 Welcome to the 2 30 p.m. Public portion the closed litigation session of the April 10th 2018 meeting of the city council in this part of the meeting the council will receive public testimony Thereafter the council members will move to the courtyard conference room for the closed session Before we open public comment I have a brief announcement The city attorney will provide a report on items listed on the closed session agenda beginning at 3 p.m Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to any items listed on the closed session agenda? I think we skipped roll call. Oh, we did It's not So let me just say that first we'll go back and go for a roll call We know we're here It's on there Council members crone Matthews your chase your brown hair Narayan your vice mayor Watkins here and Mayor trousers here So hearing none for public comments. I'll adjourn this meeting to the oh actually let me go to the city attorney. Yes, sir I'm requesting that the council add an item to the closed session based on a subsequent need the the item is Related to the April 5th 2018 letter that that the council received from Whitworth Park in concerning the PG&E tree removal project and in the subsequent need is that the the letter arrived after the regular agenda was posted and Threatens to take legal action against the city. So I Would request by motion that the council add it to the closed session I'll move second a motion by council member Matthew second by council member Brown. So Adjourned now to the closed session Good afternoon, welcome to our 3 30 p.m. Session of the April 10th 2018 meeting in the city council I'd now like to ask the clerk to please call the roll Thank you mayor council member. It's crone here Matthews is currently absent chase Brown here Narayan here Vice mayor Watkins here and mayor trousers here and if the clerk would please lead us in the pledge of allegiance To the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation Indivisible with liberty and justice for all At this point it's I'd like to announce that we're gonna have some new employees We'd like to introduce and I'd start with deputy of public works Chris Schneider Good afternoon, I'm gonna introduce two new employees the public works department To my far left is in any of NS which I'm sure I butchered But anyway, she is a parking attendant Formally a temporary parking attendant now has moved into a regular position Existing position. She was born and raised and lives in Watsonville She enjoys spending her time with her daughter and their dog Coco and We're happy to have her and to my immediate left is Jacqueline de Priest She's been hired as an assistant engineer and currently working in the engineering division and the Resource recovery section so she's working as engineering support for the landfill and recycling center She comes to us from Virginia Beach where she was born and raised she has a Engineering degree masters and a bachelor's in environmental engineering from Virginia Tech as well as an engineering and training Certificate, which is the first step in becoming a professional engineer She's moved from Marin where she was working for the Marin Municipal Water District and before that for a daily city We're happy to have her here And part of the team Very much. All right. Welcome aboard Now I'd like to invite up director of water Rose Maria Menard afternoon mayor and council It's my pleasure to introduce to you Leah Vandermotten lia has come to us as a New position that we have as a associate engineer She's working on the largest single project that the water department has right now Which is a the no quick gam inlet outlet project, which is about a 40 million dollar 40 to 50 million dollar investment to rehabilitate or replace the Pipeline that goes through the dam that brings water either from the lake to our treatment plant or it sends water back Up to the treatment plant or to the lake via The Felton booster station that sends water back up there when we Have the conditions that allow that so Leah has actually been with us as a temporary employee for a number of years And we just recently obtained by your good graces a new three-quarter time Engineering associate position associate engineer position so she's joined us in that position But she had been working on this project for a couple of years She's born and raised in the Santa Cruz area and she graduated from Soquel high school She has a BS in engineering from University of California in Irvine and also a civil engineering master's degree from San Jose State She's worked for in the water business since about 2001 So she brings a lot of really great experience to our position and we would we're really thrilled to have that because we have a Lot of much more complicated projects than we've had historically And she also worked for us before from 2008 to 2011 So then she took out a little break to be what she describes as a professional mom of two boys We're now six and eight and so she likes to For sort of fun time when she has fun time She likes to hang out with her family or husband and two kids and a cat and a dog and some chickens and neighbors She drives our kids around to the sporting events. She likes to and she does a lot of laundry She says using a lot of water, but she didn't live in our service area now, so it's okay And she picks up a lot of Legos. She says and She likes to run and surf under free time, but she can't remember when she had free time most recently So please join me in welcoming Leah Vandemotton Welcome Thanks, and that was great to hear about the new employees next I'd like to transition over to dr. Tiffany wise West the Sustainability and climate action manager will give a presentation on the climate action plan. Yes. Thank you, mayor Good afternoon council members and mayor I'm really pleased to be here today to share with you our progress on our climate action milestones As well as a little bit of an update on climate adaptation since I've last seen you on that topic last summer So jumping right in We did adopt our first climate action plan in 2012 that plan contains 12 Milestones that are tracked through 13 indicator metrics each of those Indicator metrics have a target or goal associated with them and we achieve those goals through Implementation of 254 actions that are called out in the plan Currently the climate action program is a point seven five FTE. That's me As well as anywhere from two to nine interns at any one time But we work quite collaboratively across departments and in the community Working through the department head every other month meeting on major projects and decision-making With our external Community climate action task force that's made up of all kinds of sectors of our community These folks are really grateful for Providing their time and their expertise You can see on the right-hand side all of the things that we accomplished over 2017 and I'm looking forward to Continuing to identify productive ways to work together Also, our employee sustainability team has members from most departments and you can see on the right-hand side The types of projects that were completed over last year annually We do do a couple things each year number one we We prioritize projects for that are funded through the carbon fund these are carbon reducing projects and we also go through the capital improvement program projects and Note those that implement the climate action plan which then becomes a sheet on the CIP and Lastly we really work with a number of key departmental staff and divisions on Implementing the climate action plan So real quickly I wanted to give you an at a glance snapshot of what we've achieved What's on track and what's not on track so going from left to right? We have achieved three of our milestone indicator targets this year up from two from last year Where achieved is indicated by a solid green circle? in terms of Indicator milestones. I'm sorry indicator targets that are on track. We assume at this point in time They should be at 67% progress or greater. They're indicated by an orange circle and The number and there are five that are on track to meet The the milestone by 2020 there are five that aren't on track So those are ones that are have achieved less than 67 percent progress It's important to remember that our milestone year our baseline year is 2008 and our Target year is 2020 and it's also important particularly with respect to those that were not on track to make to remember that Our baseline year values were really high to start with because of the environmental ethic of our community So that's one thing to bear in mind with those that aren't on track of those 254 actions over 30% have been completed already and another 32% of the actions are either ongoing or in progress So jumping right into the 12 milestones the first one is to reduce energy use some municipal buildings So we're talking about all buildings here except for water transport and street lights We haven't updated this metric since 2015 because the data are not available yet from PG&E And as you can see we have achieved some progress not enough to say that we're on track But I think it's important to keep in mind that we have three major energy efficiency projects that are either in progress Or coming up that should get us to our milestone I think at this point it's also important to remember that in 2015 we spent two point five million dollars on electricity and natural gas and Just this year PG&E raised rates about eight and a half percent and so energy costs going forward are going to be something that We really need to pay attention to We did transition our Electricity accounts to Monterey Bay community power just last month in March and so now our electricity emissions going forward will be zero Okay, then second one is to expand energy efficiency programs to 30 percent of homes and businesses and as you can see here This is one that we've really struggled with what we're tracking here Are the number of homes and businesses that go through the green building program or? And I should say those that take advantage of central coast energy services low income weatherization And other programs that they have Here it's really difficult. I think for the city to influence uptake of these programs and You know, this is something that I think with Monterey Bay community power some of the profits that they have could be directed into supplementing or incentivizing these kinds of programs And so I really am encouraged by that and hope that that will help us to make better progress on this particular milestone Oh, and right now we have about 1300 homes and businesses that have taken advantage Of those our next milestone pertains to solar and we have three indicator Metrics associated with this first of all 5000 residents are our target by 2020 to have solar PV installations Last year was a record year for us 446 systems installed was by far the most in any year and we are more than halfway towards our goal I do expect that with the federal tax credit incentive Starting to step down next year We will have a rapid increase or a big rush of more solar PV So I think that we will achieve that goal goal in terms of businesses trying to get to 500 businesses Right now we are at 72 again last year was the highest year on record in terms of number of systems Installed in the year at 10 systems This is another one where we really are challenged with how can we influence businesses to uptake solar PV? and in the past we had done a technical assistance project with three Property owners who ultimately ended up all three doing solar PV So if that's something that we can find funding for in the future I think that's something we'd like to do and then again some of those incentives that Monterey Bay community power might have as Well as the federal tax credit starting to decline I think will also motivate more installations on the business end and then last we call for supplying 33% of our municipal building load With renewables so here we define renewables is electricity from methane right now that's about 20 meets about 23 percent of our load and Electricity from solar that currently meets five point three percent of our load and when I'm talking load I'm talking both electricity and natural gas Made into common units and again here We're excluding water transport and streetlights and you can see that we're doing really well here last year the water department installed the Bay Street reservoir which got us to about 28 percent total of our