year everyone um i just wanted to comment on item 11 the um the grant application for san lorendo river flooding and climate change um while i'm i think it's great that were that you're looking for funding to keep pushing forward on um climate change adaptation and mitigation and i'm really glad to see that there's funding in there for um rv dumping to match local enterprise grant funds i also just want to sort of flag that there's been 20 years plus of study of the san lorendo river planning we have people active in our community who have been working on um you know worked on the san lorendo river plan in 2003 and the recommendations for that were shelved the copy of it that's available online is missing some pages and there's to me that points to two things one that the the city hasn't taken seriously the work that it's done in past decades hasn't taken advantage of local knowledge and um resources uh person power that's been available to work on these these items and people are still on advisory bodies if you look up that document and see who was involved so it just i'd like to like to recommend that everybody take a look at that river plan from 2003 take seriously the recommendations that were made then which were informed by i think early knowledge earlier knowledge of climate change even if it's not mentioned specifically by that wording um and you know take some of that advice along with spending you know a hundred thousand two hundred thousand however many more dollars for yet another study um you know we do a lot of studies let's do the work too thanks very good thank you anyone else who's wish it with us today who wishes to comment on the consent agenda seen and hearing none the matter is back before the council and uh we're going to take up those items that were pulled so let's take a look yes you want to motion on the remaining sorry mayor you would do a vote to accept the full consent agenda agenda um calendar and then go to the ones that were pulled okay let's get a motion on the remaining consent agenda items motion yes i had a comment on 15 what go ahead uh so i have a comment on 15 finalizing sister city relationship between berets france and the city of santa cruz and i just wanted to say thank you to parks and rec tremaine head and jones and city attorney's office cassie bronson um for working on this finalization which wasn't quite uh ready by the end of the year and so with this um a new finalization i'm looking forward to um continuing a sister city relationship with berets france thank you thank you another item you want to comment on question on 18 is the west cliff drive walking path storm damage repair project completion i was just curious if any of the storm recent storm impacts um along west cliff drive are associated or impacted this project at all mary kaley uh member of the city council my name is roger spanggood i'm sorry you are recognized thank you um so the this notice of completion for west cliff is actually the last fema project from the last declared declaration in 2017 it held up fine it is not part of the damage uh that's currently going on in west cliff thank you for the question or comment anyone else as a motion and a second to approve the consent agenda as amended those favors councilmember brunner i make a motion to approve the council the consent agenda did we have a motion on the floor yeah i have councilmember watkins seconded by councilmember brunner okay that's where i thought we were okay clerk will call the roll councilmember newson hi brown hi what can i um brunner hi calentary johnson hi vice mayor golder hi and mary kaley hi motion passes and so ordered we're going to go to item 14 which was pulled the member who pulled that item wished to open on it sure this item was pulled on requests of staff and i'll go ahead and power staff speak to it good afternoon good afternoon mayor and city council um on june i'm elizabeth cabell thank you thank you on june 28th of last year staff brought an item to council discussing the implementation of energy related improvements at three city sites the civic auditorium so cal front garage and harvey west ball park ball field at that meeting council adopted a resolution authorizing execution of an agreement with site logic for the implementation of the improvements with funding provided by a low interest california energy commission loan of three million and a tax exempt municipal lease loan of three and a half million the cec loan was approved in october for two point four million instead of the expected three million so the municipal lease loan that's brought before you today is for three point eight million instead of three point five million the scope of work and total cost of the project has not changed from what was approved in june but because the municipal lease loan amount is different than what was originally approved we need to have the item considered and voted on as a separate item of business and not part of the consent calendar so staff municipal advisors bond council and site logic are all here if you have any questions on anything members questions thank you very much we're going to take these one at a time is there a motion to accept under 14 as recommended i'll make a motion public comment public comment seeing hearing none i'll move item 14 a second motion and a second under discussion seeing the nearing none we will move to a roll call vote what we'll call the roll council member newson hi brown hi what can hi brunner hi calentary johnson hi vice mayor golder hi and mariculey hi item 12 on the consent agenda miss calentary johnson thank you this is um the committees and commissions for council members and i wanted to request um that um i serve on the downtown management corporation and i've spoken to council member brown about um swapping places there we're good yes good good further on this item i do miss walkins yes i apologize for not speaking to you in advance that i saw that i was removed from the farmers market board and i know that the farmers market board likes to be consulted prior to any kind of changes at the city level so i'd like to either request to remain and or have that conversation with the board prior to making this change okay uh why don't we why don't we go ahead you had a comment miss brunner and i'd like to recommend that uh council member walkins remain on the farmers market board and on and would that mean that somebody needs to who was indicated to be on here myself and you okay you're okay with that dropping off that correct okay further nope thank you and i would like to apologize to my friend miss brown who in my putting together of all of these requests uh i uh i made an error no matter how many times i read it i didn't see the error every time and uh miss brown is going to be our representative to the regional transportation commission i will be if the council approves this the alternate on the regional transportation commission i would like that without objection inserted into this item are there further questions or comments on this item anyone on the public wish to make comment on this i'm sorry mr newson a quick question i've uh or i'm just noticing that for the integrated waste management local task force i am listed twice as on the council or on the agency and as an alternate that's so good we're expecting let's make sure that's correct i've already fixed it that was the original but i've updated the the that's what we do to the new council members double and triple them up on things all right uh those those changes are made uh anyone wish to comment on this item on appointments seen and hearing none of roll call votes in order do we have a motion no it's a yeah this motion the second count our johnson seconded by Watkins roll call vote please council member newson i brown i what can i runer i fill in tory johnson vice mayor golder i maricule hi council we are on agenda item number seven and miss walkins did you wish to comment on this well i just wanted to see if there was any further discussion but we did hear from our city attorney and the logic you know behind this so i'm happy to just proceed and moving it after we have public comment if you'd like all right public comments on this matter seen and hearing none motion to approve is in order i'll go ahead and move it motion by miss walkins second by mr newson is there public comment seen and hearing none we will move or excuse me debate or discussion seen and hearing none the clerk will call the roll pardon me mayor just for clarity um the the motion is to adopt the two resolutions the revised resolution for item seven that was distributed to the council as well as the additional resolution that has been prepared for the emergency procurement the record will reflect that's the motion clerk will call the roll council member newson i brown i what can i runer i fill in tory johnson i vice mayor golder i america hi members we have uh we're now moving ourselves to the item that does require a uh a public hearing on our consent item number 21 that item is now before us let me ask first if there are any questions or comments on this item by members seen and hearing none we will go to the public we're in a public hearing at this point regarding item 21 a second reading and final adoption of an ordinance relating to the fire code anyone wish to make comment on that seen and hearing none the matter is back before the council and a motion to approve would be in order council member brunner i i make a motion to miss brunner miss walkins is the second debate or discussion seen and hearing none roll call vote what are we voting on um the second reading of that i uh brown i what can i brunner i fill in tory johnson i vice mayor golder i and mayor kewie hi motion passes we are on item 22 on our agenda this afternoon this is health and all policies progress report and work plan who will be presenting on this issue that will be me mayor i am tiffani wise west the sustainability and climate action manager thank you for being with us this afternoon you're welcome let me uh bring this up please and may i ask the clerk i need to both share the screen and turn on the camera is that correct all right here we are thank you good afternoon council members and mayor as i mentioned i'm tiffani wise west the sustainability and climate action manager for the city and i'm here to share with you today the progress on health and all policies over 2022 and the 2023 work plan i want to start by acknowledging the council members that um are on the health and all policy city council committee council member walkins collin tarry johnson and brunner and i also want to acknowledge our consultant nicole young of optimal solutions who's really assisted us with carrying out these work over the years so just to jump right into it um what is health and all policies and you know why is this an initiative here at the city so health and all policies really is an acknowledgement that local government decisions and policy making impacts community well-being and in turn evidence demonstrates the prioritizing equity public health and sustainability results in improved community well-being um this initiative started back in 2018 motivated by then mayor martin walkins um and really uh acknowledging that no one sector or agency alone can do this uh improve community well-being but it takes a cross-sectoral approach that yields multiple benefits for our community this initiative is aligned with the core conditions of community well-being where core stands for collective results of evidence-based investments which is a funding model uh partnership between the county and the city to achieve equitable health and well-being in the county um also there is broader support for health and all policies it is an international framework utilized by the world health organization the centers for disease control here in the united states uh the state of california has three cabinet level positions in the strategic growth council and there are a number of us and neighboring uh local governments that utilize this framework notably the cities of richmond gonzales and monterey county however each of these jurisdictions really operationalizes this framework in a different way and i want to share with you how the city has operationalized this framework um by sharing some of the highlights i'm not going to read all the words on the screen here but i will say that um there was a city council and um city department head committee that was directed in 2018 to evaluate how would the city operationalize health and all policies here at the city that resulted in in ordinance as well as implementation recommendations lots of training that's happened over the last several years we do include narrative language on how health and all policies have been incorporated in every item on agenda reports and subsequently in 2021 a resolution on race racial discrimination was also adopted that was very complimentary that actually reconvened the health and all policies um city council committee this past year we do have a set of community well-being metrics that were adopted that are aligned with the core conditions of well-being this past year we integrated health and all policies into the budget and that's a phased approach that's ongoing and began our work as a result of the racial discrimination resolution looking at diversity in recruitment and representation on our committees and commissions this next year as you've seen in your agenda report there are some other items related to single-use tobacco waste product options as well as carrying some ongoing work with the the equal employment opportunity committee and a diversity equity and inclusion effort so while we do track our indicator metrics I think it's important to acknowledge that systemic change and improvements to community well-being over time do require sustained effort over years and oftentimes we do not see shifts and improvements until the decadal scale so something I wanted to point out one of the major work plan items over last year that will be continuing in an implementation phase this year again coming out of the racial discrimination resolution is sorry um is a Santa Cruz like me uh value of representation representational uh government report and study that was conducted Santa Cruz like me was originally a partnership between Santa Cruz ventures and Santa Cruz county to understand what were the demographics of Santa Cruz counties um and now the city's representative bodies and really acknowledge that different lived experience can help inform and shape policy and governance to ensure our county is resilient resilient prosperous and equitable I want to acknowledge Maria Cadenas and Kayla Gomez from ventures I'm not sure if they're here um but they conducted our survey of all of our commissioners and committee members where we had 63 percent response rate which is very high so we know that the findings that we have um are representative of our committees and commissions um we surveyed folks on everything from gender age income veteran status education identification is differently abled race ethnicity and housing status um and then we compare the results of those demographics with the citywide demographics um the report also includes the county values for both of those as well the findings that we there were several critical findings one is that there is critical over representation of zip code 95060 considered the west side of Santa Cruz um a higher that has higher income households there's no representation of young adults and low representation of those without higher education degrees and households under a hundred thousand uh dollars a year there's also critical under representation of people of color and renters so with that the Santa Cruz uh like me a city like me report that you see here came out with some recommendations which the city will be carrying out over this next year and I'm going to share those with you right now as well uh number one we will be forming a diverse and inclusive external advisory body to the health and all policies committee to guide the recommendation the implementation of these recommendations gaining input on targets for diversity potentially compensation and outreach to diverse peoples number two more training that's something that always arises um so in this case training for our committee and commission staff and chairpersons on the purpose of why are we looking at demographics and why are we trying to diversify um our advisory bodies um we also be touching upon interpretation and translation health and all policies itself um and uh getting input on some of these efforts number three um I'll be working with the city clerk Bonnie Bush on recruitment diversity translation and interpretation standards as well as targets one other piece of this was that we were to brief the mayor and council on the city demographics and the purpose of this which I am doing here today number four as I mentioned we are going to be evaluating setting standards for interpretation translation beyond what we have in place now which is on request um and we have a guidance document on that as well as targets for diversity and commissions and committees um and then lastly we're going to be working with the county to review the variances in our demographics conduct knowledge sharing share target setting approaches and work plans and identify possible opportunities for collaboration I think um the commission on Latino affairs at the county um I believe was the lead on conducting their Santa Cruz like me report and I think there are big possibilities there as well as in the human services commission and the women's commission we also could potentially invite Monterey county to inform the seeing as they've had health and all policies in place for some time with that uh that is my report to you and the recommendation is a motion to accept the 2022 progress report and approve the 2023 work plan as presented and is contained in your agenda report miss wise west thank you very much for your presentation today let me ask if council members have questions or comments on this item miss Watkins I don't have a question but I do have a comment I just want to thank my colleagues for their interest their work and um but also really want to give my sincere gratitude to you Tiffany for all your dedication and hard work I know this is one of many things on your plate um but I have heard over and over again that diversity equity inclusion sustainability and health and well-being is a priority for our community and these values are ones that I too hold very um close and what I think I feel really is the power of health and all policies is the fact that this operationalizes those values in a way that we can see as you said though in the long term really some change and so um I know that's a slow moving process but it's a critical process to really achieve some of the equity goals as well as some of the sustainability and health goals I would like to see Monterey county come I'd love to see how other jurisdictions have operationalized it I think we can learn from them and I'm sure that they can learn from some of the work we've done um I know that in the report we had areas in which we want to see growth in um and then actually that's getting me to a question if if I may I want I know that there was some funding and I've mentioned this to you also um city city manager Matt that you know having some sustained investment in this also matters so I know that there was funding for 20 000 do you feel that's going to adequately be able to meet the needs that we could see this potentially moving forward to address I do for this next year and the work plan the work plan was kind of tailored around what can we manage in terms of fiscally and um with our capacity so I do think that that can cover what we need to accomplish this next year I guess also then as a follow-up is I know that this has also been a place where there's additional items added to that so if that were the case such as the tobacco related research that we'll be doing um you know I think that we revisit the funding associated with that as opposed to additional workflow or workload so that you can have it manageable but also be able to you know achieve some of our goals thank you thank you if I if I may chime in just really quickly mayor um appreciate that comment council member uh Watkins and we are certainly sensitive to the number of priorities and um additional projects we've added under the health and all policies umbrella so we we do look forward to working through that with the council as part of the strategic plan process and certainly looking at opportunities for us to continue building out and I think achieving the vision that we have we've set forward thank you thank you Ms Watkins I think if if then if at the strategic planning process and outcome if it does look like that this is going to be integrated in more of an intensive way that we have this item come back for for the discussion and modification for potential additional funding supports so that would be a sort of informal happy to do that I would also anticipate part of that will occur in the course of building out the budget for fiscal year 24 as well and so more conversations to come thank you council member brunner thank you I just a brief comment to um acknowledge Tiffany wise west for all the work that um on this uh body we've really we set forth with some direction and to see it laid out in this report is really significant of what we've been able to address and I'm so glad you mentioned Nicole Young of optimal solutions and Maria Cadena's executive director of Santa Cruz Ventures for the uh a Santa Cruz like me report um because with that data it was so eye-opening and it's continuing to help inform our work going forward so I'm happy to see our work uh continue and um I'm happy to continue working on improving the equity and uh well-being of our internal systems and externally in the city so thank you thank you miss brunner miss con tarry Johnson I'd also like to acknowledge and thank