load that's being met by renewables and The solar projects that we have in the hopper that we're hoping to complete this year will get us to our target of 33 percent two years early so Very encouraging on that We do have a number of other projects that are possibilities in the future and again looking to Monterey Bay community power for some potential energy storage combinations with solar PV That they might incentivize and we're actively in conversations with them By the way on all of these incentives that we would like to see One of the milestones that we actually achieved this past year was partnering with UCSE on 25 Sustainability and alternative energy projects We are considering establishing a stretch target. We haven't done so yet since we achieved that and the types of projects that we've worked on Really are a broad range We have the grid alternatives workforce training that's coming up We've done green business certifications. We have stormwater improvements and rainwater harvest at Bayview school. We've done tree planting. So a number of projects there In terms of the rail trail how we measure measure progress on supporting bike and pet use and establishment of the rail is by the amount of Funding both fully funded and partial funding and as you can see on the little chart on the left-hand side We're slowly creeping up to a hundred percent of the rail trail being funded currently It's at 92 percent of funding or partial funding Next we don't have a target metrics associated with water conservation But as you can see on the right-hand side overall system water use continues To be more than 20 percent lower than it was in 2013 even though wattage water shortage regulations and restrictions were rescinded in 2015 and the chart on the left-hand side shows you the per capita water use and you can See Santa Cruz residents are the green line on the bottom and we are consistently using much less than the state and Central Coast averages on water conservation in terms of waste diversion and organic waste we currently have a 67% diversion rate a slight dip from the year before But still the overall trend is very good Our next step on this where we'll see a major bump or decrease in the disposal rate Will come when we get the food waste diversion into full operation And there is a pilot program going on right now for commercial foods scrap collection Next is to increase bike ridership. We previously had a target of 10 percent that was reached in 2016 We established a 12 percent stretch target and as you can see we are making good progress to that goal Again, we did have a slight dip from 2015 to 2016 which are the last data years that are available But overall the trend is still very good and for reference. We are by far over both the county the state and California in terms of mode split for bike ridership We continue also to be the second highest bike commute mode split in California And we're really eager to see how the new bike share Affects this mode split in the future and I know that you know all about that Next our ninth milestone is to switch 20 percent of low-carbon fuels Of cars to low-carbon fuels Those include both electric vehicles and hybrids and you can see we're at about 8.5 percent right now almost halfway to our goal and just a few things on that You know, we are second in the country in terms of new vehicle purchases that are electric vehicles So that just speaks to you know, what our residents are thinking and their environmental ethic We also are doing quite a bit of work to improve the EV user experience On the consent agenda is the EV fee for charge Which is really meant to help turn over parking spaces something that we heard from our EV owner survey We also are doing outreach to commercial property owners To encourage them and and educate them about programs that are available to fund EV charging on their properties And we do have some plans for EV expansion in the future At this point, I also want to mention that on May 3rd We're having an electric drive event down here in downtown Santa Cruz Where we'll have e-bikes and electric vehicles on hand for folks to drive off the civic auditorium lot and so encourage folks to to check that out and Hopefully things like that can help us to also improve our progress towards this goal Next is to retain 200 certified green businesses and we're at 163 up from 155 last year We have just hired Internally Kristen Perez to be our new green business Coordinator and that position has been empty for some time So I'm I'm I think that with Kristen's hire We're really going to reignite the pace at which we are certifying green businesses, but on track here making great progress Next is to maintain an increase urban tree canopy by 10 percent If you might recall from last year when I presented to you, we've never been able to report on this metric But we have two studies that are going on right now. We're working with UCSC On a tree estimate canopy estimation project, which the preliminary findings put tree canopy at 32 percent of our overall city acreage It is too early, however To ascertain the percent difference between our baseline year and last year And we have already done one of our 12 tree plantings through our cal fire grant That will add to the canopy and our GIS based inventory will start later in the year Finally our last milestone is to reduce single occupancy vehicle commutes by 10 percent We are making good progress towards that We are currently at 56.5 percent our target's 55.6 percent So we are almost there 6.3 percent will represent 10 percent of Sov and just to let you know look in the lower left hand column of this table You can see our sov rate compared with the county the state and national and you can see that We outperformed by far These other scales of jurisdictions and some of the other mode splits are there for your reference as well And last in terms of our community greenhouse gas emissions goals We do show that we've achieved our 2020 emissions target and that we are on track for 2050 One last thing I want to mention in terms of climate mitigation is that you know, we are also Working on our climate suit as you all are aware So that is something else that is a major thing that we're working on In terms I just want to give you a little bit on climate adaptation because it has been sometimes since we last was in front of you Last year we did complete our first sea level rise vulnerability assessment as well as a social vulnerability to climate change analysis Those were integrated into the draft climate adaptation plan update that was released in 2017 We will integrate regulatory comments public feedback from our outreach events As well as new data that are available And we'll package that in a final update that we're hoping will come to you this summer for adoption with the local hazard mitigation plan We've also initiated updating the local coastal program with sea level rise policies We've started some ad hoc monitoring at our river mouth And we are about halfway through a nine month climate adaptation outreach campaign, which I'll share a little bit About that with you in just a moment And we are also leading cross jurisdictional coordination With the central coast climate collaborative and our local Monterey bay climate action compact In terms of our outreach, we have over 50 events scheduled doing things like tabling at the library and farmers markets Spanish language story time tabling at the library Coastal restoration workdays community forums those kinds of things Why i'm showing this is I want to point out that you know, we did the vulnerability assessment and we're really actively trying to Engage vulnerable populations. And so over 20 of our events are targeted to or in vulnerable populations where they live work and play Some of the things that we're asking when we're out in the public is You know, what do you love or what's your favorite thing about Santa Cruz? And why are we asking this question? These are some sample responses All of these things are impacted by climate change, right? And so that's a way to get us all on the same page and have a common value around this topic Secondly, we worked with a nonviolent communication specialist who said you really need to give space for people's feelings about This kind of thing climate hazards and you can see we do have some kind of sad Responses here, but what we're really trying to do is provide information and tools for residents that are going to Transition from kind of these sad negative feelings to being motivated or activated And last we also really wanted to start having a conversation about possible solutions So we talk about some areas in Santa Cruz where there are known vulnerabilities like west cliff We talk about the trade-offs of different possible solutions and we ask what do you think? What would you prefer? This is just a one subset sample from one group So please don't construe this as all of the responses, but these are the kind of answers that we're that we're getting Um, you know folks are expressing their preferences after hearing trade-offs in terms of what next what's next? We have a lot coming up that we need to do or pursuing grant funding Uh to do many of these projects and um, As I said, we'll be bringing the update uh to you in 2018 and this is the first annual reporting to city council on the progress So with that, I thank you very much and if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them All right. Thank you. Are there any council member questions council member brown Well, first of all, I want to say thank you for uh putting together this report and for all of the work that you've been doing I had the um pleasure of attending one of the sessions that when you were piloting this process and um I can say that the word clouds really do reflect the feeling in the room when we went around and talked about our both our uh happy You know stories about santa cruz and then our concerns about um what may be coming our way So thank you for this. Um, I have uh, well, I have a lot of questions But the question that I really want to make sure I get a chance to ask is related to um Energy storage so um, as you know, I'm on the I'm the city's representative to the Monterey Bay community power um jpa and we talk a lot about this and So I've come to understand that solar uh energy while Obviously desirable and renewable energy sources are obviously desirable. We have a storage Capacity issue and so I'm just wondering and I know that we're going to be working on that with the jpa The joint powers authority, but I I do wonder if there are things that you Have been thinking about that the city can do To facilitate increased storage capacity Both either either in terms of incentivizing and or the city itself taking on those kinds of projects Yes, absolutely. Thanks for the question in terms of incentivizing You know, that's something that we actively will be uh, I think supporting with Monterey Bay Community power in terms of our consideration of energy storage. We've had some ad hoc conversations about it But we have not done um of any full-scale analyses yet I'm hoping that would be part of maybe a strategic energy planning or master energy planning effort Which I would like to see coupled with the climate action plan You know, we our climate action plan is done in 2020 So we will need to uh revisit that and I'm hoping that we can uh do some master energy planning at that time Where we would address energy storage Welcome any other questions on the side on the side council member krug On the uh, reduced single occupancy vehicle commutes wire Will we seem to be a lot lower in um carpooling? Is there any attributable noticeable reason obvious? You know, I don't know the answer to that question. I'm not sure if uh, Perhaps someone from public works who works directly in that area. I don't know if claire. I think claire might be here Claire, do you have anything to say on that on carpooling? Putting you on the spot Clearly slayer transportation planner Um, generally our carpooling has remained slightly lower than what you see in the us california and um It's about on par with santa coast county as a whole I think part of the reason that we see that lower is because we're significantly higher in biking walking and working from home So people in our area have just chosen other modes rather than sov not necessarily carpooling Thank you. And uh, probably, you know, we talk a lot and there's a lot to chew over here I really appreciate