my colleagues on this committee and Tiffany for your leadership and um for taking some big ideas and making it really concrete and succinct um I'm excited to see the recommendation all of them but certainly the recommendation of collaborating with the county and our committees and commissions I mean this is where we cultivate and develop leadership pipelines and and that's what informs us as a decision-making body um there's also hopefully in that partnership there's opportunity for us to talk about health and all policies in a in a bigger way with the county um you know they have human services department um health services agency the or three so there's a there's a lot that we can do and and hopefully when inviting Monterey um it'll inspire us as a county to do bigger bigger things with health and all policies outside of our city um I really um want to thank you councilmember Watkins for bringing up what it takes the resources it takes to do this work we've done a lot um with the resources that we have and I know that we could probably do a lot more because health and all policies we have these very specific actions that we do but it is bigger than the specific actions it's infused in how we conduct our business so thank you for your work and thank you for the presentation thank you councilmember councilmember brown well I'll also uh add my sincere appreciation to Tiffany wise west it's amazing how you keep all of the balls in the air and bring deliver us really really cohesive packages of information that are very useful for us and so on that note I want to just uh make a comment for the general public if you're listening um the report attached to this item is is so useful I mean I loved seeing it uh city like me report um you can find it there uh attached to the agenda item and I'm hoping we can get it out somewhere that it's more accessible for folks to find it on our website um because I know that we all express and and work towards uh inclusive representation and we talk about community engagement and wanting the public to really be involved in uh city decision making um you know new ideas generating new ideas all of those things and uh this shows where we're at and it it also provides some motivation to get involved as I was reading it I thought I want to I want to get involved in this this is a cool thing so um so thank you and I hope that uh folks out there will take a look at it and um happy to support moving forward um with the the process thank you further questions comments anyone with us today who would like to make a comment on this item this would be your opportunity to do so we also have a couple people um virtually with our hand good mr whitehead come on up good afternoon sir I'm I'm sorry I'm sorry excuse me I apologize I apologize I apologize good afternoon sir yeah I'm I'm Richard Richard of course you are I would just say that for a long time health doesn't start in the hospital starts in the neighborhood so I don't know you but I sure coming here didn't plan to talk but if we're we're going to see change I'm going to get your card and I'm going to read the report um I can't be back here but I'll be watching at five o'clock and I came because I just wanted to welcome you Fred because I believe in for the next four years we're going to see the power of what we can do in a neighborhood whether that's a neighborhood that I'd like to see on one block or what comes out of your plan it's obvious this was fantastic it didn't happen because I sure remember the county office and way back to your dad so those who don't know me I am the stand for change 84 year young but without going into all the details if ever we're going to see change it's to get to Cabrillo it's to get to UC to bring that voice forward and I know I've got advocates for youth power I've got advocates for a youth mayor because we've got to create a healthy Santa Cruz starting with the families and at least that one block where the warming center is getting out of there we've got people paying the 2,500 for a one-bedroom apartment so I will get your card uh what I represent is strategies they're based on that Cabrillo but I would recommend that you get to the Latino Affairs Commission and they meet every other month and make this known to them we have two representatives from the city of Santa Cruz so you know Fred President Obama Michelle got started as a community organizer look who's sitting around but let's not forget those who went before us so with that thank you for tying me I love Nicholas but you are Richard Lewis by the way my brother's back in Brazil as those who don't know that last name my brother Bob and Jack owned Lewis Volkswagen I'm proud of that but I'm more proud of what the city manager can do back over in Watsonville but as I said a prayer back 50 years ago with Father Ross prayer I'm still hanging on to so thank you for letting me remember our here so Lewis thank you sir anyone else wish to provide comment there are folks on line who would like to make comments yes thank you the thrust of both the summary and report you're being asked to accept contain the classic leftist and high up discrimination garbage it seems this venture organization wrote the report and as far as I know it's a political action group that seeks to install more Hispanic people into positions of authority at any cost led by two-time progressive political loser Maria called Dennis Dennis as a goal in itself believing no one else can represent that community unless they have their ethnicity or skin color never mind the qualifications the skill or the other views of other potential representatives it is clearly favoring a discrimination and assignment of unearned privilege the documents assume that there is something wrong with representation by people who have higher income or live in owned property or are well educated or are too white or could be more qualified when the compositional legislative or advisory bodies do not precisely match the many selected demographics or some of some community which they define as zip code 9506 so which is not in itself the city of Santa Cruz although using even the city of Santa Cruz doesn't make any more sense if you care about excellence the people of Santa Cruz or how well the city functions for its people instead of the summary and reports irrelevant factors further the false assumption presented as fact is that these disparities of demographics and representation must be due to the oppression of some pervasive white supremacy and no other for example superior candidate qualifications or voter wisdom their solution to this so-called problem is racial and other demographic quotas in reality for thousands of reasons people are and will always be different and not exactly equal except in their basic rights and the best we can do is assure equal opportunity to all to find life liberty and happiness with respect for all other individual rights before I go further I would mention this summary and report is then an offensive hypocritical anti-racist racist abomination I would identify Tiffany wise west and martin Watkins as primary and motivated instigator actors of this defective ideology and I request motion for their removal from the high up subcommittee and eventual repeal or rewrite of the high up policy in its entirety with apology by the council to prevent this kind of trash ideological abuse from being brought forward it can only lead to mediocrity at best I have read for years now the applications for commissioners and a good many I'd say were stably written in pencil and show no particular experience or knowledge and sometime make application to numerous commissioner openings as if it makes no difference as long as they get an assignment it matters who are representative advisors are and the city has no need for reports filled with leftist false assumptions false problem causes and inane brain dead suggested corrective methods to those or the supposed benefit from the people who believe in promote such things don't be telling anyone they have the wrong color anyone they're too educated or tell anyone they have achieved too much and that they can't represent other people thanks mr Phillips thank you very much and who is our next participant miss bush um we have Kayla Gomez thank you hello um is everyone able to hear me yes um ventures partners with rural latino working-class families in the central coast to build a prosperous and economic future for all whereas zip code race gender nor immigration status do not dictate income or wealth I would really like to thank the health and all policies committee for your partnership and especially Tiffany for your facilitation and your consistent support as we work to put this together this report I'm really pleased with the participation rate and as more cities begin to conduct this process it's my hope that it will only increase I also wanted to share that this report um and the county level report we published in 2020 are both available on ventures website um sccv online dot org and we will also be hosting an open webinar in February to take a closer look into the report where we'll go through each piece of a Santa Cruz uh city like me and we'll have a q&a and we'll also be sharing information and details for how to join on our website and through our social media uh again thank you so much for everyone who participated in this process and special thanks again to Tiffany and the health and all policies committee for your work I do hope that this process will be replicated through the central coast uh thank you so much miss Gomez thank you very much miss bush is that complete our folks who are calling in from outside it does thank you miss Watkins yeah I'm happy to move the recommendation which is a motion to accept the health and all policies 2022 progress report and approve the proposed 2023 work plan motion by miss Watkins uh second second by miss bruner and miss callantary johnson simultaneously wanted to make that second uh further debate or discussion seen and hearing none we will move to a roll call vote council members Newsome I brown I Watkins Bruner I callantary johnson I place mayor golder I and mayor Culey I passes and so ordered members we are on item number 23 this is an item brought forward by brought to you by uh council member Newsome and myself this uh matter relates to the downtown library affordable housing project and uh related activities uh what we will do is I'll make some opening remarks of mr. Newsome or other members which wish to make remarks such will be the case then we will seek input from the public both in person and online uh the issue here from the perspective of myself and mr. Newsome is that uh we are new to this and we're both quite interested in in the project uh there was a matter before the parks and recreation commission on this issue and appeal and uh the uh without respect to how the commission dealt with this issue it is uh my opinion mr. Newsome can speak for himself and suspect will uh is that it would be helpful to have these matters brought together when the uh larger set of issues are in front of this council for consideration so that is why we have brought this forward and uh the the action that uh we would appreciate you taking after we've received some input mr. Newsome do you wish to make any opening remarks sir uh no I do not thank you uh summed up thank you let me ask if other members have questions or comments before we hear from the public let me invite the public to make uh any comments you have let's start with the folks who are here anyone who is with us in chambers today wish to make a comment it looks like we've got uh we've got a couple of folks who will do that if you don't mind what we will do is let's hear from you and then what we'll do is hear from someone who's online then we'll hear from someone who's here and we'll alternate back and forth good afternoon good afternoon and thanks for the time um my name is lisa ekstrom please vote to approve this request from mayor kealy and council member newsome to reconsider the park and recreation commission's denial of an appeal on december 12th it's clear that our heritage tree ordinance is designed to incorporate a heritage tree prior to a final project design it's also clear that this consideration was not included in the design process for the project for lot four except as an afterthought paraphrase joni michael don't it always seem to go that we don't know what we've got till it's gone we can and should save some of these heritage trees that we can thank you so much thank you for being here today miss bush would you ask one of our folks online to come forward thank you uh good afternoon my name is matt ferrell i'm here today representing downtown forward and we want to thank mayor kealy and council member newsome for combining both these issues for a single consideration by the council and i also um in following the lead of council who has been thanking city staff for all the great work they've done i want to uh thank leslie keedy for the work she did in reviewing the heritage tree permit ordinance requirements around this particular project and say that i have had the opportunity to work with leslie for over uh 20 years and i find her to be uh a consummate professional and a true advocate for the preservation of our urban forest so thank you very much for your time thank you mr ferrell good afternoon good afternoon again mayor kealy and council members um well i'm i'm here to talk about trees um but i barely got here from bonny dune today on account of so many many trees being down nine of them on smith grade my road and um it really made me appreciate the trees that are still standing i'm grateful that this uh item is on the agenda today and i hope the council will take a step back and clarify the process it needs to employ to move forward uh on the library garage housing retail project stated um as are slated for lot four i specifically urge the council to follow the heritage tree ordinance that states the heritage tree can be removed only if and i quote a construction project design cannot be altered to accommodate existing heritage trees or shrubs close quote so far that hasn't happened there's no evidence in the correspondence or records of meetings relating to the lot four project that the city ever asked jason architecture to consider saving any of the trees on lot four even though a drier dryad arborist independently assessed those trees and concluded that none of them was recommended for removal no matter how disposable any of you feel trees may be the heritage tree ordinance is there to assure that every step be taken to preserve them if possible it falls to you to take every step and one of the first ones would be to ask jason architecture to assess what trees could be accommodated in the design of this project since none of them on their own would be recommended for removal this would be crucial information to have for the february 28th meeting when this project would come back to the council for final approval so i thank you for that consideration thank you for being here this afternoon miss bush do we have someone else online thank you hi can you hear me yes hi lyra philippini here thank you mayor kealy and councilmember newson for requesting a council review of the parks and recreation commission's decision concerning the heritage trees at the slot for project i very much support this coming to council at a future date but i am concerned about the timing as noted by the arborist reports many of the trees are worth saving unfortunately the public record shows that there's been no consider consideration of our heritage trees and associated ordinance until an appeal was filed but now that the design has gone this far the majority of the trees located near the interior of the project footprint makes them poor candidates for possible incorporation into a design alteration however a few of the trees along the perimeter could be incorporated into the project with alterations to the design and program square footage for instance a reduction or elimination of the commercial space component i greatly hope you will consider asking the architects to follow the heritage tree ordinance and ask them to undertake a design modification to incorporate at least some of the perimeter heritage trees for instance it would be lovely to have a front facade of the block long building broken up a little by a possible library entrance patio framed by the large and healthy liquid ambers with hope for an outcome that honors and brings together our community i thank you thank you very much we'll now hear from the next person who's with us here in public good afternoon good afternoon thank you uh council members and mayor kealy um my name is susan kevaleri i want to also uh support the idea of bringing this issue to the council at a later date um we know that know that right now we have been suffering from flooding in our area lot for is a lot in the flood zone and i would hope that the city council might ask for an alteration of the multi-use library garage housing project in order to save some of the heritage trees these trees absorb a large amount of water during rainstorms their large canopies provide shade and cooling during times of heat and they counter the urban heat island effect most importantly they absorb a lot of climate heating carbon in their large woody structures again please save some of the big beautiful trees on lot four for our health and climate resilience thank you thank you very much for being with us today miss bush anyone else online all right we'll go to the next person online good afternoon hi fred geiger long time senate cruise resident i wanted to appreciate the fact that you are going to look into this matter further it is important as you're fighting out to a lot of people too well actually see the city council which is a lot making body consider actually obeying the law um you know as a taxpayer it's very irritating to see when the council becomes arrogant and decides they could do whatever they want to do and then ends up having people take them to court uh the recent wharf plan is a good example and then the taxpayers are stuck where they believe is a 77 thousand dollar legal bill when the council finds out that they actually do have to obey the law so i'm encouraging you to take a good look at the heritage tree ordinance it does require designs to be modified to accommodate heritage trees i'm sure you all would say in public oh yes i support heritage trees here's a chance for you to show us that your talk is actually activated in actions thank you thank you sir good afternoon good afternoon council members and merit you i'm pleased i'm pleased to be able to speak today i'm also addressing the issue of removing the heritage trees from law four and i do support the effort to putting it forward to council so please consider in the meantime keeping some of the heritage trees on lot four in the design of the library garage housing project planned for that location the consulting arborist for that project said that five of the eight trees were worthy of preserving the city of santa Cruz heritage tree ordinance clearly directs all building projects to include existing heritage trees in their project design if possible the easiest solution would be to include the two liquid ambers at the outer edge of the project it would be non-trivial i mean it would be trivial not non-trivial they would take up less than 2000 square feet of the design the architects have included in their design 10 000 square feet of commercial space it is possible that they could alter that please follow the heritage tree ordinance and include some of the trees on lot four thank you thank you for being here today miss bush someone else online no we have nobody else unless somebody wants to press star nine to raise their hands but as of right now we have nobody very good good afternoon good afternoon my name is phyllis actually my new name is joy phil taube green leaf and i just turned 80 years old and i consider myself an example of a healthy heritage tree um i think flexibility is one of the the key facets of intelligent human behavior i know that the architects who made this plan which includes a child care center and a library are also well aware of the climate crisis that our world is in right now every tree is important we are here to advocate for the heritage trees if some of them were even baby trees i would still be here advocating for them there's going to be a children's center what a wonderful educational opportunity for children my former um profession was early childhood education trees what trees give us as human beings what trees give the planet are so important for children's education so there you're going to have a child care center and you're going to be able to say to the children we changed our plans we grown ups because we know how important trees are to your health to your life to our planet earth so i want to say to you please not only because we have a sensible ordinance but because we understand the climate emergency that human beings are facing in the entire world every tree that is healthy is important please honor the trees and i want to refer you all to the wonderful song that the banana slug band wrote many years ago and they sang it at many music festivals all over the country it's about what a tree is for us and it's called i'm a tree it was written by the banana slugs let's honor our santa cruz tradition and planet earth don't cut down any of those trees modify the architectural plan and honor our children and our planet thank you well thank you for being here good afternoon we'll hear from you first then we'll hear from someone online good afternoon hello my name is roland sear and i want to appreciate you all for thinking about something really important it is not possible to assign any kind of weather event to climate change but what we're experiencing right now is to in complete agreement with the predictions that our climate scientists have made and they also have pointed out that there will be worse than what we're going through and so it is upon us to think about what we can do to keep things like this from happening now one tree won't save the climate change issue that's ridiculous but this is a an incidence where we can act locally while thinking globally and uh every tree particularly the grown trees that we have in lot four are the best machine to remove carbon from the atmosphere we will not be able to save ourselves our civilization by just uh stopping to emit uh co2 into the atmosphere we'll also have to remove co2 from the atmosphere and climate and trees are the best way to do that grown trees much more so than little saplings uh they will eventually grow up and rise to the level of grown trees but these trees need to be preserved this also means that the city has to be much more vigilant and much more determined to think about how what we can do about climate change we have a climate plan but if we look at the trees that have been felled in the last few years it's ridiculous we're not doing enough and it's upon you the council to tell the administration to stick with the laws that we have on the books and follow the the laws that we have and put some bite into our policies what's happening now is happening uh with less than 1.5 degrees centigrade warming this is less than the goal that we have set ourselves if we don't act by the end of the century we will have five degrees centigrade warming and i'll leave it to your imagination to think about what that will look like for the world and also for us here thank you for your time and for your consideration miss bush we have someone else online we're going to be right with you we're going to hear from someone online then we'll be right with you thank you miss bush we have someone online thank you welcome if the phone number ending in five three four seven can yes i can you hear me now yes we can thank you this is sentient math use and i'm calling in to support the action before you to continue the the two items to a consolidated hearing many of the speakers have suggested that the city did not follow the heritage tree ordinance um in the issuance of the permit but in fact the conditions and the process were strictly observed including detailed arborist reports uh they made the findings that justified the permit as you know that was appealed to the parks and rec commission with a very detailed and long hearing and the parks and rec commission denied the appeal is understandable particularly that the newer members want to consider this anew um it makes total sense to consider that item the tree removal permit in the context of the entire project the historic tree ordinance does not require that that a project be redesigned redesigned to protect heritage tree particularly one or more than one that are not in good health or good candidates for being moved it simply requires that the process be observed and that the requirement that a tree be protected is not absolute there is the consideration that protection be considered if the project can be redesigned without compromising the project in this case the tree removal is necessary for realization of a very complex project which it should be pointed out has been designed with the most state-of-the-art and forward-looking environmental sustainable climate conscious characteristics so uh in in short i support the action before you uh and bring all these issues forward at one time uh uh before the entire council thank you miss matthews thank you for calling in good afternoon hi i'm susan worth living so cal in a leaky trailer in a senior trailer park i'm deprived of people of all ages except for seniors i'm telling you i don't know where we got this crew of seniors to tell you the truth but nonetheless i am i am just mortified that we even have to think about this that we have to worry about those trees and our farmers market it's the only thing that i've ever found that was a community and worth living in this area for that farmers market and the lovely library the the carnage library i can't believe that they're just gonna put that in the landfill how wrong is that and synthia matthews we know owns a lot of property around here and excuse me she'll never confess excuse me for just a moment if you would stay on point that would be helpful thank you we need to move this ahead to a to a later date and a later time so people can be here well thank you very much miss bush do we have anyone else on there's nobody anyone else we should testify on this item good afternoon is there anyone else on the phone you you have the floor yeah good afternoon i'm jane doil and some of you have seen me here numerous times i'm afraid this time i'm not quite as well prepared as usually because i've been out of town and i'm just catching up on some of what's happening about the heritage trees i'm also very impressed by what everyone else has been saying a lot of the points that were in my mind frankly have been made about what this will mean in the future what it means right now um when i was an undergraduate i actually studied forestry and have a personal place in my heart for trees so there is that is carrying me forward a little bit here but i want to bring up something that i haven't heard mentioned and i think it's one more arguing point for santa cruz to be very representative of what the county wants the county has just released as far as i can tell just released a climate action plan and part of the idea of a climate action plan for the county is how we can make a difference how we can for example increase the amount of carbons equation i can't even say the word anyway you know what i'm trying to say um and i think that if you think about when you're trying to decide if this goes to the planning commission and so forth that we do want to be carrying forth what you just talked about in the last item health in all matters and trees are very contributive contributory to our health as we know i'm not saying anything that everybody in this room doesn't already know what i'm trying to do is hope that i can influence you to support going forward and giving us more opportunities to um advocate on behalf of the trees which can't do that for themselves so thank you thank you very much miss bush still no one else online that's right nobody else good miss shendl decker good afternoon again i also don't have a whole lot to say that other people haven't said already especially roland and jane um i i would just put in another voice for balancing the needs of our environment and the people who live in it and balancing the different policies and um priorities that we've come up with as a community so if we want climate change mitigation if we want uh library and affordable housing you know we have to make some compromises and so i appreciate that this is back on the agenda and i hope that um it isn't just a sort of symbolic um process that ends up with a sort of just reaffirmation of what has already been um decided um because i i do think the trees are significant as roland said they're not the only trees but they are significant trees they're significant to um not just carbon sequestration but the the um mental health of people and as other people have brought up when you have a school or a library or senior housing across the street when you can look out the window and see a tree there are very different outcomes for your your mental and emotional social well-being so we cannot look at the trees just as simply like um you know old-school environmental conservation that's just blind to housing justice um or label it as just nimbyism anti-growth nimbyism it really is about balancing our very own needs within our own bodies as complex environmental beings um so that's it thanks thank you very much let me ask if there's anyone else who wishes to to provide testimony with the sign do you wish to testify okay okay i think i think that's what you want to say all right mayor we do have another caller one other person online let's hear from them good afternoon we can hear you good afternoon good afternoon can you hear me yes thank you very much um my name is julian greenside i wasn't going to call in but um i was listening and when i heard um the statements from synthia matthews i felt i had to call in to make a correction uh miss matthews is correct in saying that there is that the requirement to accommodate heritage trees into a building site or into a project is not absolute that is true and the city has a resolution three conditions that allow a heritage tree to be cut down with respect to those designed to take it down however she is incorrect in saying that um the project design being altered uh is only if it doesn't compromise the project that is inaccurate if that were the case then developers um bringing a project forward that there's a heritage tree on site would simply say oh we can't uh accommodate that because uh it would compromise the project no the resolution states clearly that a heritage tree can be removed if the design cannot be altered to accommodate the tree not cannot um be altered if it doesn't compromise the project so we come back to the question of that's quite an absolute statement in this regard the question is can this design be altered to accommodate um some of the trees now that's not how it should have worked should have worked right at the beginning since the city was the developer saying to the architect that uh we need to accommodate some of the trees so designed to do that but that didn't happen and the public record shows that quite clear there were no conversations about heritage tree accommodation so now we're at the end of the line with a design which should have accommodated them but it's better late than never and there's a chance now if you direct staff to direct the um developer sorry the architect to make a slight um alteration suggestions have been made then it will be possible to have the best of all possible worlds preserve some of the heritage trees and have a project to be proud of thank you thank you miss green side appreciate your participation on the else online there are nobody else nobody else who's with us wish to make further comments back before the council mr. new some moves the recommendation second by the vice mayor under debate and discussion miss brown so so i'll look left look right um so i just wanted to make a comment about uh the the requests from the community uh that that really goes beyond what's on our agenda here and and i want to say that i i support that i support uh asking our the architects to to consider ways to incorporate um the trees um and having been involved for uh much of this the length of this process of developing the library uh project i'm i have asked the question of the architects it's been informal i was on the library subcommittee um and was involved in conversations with jason architect um the uh so i have a pretty good sense of what the answer would be were we to take that action formally here today um and and i think the answer would be no it's it's not possible um but i would like to find a way to have the conversation about um i know that that folks have talked about some of the trees um maybe not being as um uh maybe being a little bit easier to accommodate and it is something that's of interest to me i will do what i can at this end to follow up with those conversations with our staff um but i i just want to say um clearly now uh that i'm not i don't have uh um a lot of optimism that we're going to be able to make a major change to the project um as much as i would like to see that happen so um i feel a responsibility to say that here um because we are um i imagine going to move this decision to a future meeting and i agree that the council um and i want to thank my colleagues for bringing this to us because i do believe the council um should consider all of these uh in tandem and that we should have the final say this is a major project it's a city project and um i will continue to advocate uh at this end uh as as i can so um thank you and i'll leave it there thank you miss contrary johnson great thank you mayor kealy and councilmember newson for bringing this before us um i think councilmember brown kind of got to it i wanted to articulate and clarify for everyone listening that this item is not to at this point um overturn the parks and rec decision around the heritage trees this item is for us to consider all the permits all at once um as it pertains to the downtime library and affordable housing projects i wanted to clarify that for all of us and everyone who's listening thank you thank you very much miss brunner thank you uh thank you councilmember newson and mayor kealy um it makes total sense to align um consideration and action of all of the permits for this development uh to the same upcoming meeting and i would like to just um suggest that uh several of the the community points and concerns um be addressed or be considered at that meeting um when we hear all of these permits at the same time i think that would be very helpful to have some informed data thank you thank you let me ask if there are other comments further debate and discussion saying in hearing none clerk will call the roll councilmember newson hi brown hi what kinds hi brunner hi calentary johnson hi vice mayor golder hi and mayor kealy hi motion passes and so ordered just before we recess until we come back in an hour and five minutes for our five p.m. item uh a couple of comments by the chair since our regular business is is is finished for the afternoon session i wanted to take a brief moment and share with my colleagues with the public and and those who uh and city staff as well in terms of presiding uh it is my thought that uh that the way a way to preside at in such bodies is to be fast but fair not in any way to shut off debate discussion here on the dais nor to shut off any of that with our members of the public who who participate i do think that it might be helpful and i've discussed this with colleagues uh before being seated and with the city manager and others since being seated that i think it would be helpful as a matter of custom and practice going forward uh to do a couple of things one is to ask staff to limit their public presentations to 15 minutes if they believe that they need longer they can make a request of me or or the city manager and we will make decisions on a case by case basis uh let me tell you what underlines that uh i don't believe this is a good place to use the army way of educating which is to tell people what you're going to tell them then you tell them then you tell them what you told them uh that works well in the army i'm not sure that it works necessarily very well here i'm going to work on the assumption that both members staff and the public have read the item and that it is unnecessary to have a complete repeat of what is in our staff reports and in our packet uh i'm not sure that that serves a particular purpose i do understand that there will be times where there could be excuse me where there could be appeals and other items in front of us where we are required to have more complete presentations but i think a summary presentation by staff is it can be quite helpful and maybe can expedite the work that we have i want to be very careful that you understand what i just said i didn't say the staff reports aren't important they're critically important but they have an opportunity to write about that we have an opportunity to make calls and talk to people so does the public before we have our hearings and before we have our sessions second item is that i think it would be helpful as a matter of practice if what we were to do here on the dais is that we have an item we get the staff report we ask if there are any clarifying questions not speeches disguised as questions but actual legitimate inquiries that you couldn't have gotten the answer to before the hearing so i would encourage you to ask as many questions as you can prior to showing up here uh next it does seem to me that what is very helpful after having gone out to the public and received their input either through a formal public hearing or the opportunity to comment is if when the matter is back before the council that what we are debating and discussing are motions so as the presiding officer the first two words i would like to hear out of your mouth when the matter is back before the council is i move now you can move whatever you want no restrictions you can move the staff report as is you can move your own motion on what we should do you can move the staff report with six amendments to it that you would like to see but the first two words need to be i move and in that let me take another step or two it would be helpful if the motion is stated in its entirety first before you wish to make comments so in other words i move the staff report with the following two amendments this amendment and this amendment there it is if we get a second then you can open on your motion and we can have all the debate and discussion that is helpful for us to have so i'm not trying to close that part down but what i would like to do is instead of having a salon have actually debate and discussion on motions because this is an action body that's what we do is that we take action so that would be helpful if you would do that the chair will certainly the presiding officer will certainly recognize motions to amend and substitute motions so we're clear on how i see that and if i need further educating on this please tell me but a motion to amend is essentially i agree generally with the motion but there are these items which i would like to amend contrast that with a substitute motion a substitute motion is in my way of thinking about it and hearing and presiding a substitute motion is there's no fixing this motion you can't there's no way that you can amend and amend good enough for this motion to be what the member would like to see it be so motion to amend motion to amend is i can generally agree with this if these amendments are adopted substitute motion as i see it is i can't get there from here and i'm offering a substitute motion so in terms of how we will proceed that is uh how i as the presiding officer would like to conduct our meetings i do have a sense that what that will do or i'm the intention behind this is to make sure that we get our work done in an expedited expeditious fashion without in any way reducing eliminating debate and discussion on this dais or with the members of public if you have any question on that at this time i'd be glad to to respond to it and see if that sounds about right for folks sound about right to you okay very good uh we have finished our afternoon's business we will be here again at five o'clock but between now and then we stand in recess let me call the evening session of the santa cruz city councils meeting on January 10th 2023 to order clerk will call the roll thank you mayor council members newson uh president brown here what can's hearing greener president calentary johnson president vice mayor golder here and mayor keily here having established a quorum we will move to oral communication this evening this would be an opportunity for anyone to address the council on a matter under our jurisdiction but not on tonight's agenda uh let me ask the clerk uh do you have folks who will be calling in we do let's start with this gentleman here under oral communication then we'll go alternating back and forth good evening sir i'm steve osreth i live in santa cruz on north pacific um i want to uh the issue that i want to raise i don't want to have a discussion about it but i would like just a one sentence answer to the question that i will ask about it from one of the council members if i may um the issue relates to the fact that the current council and all the councils recently have represented only about 50 percent of all the citizens voting and i would like the council to be willing to arrange for a discussion with at least one member from our group who have some practical uh alternatives to the current voting method that would allow many more citizens to be uh well represented in the council and uh i would like therefore to ask the somebody on the council now to answer this request uh at least answer my question in some way please how we deal with that so that we're clear with each other so oral communication is not an opportunity for us to engage in dialogue with you i think what will happen based on your testimony or your oral communication this evening is somebody may choose to reach out to you but we're not going to engage in a back and forth with you on this it doesn't comport with rules yeah i recognize that by my first comment saying i was not expecting a discussion but i would like an answer okay now you said it twice members on that issue please because i would like to give the opportunity for the council to display its interest yeah i understood it the first representative of as many citizens as possible excuse me i understood it the first time you said it and i clarified what we can do and not do so thank you for your testimony well i know you can do this you there's no restriction on you doing what i'm asking you to do i'm not going to debate how we proceed with you i've told you how i'm just a citizen so thank you for your communication thank you for your communication well i i wish you hadn't responded in a more simple way body bush we got somebody else online can you hear me yes we can all right sounds good job yeah my name is hector marine i wanted to just you know first off i'm start off with this entire you know meeting and saying that you know i hope y'all are remaining safe throughout these times and these storms i hope y'all are y'all that y'all and your families are being safe because i know it's really hard for the storm right now um but yeah i quickly wanted to address two matters i think one matter was um the facts that we should have a much more open democracy throughout our uh throughout our county and throughout our city right um the one thing that that we can debate on