these um stats and stuff and I'll have other questions But if I can put you on the spot, how do you stay, you know, given this global, you know, the whole thing climate Disruption is what um, some of the people who are studying it are calling it and they're not calling it climate change anymore How do you stay motivated and activated? That's a great question You know This field is always changing There's new technology innovation new policy and that really excites me and I find it um Intellectually challenging as well um As well as the fact that I mean, I'm committed to environmental This environmental profession that I've been doing for, you know, quite a long time Working in this field and I'm also really motivated by our community We have so many community activists and advocates for this kind of work That, you know, we this needs to be a collective effort. This isn't a one person one program kind of thing And so that really encourages me as well and keeps keeps me positive and motivated. Thanks. You're welcome Councilmember matthews No questions just so impressed with this report and it is truly a testimony to community plus staff and To have picked a point in time set ambitious goals and making really amazing progress I have no doubt that that the rate of progress is going to include Increase on all these measures. So just thank you and congratulations. Thank you and congratulations to the public Okay, um, see another questions that concludes the presentation Obviously, some of these projects will appear back in the capital improvement program We'll review that in the budget But I just want to thank you for this update on all the work that's taking place today You're welcome. Thank you We'll transition to the next item on the agenda Which is the presiders announcements and just as a transition from this presentation Just want to announce it's almost time for earth day saturday april 21st The whole family can celebrate the environment at san lorenzo park from 11 a.m. To 4 p.m. So mark your calendars This year our city tables include climate action parks and rec santa cruz public libraries waste reduction Including our new community master recyclers and two special street smarts ambassadors Mavericks the warriors max mascot and chipper the chipmunk of the california highway patrol Both will be helping youth to learn best traffic safety behaviors. So mark your calendars and we hope to see you there Also, I have a few other announced. Oh council member matthews if I could just insert here Proceeding earth day will be the march for science year two starting at city hall at tan and All comers be there So I have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television Channel 25 and streaming on the city's website city of santa cruz.com Mike oliphant is our technician in the uh in the back this week and I would like to thank him for his work today He stays here throughout the day and in the evening. I really appreciate him being there Broadcasting this all city council members can be emailed at city council at city of santa cruz.com If you would like to communicate with us about an agenda item, we'd like to receive your email by monday at 5 p.m Before our council meeting this provides us with an opportunity to review your email include it with the rest of our agenda packet Please bear in mind that all items of correspondence with the city and the city council constitute public records and are generally subject to Disclosure upon request by any member of the public Accordingly, if you have sensitive or private information that you do not wish to be made public You should not include that information in your correspondence Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left It's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens When you're inside or outside of the chambers Are there any statements of disqualification from council members? Anyone Seeing none At clerk are there any additions or deletions to the agenda Um in regards to oral communications oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on any items That are not on our agenda Oral communications will generally occur at the conclusion of our afternoon business at or about 5 30 p.m But may occur before that time At this time, I'd like to call on the city attorney for the city attorney's report Thank you, mayor trazos members of the city council. Um this afternoon's closed session commenced at 2 30 p.m in the courtyard conference room Uh, the items discussed in closed sessions this afternoon are one item of pending litigation And that is the case pending in the united states district court for the northern district of california entitled oralt Versus the city of santa cruz We had two items of real property negotiations. The first uh pertains to the real property at 1101 fair avenue Uh, that is uh, the the owners Engle street partners llc and Negotiating parties included That entity and new seasons market llc This is uh pertaining to uh real property being sought for completion of the segment of the Rail trail adjacent to the west side new leaf community markets Second item is a real property owned by the city of santa cruz in the city of scott's valley commonly known as the sky park property Um, the city received a report from its real property negotiator bonnie libscomb Negotiating parties for that property are the city and palisades builders ink Lastly we had one item of potential litigation that was added To the council as a subsequent need item prior to the closed session There there was no reportable action on any of those listed items Thank you. Tony. I'd like to now call on the city manager for his report. Uh, thank you mayor and council I just have a brief update on a few items For the slides to go up. Oh here we go. Thank you Um So first I just wanted to kind of give you an update on some of the actions that council director related to the recently adopted emergency ordinance related to rent increases and Just cause and uh council director that we um provide some information to landlords and uh also to residents In the community and so there's been some progress made on that The website's been updated. We've mailed about over a thousand postcards And then we're also following up with about 4 000 additional emails to to landlords in addition, uh, we've now put in place and provided information on our website related to the provisions of the ordinance that relate to the ability of landlords to Buy for rent increases above the two percent If there is a reason to to do that And so that's in place now and the information is also available on the web page. So just to let you know about that The other thing that just to point out that the the city's adopted short term vacation rental ordinance Is now before the coastal commission And it'll be heard actually this wednesday april 11th Before the commission and as you know, the commission staff is recommending a different Recommendation than what the council adopted which is essentially to exclude the provisions that you adopted from the coastal zone and so we will Be there at the commission meeting our planning director to speak to it and then we've had some letters of Communications to the coastal commission soon formed them of our concerns related to that the concern again is that there would be no regulation of Short term vacation rentals in the coastal zone, which is where a lot of our short term vacation rentals exist currently So some major concerns are relative to what the commission might do in that regard. So as soon as we hear what happens Well, we'll let you know about that just a Preview of some upcoming agenda items that I thought I would share with you and the members of the public At that your next meeting on april 24th We plan to do an update to you on the homeless shelter the phase 2 update Which is the next phase after the current reverse street campground And so we'll be doing that concurrently with the county on the 24th We also will have the HUD 2018 2019 action plan the public hearing that we do every year will be here in front of you as well We did receive some good news there that we've received additional funding that we weren't expecting. So there's some a bit of good news there also some more of Recognitions or presentations. There'll be a couple the outstanding volunteer recognition and the Hans Christian Anderson contest awards will be presented at that meeting Moving on to may 1st. There's a study session in the evening on the downtown Well, we'll be presenting all the various major initiatives and projects related to the downtown such as the Some of the housing projects transportation projects the downtown library advisory committee recommendations the farmers market related projects So those all will be before you on may 1st for a study session and then finally On may 8th we'll be presenting an update on the two-year work plan as well before you And that's all I have happy to answer any questions you may have Are there any council member questions? Council member matthews. It's not a question, but I don't know where else to say this Um, the city has developed an informational page on measure s Which is now embedded on the city web page Finances section, but we'll as I understand it soon move to the home page just giving Impartial analysis of what what is included the specifics f aqs and so forth. Yeah, that's correct. Uh, as you know the city council adopted to A directive that we place a ballot measure a sales tax increase of on at the on the june ballot And we are developing a public education Web page, which is what the council member matthews is referring to and we will also will be providing public education related to The the tax and and what it would fund and what would be essentially the the consequences or what the city would have to do In the absence of the additional revenue, which is you know, pretty significant Reductions that we're facing obviously like many other communities. Um, yes Council member crud going back to the homeless camp at 12 20 river street I'm wondering is there is is there a date certain that that might close and is there something? After that that we're pursuing So, uh, we'll be doing an update a more specific update on april 24th But the the timeline for the existing camp is uh through the end of june That's what it's funded for and so what we're working on now with the county is on what and that's phase phase one So we're working on phase two. It's which is what happens after june and so we're looking at A variety of options and that's what we'll be bringing before you uh Both the options relative to sites as well as the funding approach again concurrently with the county Okay, so, you know other questions First up on our agenda is the consent agenda. These are items numbers two through 18 on our agenda All items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by council member for further discussion Is there any council member that wishes to pull an agenda item? Council member chase. Yeah, so I know that uh item four senate bill 8 27 And this might be a comment might be pulling it. So I'll just leave it up to um The mayor um was significantly changed yesterday and I haven't actually had a chance to look at all of those Changes, so I'm wondering if we want to postpone that on our agenda Would you like to pull that for discussion? I can pull it? Okay, we'll pull item number four. Um council member crone You had a comment about the the minutes And um number two right and Also wanted to vote. Um I have to pull it. I'm going to vote no on seven and eight harvard drive summary vacation in frederick street I think the city should not be giving away property and this seems to be a long-standing Habit of ours and I'd like to see it stop, but I'm going to vote no on on that Okay, when it comes up before the vote just if you could just mention that so we can record that Okay, and I also want to Pull um item uh Well 12 or 12 and 16 Okay, so we'll pull um Items four 12 and 16 council member brown Yeah, I just want to make a comment Actually, um number three Okay, would you like to do that now? Sure. Well, so on item three and I guess relatedly. Um, so this is the the item um Declaring Santa Cruz appreciation of the onylc odyssey upon its hundred thousand student celebration and um Direction to rename the cow beach Annex parking lot as jack o'neill way. I just I think it's worth just highlighting the role that the onylc odyssey and the O'Neill family has played in our community and I hope that this Is a