several things and ongoing about several efforts when it comes to housing uh certain planning developments etc but the one thing that we cannot argue and i believe we're all on the same page is having a representative democracy so i wanted to second the voice of steve bosworth that's that that that seeks to expand all that message of having that direct democracy so we can ensure that every voice is counted and that every vote is counted on i feel like it's something that we can all agree on i'm latino as well so when i was engaging with several folks throughout our community they all feel like voting is a waste of time within the latino community because it doesn't go in the efforts of latinos and bifog folks so i hope and i invite the council to sort of have this sort of um engagements with us the constituents with us citizens and with us the organizers to expand on this democracy um the second matter that i also want to address is the uh is the uh downtown development project that's going on um i appreciate fred kilis efforts and limiting the story um story if i could just take a second here that is a matter on our agenda this evening so oral communication is for those matters under our jurisdiction but not on the on the agenda this evening so if you would like to call back on that item after oral communication when we get to it we'll be glad to recognize you for comments on that item at that time thank you yeah of course yeah of course thank you sir i appreciate you thank you good evening miss shendl decker hi everybody um i would like to very briefly just say i agree with steve and hector that i would i that i would like us to have community conversations about increased representation um but that's actually not the larger comment i want to address right now um i would like to sort of harp on about um our emergency response in in relation to people who are unhoused but i'm actually not even going to harp on about that i'm going to point out to everybody that our city and county emergency plans do not adequately address really like nuts and bolts of how to help people who are invulnerable at risk or um you know people who have functional needs and access issues in our documents it's pointed out as this like little like you know insert like side note like these are communities that need extra help in case of emergency right there can be complex trauma physical or mental issues transportation poverty um of service animals of children elderly all sorts of issues issues that all of us in this community either have experienced are experiencing now or will experience some time in our lives so this is something that affects all of us and should not be a little like chocolate chip in the corner of a cookie of our emergency response plans this should be fundamental central to all of our emergency response plans and it needs to be really communicated to the public that we are working on this and taking it seriously we had these floats a year ago and i don't see anything in our documents that advances our emergency response planning for people who are vulnerable or at risk i don't see anything that says that we have consulted with those communities so i'd like to see a million times more action on that thank you miss shindal decker anyone else do we have other folks online there let's go with that good evening good evening um hi my name is sabina holber i'm a resident of santa cruz i wanted to call today about two items in regards to the storms the first is regarding emergency shelter i really can't believe that in a city with as many unhoused folks as we have that there wasn't a basic emergency shelter plan in place before the storms hit the civic center opening was incredibly helpful to get people into safety but it was extremely frustrating to see it closed down by matt huffaker right before yet another atmospheric river hit our town all other shelter available was full or inadequate for example tents are not adequate for people during storms like this they need real shelter and they need to be able to stay for the duration of the storm not kicked out at 8 a.m arbitrarily while it's still raining the council needs to come up with a real plan for emergency shelter that can be enacted immediately without all the scrambling that was happening this past weekend that scramble time makes it harder to actually take care of folks and increases the possibility of loss of life i'm seeing that 17 people have died across california during these storms and a couple of those people were unhoused i know of at least two in sacramento the second item that i'd like to talk about is west cliff drive it's time to close west cliff to cars the pedestrian and cycling path needs to be pulled way back in preparation for future inevitable erosion that will just keep happening all year long even in great weather we've been seeing the walking path and cliffs erode and fall into the sea at this point it's hazardous one of the best days of the year last year was during open streets on west cliff i took my kids we hung out with neighbors and we thoroughly enjoyed all the space available removing cars from west cliff will make west cliff a safer space for all and i really hope that you guys take that up in the next few sessions um thanks for the time bye miss holbert thank you very much anyone else wishes wishes to address the council under all communication miss bush do we have additional folks online we do yeah let's go good evening good evening um from i missed the beginning but this is public comment for items not on the agenda so it's not the time to ask about comments about the uh development plan downtown it is correct that this would not be that time so uh miss van hoa if you would like to call back in to make comment on that that would be fine otherwise you can continue now providing comment on any item not on our agenda but under the city's jurisdiction um let's see i think i have a okay here i just returned from middle by the way my this is darian most need um i just returned from italy where uh they seem to be in love with uh qr codes over there and i i got a i got a parking ticket parking ticket and they had a qr code to pay it and i as much as i don't like it it was extremely the convenient and i would suggest the city look at doing qr codes on their parking ticket i think that would increase the um um collection because it's very convenient just take care of it right there no phone calls no letters no websites to plug into it which and it's a simple a simple qr code uh in addition to that i got another comment while i have three minutes or a minute left uh i noticed the bench land is completely stripped of grass and of course that's the weather you're going to be redoing it may i suggest that you look into uh use a artificial perf that there's a football field that up in meadow park that's going to be redone and frankly i just bought rolls from another football field for 150 dollars the dollar a square foot that i'm going to do with my low low low water landscaping at one of my properties and this is an opportunity to put really high quality industrial strength artificial turf in the bench land for a very um a very attractive price anyway but um i think you know where to reach me if any if there's any interest so thank you and i'll get back to you on the next agenda agenda item very good thank you so much good evening all right thanks a lot hi i'm abby um first of all um this i'm talking about the emergency what happened with um the last few days when the shelter uh the civic was opened i want to commend whoever was running that shelter it was i did not hear one complaint for those of you that know me i am i am full of complaints every houseless person i spoke to that or that was there really appreciated it so to be kicked out a few days later during the rain was horrible which i was there when they were being kicked out so um took a few notes when they were being kicked out i was told that they were going to be given other opportunities for other shelter places this is what they were given they were given this one page and these other resources so i took a person in my house that's been staying there since since it was closed and she's called every single one of these numbers now she has also a phone but most people don't no one called her back until yesterday afternoon so this was uh excuse my language bullshit um so this did not help at all so i don't know why you're saying that this would be taken care of people um so it's taken her five days to get a phone call back she still doesn't have any housing um i drove her to cabrio so she's getting shelter there i went to the vintage church where there's supposed to be um a shelter last night and they told me well there's no evacuation so obviously it was just for house people but people that are out with with no with no housing at all aren't considered an emergency this is inhumane very inhumane i wish you would rethink how you do emergency we've been having this way too long where you should have something more organized thank you thank you mrs bush okay thank you uh this is uh garrifell hey despite uh well before i say anything else i i was very impressed with the new mayor putting his hand on the constitution when he took the oath of office and i hope he keeps it there that was fabulous anyway despite the hotel tax increase and massive fee increases routinely voted through by the council i can't imagine the long feared scenario of yearly growing deficits won't materialize soon enough very possibly if there's this year's budget plays out as expected and there will be no funding available except to defer and raid capital improvement projects until like a bad landlord the place gets condemned for lack of maintenance i would make the point government cannot or should ever try to do everything and and that it is not in itself or should operate irrespective of the economy and population size as a growth industry and again i would mention it should provide only what the pervasive consensus will of the people is in wants needs and that they are willing to pay for and that and no more in some future years perhaps there will be 2023 the public might pay less if so the government should adjust in kind doing things like agreeing to no furlough provisions in union contracts defeats those needed adjustments running the reserve balances down to zero leaves the city open to disruption vulnerable and emergencies to first maintenance and makes borrowing money difficult it seems like a budget item badly needs to be installed to rebuild reserve balances over a reasonable period of time until the target balance is achieved that cannot be spent except in extraordinary circumstances which need definition that means a will to cut waste and expenses needs to appear when the balance is achieved some say 16 percent of your operating expenses those rules of one and why that balance can be spent i suspect also need examination and not just because thank you very much anyone else with us who wishes comment on oral communication miss bush anyone else one more yes good good evening retchie good evening can you hear me yes okay great um i wanted to just kind of go through a couple issues um the first uh we where abby was bringing up the notion of people getting a paper and then having to call a bunch of numbers to figure out resources i brought this up in a meeting actually with um councilmember calentari johnson which is that we can very easily make this entire system better by just having a google spreadsheet that has public view access and write access only to the service providers the service providers can effectively just write where the vacancies are and then the public can just see it and then the public doesn't have to call and do this back and forth and waste everyone's time and just make unhoused people literally like seek out their own services and then this also cuts down on the need for case managers and case workers we could cut a whole layer of just wasteful bureaucracy out of just the discovery of whether services are available by having a google spreadsheet for people right which costs nothing um so i really encourage really encourage the city and the county to coordinate on just making that little tiny change because you'll save money everything will be better for everyone and we'll actually have an understanding of what our service capacity is which we don't have now um and so i don't really have a whole lot of time to go over the second issue so i'll just kind of leave it at that uh so that it's the focus is please make this incredibly simple change otherwise i'm just going to go organize and talk to all the service providers and just ask them to do it myself right because that's all we're really trying to get out here all right thank you thank you mr misler anyone else online there are no more anyone else with us this evening i'd like to provide moral communication to the council seen here none we are on agenda item that is brought to us uh this evening uh by council member nuesome and myself the way we'll proceed on this is that uh we will provide brief presentations then we will ask for a brief presentation from our city planning staff who has reviewed this and provided an attachment of their own on this with that information we will then go uh out to the public looking for public comment on it it will then be back before the council for debate discussion and action so let me recognize my colleague mr nuesome for opening comments thank you mary kealy uh so the agenda item uh that we will consider tonight reflects the feedback i heard during the past campaign i consistently heard two things as i knocked on doors and spoke to residents of my district one uh the people wanted more housing especially affordable housing but two they did not want buildings that were too big for our community i did not speak to a single person who wanted 17 story buildings in our community the proposal that we will consider tonight is a good faith effort to obtain these goals and i am very happy to partner with mayor mary kealy on this uh agenda item i think this is where the past council was heading uh on this issue so this agenda item i think will make that correction that direction clear of where the past council was heading this proposal tweaks the current downtown expansion plan south of laurel by creating guidelines for building heights the total number the amount of total housing and the amount of affordable housing in this plan specifically this proposal calls for no single building in the downtown expansion plan project to be taller than 12 stories it also calls for 1600 dwelling units in the downtown expansion plan and it calls for 20 of all residential units built in the downtown expansion plan be affordable housing just to further quantify that last point this plan calls for 320 units of affordable housing to be built in this area middle class and working class housing in our community housing for say teachers social workers construction workers and park workers in our community now it should be noted that our city operates under a different regulatory environment that it did in the past due to state legislation and this plan therefore uh directs our staff to accomplish these guidelines by establishing policies that to the maximum extent possible will attain the goals uh outline uh in closing i just want to give a reminder that our discussion this evening will be the first of many on the various projects uh in the downtown expansion plan south of laurel there will be plenty more opportunities for public input on the various projects that will propose in this area this proposal will be a guide to those discussions though by limiting the building heights in the area and providing for the maximum number of affordable housing units possible in a financially viable manner thank you thank you council member mr butler you recognize for a staff report the camera isn't working good afternoon mayor and council members i'm lee butler director of planning and community development and i have with me sarah noisy she is the director excuse me project manager um for the um the downtown plan expansion and uh senior planner with our team um i'm gonna frame the issue a little bit and then speak uh briefly to the specific items that um have been brought forward by mayor kealy and council member newson so building heights are controversial in nearly every significant project we work on in the city whether it's 35 feet and three stories or 16 stories and 175 feet as was considered and as is being currently considered for one building in this downtown plan expansion area people have strong feelings about where we should grow and how we should grow and anecdotally at least most people are of the opinion that we should not be growing out into our open space areas so hoganip and de la viega or expanding into our agricultural lands to the west so the area where we will develop is generally fixed and at the same time the state is bringing strong mandates for how much cities must increase their planned housing capacities and for very good reason for many years california cities have not provided adequate housing to meet the needs of our population and that has led to many of our societal ills so the state has stepped in and has not only increased how much housing we must plan for what we know as our rena or regional housing needs allocation but it has also increased the implications of and enforcement of not planning for sufficient housing for us our rena numbers increased by five times between the past nine-year cycle and the upcoming eight-year cycle so we need to plan for at least 3,736 units to be able to be built in the city between 2024 and 2031 so to meet those goals we will need to roughly triple the rate of development that we have seen over the past seven years and with the state housing growth mandates it's not a question of whether we plan to grow it's a question of how we plan to grow and that's one of the things that we're talking about here this evening since growing out into our green belt is not an option growing up is what we must do and that growing up does not come without heartache and we hear that regularly we heard it for this particular item in much of the correspondence whether it's concerns about traffic or parking or shadows or about community character all of these factors need to be balanced along with other factors like employment capacity and alternative transportation options have to be balanced with the fact that or the residential capacities called for by the state we need to plan for those so before the council tonight are some very important policy considerations for the downtown plan expansion and we'll reiterate all the points from the staff report but I'll touch briefly on the three main ones and also along I'll note how density bonus needs to be considered so the first is the number of stories the second is the number of affordable units and the third is the total number of units in the plan area number of stories of course is directly related to the total number of units and the policy direction under consideration and the mayor and councilmember nuisance report contemplates a limit of 12 stories inclusive of density bonus as stated in the staff report developers have a lot of leeway when it comes to density bonus and how they provide those additional units that are allowed by state law but if the council is desirable is desirous of a 12 story max then staff can work on policies that would make that the most likely outcome when a 50 density bonus is applied and I think that's the the approach that we would need to take with this is looking at an anticipated 50 density bonus as we would likely see with projects coming in this is really a policy decision for the council balancing the factors like community character and community sentiment with things like this being in close proximity to the highest concentration of jobs in transit in the region so the council also needs to consider that if there is a reduction here that that delta of units is likely going to have to go elsewhere in the city because we do have to plan for that 3,736 units and so though that's a key policy consideration that the council will want to think about in making this determination the second policy direction that's under consideration is the total number of affordable units and staff can create policies that call for a total of 20 of the units being affordable inclusive of the density bonus the question is really whether the projects will be viable at that affordability level and if this is the direction of the council to have 20 of the gross units as affordable we will have to work closely with the developers to consider and study and evaluate a variety of potential compliance paths that can allow for the policy to be implemented in a way such that it does not become a barrier to housing because an outcome that we do not want is that we do not get the affordable units nor the market rate units and finally the council is contemplating as part of the recommendations from the mayor and council member Newsom the maximum of 1600 units in the plan area the state has invalidated growth caps so we can't put an outright cap in the plan but as noted in the staff report we can craft policies that in anticipation of all the projects utilizing a 50 density bonus we would likely result in a 1600 unit maximum we as noted above the number of stories clearly affects the total residential capacity in the plan area so we will need to study that in a relationship and report back to the council on our findings and I want to point out that we do have some caveats in the staff report with respect to 100% affordable projects or small units and so forth and I'm happy to answer questions about those if you'd like but again the shifting of housing to other areas of the city is another key consideration here we can however put in policies that would limit the would likely limit you to 1600 units in the area if that's the council's desire um finally we noted in our gender report that we recommend and Mayor