harbinger of things to come to really try to Use that that site as a place where we can Support and highlight the um surfing community and Santa Cruz In the next item comment. Yeah. Um, so on item six. Um, I actually it's really more of a question. I'm uh not In opposed to implementing a fee for electric vehicle charging and I understand the rationale But and I know you mentioned this tiffani when during your uh climate action Uh program report, but if you could just give us a little bit more Information about what why? Um, it's actually not going to be a deterrent to um ev Do you want to pull this or do you just no, I just want to I did it's just a really quick question Okay, good. Yeah, I don't want to pull. I'm not opposed to it Just curious as I noted in the staff report for this This was one of several items that came up in our ev owner survey this past year to Kind of get over the obstacle of or one way that we could get over the obstacle of folks staying parked in these spaces longer than they are really allowed to This will motivate a turnover in those spaces by imposing a penalty after four hours. That's pretty substantial I do want to note that we really did take an incremental approach here and when we evaluated all the different ranges that were out there for fee structure We really took the low end trying to make this be a very incremental step And I did present this at the Monterey Bay Electric Vehicle Alliance last month and Folks there were supportive as well for the reason I mentioned Of course, this will also allow us to recoup Nearly $60,000 on electricity costs and maintenance that we spend and as I mentioned with our utility rates increasing That's only going to increase also. So kind of a dual purpose here You're welcome. So chris you had a comment on two that you want to just yeah, I just want to ask um there on two point one five um It said the council through a motion We directed that a letter of support for ab 3037 be agendized at the next city council meeting I'm wondering why that didn't happen or what why that's missing I do you want to give it? Yeah, I think you responded To all of us you wrote something to all of us on that Right. I'm just sorry. I just lost my track bill is in progress and there's going to be coming back in the next agenda meeting She was in conk communication with a third party to get an update on that. Okay. Thank you, but it will come back There's there's amendments being offered and so just to have more clarification on what exactly the bill will be like So that was your question on the minutes. That's okay So items the items that we pulled are 4 12 and 16 So if there's any member of the public that would like to speak to an item other than 4 12 and 16 now is the time Is there any member of the public that would like to speak to an item other than 4 12 and 16 adam? We'll come up You don't need to go ahead and mayor and council members. My name is adam stackley I'm the operations coordinator of ony lc odyssey and I just wanted to say thank you to the council and Um For considering honoring jack ony ony's legacy and as we approach our milestone 100,000 students. So again Really looking forward to celebrating with the community of supporters who have been with us for the last 22 years So thank you again I think xana Is any member of the public want to speak to an item other than 4 12 and 16? Okay, ma'am you'll step right up Hi, Beverly Day show electric auto association central coast chapter I wanted to personally invite all of you to come to earth day to our electric vehicle Uh display you said earth day, but I didn't hear electric vehicles Well, let me just say this is a the consent item and we have public comment at 5 30 if you want to speak to that item then So if there's an item that sir, I invite you to come appreciate that Thank you. Thank you. Okay. See no additional comment We'll bring it back to the council and I'd just like to say you know first of all Thanks adam for being here and kim and the rest of the surf club that are here speaking There's a memorial project on there as well and you were talking about historical references That exactly what we like to see in that area So I appreciate their work to make this possible as well as the upcoming event on june 24th at cal's to recognize the 100,000 student For the only you'll see how to see Did you have a comment also? I just wanted to briefly comment on item number five Which is the resolution urging the adoption of federal gun regulation and insensible activity around Supporting the safety of our children in our community and hopefully we'll be able to see some movement And this is one act that us as a local government can do to express our support And so I appreciate the council's support for that So member matthews, I'll go ahead and move the consent agenda except for items 4 12 and 16 It's noting just noting also there's a whole lot of water business Yeah, right for later tonight Motion by council member matthews second by council member or vice mayor walkins And I know council member crone is logging a no vote for number seven and eight on that That's correct and for the record. I don't think for the record. I don't think the city should be giving away property Okay, so that's a no votes for seven and eight by um council member brown and council member crone Okay, so all items on the consent other than items 4 12 and 16 motion by council member matthews second by Vice mayor walkins all those in favor. Please say aye. Hi Those opposed That that motion passes with council member crone council member brown voting no on seven and eight, but all others pass unanimously Hey, great. Thank you. So the next we'll take these in order and we'll move on to item number four Which is senate bill 827 resolution of opposition and council member chase You mentioned the issue of the amendment that came forward late last night and just was sent early this morning Go ahead. Yeah, I was just gonna say I had come planning on supporting it until I realized that there were some significant amendments to it And so I haven't had a chance to read through those So I'm just I'm not sure if other council members have been able to do that But if it remains on the agenda today, I'm gonna vote no on it only because I haven't read the updates Any other questions or comments? I agree. I haven't read it either And I I think I still might oppose the bill even with the amendments that are in there because I think There are a lot of bills passed last year for instance sp35 which I think really does address a lot of the issues of cities not fulfilling their rena numbers And so even with the amendments on this, um, I still think it it perhaps Um, it has too much influence Over local control of decisions of important land use decisions, but It's true with bills. They're ever-evolving and changing and we specifically know this one has new amendments, so it might be worth Waiting until we see how it practically affects Santa Cruz Any other Questions, I would just prefer to postpone action on this I'll make a motion to postpone action on this. Um, until like at least we have time to read the amendments I'll second Okay, um, we We can go. Um, I guess what I'd like to do is If that's what you're questioning at this time to yeah for a public comment on that, um, I guess, um We'll we'll do that. Are there any member of the public that would like to speak to the side of on agenda 8 27 Specifically, there's a motion on there to postpone. You can come up and step and speak to the agenda item as well as the motion on the floor Thank you very much, uh, honorable members of the council and members of the public I appreciate you postponing the vote because it's it's a very dynamic Uh piece of legislation. So thanks for for doing that and pulling it What I what I would like to see or recommend is is um, perhaps, um, positively influencing it through the Um association of governments and the council of governments Um, to see whether, uh, Mr. Weiner and the other authors might be willing to kind of meet Meet halfway I think it's really important. I think I'm old enough to remember that You know, my parents got sick of the The, uh, growth in the bay area and And so they and a lot of their friends said well, we're going to get ourselves elected To city councils and boards of supervisors and we're putting an end to all this building because we hate the air pollution and the traffic and Houses popping up everywhere You know, and I think they did a pretty good job, but Now we're paying for the consequences, which is displacement of, uh People that don't have lots and lots of money to afford the houses and we're also seeing some A perversity in where investor money is going Because for some reason, um, no apartments are being built And so I think the dialogue around sp8 27 is really important Whether You know, I know it's an issue of local control and Uh, a lot has come out You know really strongly against it But um, maybe give it a chance as an opportunity to engage and see if the Council of governments is willing to, you know, really talk it out And give an exception maybe for for cities And counties that that are working actively. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please Next speaker Just step right up I'm Evan Soroky. I'm speaking in favor of sp8 27 I, uh I'm urging you to support it since it will allow the production of a lot more housing And I'm just going to read a few excerpts from some letters of support from various people On the matter of affordable housing san francisco planning department has noted that sp8 27 May reduce interest in local programs, but may result in more affordable housing overall Because sp8 27 much broader effect will stamp substantially increase the total number of inclusionary units A manner of environment three major environmental advocacy groups have rode in support Stating the shortage of affordable housing is decades in the making failure to maximize transit opportunities and allow adequate housing Your transportation centers has caused displacement longer commutes more vmt Increased greenhouse gas and loss of open space And on the topic of equity race, uh, a group of fair housing experts has wrote a letter of support Stating that tactics used to make housing inexhaustible or Privately expensive for people of color and low-income families Include detached single-family housing front yard and building setbacks restrictive florida area ratios parker requirements height and density requirements These policies prevent developers and landowners from Developing affordable housing near areas of employment and public transit Walking out many low-income people and people of color from high growth areas And I want to quickly note last year. You're uh, the same council is concerned about sp35, which is now law Uh, it has been used to create projects that Have at least 50 percent affordable housing in all cases including kerbetino where there's a project being proposed That could create more inclusionary affordable units than all units that exist in sankers county all jurisdictions today So I urge you to support the bill. Thank you next speaker, please Good afternoon mayor council members. Um, I just want to say, uh, I agree with your assessment of the situation In terms of recommending to table the issue until um, The kind of bill comes more comes more into place of what it's actually going to be I understand the way the the legislation was originally originally written that the scale of the up zoning was definitely A lot, um, especially for a small community like Santa Cruz and I think we need to recognize that I think the amendments that were offered. Um, yesterday go a long ways towards Kind of mitigating the impact the bill would have on smaller communities like Santa Cruz And looking at the transit maps that we have that would be affected by this this bill Because of the limited bus service that we have in the headways that we're currently offering the the, uh The area around the bus routes that we have that would have been up zoned or have the mandatory up zoned No longer applies and there actually isn't any area that I can see in the city of Santa Cruz that has an average 15-minute headways for bus routes year round. So But in general, um, I also want to speak to the to the notion of collective action problems You know, we as as a state really in the whole of california We haven't built enough housing to keep pace with population and job growth over the past 40 years And it's been substantial