Keely and council member Newsom also recommended that we continue to study 1800 units in the environmental impact report or EIR this is not the last time the item will be in front of you studying 1800 units in the EIR provides you with flexibility for future decisions for example if through the rena allocation process and the site's analysis of where intense where additional housing capacity is added if it's determined that it would be beneficial to include additional units in the downtown plan you would have the flexibility to do that if you are studying those 1800 units also 100 affordable projects could use the density bonus allowances for unlimited density or smaller unit sizes as I mentioned so those factors could actually get us above the 1600 units even if we're targeting the 1600 so continuing to study the 1800 units is important and that would in no way preclude you from approving the plan policies that include an anticipated maximum of 1600 units when this comes back before you at a later date with that I'll turn it back over to the mayor and I'm happy to answer any questions that you may have Mr Butler thank you appreciate your the brevity and the focus on your staff report thank you let me ask if members have any clarifying questions based on what the staff has said is there any clarifying questions you'd like to ask at this time okay let me let me invite members of the public to to provide us with testimony you can start by lining up over here and I suspect we are going to have some folks on the phone is that correct miss bush so what we'll do is alternate we'll start with someone who is here presently then we'll go to the phone come back to someone we'll alternate back and forth so whoever would like to lead off on this good evening good evening good evening council um my name is uh hi martiega uh i've been a resident since 1969 which there was a year i was born um i'm in uh support of expansion and housing more than anything affordable housing because everybody looks out for the homeless you know i i i'm with them too i'm not against it but nobody's ever looked out for the diminishing middle class right at this time of diminishing wages mass inflation nobody speaks out for us my son with the masters he had the mood of the fresno area to attain a home he could rent he could keep on renting but we he wasn't able to purchase the home here so this this will do two things for three things this job i believe will provide livable wages for the working men and women that are going to construct this job another thing it's going to be hopefully local hire to provide jobs to the local men and women of this area which um is really hard to attain because we don't want to build so i've been uh doing the mega commute for 30 years which i'm not crying about it i'm happy but i love my area and i would love to work locally so yes i support this job for the economic benefit that is going to bring here locally hopefully we have local hire to spend those dollars here in santa cruz and thank you very much for your time thank you for being here let's go to someone on the uh who's calling in thank you miss bush okay thank you i do not believe the state and m bag suggestions for housing expansion take into account that people are actually leaving california in droves maybe it's the high taxes the toxic political environment and no matter they are leaving the only driver for population growth is now illegal immigration and birth death but that is now coming up short so great is the exodus there is no growth it's a false narrative i'm trying to envision 12 story buildings perhaps without parking and what that means in congestion and a reduction in quality of life bigger buildings didn't make separate system more affordable bigger buildings didn't reduce LA's homeless population it all just made for more congestion you can be part of that density madness or you can try to manage it more sensibly a reduction from 225 feet to 175 feet tells you people don't want the high skyscrapers and 175 feet is still quite tall it also math it is a mathematical fact that the law of diminishing returns applies to making housing affordable with each extra added story affordability comes from lower construction costs which matter more in the end you are responsible to the people of santa cruz and if that means measures should be taken to mitigate authoritarian non local mandates where possible you should and if that is the way the people i see little appetite for really tall buildings here as as the cost is self-admittedly uncertain that's not a plus either unless some of these tall story buildings are 100% affordable this 2080 split is just more the same assuming an unlikely endless supply of people that would like to live in santa cruz i doubt these structures will do anything really to provide housing for service people who might perhaps be commuting from elsewhere as there will just be more people of service and more service people needed and the housing ratio remains unchanged but more congested this threat issued that if the density isn't created downtown it will go elsewhere in the city but that didn't set well with me when i first read it i see no acknowledgement that the fiscal immorality of the excesses of the federal government's debt bomb and zero interest rates are the primary reasons responsible for inflation of asset prices housing construction costs and rental prices a future with a higher percentage of renters doesn't sound like a better future to me but that will be the result unless there are also condos built along with rental apartments thanks thank you very much good evening the president the presenter of the plan so far very clear and precise i only want to emphasize that if it was only possible to meet the housing quota by having 16 floors then because of the existential price crisis for the homeless it would be worth it but of course if you want to reduce it to 12 that could also be accessible if it is part of a comprehensive plan force that in other ways the needless need will be met so what i would like to be considered is to have not only uh piece by piece presented at separate times but each piece be presented as a comprehensive plan to meet these housing needs thank you miss bush thank you we can hear you i think if you speak hello there hello this is derrius again question i have to have a building in critical part of the downtown development plant expansion uh it's in three of the scenario three of the five scenarios i believe the warrior stadium goes right through half a dozen tenants living rooms in this building my question is have what is the process for acquiring these properties what is the process if other own other owners refuse to sell are you prepared for eminent domain is there other alternatives of course i don't expect answers to these questions on this this venue but as somebody that's impacted as well as 18 tenants many of them on section eight um i would like to have this dialogue with somebody in planning thank you thank you very much good evening good evening mayor city council and uh community my name is tony other i am the senior business age of carpers local 505 located aptars service in santa cruz county as well as a senior business agent for monterey county carpers local 605 and the carpers of santa cruz county fully support this project i'm speaking on behalf of those hundreds of members and um as it is written right now to compromise on the height density as well as affordability that was crafted we support that as well we look forward to working with the city as well as uh santa cruz warriors and building this project uh looking over the next hundred months i'm sorry over the next months and years to bring this vision into a reality for the city of santa cruz and one thing i do applaud about this project a lot of times we look at affordability as well as affordable houses sometimes we scheme up we seem to forget that the people that build in the houses not getting paid a livable wage with this project there will be a livable wage that will be paid to the members that are building this project i'm also a member of the builders trades and i got some of my constituents here as well and uh in addition to that uh health care will be paid by the building of this project and not just health care for the members but therefore their families as well so we're looking at projects being built this project will help not only the carpenters but the members of the builders trade as well as a whole as well as the communities because they can put that money back into the community which helped the community and not only it eliminated the burden of the city as well as the county trying to provide health care for those intervals that don't have it so we definitely support this project and i appreciate your time thank you thank you for being here this evening we appreciate it miss bush someone online liara filipini here again good evening and hello hi um i hope you all will support mayor keely and councilmember newson's amendment to the original downtown expansion plan and that you will request changes to the study parameters of the associated eir the part of this new proposal i find most compelling is the 20% inclusionary requirement to be inclusive of density bonus this would be particularly helpful with our community's need for affordable housing considering how few affordable units are now proportionally being proposed in most market rate projects after the addition of a density bonus as you know mayor keely's proposal also indicates a 1600 maximum for the number of units it seems important that this maximum of 1600 be the focus density studied in the eir not the 1800 proposed by staff i'm hoping that council will provide further clarity for the community and direction to the staff for the eir study on a couple additional elements of the new proposal for instance what number of 12 story buildings would be permissible please set specific number and their locations and heights as was done in the original proposal additionally what is the actual height limit to be set for these 12 story buildings will it be 120 feet assuming 10 feet per floor please set a solid height limit for the study and associated proposal the reduction of heights from 17 story limit to a 12 story limit is a much more sensible proposition though still one and a half times taller than the current tallest building in santa cruz which still does impose many associated impacts to our infrastructure carrying capacity health and safety so i do remain concerned about our infrastructure's ability to withstand this magnitude of growth as well as the possible dangers associated with flooding earthquakes liquefaction and evacuation capacity for this proposed density increase for such a small area however i strongly support the sensible changes to the plan being proposed by mayor kealy and councilmember nuisim and hope for clarification to the details thank you thank you miss philippini for calling in good evening mr barron how are you good my name is frank barron um long-term uh city resident and um retired city planner um i want to thank you um mayor kealy and councilmembers for this opportunity to comment on mayor kealy's proposed revision to the downtown plan expansion um the current proposal approved by your council back in june includes one 17 story building and three 15 story buildings in the south of laurel project area on the plus side mayor kealy's proposed revision would reduce the maximum height to 12 stories but on the negative side it would not place a limit on the number the number of massive 12 story buildings that could be built nor would it place any limits on the building footprints as does the current proposal this could result in the whole south of laurel area being covered with hugely out of scale and out of character high rises twice as twice as tall and massive as the ugly behemoth that's going up right now um at the former taco bell site imagine that twice as tall is that and twice as massive the overall impact of the mayor's proposed revision would likely be far worse than the current proposal despite the lowered height limit a better approach one that would accommodate most of the downtown plan expansion projects objectives including this 1600 new units with 20 affordable and a new warriors arena would be to um instead of having a blanket area wide 12 story height limit lower the heights of the currently proposed four tallest buildings by five stories each that would lower the single tallest building proposed building from 17 stories to 12 stories and lower the other three adjacent tall buildings from 15 stories to 10 stories inclusive of density bonuses then keep the remainder of the south of laurel project area at the currently proposed height limit range of between five and eight stories inclusive of density bonuses um if your council were to adopt this scale backed scale back hybrid approach i think you would find that opposition to the project would virtually disappear or nearly so however there will be considerable opposition if either the project is currently proposed or mayor keely's proposed revision with this unlimited number of massive 12 story buildings goes forward given that this proposal counts constitutes the biggest most significant land use change in the history of santa cruz one that will forever change the character of the city and and due to recent state laws cannot ever be undone your council should carefully consider how you how you will want to be remembered thank you mr barron thank you very much miss bush someone else online yeah thank you mr lane good evening good evening my name is don lane though i'm connected to a handful of affordable housing organizations i'm speaking speaking tonight as an individual i don't envy you sorting out the challenges of this item item but i'm happy you're taking it on because it presents an opportunity to make substantive project progress on meeting our community's housing needs especially the affordable housing needs we have the goals are really worthy achieving 20 or more of affordable units within the planning area moving us toward greater housing density in the proper location going high enough without going too high and facilitating a permanent home for our beloved warriors i especially encourage the idea of council and city staff working with the property owners to create a development agreement that meets our community's goals and avoids running a foul of state rules and objectives please don't overlook the possibility of having the property owners provide a substantial piece of land in the expansion area to an affordable housing developer as a way of maximizing the opportunity we have in this zone i also want to put in a word for not overly limiting the number of housing units downtown to meet our affordable and workforce housing needs and requirements downtown is our best location i think putting the council's good focus on affordable housing and on concerns about height together with the city staff's diligence in complying with state housing law and city planning processes can actually lead to a very good outcome for our community we continue to make great strides in meeting our housing needs and maintaining the diversity and inclusiveness that's essential for our healthy community let's keep it going tonight thanks very much thank you mr. lane good evening hello council members my name is kasey vanden huvel i'm the president of the modern a sand cruise building trades council as well as the representative of the sheet metal workers local 104 i'm here tonight and tonight you're going to hear me say two words housing and jobs and throughout this discussion you're going to hear housing and jobs through my public comment right now we're worried about how the horizon of the downtown area is going to look and right now that horizon does not have housing or jobs so i look forward to that change to have housing and jobs available for our residents this amendment hits square smack down in the middle of where we want to be not too high not too low let's go right in the middle and let's move forward so we can provide these residents with good working construction jobs and long-term jobs in that commercial real estate we also need to provide housing that's the number one issue we have here in Santa Cruz and how do we do that we are a dense little city here the only way to do that is to move up so i support these recommendations to the expansion and i support housing and jobs that is so important to the city and its members of my union so please move forward on this action and let's get started on this project thank you thank you mr vandenhove miss bush someone else online there is good evening the person who is calling in good evening i will let you know it looks to me like maybe that person has muted they're still muted yeah if the person with the phone number ending in 5542 can hit star six unmute yourself i'll tell you what well that person's figuring that out let me recognize our next speaker good evening sir good evening worthy mayor worthy council members in your city staff great job on uh what you did in your report there real good job uh mani panero's my name i'm the ceo monterey san criss county building construction trades council we are in full support of this project it's important it turns into a viable economic engine for the city of santa cruz you need housing you need good jobs with great health care great livable wages not only that you start young people in their career not all kids are going to go and get a two four six eight year degree this gives them an opportunity to work here we want to work with the city here we want jobs to stay here put that money back in your community that's where it belongs so get this project going we're here behind you thank you and hope to see it break round soon mr panero thank you so much for being here have we got our person online set up to go now yeah i just went to the next person we'll go back to that very good good evening uh good evening mayor and council member my name is jesse bresto with swanson builders and i wanted to um call in in support for the staff's uh original recommendations for the downtown expansion and the the reason being is um when it comes to rena numbers and the original 1800 units that are being proposed um we have an eight-year cycle to to and to get these right and if we uh try to limit those amount of units it's going to be spread out throughout the city and it's uh my opinion and i would feel that a lot of planners would agree with me given my professional background being in planning as well that the more concentration that you have in a downtown and more walkable area with the transit center and um services and jobs and things like that the better uh you know mission street water street soak health street that's where these other units will end up being allocated and they're not as it's not as walkable areas so you know we have one shot at it and i really feel that um allowing the higher density in in this location would be the best thank you mr. bristow appreciate your testimony good evening hi my name is christia darum i'm a resident of santa cruz for the last 42 years and much of that i've been an educator of low income students and families and spanish-speaking families so i want to quote from jame jacob's book the death and life of american cities if you don't know her she fought diligently to preserve communities and neighborhoods and faced really destructive ruthless development projects in new york city she quotes building cities we have the capability of providing something for everybody only because and only when only when these ideas are created by everybody with the input of those who will live there so i'm urging you to oppose this 12 stories the 12 story development i think that if you compare i've done some research personal research i traveled through europe on my bike mostly for several weeks last summer and you see that beautiful cities create beautiful experiences that's why people are drawn to this town it's a beautiful city it has a lot of open space and nature and the buildings are of human scale they provide a lot of space and sunlight not dark cold canyons right now i'm about to switch my bank because the community credit union it is very difficult not only getting there on a bicycle which is my mode of transportation but as i stand there during a sunny bright day i'm in a dark cold canyon and that experience is not going to draw ucse students or more tourists to our town also i want to question the state data i'm very familiar with the regional housing need allocations and other cities are fighting this that the allocations have been the numbers have been overinflated if you do if you look at similar cities of our size and our population throughout the world we're talking europe and the us the majority of buildings in those cities of that population are not more than five stories so i want you to get our input i want you to consider a lower height limit and i also want to question just for other educators and teachers because i've been here before and they've said okay we're gonna have 20 percent affordable housing and then the housing is actually not affordable for these educators not affordable for the police the prices are just not truly so how can you guarantee that local workers these gentlemen here will actually build this how can you guarantee to us that the people who work in our town will get the housing because they aren't currently now many of many educators police have to work you know drive from selenus and watsonville and that is adding to this extreme weather for those of you who don't you know understand it carbon driving puts more carbon to the air and is causing more flooding more historic fires in our future more historic droughts so um yes streets must be attractive thank you thank you very much someone else online yes good evening person that was the same person who wasn't good evening come on forward good evening good evening my name is april welsh i've been in the community since 84 i was