and I'm not going to echo all the different effects that we've had that housing or that How to ensure it has I just want to say that in the spirit of collective action problems, whether it's climate change or other especially sustainability related, um Ways in which you're trying to address these issues collective action problems are defined by In uh problems where it's within the interest of individuals to continue doing what they're doing But collectively not within our entire interest. And so I the way that we address collective action problems again in the You know drawing an analogy from climate change is we work together and governments work together and oftentimes we have to build contracts that Bind each other and this means oftentimes working with a higher level of government whether it be The feds or in this case the state and so I know it's you can finish the sentence if you want Well, I would just to encourage you that the principle behind the bill is actually pretty sound and solid in that local control as a balance Um for meeting our essentially our housing shortage. Thank you. Thank you next speaker. Please Here in council kc byer from the santa cruz area chamber. Uh first off We uh looked at this bill last year when it first got introduced in january and I called the senator and I said As a as a business organization, we will not take a position on until it actually goes through a first hearing I was surprised to see you I wanted to put an opposition letter out when it hadn't even been addressed by the by the By the committee itself. There's two committees of origin that are here to this bill The senator is approaching both the chairmen's of the of those particular Policy committees and trying to work out Relationships that are changing the bill it's dramatically changed when since it's written and as robert had earlier said I've reviewed the bill and I don't think substantially There's much in the bill that's going to impact the city of santa cruz Or perhaps around the bus station, but no other Ontario would meet the requirements of that So I would highly recommend that you postpone this action until you've actually seen the bill come through a hearing And then you'd have more input of how other legislators are looking at the bill. Thank you Thank you next speaker Council members gillian greenside. I wasn't going to speak to this but since you pulled it I just thought it worth mentioning that a seara club california has come out in opposition to senate bill 827 and they're taking a lot of heat for that because traditionally they would be in support of Housing and so-called smart growth the reasons for taking that position a strong position against their senate bill Is because they feel that it will the effect Of this rezoning will be to displace lower income residents and also to turn people or bodies against public transit Developments and they thought that was serious enough to take this position So while the bill obviously will change with amendments I still think that Of strong position against this bill Is worthy of examination and although the comment being that We don't have any headway. So it won't affect us I'll remind you that we may have a rail with trail a rail line Transversing our county and that may have implications under this bill as well Thank you for your thoughtfulness on this and being willing to Take a stand even if you're delaying it to see what the further developments are. Thanks. All right. Thanks jillion Are any other member of the public that would like to speak to the side item number four regarding senate bill 827 Okay, see none. We'll bring it back to the council for further discussion On this side council member brown Well, I appreciate the comments of uh, the People who have come to talk with us today. I also appreciate the attempt by senator weiner to amend it in ways that address some key concerns definitely of mine and clearly of many members of the public in the state of california But at the at the same time i'm still prepared to vote in favor of the Recommendation to oppose this measure because what I don't see in the amendments and I did have time to look at them is any real guarantee that We'll get any affordable housing out of it. And so the idea that Increased density is automatically going to bring us affordable housing whether or not in santa cruz or any other community Is just not has not played out in practice. And so we already have State mandates to increase density. We can't we don't have any control over that I don't want to see us supporting another measure to do so without the Affordability guarantees that we would I would need to see it to be supportive if that's a substitute motion. I would second it I'm just saying i'm gonna I don't think it's i'm not making a substitute motion I'm just not prepared to vote in favor of delaying the vote That's a member and ryan. Oh, I didn't have a question. Okay. Well, this is comment period now After you hear the public. So do you have anything to add? No, I don't at this time Mr. Watkins, I just I mean I seconded the motion to postpone at this point This will come back to us, right? Yeah, if we at our next meeting or and also with A transcript of the changes that have taken place since Okay, can I have make one more comment about this? I don't see that Voting to oppose this bill in its current form takes away our ability to Have a voice in what kinds of amendments happen. I mean, we won't be precluded from doing that Should we oppose it? So that's another argument that just I I have doesn't resonate with me I guess I'll just speak to it since you both are I think in favor of postponing I think this is an opportunity to weigh in on it We brought it forward because I think our city's done a tremendous job in terms of planning through its own public processes To go to the public and and plan out where we have growth We've seen that we as a city have approved many projects that just can't get funded right now. In fact, some of the height Limits that we have under a 27 have been approved in our downtown and I feel that in my opinion We are committed to building housing and I'm just not committed at this point to losing the local control over a housing process So as a city we've done a lot of good work and I'd like to make sure that work continues moving forward If the council thinks of postponing this I think of it in terms of well, let's have those comments that we want to provide To senator weiner because tomorrow our deadline to send comments for this bill is tomorrow at noon I was in contact with the league of cities and so I think we'll lose that opportunity We um, we looked at um, this was senate bill 35. I don't contrary to what was said I think that there was a letter that was sent to The senator on that providing recommendations. It wasn't an outright Objection it was just that we looked to provide guidance. We didn't there want to lose the local control as well So rather than postponing I'd rather make an affirmative step and just make our comments So that we do have some sort of communication to see how we'd like this to move forward You know, did you have a comment? I do. Thank you. Tina Scholl assistant city manager I just want to say that the amendments did come out yesterday And as a staff perspective, we haven't had the time to even analyze It's how it's effect on Santa Cruz You've heard some perspectives from from some speakers and there were changes to the height limits To changing the word from transit to bus and also to changing The definition of a transit stop to reference headways and times of days So we do have to reference maps and do this analysis of what it's actually going to look like for Santa Cruz and for us And so we we would like that opportunity to take a look at it and analyze what it's actually going to do to us Because right now we actually can't give you that advice around What our professional opinion is about his impacts on Santa Cruz? So I just wanted to say that we are engaged in that we won't be able to do that by tomorrow And who neither just due to preparing for the coastal commission hearing as well So that's where we are in a staff perspective from a staff perspective Do you have any opinion about the local control issue about the planning process? You know, I would prefer us to look at the bill and come back and have an engaged discussion And not have myself represent my views and have the planning director here on that as well Because I think that looking understanding the bill and its entirety is really important So I'd like to defer on that. Thank you When just speaking with the league of city is that who we work with in terms of our legislators I mean they've talked about this taken even with the amendments in oppositional positions So I guess if we are thinking about postponing it, I'd like to you know At least have some sort of guidance as far as what we're Because we're not going to be able to send any communication to the bill's authors on what our position is But I mean mine is that we have done quite a bit of good work in in terms of planning And we've made a lot of approvals and so a city of our size I mean in terms of looking at control would be losing that local control would be a big deal Yes I'm generally sympathetic. I I do feel it's premature. I'd like to have Understand the amendments is clearly work in progress. So I I feel quite comfortable postponing it. I think Anyone who has individual input is quite clear quite Free to submit those comments as a council member and I think you know considering it more more fully fleshed out and time to consider the impact on our community makes a lot of sense Okay, I would ask then if we are going to postpone this to the next one that We also work with whoever our legislative affairs folks are at the state so that we're One having direct contact so that when we are looking at this bill and its impacts at the city We're are looking at more of a longer term plan not just like this one off with Senator Wiener's bill because I've seen with 35 last year That we did see this idea that you know a lot of communities aren't doing their part in terms of meeting the housing needs And I think our city has been And I feel like we have had difficulties and challenges in funding some of those projects But we have gone through a lot of public process to make those approvals and I think we're kind of we're not recognizing that in at this point If I could just continue my comment briefly I mentioned it may have been in the last meeting We've gotten communications from the league in their weekly newsletters and communications about the whole package of housing related bills that have either been Gone into effect or being contemplated and I think I suggested we maybe have some sort of a study session maybe involving League personnel and our staff whatever because it's just seem like there's there's a lot of change going on right now We're anticipated so that would just be a suggestion when there's a Available time for us to to take kind of a holistic look at the bills Yeah, I was I was ready to support opposing the bill Then the amendments came in and I saw that they didn't necessarily apply to santa Cruz nearly as much But this is a bill that is addressing housing on a statewide level And I think to oppose it right now We're we're going to give it a very narrow focus as just a city and as we know Housing is a statewide original issue And so that's why I'm going to go ahead and vote to postpone because I don't necessarily Want to oppose a bill that might turn into something that maybe areas That aren't Fulfilling their fair share or need a little extra push whereas we aren't necessarily going to be affected By the bill because we are doing our fair share. So I'd like to take A little bit of time and postpone to see if this bill can can end up being productive like that It sounds as though that's the consensus To postpone this for the next one and if we do that then I'd like it to come back at like a You said the next one could just come back again with the staff analysis We would have to go back and talk to our staff I mean, it's possible we can at least give you an update by our next meeting which is April 24th One of the speakers also referenced that this bill going through at least its first committee hearing might be somewhat transformative So we would want to check in as you suggested Mr. Mayor with our legislative advocates in Sacramento the league of california cities and talk more about process Who is it most productive to come back? So we can at least give you an update next meeting if it doesn't come back in full And also if we package it with the host of housing bills that could take a little more time as well So if we do want that holistic viewpoint to look at not just a a point in time on housing legislation But the package and to see how this could influence our community and community statewide We would need a bit more time for that so for something more holistic that might be more in the may time frame But again, we'd want to check this against Our our advocates in sacrament about timing because we want to make sure that you can take action while things are still malleable And you can still make an impression and an impact Listen for tina. Um Speaking of fair share, uh, what is the percentage of our affordable housing that we've we've built or haven't built? That's a great question. I don't have that on top of my head If you're referencing arena numbers, we actually do quite well. There's many categories There there's market moderate low and very low and we do very well in most the categories We are behind in the very low category, but many communities are but in the others We're actually ahead of many other communities. I can certainly get you those exact numbers tomorrow One of the things that actually I think it goes to your point the councilmember mathies that I think doing a little bit of an update last time you saw those numbers other arena numbers But that's a little deceptive because that showed the numbers relative to a particular Time period that that covers the arena the arena numbers And so you really have to look at it more Longer time period to really get a good assessment of what's actually been produced To get a better picture of that. So actually after the last meeting staff talked about how we really need to update that data To present to you and to provide you that gives you a clearer picture of what's actually being produced because it's actually You know better and more than what that chart indicated, but we'll we'll get that to you councilmember norion I'd like to call the question Is there a motion to call the question second by anyone? second by council our council councilmember chase so You said to postpone it to the next meeting Yeah, that's the most I just I just want to call the question We need to take a vote if we all agree to postpone it to the next meeting No, no, no, we need to take a vote to stop discussion And then we can vote on the motion the second right, okay All those in favor of calling the question, right? I I'll call I'll vote to call the question. So we've got two So passes. So The motion on the floor is to postpone this item Can I get the votes on that? I didn't Councilmember brown opposed councilmember norion for vice mayor walkins for councilmember crone Against councilmember matthews for councilmember chase for Myself for to call the question Okay, so if this is If the question is having this for the next meeting, I will support that That's precisely why I voted no on calling the question because I wanted to see if the maker of the motion would be willing to include a provision to bring it back at our next meeting So I I'm in support of this coming back when we have as As tina stated enough information to actually weigh in on this. So an analysis by staff And which would include at least the amendments and perhaps The information from the committee. I don't know what the committee's schedule is So if it's coming back and we don't have complete information I'm probably still not be prepared to vote on it at that point So I'd like it to come back to us when we have staff analysis that allows us to actually weigh in substantively on the bill That's where matthews I agree. So let's have a clear statement of the motion Oh, uh, I will make a motion to postpone item for senate bill opposition of senate bill 8 27 To return to council when we have a staff analysis that will allow us to substantively vote on Them bill you write that. Sure. Do you mean to write that down? Okay, and that's um, uh, supported by council member uh, or vice mayor walkins seconded It's seconded So no further discussion. I'm not going to support that. I'd like a little bit more clarity on when when it's coming back So I won't be supporting that Okay, um So should we take so take a vote to it all those in favor of the motion on the floor, please say aye. Hi That's uh, council member matthews council member chase council member walkins and council member doroyan those opposed Please say no. No, okay Noes council more crone council member brown and myself Okay, so moving on to item number 12 Number 12 is the encroachment permit for the uh, broadband telecommunications network Thank you, mr. Mayor. Um, I would just like some clarity on these these contracts. They come to us They seem more like ad hoc and like what What rights do we have to either accept or reject these? Kinds of uh of contracts with astound wave broadband telecommunications network Pd attorney yeah I talked to council member crone about this yesterday. Unfortunately. I haven't had a chance to Uh research it in the meantime, so I'm not prepared to To address the city's regulatory authority over this. Um, it's a standard encroachment permit that we It's correct. It's correct that it's typically done on a fairly routine basis, but I don't know if anyone here from the public works department is prepared to talk about it Deputy director christ neider Good afternoon, um Typically we do it through an encroachment permit In this case broadband's a new provider in this area. They've proposed a for For areas of santa cruz to implement their fiber project We can't regulate and Manage the right-of-way, but we can't deny their permit This is just the first permit which Is based on their conceptual design. They will then need to submit plans To show specifically what they're going to be doing and they will we will have to issue A variety of street opening permits concrete permits, etc for them to do the work But we'll be reviewing traffic control plans, so they'll be covering the cost of staff time to review the plans and for them to implement That was my question like why can't we deny them doing this and have Why why this company over another company? It's it seems any company that has the authority to Implement communications Projects in the city has the authority to do this. We can't we can't restrict anyone. It's like cruz aio broadband Anybody else who wants to you know Fiber projects in the city of santa cruz or any other community for that fact Now we do have the dig ones policy And we notify a contract when we get this kind of plan that we notify all the other providers saying here's an opportunity to Jump in the trench with this company And sometimes there are people who do that. It's not very often though Any other questions? Hmm picking that I can go to the public while you're No, I just it was a similar discrepancy if our city attorney said he wasn't he has not at least he told me I Was not aware of anything that we have to accept this or do you I didn't know if I phrased it the right way Maybe I phrased it the wrong way Yeah, I I the question came to my attention yesterday afternoon or yesterday When I spoke with council member crone I just haven't I did some very preliminary research and to haven't had a chance to follow up with it But I mean that the assistant director of public works His understanding of the situation is is consistent with the way I've understood that but I just can't give you Any citation to a statute or regulation that's applicable Thanks Okay, I'm going to turn it over to the public. This is item number 12 The encroachment permit for stownway broadband telecommunications network Is there any member of the public that would like to speak to this item? Is she none I'm going to bring it back to the council for action Council member matthews it appears that this is a standard operating procedure that's extended to Utilities in general it is consistent with the dig wants policy, so I'm going to move approval Okay, and I'll second that I had a motion by council member matthews second by myself Any further discussion all those in favor, please say aye Those opposed no Okay, that motion passes with council member brown and council member crone opposing So we're moving on to the next item on the consent which is item number 16, which is the encroachment permit in public right away for santa cruse bike share And I think I'd like just to have it start with a presentation if you would thanks Good afternoon, mayor and council members. I'm claire fleece layer transportation planner Amelia conland transportation coordinator and this afternoon We're presenting to you the second round of encroachment permits for our bike share system So we'll try to go through this quickly because you've seen updates on bike share before But hopefully this will help to head off some of the questions that we've been seeing from public communications And then we welcome any questions that you have during the presentation or after So a brief overview of the system to set the stage for what it is and what we're looking for an approval of today Our system santa cruse bike share will be 250 bicycles all class one electric There will be 27 total stations within the city of santa cruse seven of which you are seeing today This is a no cost to the city contract. All of the expenses are borne by our contractor jump And it's part of our go santa cruse initiative, which as tiffany wise west mentioned earlier We've been making great strides in reducing our single occupant vehicle travel And this is one of the other tools in our toolbox that we're implementing towards that As for status the first batch of encroachment permits were approved by you at a previous meeting This is the second batch today. You are looking at seven station locations and of note We received a lot of communications in public about the woodrow west cliff location That is not included today. The zoning administrator's decision on that was appealed So that's on a separate track through the normal appeals process. It'll next be seen at the planning commission in early may So again woodrow west cliff not included today Overall the program goals of bike share are to implement another transportation option for both residents and visitors For people who live and work and visit the area The locations that you're looking at today Most of them are in the coastal zone because they had to go through an additional step of going to the zoning administrator For coastal permits and design permits. Um, and so one of the things we see here is they also increased coastal access via sustainable transportation options Our general plan and our climate action plan also include numerous policy goals that support this Most notably our climate action plan includes a specific goal to increase our bike commute mode split to 12 by 2020 And this is one of the tools that we see helping us to get there Of the bikes as I mentioned there were lots of questions on the bikes that we had come up There are 250 of them. They are eight speed bikes They are pedal assist electric bikes. There's no throttle to them. So Some of the older and different types of electric bikes you see have a throttle These you have to actually pedal and as you pedal they give you a little boost They go up to 20 miles an hour is one of the questions that we got a lot This is consistent with a class one type of electric assist bike And class one bikes are able to be ridden in bike lanes and on our multi-use paths Additionally, they have front and rear lights a bell for you to alert people that you're coming A built-in lock and this style of uh, or the vendor that we're working with jump bikes Requires that the bikes be locked to a physical asset a bike rack That was one of the other questions and I think you've received numerous emails also about piles of abandoned bikes Notably the images from china Our bike share bikes cannot do that. They have to be locked to an actual bike rack to have some some order to the system Also, they're made to be theft and vandal resistant They're in 40 cities in the u.s So far made to be left outside in the environment and many of the issues that were brought up have been addressed with having Custom components that cannot be swapped out any other bicycle None of the parts can be removed and they're they're really made for rough and tumble The color is this orange red color. I actually