drawn by ucsc raised my daughter here um i do have um a lot of attachment to the environment of santa cruz and what what i was drawn to in terms of living here and i'm also i know that you guys are in a very difficult situation in terms of trying to meet the needs of our community definitely for more employment um for affordable housing for more housing my question is like who is all this housing for i mean my question also is like would any of you want to live there i wouldn't i mean i've lived in a three bedroom house rented rented to students done everything i could to create a beautiful environment for my amazing 24 year old and um these are not beautiful environments for people people need space i mean i think the density model is fallacy you know and i and i know i work with all the low income people through the county i'm an energy specialist for pg and e and um there's tons of areas there's even like apartment buildings that really should be torn down and rebuilt you know it's like why are we doing this in this particular area in this model where it's just going to block out the sun and create not a beautiful environment you know we're a tourist town where you know people are drawn here for the beauty of this environment and this is not a beautiful project you guys it's not i'm really really sad that you would even consider it for a community i think there's just so many other options i think it's i think you're blindsided and also i do have a question too about the number um the number of units i think our city is a way over zealous about that i'm curious to know what watsonville what what are they having to build there how many units is watsonville having to do and isn't there some way for us to be able to debunk what the state is um requiring or requesting for us in terms of the amount of units so and i'm frankly i'm in jeopardy of how many to leave sam and cruise because i just you know it's just gotten so crazy in terms of for affordability it makes me really sad so thanks for listening thank you for participating we appreciate it miss bush one more time hi can you hear me yes we can excellent thank you good evening mayor kealy and fellow council members my name is anthony of skew so and i'm a business agent for the heat and frost insulators local 16 i apologize in advance if uh if my comments are going to sound as i've already i've been echoed by other people but i'm going to speak anyways um here speak in favor of the project tonight is it will bring much needed opportunity to the city of santa cruise santa cruise has a high demand for affordable housing due to the decreasing size of the middle class if this project is built with the possible community benefits agreement it will create these opportunities for local santa cruise residents with community benefits such as local hire our union is ready to hire new santa cruise apprentices that will benefit from a six-figure income paid health care and a guaranteed pension these new apprentices will be trained for free and complete their programs with zero debt these are jobs that do not require any college experience furthermore after this project is completed our union will continue to provide them with work throughout the rest of their careers since these apprentices will be residents of santa cruise they will spend their hard-earned money locally which will boost economic activity if this project is approved and a community benefits agreement is not used your community will get a project built by the lowest bidder with the least skilled and trained workforce available from contractors outside the geographical area any money is earned on this project will benefit outside communities and place the integrity of the project at risk construction workers take pride in building projects in their own community we build with integrity to make sure our excellent work is on display for decades to come we all like to drive by a project and point out to the other people in the car hey look i built that please think about moving forward with this project and give serious consideration of how to best serve your community beginning with the construction phase thank you for your time thank you very much for your participation good evening good evening thank you i have something to share with if you'd give that to the clerk she'll be glad to distribute that thank you i'm going to do this i'm going to start the clock over right because you you handed something out i don't want to count that against your time so go ahead thank you um council and mayor kealy for allowing me six minutes to represent the stop the skyscrapers you would called in and asked for that mid dance i recall i had emailed yes so will i be able to i guess i'll keep track up there okay okay all right first of all thank you for this opportunity to speak on behalf of a group of citizens that have associated around the phrase stop the skyscrapers appreciate the opportunity to talk here my name is susan monheit and i've recently moved back to santa cruz i graduated from ucse in 86 and i've moved back after a 30 year career in environmental protection water regulation water rights uh this group was formed by neighbors talking to neighbors when i learned about the project the density and the height being proposed originally 22 stories and then reduced to 22 i started talking to my neighbors and nobody seemed to know about what was going on or the scale of what was going on um and when they found out about it they were the stressed appalled very very concerned okay there are many concerns about the project this massive and of this density um although in an eir traffic congestion does not legally have to be analyzed the people who live here know it is will be a reality and would request that that be be analyzed as part of the eir so our core a few um core members of the of the group reached out to mayor then uh candidate mayor kealy to discuss our concerns and share an initiative we drafted to try to give people of this town more of a voice to be recognized whether the group decides to move forward with an initial a ballot initiative will largely depend on whether we feel the voices are being heard and and our considerations being taken into consideration so fred did listen and he has taken action which is number 24 on today's agenda and um i would like just like to applaud new council member newson and and and mayor kealy for hearing us and and taking action moving us in the direction of lower and and uh confined density or specified density that the group wants and in general i would say the group you know is not unified we all have different opinions and for part of the group there is not enough specificity in how many 12 story buildings or where they would be located to uh in amour uh support at this time those things need to be better identified and and should be analyzed as an alternative project in the eir with some more specificity so we know what's talking about there is a big concern here that too many 12 story buildings or not enough space between them will create dense dark canyons of microclimate that is cold and dank and not a place where anybody wants to be i have asked that i have i have passed out um a couple of photographs i'd like to refer to this is from yan gel's book cities for people and as we are going you know going to be building a new city or a new downtown that is a foregone conclusion i really want to empower this council to create a vision that is livable that is desirable for our town and not follow a developer's vision that is designed around maximizing profit in order to fund an arena that nobody wants to pay for so um there are two photographs there one shows some perspective of a town um where massive buildings were built behind it and it's out of scale and out of step the second shows that above five stories people begin to lose connection with what's going on on the ground and they lose connection with community with each other um so i really want to invite this council to create a vision that will be inviting that will maintain a destination location that we currently are and that will create a vibrant economy that is sustainable um when i think of where i want to travel it would be to a place that has ambience and sunshine and that is what i want to create here um and to that end i would like to make an invitation to this city council that Laura Lee who actually owns this book but i would like to give it to the mayor to Mayor Keely and the council with an invitation to flip through it and look at the concepts from this dutch person author and and engage in some conversations with people about creating something that's vibrant and unique that people will want to come to and in just saying we're creating the $1.6 million development here thank you for your time and consideration thank you very much uh in in so far as thank you in so far as many of us don't we have policies of not receiving gifts your gift is to the city correct uh yes it's to the city for everyone we do not have to uh that won't be a gift to us as individuals thank you thank you for your testimony someone else on online here would this be ryan correct good evening sir good evening council uh this is ryan meckel i'm calling in on behalf of myself and santa cruz imbi in support of the staff recommendation and the original plan for 1800 units uh if we want to build a city where people can actually live and build a city where people can live sustainably this plan is a portion of it helps to achieve that i like earlier people said and like staff said this is a play for people want to live right in downtown and if people are living downtown they may not have to own cars they could bike to work they could take the bus to work they could walk to work it's where a lot of the jobs are and it's where the housing should be as well in addition if we reduce the number of units in this area it's going to make it more difficult to achieve a certified housing element because those units are going to have to go somewhere else in the city and as i'm sure you're all familiar with people are not exactly thrilled to have units anywhere in the city you're going to have opposition no matter where you go so i hope you'll stick with the original plan and with the staff's recommendation on this project thank you thank you for your testimony thanks for calling in good evening good evening council and mayor my name is chris sagers i'm a long-term resident of santa cruz and i think people get lost in this house this concept of housing for people um it's it's needed however um there are reasons why high rise sky rises kill the ability high rises separate people from the street activity is best spewed from the street from people you lose contact with people inside a high rise scale is not human scale high rises radically reduce chance encounters and propic equity it reduces chance encounters creating livable cities and connection with people high rises are vertical sprawl taking up too much space and it's inefficient high rises equal gentrification and inequality increases profits for developers expensive the taller you go buildings tend to be luxury units for global investors anything about five to six levels you're looking at global investors that are paying for those extra floors and it's not going to be available to working-class construction workers please people etc number six it's not eco and green they use twice as much energy as mid-rise buildings you're looking at cooling air pumps water pumps that are required to cool and heat the upper floors it's not good for our health deprise people of neighborhood spaces and activities they encourage people to stay inside and imprison people the other problem with skyscrapers pollution more materials increased carbon footprint and substantially interfere with climate causes the taller buildings create heat islands it is trapped between the street and upper floors especially if you're going to have multiple high-rise buildings creates a valley effect creates winds winds hit the taller buildings go down on the on the ground um i'm just second here sure and the buildings totally um take over on the presence of people on the on the street again their energy coefficients and um yeah that's about all I have and I oppose this um height limit amendment thank you thank you for your testimony thank you miss bush someone else online yes we do we have a handful of people yeah mr. sepperman good evening hi good evening um my name is ellie sepperman and i'm here on behalf of the housing action coalition calling in strong support of the staff recommendation I generally work in zana clara and san matel counties but after hearing the attempts to limit density downtown I wanted to offer a regional perspective regionally as we all know we are in a housing crisis and cities throughout the bay are responding by increasing height limits and adding more adequate housing especially downtown and near transit and often the best way to do that is to increase density um and uh Santa Cruz should not be an exception to this rule it is important that we do not limit ourselves in terms of density and um if I have any caveats to the staff recommendation it would be to increase the density that is proposed it was said earlier tonight that you should consider how you want to be remembered and the way you ought to be remembered is a city that encourages all residents to be successful and the best way to do that is to support the staff recommendation thank you so much thank you miss sepperman appreciate your calling in good evening sir good evening council uh my name is bill kemp uh i'm a downtown business owner a dta board member and an architect who has practiced locally for 27 years I encourage the city council to support the downtown expansion area plan eir as it was approved last year the south of laurel district is the best area of the city to rezone it will easily accommodate increased residential density as required by the state housing element cycle and help to expand the city's commercial core the community has rejected growth outside of downtown the corridors plan went nowhere the circle church development was hotly debated large-scale residential development in the downtown benefits everyone more people living downtown creates more customers for local businesses and restaurants they will drive less and energize the streetscape also having the santa cruz warriors here is a privilege and a point of pride they deserve a downtown venue we all can be proud of in eir is a study it's not an ordinance we should study the maximum density possible for this area the planning department did the hard work and outreach to create the parameters for the consultants to review those findings should be analyzed and used to inform the ordinances that will guide the future zoning the largest building volume should be considered most of the current buildings proposed and under construction contain micro units because the financing favors them we need more residential volume so there can be a mix of units that are larger and more appealing we desperately need affordable housing raising the threshold to 20 was the right thing to do but affordable units are incredibly expensive to build i have a 100 affordable local project where each sro sized unit will cost 400 000 to build state density bonus law is the only option to make these high density projects pencil out and be attractive to developers i don't see a way to adjust this law that won't be challenged in court i care deeply about downtown i spend most of my time here i'm invested in it a year ago i moved my office from the outskirts to above pacific avenue i want to live here too i look forward to nice apartments and condos with amenities that will entice me and my friends out of their large empty nests and live a more sustainable and walkable life downtown i'm not concerned about relatively tall buildings downtown when i go to a new city i search out the tallest observation deck to get an overview if there was a place downtown where i could see over beach hill to the ocean i think that would be awesome a varied skyline should be explored throughout downtown not only in this area it is becoming more uniform as each new building is added in closing i i'd just like to say that i'm excited for the future of downtown i'm glad this plan is being presented and reviewed it's an opportunity for progress the locals i talk to downtown want this big big thank you thank you sir miss bush mr misler hi can you hear me good evening yes we can yeah i i think i just wanted to speak to the conflict that we keep running up against here between wanting to serve housing as a commodity versus housing as something people need and live want to live in obviously when we're talking about you know i want you guys to build as tall as you need to build and i need to hold the dialectic obviously here that the reason you're building 80 percent market rate even though that's clearly not what we need and 20 affordable is because that's what the market is demanding of you and investors are leaning into these kinds of demands even though rents have gone up year after year after year somehow they can only still afford 20 percent it just doesn't make any sense there's no way that overheads have increased the same amount as rents over the past 10 years rents have gone up like over a hundred percent so we need to be real about what the numbers we're talking about are and like what we're actually doing when we're like building housing and what goals we're trying to achieve i think if we want to be if we want to hold a better balance we can start to think about maybe building housing that starts out a little bit subsidized but then we give um every single person a section eight voucher for instance until the developer gets some overheads paid off and then you basically set it at a lower rent permanently after that right so you can do things to take care of the upfront overhead over time you don't have to have a bunch of money up front but the fact that we're not even thinking about it this way we're just sort of accepting the idea that developers just need to make a ton of money no matter what and 20 percent is always what pencils out for developers i mean it's like you remember plane tickets used to not cost that much and the problem was diesel was too expensive like what was it 15 years ago then when diesel got less expensive the plane ticket price didn't change that's the situation we're in right this the market is not based on overheads it's based on speculation and so you guys need to understand that and treat it that way and make up systems that sort of operate to counter that problem because otherwise you're not actually helping address people's needs you're just chasing an unsustainable situation that's really just driven by the speculative nature of the profit makers and so i hope that was clear about what i'm talking about i think i don't give a shit about height limits excuse my language but i do care about whether you're thinking about these things in a way that's actually thank you for calling in thank you for your testimony mr murphy good evening good evening everyone um my name is chris murphy president of sanacruz warriors well i just want to first by start out saying hopefully everybody had a great holiday season enjoyed some time with their loved ones and is finding a way to stay dry and safe right now as many you know the sanacruz warriors are celebrating our 10th anniversary season in here since our arrival in 2012 the relationship we've enjoyed with the community with the city and all of its constituents has been nothing short of amazing we've had a lot of success together both on the court and off as well as in the community with the almost 2000 community events we've participated in since arriving we hope to be a part of the fabric of sanacruz for a long time to come we believe this proposal moves us closer to the dream of building an arena in sanacruz we want to make it very clear that we desire broad-scale community support to build a new arena a building which is required in order for us to stay here and call sanacruz home into the future in that context we embrace mayor kealy and council member new sims efforts to find common ground in respect to the overall height density and affordability in relation to the downtown area south of laurel street we recognize that the housing needs of sanacruz are far greater than building a new arena downtown is of importance we especially embrace all efforts to bring meaningful affordable housing to our community that said we're committed to working out the details of the south of laurel downtown expansion plan in a way that meets the city's planning goals the needs of the community the needs of the warriors and to create a viable economic model that facilitates the building of a new arena so that the c-dubs can call sanacruz home decades into the future i want to thank mayor kealy all the city council members and all the city staff for the hard work and effort that's going forth to make this dream a reality thank you have a great night and go warriors thank you mr murphy someone else on the phone good evening we can hear you all right good evening mayor and council members i'm on pomegranate and the downtown plan extension process began some time ago the public was led to believe the south of laurel new development and gentrification process to be comparable to the downtown plan i miss leading this is turned out to be on june 14th of this year the council approved 170 and 150 quick buildings to be analyzed the ir process overriding staff's original proposal of 180 and 220 foot projects now the city led by mayor kealy is attempting to tone down the pending outrage to this overdevelopment proposal a similar outrage and backlash occurred in the history year in the late 1960s when the council approved lighthouse fields for hilton hotel conference center the current staff report pushes back on their team's attempt to ameliorate the fallout from the publicly impalatable height condensing plan currently proposed the staff report puts forward 12 story buildings throughout the area the six plus story building the only known as the taco bell project at laurel pacific fields way out of scale well stories nearly doubles the height of uh and buildings it can't be looked they're not found anywhere in the plan areas proposed in the current staff report unlimited 12 story developments instead of 150 to 170 foot buildings is outrageous and appears to be a given way to real estate and development interest this is almost worse than a few 150 to 170 foot buildings 12 story and taller buildings should remain in san jose and santa clara valley and not mushroom out in san jose try to imagine the process underway and ask yourself if staff's vision is the santa cruse you have come to know and love staff has said the city has no choice but to continue to build massive developments in order to comply with the rena requirements i say hogwash there is major statewide pushback to rena and the city of san jose must join in as well as leave to not only question the validity of the numbers but to roll back the excessive state mandates the eir should be analyzing the project area with 1600 maximum units an accurate project description is required under cqa the downtown plan extension should plan for no more than 1600 units near kealy and county member newson have set forth keep the height density and setbacks the same as the downtown plan keep our local coastal plan intact simply the downtown plan extension should be in line with the downtown plan nothing more at a minimum mayor kealy should be supported in the temple the rest control over the planning process from staff the decision today we have lasting implications and i thank you for calling in we appreciate it good evening good evening my name is kathy haver and i have lived in uh san jose since uh 1969 um and i would just like to bring up a couple of items that i believe have not been addressed first of all the streets that you're planning to build these buildings on have ancient infrastructure the pipes underneath those streets are probably more than a hundred years old i wonder if the city is planning to replace all of that infrastructure if they're not they will have to do that are you thinking about that also the streets are not particularly wide and they're going to have to be expanded to four lanes which was going to do away with all of the parking on the sides of those streets now are you requiring that these huge apartment buildings provide at least a half a space per unit the people that come into xana cruise to live in these buildings it's not going to be local people that live there there's going to be new people that live there they are coming with cars are you making provision for these facts these actualities through its realities or are you just living on cloud nine with all these buildings you're planning to build and my other another consideration is we've heard from the labor union representatives when i drive by the behemoth that they're building on the corner of laurel and front i don't see any trucks with xana cruise construction company names on them i see construction companies from all over central california but i don't see xana cruise construction companies there i don't think there's any way the city can build into these contracts with these contractors anything about union labor my ex-husband was a union member for 40 years most of the construction projects in xana cruise were not union all of the residential projects were never union this is not a strong union town i don't think you can build into these private contracts anything about hiring union labor it will not be built with union labor i doubt it will be built with local labor um the other thing is you are not representing the people who elected you to office you're representing developers from outside of xana cruise and people who would like to move into xana cruise for one reason or another you are not representing the people who elected you and that my my time is up thank you so much for being here thank you for your testimony we've got someone online who's calling in and we can now hear you good evening i apologize this is jesse bristow it's once the builders again um my internet connection was a little spotted uh given the recent weather so um i i don't know where i left off on my last call but um i just wanted to reiterate that um we we encourage uh city council to move forward with staff recommendation of the 1800 units mainly because um making sure we can allocate all those those rena numbers and achieve this cycle um making sure that the city um isn't penalized by the state further where you get certain projects such as 831 water street that was the consensus project because of sd 35 because the city did not meet um the rena numbers and i'll just speak a little bit to um you know some of the concerns and questions about the eir and you know green spaces and articulation and similar to a previous comment earlier you know staff needs to understand the entirety of the build out the highest maximum and then furthermore as the downtown expansion plan those design guidelines are implemented there can be green spaces there can be step backs you know someone spoke to hey this isn't going to be human scale well you can have a building built to four or five stories and then have the remaining stories be stepped back so there's certain articulation and design standards that can be implemented afterwards so um really in a nutshell we need transit oriented development so people walk people invest in um our downtown you know right now we're on a borderline recession um and some would argue that we're in a recession right now and honestly the thing to do is to plan during that recession and to come out on top and ready to have that type of investment where people want to live people want to work and people want to invest in that in the city of Santa Cruz so um thank you for your time and really appreciate um everything you guys are going over tonight thank you thank you for calling back in appreciate your forbearance with us on that thank you so much mr reyes good evening council members my name is chris reyes i work for and at the Santa Cruz beach boardwalk a place i've worked almost every year of my life since i was 14 years old i'm not very close to 14 anymore so it's been quite some time uh we are unabashedly proud to be part of the team that helped bring the warriors to Santa Cruz and we're very proud to be part of the team that's trying to keep the warriors in Santa Cruz and find ways to build affordable housing for our workforce and community members in Santa Cruz and so what's before you tonight is a good and proper calibration of what was done before and i encourage you to continue this ball forward i suspect that as time unfolds there'll be many iterations of this many changes many amendments many opportunities for community engagement on this project and all that it entails and so this is one step in that direction so it's it feels very appropriate and proper as a lifelong community member i want to also speak to the importance of this project and what it represents you know we have this cycle in Santa Cruz that goes back 40 years where uh some elected officials who drape themselves in uh being advocates for affordable housing find ways to vote against almost every affordable housing project that comes before this body i've seen it over and over and over again and we need you to be the council that breaks that cycle because there are real consequences from those actions multiple generations of Santa Cruz residents can't afford to live here they can't afford to buy homes here and the state is so fed up with that that they're basically mandating that we build this kind of housing and so we need to be good partners in that and find a way to end that cycle of generations of Santa Cruz residents kids that graduate from Santa Cruz High Soquel High Harbor High who can't afford to live here it's been going on for far too long and we need you to be the council that says we're going to find creative ways to end that cycle because it's not healthy for our community to have generations of people that can't afford to live here and that have to leave and it speaks to our values as a community that we haven't solved it yet and so we need to find a way to solve that and this type of projects are a good step in that direction so I urge passage thank you Mr. Reyes thank you very much Ms. Bush someone else online um yes we have currently seven more people okay let's go to one Ms. Martin we can hear you can you hear me yes we can yes we can okay my name is Laura Lee and I'm delighted that you're welcoming the book Cities for People it's a wonderful easy read that really highlights forward thinking planning for productive and engaging cities my concern about the plan is a couple of issues is one it's a time of crisis we're in drought flooding emergency services are overwhelmed and thinking of building on the levee an arena and all these tall buildings seems like a backward-looking model for cities more forward-looking cities are more engaged in connecting communities and having people want to stay in places building where people have to sit in traffic for hours to get here and then go to a box and be in a box and then go to another box and then get back in their car is backwards thinking I think we have to I hope that you will engage in the conversation that Susan Monheit requested that the community has more input in forward-thinking materials forward-thinking designs which embrace beauty highlighting the beauty of our town and social and environmental justice these ideas are being broadened out throughout the country there are a lot of resources of other communities addressing affordable housing but are not being forced by developers who are in it for profit to drive the process we're asking that our community speak directly with you to engage in better more welcoming housing than high rises and congestion and traffic we have to address emergency services climate change drought and traffic as a part of building our community and I have faith that you are good people I've met you I believe you are good people and I hope that the book cities for people will shine a new perspective on another kind of conversation thank you thank you very much Miss Shendl Decker good evening hello again everybody um so first I want to um express my solidarity for the people who have spoken from the central labor council and the building trades that um that a community benefit that's agreement is something that's really important to them about this project and from what I heard and learned from them when campaigning was that we actually really need a project labor agreement or ordinance that covers the entire city um you know it's not just about this one zone or this one project but the entire city having a standard set for wages benefits healthcare encouraging local workers to have those trucks in the the building yards that are more local and not from hours away also to have more oversight so that there's not wage theft and abuse of subcontractors so that's one thing I just want to mention um I'm hearing a lot in this discussion and it shouldn't be any surprise but it's just echoes of the same conversations we've been having other people have brought it up there's this kind of built-in tension between labor affordable housing needs and environmental issues and um I do think that we we just have to compromise when the conversation gets ramped up with judgment about what's right the right and wrong way to do it and you know I hear it from people on all sides of the community you know we're gonna get us ourselves into another pickle with ballot initiatives and people just yelling at each other and hundreds of thousands of dollars just wasted on advertisements that nobody wants so you know I would like to encourage everybody on all sides from all perspectives to just really like keep the humanity in in this that we're all trying our well most of us are trying our best um you know given that we live in this system of neoliberalism for 40 years like yeah this is where like Reggie talked about you know it's not because people are nimbies who hate others coming into their neighborhood they hate they don't hate affordable housing projects but we we also don't want to see simply exploitation and over building to line the pockets millions of dollars over years and years being taken out of our community that's not what people want either so um and then I was surprised that only one other person brought up um the catastrophic flooding that we're experiencing right now and how high the water got to the top of the levee and putting like a billion dollars of big buildings into a flood zone and I'm done I was just getting started sorry okay sorry it's just um I'll write a letter to the editor to flesh it out more but it's just it's a lot of investment and we are in a crisis we you all voted this this afternoon to approve um like a grant application to study climate induced flooding from the river but then you want to build in that very floodplain where it hasn't been fully studied so I just like I'd like to just like maybe pause on the project thank you thank you very much thank you someone else calling in Ms. Lewis you are up wonderful um hello council members my name is Portia I am a community member and uh employee at housing matters here in town um I do not support the amendment to the proposal and I urge the council to support the original proposal I feel like I've heard a few strawman fallacies presented throughout um a lot of the other comments um supporting this project will not lead to the demise of Santa Cruz beautiful green spaces it will or our tourism economy or um will it turn Santa Cruz into an unappealing place to live as we know a lot of people want to live here um when I moved to Santa Cruz from Berkeley I was shocked with how unwalkable expensive and disconnected Santa Cruz feels um as a recent graduate from UC Berkeley I studied climate change and potential solutions to um reducing our environmental impact increasing the density of our buildings creating more walkable neighborhoods that are connected to commercial spaces and to transit support local jobs Santa Cruz's local economy it reduces the need for commuters to drive in um and these are all solutions to reducing emissions and but preserving our green spaces and reducing our environmental impact um higher density buildings more walkable neighborhoods reduce urban sprawl and if there's more housing maybe rents will be less inflated as a former former speaker asked who this housing is even for well as I mentioned I work at housing matters a nonprofit that works with people experiencing homelessness here in Santa Cruz County I specifically work with families primarily single mothers and their children who are experiencing homelessness um the majority of these families grew up in Santa Cruz or in the surrounding towns I can personally tell you that this this housing is for human beings who need a place to live um and because there is little affordable housing the majority of these families and as noted by other speakers recent graduate and generations of Santa Cruz members um relocate to the surrounding areas such as San Jose Salinas and Watsonville which are uh less attractive places to live as mentioned by the people who really enjoy living in Santa Cruz um and it's also really safe here uh and I've attended other city council meetings where I have not heard people advocating for the empty home tax as one solution to increasing the amount of housing I also did not hear uh people fighting against the giant hotel that's being built downtown um so again I'm in support of the original proposal and it birds the city council to support the original proposal I do want to add an additional comment that I do think we can think innovatively about what this housing looks like I urge I urge the council and planners to look into resident cooperative housing developments where people share common spaces and resources which would further reduce the environmental impact and increase um of the density thank you so much for your time thank you very much anyone else with us this evening in chambers who would like to make comments on this item seen and hearing none miss bush how many other folks do we have six okay and uh elizabeth you are up good evening mayor kealy and santa cruz the council members elizabeth madrigals speaking on behalf of the modernary modernary bay economic partnership and as a resident of santa cruz and that supports moving forward with the downtown expansion plan expeditiously and we urge the city to continue studying the 1800 units that have been evaluated in the eir since 2017 and that has been actively tracking and supporting efforts related to the downtown expansion plan especially those that create significant new housing opportunities the expansion area creates a unique opportunity to plan for more much needed housing and one of the most sustainable sites in our region for growth given its close proximity to jobs transportation and other key resources the identified area for expansion of the boundary of the downtown plan incorporates a development scenario that could potentially include 1800 housing units which would greatly assist the city in re in reaching its increased six cycle rena targets of 3700 units by 2030 it is critical that we take advantage of this expansion by adding more housing in this prime downtown location thank you all for your leadership in addressing this pivotal opportunity to provide more housing and other key resources to the community thank you very much appreciate your testimony is bush who is next mr kelly good evening sir hey thank you so much for having me and thank you uh mayor and council and staff um so i just want to put into context a few things that are kind of down the down the pipeline beyond just this housing like i mean i don't know if i have to tell you that there's homelessness um there's high rents there's overcrowding when people have to live many people to to to smaller and smaller places because there just aren't enough homes and long commutes whether those commutes are from coming up into sander in the valley down into the city to work or if it's coming from blottsomville monorail county further out to come and work the jobs that are in the city of santa cruz but leaving those aside which i think are actually much there's a much greater need than the current rena number is and so these 3700 homes we have to build arena of which a large portion could come through this downtown plan extension you're still gonna have to meet but i think other other calls have pointed out that if you if you don't pursue large during this one you're gonna have to do it somewhere else and i think what's important to kind of keep in mind as we go through the housing element process is you have to show that you're gonna realistically add capacity to other sections of the city which is great it helps us to affirmably further per housing right means we can put more housing near or to other jobs on the west side um closer to campus um and i think it's just in order to both finish our housing element and be able to get the pro housing designation but we we need to be able to show good faith effort in pursuing that and not just because we care about numbers on a page and we want to know keep keep the wheels turning but because we want homes for people right you know we we are currently producing less homes than we graduate from our high schools we we are currently having trouble hiring people to come and work essential jobs within the city we are having trouble hiring enough people recruiting and retaining people to work in our schools like just ignoring the rest of the the rest of the jobs that are available and what and what people really need here there's a lot of untapped potential and and where we have not chosen to lead and say we need to solve this problem we need to solve it now so that's all i want to leave you with you get to make a decision on it and it really just means are you going to have to make more bigger decisions later or do you make a big decision tonight thank you thank you mr kelly miss bush miss falkner good evening thank you so much mayor and council uh we must ensure we house those people who work in service to our community our nurses police janitors bus drivers teachers and others who do not earn the high tech wages that have been a big part of our housing increase of price if we are to address our environmental crisis we must grow our housing with easy access to robust public transportation if we were to have a thriving vibrant community as we grow our housing upwards we must include in all of these developments community spaces that encourage people to connect with their neighbors the street life other kids and visitors within the community we need to ensure there's a strong interaction between the people in the tall buildings and the street life and ensure integration of young people and elders people with disabilities people from a variety of income levels as well the united states has a long history of growing tall projects that fail to thrive because city governments and developers fail to create beautiful environmentally smart community connecting urban designs i support more housing infill and upwards development but we must look at urban design plans that serve to improve people's lives and invigorate our community connectivity we must also include urban forests and community gardens encourage safe active and public transportation to decrease our terrible impact on the environment primarily due to an automobile centric country jane jacob's was an important role model influenced wise development principles which stress that our community must have a foundational role in how our community has grown and developed how we choose to develop our community in downtown should entice anyone to come and visit and want to stay it is critical that we invest in safe walkable bikeable streets traffic violence has