parked the bike outside in the courtyard if you want to take a look at it It's part of the overall jump brand And so it's consistent between our system and other systems that they're going to be rolling out in They most recently rolled out a system in san francisco and one of the cool things about Working with this vendor is that you can use your membership in Santa Cruz at any of the other jump systems So if you happen to be in san francisco for for business or for pleasure or in sacramento Which is the next system that's system that's rolling out. You can use the same membership across platforms The stations another question that we got asked a lot. The stations are Essentially just glorified bike racks. These gray images in the bottom left. You see Are the racks that we will have that we put in place. They're low profile They're very similar to the bike corrals that we have in other locations throughout the city They're um dark gray in color Each station will also have signage associated with it. The signs are six feet tall by 11 and a half inches wide They're dark gray in color non illuminated. No solar component They include a system map safety information pricing information and information on how to sign up and use the system Through the outreach process. I'll just go through this very quickly. We had Two public meetings. We did tabling at bike to work day in open streets We had an online interactive map for people to suggest station locations when they couldn't participate There were numerous articles and press releases in the sentinel good times patch and the city press releases Also prior to citing station locations. We sent outreach letters to neighboring properties Asking anyone if they had any feedback or would like to meet with us either in person or on the phone or via email Of those that contacted us we went out and met with them in person that resulted in numerous Tweaks to the proposed station locations that we had And then from that once we had a more solid set of these station locations. We did our formal public noticing to all Owners and renters and tenants within 300 feet of those locations Which then went through our transportation public works commission and our downtown commission as applicable And those in the coastal commission at the coastal zone went to the zoning administrator as well. So At each of these times there was opportunity for a public input and public comment And they were reviewed and the second batch then has been through that whole process as well So of the overall station locations that we have to orient into the whole system blue dots are all of the 27 locations that we will have in the city those circled in red are what are being considered today Sure. Yeah, so I'll go through each station one by one The first station is here at lighthouse Field this was situated so as to avoid blocking views of the coast We'll be taking some of the landscaped ice plant area right behind the parking lot And we're looking to fit 15 bikes in this location And here's a site plan for what the station location would look like Our next location is on beach street and we were able to work with the boardwalk on this station location They were open to removing two parking spaces adjacent to a loading zone On beach street close to cliff There's the site plan for that location Our next location this location may be having some tweaks We're going to potentially need to bring this back to you with some revisions but at this point we're looking at using some of the Dead space in the parking lot adjacent to the wharf roundabout We may need to consider an alternate here that's closer to the monterey bay sanctuary center entrance To avoid conflicts with the future rail trail How's this is that better? Okay So here's a site plan for that location And next up we have swanton boulevard and west cliff At this location, we were able to utilize some red curb area so as to avoid parking removal This is the site of a former bus stop and Here is the site plan for that location This location at sea bright beach, you know This is meant to serve people visiting sea bright beach as well as the museum of natural history here And we were able to work with the museum to get their support for removing two parking spaces on pilkington adjacent to the museum We did not want to get any closer to the beach because we know that parking is a big issue On those residential streets Immediately adjacent to the beach and here is the site plan for this location Our next location, you know, this is meant in part to serve some of the hotels down on san lorenzo boulevard and ocean street This is adjacent to the mike fox skate park and the basketball courts And we're able to use a little bit of this paved area in between the tree wells for a station Again, there's no view shed impacts of the coast here Um, and here are is the site plan for this location Next up, so this is being brought to you Because we need to modify One of the performance spaces Each of the performance spaces were included in the ordinance when the performance space Conversation was happening And so this is being brought to you in conjunction with a change to the ordinance to remove one of the performance spaces on pacific avenue The station is adjacent to poor and we have been able to work with The property owners at poor to get their support as well as the managers of verizon Both of those are open to this station location Here is the site plan for this location I forgot to update the recommendation So the recommendation is that the city council approve encroachment permits today And also make a change to the Performance space ordinance to remove one performance base on pacific avenue in front of poor And again, the the woodrow west cliff location is not on the list today and may come back to you at a future date Okay, thank you. Welcome any questions at this point should I um, if you have a question you want to ask that now Councilmember mathews it's pretty trivial. So the recommendation would be To approve these understanding that there may be minor modifications I mean You mentioned the roundabout one. Yeah, if we're unable to resolve that then you would see it again Would you want that in the language? Or it would just have to come back to us. It would just come back. Okay Want to move a crow quick question? I just want to clarify. Um, because I think you said this in an email. Um Jump will be the exclusive Provider for the city. We we cannot enter into any other contract with other bicycle providers like this For five years The contract with with jump indicates that they will be the exclusive vendor for the city It wouldn't preclude another vendor from trying to set up a business But not pursuant to an agreement with the city. They'd have to go through their own Uh, that's a separate process I'll turn it over to the public Is there any member of the public that would like to speak to this item number 16 on the consent agenda? Sir, you can begin. Yes Can begin I'm sorry. You can begin. Oh, can I Hold for a second. I just have a question about process Um, you know, why don't you why don't you step aside? Maybe you speak to the clerk and I can have someone else start Okay, next speaker, please the process Next speaker And speaking to the mic, please can I go ahead and jump in? Hi. Hi. Thank you everyone for uh hearing us I'm Megan Dawson. I'd like to thank you all for Listening to our concerns. We met with you individually. We've appeared before this entire body and before your advisory bodies I'm told you've received hundreds of letters from residents urging thoughtful city planning for a bike share program We can be proud of I know a lot of people are here today who are interested in the in the bike share program But we want to see it succeed Uh, I'm not quite sure why mr. Schneider was waving us away and telling us there's nothing to see here today Because anybody who lives in this city who's interested in bike share and how it's going to affect affect the entire city You know, we'll we'll want to be heard Also, there was mention of a formal outreach letter By staff and there was no one on our street who received any kind of formal outreach letter. We all got a little postcard That was it Okay, I want to make three quick points first Please consider the visual impact to the beauty of our natural coastline before approving an installation of nearly half the inventory That's 120 bikes out of the 250 total at seven sites that are in the coastal zone The vendor plans to double that number at these sites in the future phases in that regard Please also consider a redesignation of the sites away from the coastal zones to link with established Transportation corridors the rail trail parking lots and to coordinate with other supporting amenities Second, please consider the safety implications of stalking the coast For immediate launch into the coastal path with electric bikes that will top out at 200 Excuse me 20 miles per hour. You get a lot of torque with an e-bike. That's what makes them fun to ride e-bike riders will need time and space to acclimate to the use and speed of the vehicles before entering a very congested coastal path Please do not launch this program on a wing and a prayer with fingers crossed that all will go well We want wise council members suggested a slower pilot program low out Roll out you ma'am you need to conclude chief suggested added traffic controls Thank you very much. Thank you next speaker. Mr. Crawford if you want Thank you members of the council. I'm phil crawford. I live at west cliffs in wood roll Which is not on your agenda here today. I've lived there for 35 years my wife I practice law and paying taxes there and my wife also practices law in the city And in the county of Santa Cruz I have passed this out to you just to show that Social bicycles submitted an rfp with the blue bikes. There were no Orange bikes there when they submitted it. I think attorneys call that bait and switch Anyway, that's what you're going to get is a bunch of red orange garish bikes on the coastal view shed And that's what we're objecting to but I want to talk about safety. I teach bicycle safety at San Jose city college And you're going to put Four stations along the west drift cliff corridor. That's not a transportation corridor. I'm a bike rider I do the Santa Cruz triathlon. I enter a number of bike events. I have $10,000 worth of bikes. I'm pro bike I'm not against all your stations here Just the ones that are on the west cliff the roundabout and the other three stations right on west cliff That are going to put 60 bikes into that walkway With pet owners people pushing baby carriages skateboarders rollerbladers Bicycles pedestrians runners. They're all just going to get along wonderfully with 60 Electrified bicycles running up and down there and no helmets And they're twice as like to have dramatic brain injury and twice as likely to die if they're in an accident Now if they're considered and they get off of that pathway and get on the road There is no bike lane there and if two garbage trucks Or two fire trucks come together. There's not enough room. Somebody's going to get squished And so there's some very serious safety issues here I don't believe that you have qualified for any of the exemptions on their sequa And I'd actually just hold off take a look at this at least on the coast. Thank you next speaker, please Mr. Searle Hi, my name is Reed Searle The previous speaker did not mention people like me who is so bloody old that they can't get out of the way of a bicycle But we can't and sometimes we can't also hear the bell if it rings Um, if you approve this project, please ensure you have a mammoth liability policy indemnity because You know, I walk west cliff and I have for 30 years and not a cyclist anymore But the amount of pedestrian and motorcycles i mean motorbikes all other kinds of Users of west coast drive has exploded. I mean and I am sure we all have spent time there But go there one weekend in decent weather and see what it's like and see if you would feel safe walking on west cliff With a bunch of people who don't know much about electric bikes Using them. I mean I just to me it just doesn't make any sense I think the proper thing to do would be to refer this back to the Or whatever authorities there are to tie it into the west cliff management plan or the west cliff drive plan Both of which are in progress you know I cannot emphasize that a lot of us who are Getting a little bit older No longer feel at