skyrocketed over 70 percent over the past decade and additional 30 percent in just the past year or so we can either prioritize speed of cars or safety of our most vulnerable people in our community walking and biking on our streets so i do urge the city council through these developments to work with the dutch bike embassy the community traffic safety coalition ecology action and the rtc to ensure that our community further as our community further grows santa cruz implements the best safe streets infrastructure available finally as we remove the homes of the people who live in this area to make way for new housing structures we must offer current residents comparable or better residential accommodations at comparable rents so that this growth does not result in inequity for the current members of our community living there we must prevent new development units from becoming empty second homes or money-making vacation homes for the one percenters ideally i think mid rise four to eight stories is far more reasonable in terms of creating naturally interconnected integrated communities that invite all of us to walk sip coffee talk together meet new people encourage our kids to bike and play with friends thank you for your time thank you very much miss bush mr davis hello can you hear me good evening sir good evening um i'm a downtown business owner here in santa cruz and just a couple hours ago i was talking with one of our senior managers um a key individual within our business about tonight's meeting and she said i want to show you something she took out her phone and she pulled up zillo and she showed me that there is exactly one apartment listed on zillo for rent in santa cruz that is a two bedroom like the two bedroom she currently occupies that is less expensive than the apartment she currently occupies one listing and she said this is the problem there is not enough housing if i want to move i have one option to pay less than what i'm currently paying and it just put it all in perspective for me she's you know a lot of us who have housing we don't realize just how challenging it is we don't go to try to get the the one listing and show up with a crowd of other people that are competing for that same spot and i just want to encourage all of you not to limit the potential for the housing um in this area that that's being looked at um you know i i have feelings about height um i can see both sides of that but where i think it's really important is that that we not put a cap on what can be studied for the the south allura rural area because there are just so many people in our community that that need a place to live that's all thank you very much thank you mr davis thanks for calling in mr shonefeld good evening good evening mayor and council um my name is raffa son of the feldin because it's popular to talk about our credentials speaking this evening i grew up in santa cruise i've lived i'm a homeowner and i've lived in santa cruise for over 30 years um i just first i wanted to say that i support the staff recommendation for this evening to continue with this project without changing the eir i think it's really important to make sure that we are uh uh moving forward in the most expeditious and cost effective manner and that's that's proceeding without changing the eir um earlier this evening someone mentioned that they uh there would be community outrage for tall buildings you know uh i i support tall buildings i i i like having tall buildings in my community and makes them a more walkable place to live especially in the south of laurel area where hopefully we'll be connecting within walking distance to light rail at depot park you know that's uh the the rail trail plan is a really popular thing that the vast majority of folks in our county voted on and if we want to support uh you know trail rail projects we're going to have to have people who use the rail the rail projects um and and that means having having folks who live within walking distance to the rail corridor um i can't imagine a better place to put more housing than downtown santa cruise um rena is coming uh lots of folks this evening have mentioned the over 3700 units that we have to plan for and and it's it's always complicated and challenging to agree on where we need to build housing in our community but one place we can agree on is that it needs to be downtown uh that's why i support as much housing as we can politically feasibly build downtown um you know someone else mentioned that uh that you know we're going back to this outrage thing uh i support tall buildings but you know what i am outraged about i'm outraged that at my high school reunion this summer the majority of folks who can afford to remain in santa cruise who are my classmates are either doctors or lawyers or inherited their homes we don't have uh uh housing for for folks with working class jobs uh like uh construction workers or or or frankly the folks who who work downtown and we need that in our community uh you know we need to have to reduce the commutes that that are working class neighbors in watsonville are having to come into the city we can do that with light rail we can also do that with more housing downtown um that's that's really all i wanted to say tonight um i support the staff recommendation it's the right thing to do we don't need to change course at this point thank you miss bush we have one more and they weren't unmuting themselves so we'll try again okay the phone number and there we go there we go we can hear you welcome thank you very much it's jillian greensight speaking um i think the main um topic is uh whether to accept um mayor kealy and council member newson's amendment so i just like to say it straight up that i feel that council should support that amendment i think it was an attempt to respond to some of the concerns of the community at what is put it mildly a dramatic difference in uh heights in our town uh which is still a town in many ways uh but since people have so i would um i urge you to support that uh it's going in the right direction although my preference would be three and four stories but we're not talking about that now about preferences i would like to just comment on um some issues other people have brought up mr rays talked about uh he he was aware of many councils i maybe he just said councils but councils who had voted against affordable housing and that you would set a new standard of voting for affordable housing well i've been involved in local politics in santa cruz for 40 years and uh i can't recall a council voting against affordable housing i think that's just um a statement that is inaccurate and sets up a sort of an attitude um or maybe he could state which councils that has been um i don't recall that i think councils have really supported affordable housing next point is about the jobs and housing and none of us can be against such things especially affordable housing on opinions and preferences it has to be based on science and there is research that is done by um out of san francisco i'll just wait till the mayor is able to focus thank you market rate houses um and 80 percent of this whether it's of 1600 or 1800 is market rate then that creates the image of affordable units so when people say oh this will provide housing for our local low income people you're creating a whole new surge of low income service workers that are not going to be housed or the current ones won't be housed so you need to look at that and lastly since time's running out the rena numbers are driving a lot of this there are cities that are suing over rena numbers because they've been shown to be inaccurate become one of those cities so we're not beholden to these uh inaccurate numbers thank you thank you miss anyone else no matters back before the council i'll recognize council member newson for a motion i make a motion to accept the report i'll second that we are going to let me be sure that we're clear on this so what you've just done is moved the second part which is item 24.2 to accept the report and consider the information we will then following that we will see if there is motion on 24.1 but we will take up 24.2 there's motion a second is there debate or discussion you look like you want to tell me something sir i i believe the intent was to move the recommended action for 24.1 well then that should have been the motion is that your motion that's your motion okay with the second yes it is matters back the uh there's a motion a second under debate and discussion miss newson would you like to open on your motion you know we've heard a good bit of community feedback tonight i will say that you know i believe the support this plan that that we are put forward is a good faith effort to try to address some of the concerns that are in the community while also working towards building more housing building for more affordable housing thank you for the debate or discussion miss conantar johnson thank you um thank you mayor keely and council member newson for bringing this forward and as council member newson mentioned earlier this was the direction we were we would be heading so i'm glad that you were bringing it here so we can memorialize it and find this middle ground that is more acceptable to some members of the community um i also want to thank those who showed up here tonight and those who called um to express um your thoughts on on how we should move forward as we do need to grow as a community and i want to thank the staff there were some comments that were made tonight that were bothersome to me towards staff i think staff has done an incredible job of balancing what has been put before us by the state the rena numbers didn't appear out of nowhere they were they've gone through a process they were vetted the numbers may not be what we as a community are ready for or want to see but that's what's before us and i really want to commend staff for doing your best in um bringing forward to us um your recommendations of how we can achieve those numbers um just a couple of other comments um and and i will be supporting this motion i think this is a good way forward um we heard a lot of folks talk about um climate change and what we're seeing in our recent floods um this is climate response we've heard some people speak to this best practices are to are to create walkable communities get folks out of cars and um and have people live work and play in one area this is a very specific climate response that has been implemented throughout the world and throughout this this country so um i see this as a step towards our community being responsible while maintaining the integrity of why we're all here right we're here because this is a unique and special community we want to preserve that now how we do it is has to be we have to consider um very thoughtfully what's before us we have to consider thoughtfully the direction that we are mandated to go whether we're where we'd like to or not um and um the steps that will get us there so i'm kind of rambling it's been a long night but um i believe what you have put forward and what you've brought as a middle ground is climate response and it is providing housing so i'll i'll be happy to support this when we come to a vote thank you councilmember brown thank you mayor thank you to all of the members of the community who have spoken to us tonight written letters been here for these conversations ongoing uh i appreciate hearing from you all and um and i heard a lot of things tonight that um i've i'm familiar with uh the arguments and many of which i share um i thought i would make a few comments about why i am supporting this uh given that i am uh perhaps one of those council members who mr reyes might be referring to who votes against a housing project i um i am a big supporter of affordable housing and one of the things that i have really tried to champion during my time my six years on the council is to increase the affordable housing stock as we continue to bring have projects come forward that are market rate projects we can't stop those um we have some say in the how they are constituted um and less so with new state law has been mentioned um but we have an opportunity here to actually um create a framework for including additional affordable housing units um yes 20 percent of uh you know a total number of units in this area is uh means that 80 percent are you know unaffordable um and that some of those affordable units aren't really affordable to very low income people but the more that we can do to leverage those opportunities um i believe the better off we will be within the context of this bigger market context that does entail gentrification and displacement so i'm really supportive of this in large part because of the 20 percent uh inclusionary goal and the idea that that is going to be something that is um that is um inclusive of the density bonus units um you all have heard me talk about this uh over and over and over um this is a really big difference between the initial proposal um that the council um approved i believe um in that regard if just for that alone this is a huge difference so um you know and i won't say repeat all of the concerns about um you know the the future and you know what kind of vision do we have i think miss uh monheit said um you should plan your vision right it's not entirely my vision but it's a vision that i can get on board with under the circumstances with all of the competing needs interests and laws that have um uh created the the current realm of possibility so um thank you for letting me hold forth a bit thank you council member let me ask if there are other comments by council members a couple of comment mr butler thank you for the staff report on this and for the previous consultations on this i think what it does what your staff report does in conjunction with council member newson and my agenda item is that it lucidates the following concept which is that we are sort of kind of in control of our own destiny if we were sitting here 10 years ago we'd be having an entirely different conversation and i think where you stand depends on where you sit knowing the state legislature pretty well that where they said they believe rightly or wrongly that some communities at some times far too many for their liking the legislature's liking and the governor's liking have said no so many times that in their way of thinking it forced the state's hand on reaching beyond what they had customarily reached to california is a home rule state it's less so today than it was three years ago and it's less three years ago than it was eight years before that you're helping me with something aren't you thank you i appreciate that whatever it was you just did i'm sure it was marvelous and and i think that we can be fairly critical in a fair manner critical of what the state has done in certain regards of one of those is that in his uh in his first years governor for the third time governor brown was facing a very significant deficit in the state's general fund billions and billions of dollars and he realized at that moment that it was impossible for him to prosecute any other part of his agenda and the legislatures if all they were dealing with was the deficit and go on a going forward basis and so what the governor did and and and i understand why even though i don't like what he did he swept off everything he possibly could that was impinging on the state's general fund and part of that was to sweep 1.7 billion dollars off the table of redevelopment funding available to local governments in part to be able to build the affordable housing that both local communities wanted and the state of california wanted when the state got into multi billion dollar surpluses we do know that there was no conversation in sacramento about remember when we took that 1.7 away from local governments maybe when we've got a 50 60 90 billion dollar surplus maybe we ought to sweep that back off the table over to them or you know what we'll do we'll give them a successor agency in some form or fashion that'll do the same thing they didn't either of those things and then in my opinion blame the victim for not getting enough housing built so i can have my issues with them but where you stand depends on where you sit from where they sit that makes sense and when i sat there that makes sense but that was 20 years ago and that wasn't part of the conversation then but when i sit here now what occurs to me is that there's no less of an imperative to build housing in general and affordable housing particularly and so it occurs to me that given how much authority has not been ceded to the state government but how much authority has been taken by the state government this was not something we asked them to do we didn't ask them to take away our land use authorities or to turn us from a home rule state into a state government controlled land use state we didn't ask for that but we are where we are with this and i do think that that i believe that it was all very positively motivated when this council the previous council actually and this city government made the initial proposal on what to do south of laurel i think that was a very well motivated set of decisions i think what we found out in the ensuing roughly 12 months is that that doesn't have purchase in the community it's just not going to fly in the community it's too much it's too tall wasn't enough affordable housing and so on not because this council wanted it to be that way or the previous council wanted it to be that way just out turned out and so i think that having a reset at this point i've said this to some of you privately there's a consumer product and i have no idea what it is used for it is called head and shoulders shampoo i have no idea what this product is used for but i do know that that company had the really smart idea of branding their product with the following slogan you don't get a second chance to make a first impression i don't think that first impression work very well out there in the community frankly i think we contrary to that advertising slogan do have a second chance to make a first impression and tonight this council action will help us do that this is the beginning of a second start it builds upon the good work that the city has already done what they directed staff to do with regard to the environmental impact report and the california environmental quality act very important first steps but by doing quite a bit more than simply course correcting by having a second chance at that first impression i think we are much more likely to get where we want to go now what you've done mr butler i believe is said without any ambiguity at all that the state is more in charge of what we do than they've ever been in the history of the state of california and that if we want to have their goodwill in dealing with us going forward we can say that what we want to have is 12 stories 20 percent cumulatively affordable housing and uh some number of units and you and i don't have the same idea but i think you're right on what we should be studying in terms of the units i would like it to be capted 16 i understand your argument why it should be 18 and i'm going to vote of that but i do think that the second opportunity we were not going to have a third one or a fourth one to do this but this is the first step in that resetting of what we are managing towards and i think what you have done is given us a clear eyed report that says if you reset this at 12 stories 20 percent cumulatively in 16 to 1800 housing units there are in fact ways to manage towards that the shortest distance between two points may not be a straight line on this in fact it is unlikely to be a straight line on this for those three objectives but there are paths to be able to get there understanding that we are in a weakened position relative to the state but we are not powerless here we still have considerable land use authority i want to thank the folks who testified here tonight in person the folks who were on the phone thank my colleagues for their good work on this mr butler mr huffaker thank you both you've been quite helpful mr kandadi very helpful in figuring out the multiple reddings of multiple needles that got us here tonight thank you for that let me ask if there are further comments i want to make very clear that we are voting on what i think we are voting on sir the motion that was made was uh corrected to be item 24.1 correct sir that is correct the recommended action so we are going to have two actions tonight we'll do this then there's going to be a motion to accept the staff report on this separate and apart that is correct seen in here hearing no further debate or discussion the clerk will call the roll councilmember newson hi brown hi what can i um councilmember brunner has disqualified herself councilmember calentary johnson hi vice mayor golder hi and maricule hi hi chair will entertain a motion on the subsequent item on our agenda item 24.2 i make a motion to accept 24.2 is there a second all second motion by councilmember newson second by councilmember Watkins is there a debate or discussion seen in hearing none excuse me i'm sorry yes please comment thank you just want to make sure um when we do the eir and the 1800 units will we do a comparison between the 1600 and 1800 thank you councilmember calentary johnson yes i would anticipate that we have an alternative that evaluates um not to the same level of detail but to a level of specificity that would allow us to understand the differences between the impact studied at 1800 units versus those that we would see at 1600 thank you for the comments for the discussion clerk will call the roll councilmember newson hi brown hi Watkins hi councilmember brunner has recused herself calentary johnson hi vice mayor golder hi and maricule hi the motion carries in so ordered let me ask if there's further business to come before the council this evening seen and hearing none motion to adjourn is in order mr golder moves miss Watkins second this body stands in recess until january 17th 2023