all comfortable walking on west cliff drive on weekends and pretty soon it's going to be that way seven days a week Thank you Next speaker please afternoon My name is Hemant Vedya. I live on the west side I would say I drive walk about 10 12 miles a week on west cliff drive. So I'm very familiar with the traffic situation there and certainly share The concerns expressed by the previous two speakers In addition to my personal concern Through next door. I reached out about 2200 residents to share my concerns with them To get some feedback and in fact Number of them said they have sent you emails In response to my post But just to give you a sense 42 percent of the respondents in fact did say that Having these motorized motorized e-bikes onto west cliff drive is a dangerous proposition There's another 29 percent We're talking about just overall concern about west cliff car traffic. How crowded it's getting Maybe we should block it to cars. Maybe we should make it one way So though not directly related to bikes I think it does get to the underlying concern people have a good 7 out of 10 In the west side community that adding these 20 mile bikes to the current traffic mix Is a dangerous proposition So my request to you is to consider some options One could be to block west cliff drive from e-bikes Pull the bike stations onto Delaware. Delaware is a nice Wide street It has bike lanes Almost all the way through on both sides of the road in both directions It has sidewalks on both sides almost all the way through and you have a tremendous east to west Wide road conduit all the way to the marine center. So why not pull the bikes away from the course put them on Delaware for example something worth looking at But just to wrap up my request is you need to wrap up please Please postpone the permit till some good traffic control measures are put into place. Thank you, sir next speaker Hello, mayor terrasis and council members. My name is yonica strauss and the executive director of bike santa cruz county In 2015 the city of santa cruz received a gold level recognition for being a bicycle friendly community by the league of american bicyclists We are so proud of this recognition And it really acknowledges all the hard work that city council members and staff have done over the years to improve bicycle safety in our city With that recognition the league provided recommendations for advancing to the platinum bike friendly level A bike share program was one of their recommendations and we are thrilled that the city has entered into a contract with one of the most Highly acclaimed bike share companies social bicycles bike share offers a new transportation option for both residents and visitors with the goal of reducing motor vehicle traffic And increasing trips by bike which improves community health mobility and livability while reducing co2 emissions And traffic we are excited that the entire fleet will be electric assist Which will incentivize users to travel further distances by bike and new cyclists to attempt our santa cruz hills Which can be tough at times Even if you have your own bike bike share is a great option If you're worried about bike theft if you need to go one way Or if you need extra bikes for out-of-town visitors Bike share stations on the coast are an important part of the overall network since west cliff is a major destination For both residents and visitors We support the bright orange color and this is mainly because of the safety that that allows the cyclist Making cyclists more visible on the road improves the safety since most collisions occur when drivers simply do not see cyclists Many bike friendly communities around the u.s. Have already established some similar programs as this and with much success Please approve the encouragement permits. All right. Thank you next speaker. Please Mayor terraces councilmember julian greensight I'm a strong supporter of encouraging more people to get out of the cars and to ride bicycles And i'm a strong supporter in concept of this program and therefore I feel What's the word? I'm not pleased to have to be here to sort of be the bad guy to point out what I think you should have seen or staff seen before this was unrolled and that is that the To encourage people to ride bikes you need to have people looking at bicycles in a very positive way Now it doesn't apply to those of us who already see it as an inherent good and for bicycle Enthusiasts but for those who are on the other side of the fence the way to get them over is to not irritate them Not set it up for failure the garfield park site, which i'm sorry. I thought that was going to come back for a reloc Once the library patrons see that 50 of their parking is gone. You're going to have people who are really PO'd about bicycles. You're not going to have converts And the and they don't know this is going to happen. The same thing is with these sites on west cliff Once the impact is felt you're going to have people saying negative things about bicycles rather than positive things So i'd encourage you it's a great program in concept But some particular sites have not been chosen with a broader view in mind the library staff were not Enthusiastic about it. They have problems with it. They weren't really consulted Obviously the people who are concerned about the safety on west cliff The fact of putting a sign between the path and the ocean a six foot tall Sign however narrow is against your own ordinances. So i'd encourage you to Either take another look take a pilot program start small But don't just blanket approve all of these sites. Thank you. Thank you next speaker, please Afternoon honorable council members staff and public my name is kirsten liskey I'm the vice president of community programs at ecology action And we are working to help people act now for thriving people and plan it I'd like to echo Definitely concerns for safety and the fact that this is new technology and innovation for our community that we're going to have to Continue to work out I definitely would also like to echo all of the comments from bike santa cruz county about all the accomplishments And how grateful we are for the city leading the way to help make biking and walking a norm Normal way to get around that's much better for the planet and people two things I want to just mention from our perspective is That from an industry perspective for this kind of a program to work It actually can't start small you have to get a lot of people seeing that where people are Is where the bike stations are so there has to be good distribution of the bike stations There have to be ample and available bikes going where people are and where they want to go For it to work out so If it's pilot if it's small it's not going to be People aren't going to choose that as a normative way to get around and it's not going to have visibility for our tourist visitors So I just want to strongly encourage The support of the very thoughtful planning process that went in with industry expertise to put together a program That's actually going to fly if we shrink it too much There's a good chance that won't fly and we won't have a bike share program Which is pretty critical for norming biking as a way to get around town. Thank you so much for all your work Thank you next speaker, please Good afternoon. I'm brett garrett and I just want to strongly support the bike share program Um, I like the bright color. I think it's a safety feature Um, a couple of ideas for west cliff Some people talk in terms of keep the electric bicycles off of west cliff We might want to keep the electric bicycles off of the sidewalk, but um Maybe tame the automobiles a little bit so that the bikes can fit into the street There could be a speed limit of 15 or 20 miles an hour along west cliff It could be limited to local residents so that there's no through Automobile traffic on west cliff. I don't know the best solution, but I I think there's ways to To reduce the automobile traffic or or tame the automobile traffic So that it will be a better place to ride an electric bicycle Thank you very much. Thank you next speaker Is there any other member of the public that would like to speak to this item item number 16? Okay, ma'am. Are you waiting to speak for this oral communication? Okay, you'll be our last speaker. Please go ahead. Aldo Good afternoon. My name is Aldo Joaquino Again, I'd like to emphasize the hazardous conditions that Bicycles that can do 20 miles an hour Present when they're allowed to ride on a sidewalk And west cliff drive is the only West cliff Drive path is the only sidewalk in the city where you can ride a bicycle to put A 20 miles an hour bicycle on that path with the intensity of use that it has at peak times Um, it's just not sensible. It's going to create a tremendous amount of conflicts and animosity This program should be tested out For one thing it's a not a comprehensive program. It doesn't address the whole city It leaves out a third of the city, which is the university campus There are 20 000 people up there that can use bikes like this and this kind of program and the staff has not pursued That to the point of reaching a firm conclusion about how to serve the university It needs to be served if you want to have a really sensible program So I strongly urge you to do a pilot project that involves the all of the areas except the coastal zones After you see what kind of results you have with that then you can come back and See to what extent to expand it. Thank you. Thank you. Nick speaker, please Any other member of the public that would like to speak to item number 16 Thank you Well, I think of bicycling You know like a long west cliff or in an open area. I don't um, this sounds problematic from what people are saying here and um Seems like it needs to be looked at more And I also think wherever we walk or bicycle or get exercise It needs to be in a place Where it's a healthy safe environment and the fact that the city I mean, you know, it's like I wouldn't bicycle or walk where people are smoking constantly but with the broadband Approval of encroachment for everywhere And the 90 cell sites and the agreement with crown castle to put these all over This is like being in a toxic waste area Where we're trying to have fresh air a good environment and a safe place to exercise So this just doesn't sound like the right way to do it. Thank you. Thank you Okay, you're our last speaker ma'am. Please step up My name is Lynn Ricchio and I live on west cliff in Woodrow and would like to ask you to consider a pilot program before launching Such a broad based On slot sort of In that chronicle today, there's an article on more personalized electric vehicles that These are Variety that are scooters, but it also kind of mirrors maybe some of the problems that we're using the same sidewalk Thank you. Yeah, we'll bring them back to council for deliberation Any further questions or comments council member matthews? I have a bunch I'll just start by saying in general, I think this is a really exciting New program for us to commit to Certainly, we live in a visitor serving area and west cliff drive seems to me like a natural place to have this kind of Resource available. I'm pretty Sensitive to the concerns about how crowded west cliff is already on at on many days many types of Many times of year etc So I do want to ask staff a couple of questions One is whether you considered the possibility of Not allowing the motorized bikes on the west cliff drive path Because it seems to me everywhere else. They're going to be used. They're going to be used in street. Is that a correct statement? so I think it's a multipart statement. Um West cliff drive has a multi-use path. I understand that so it's intended to be used by both bikes and pedestrians We have other multi-use paths in town as well And so the type of bike share bike that we have it's a class one electric bicycle And per california vehicle code class one electric bicycles are allowed on multi-use paths So whether it's a bike share bike or your own personal e-bike same standard Um, so no different than status quo right now where there are e-bikes currently using our multi-use paths Does that answer I think yeah Technically, I mean this one is a different order of magnitude than say the levy for example Um So you have answered my question. Um What is the opportunity for? tweaking this program In whatever form it may get approved We go through some period of time and It shows up that there's some specific elements Or and I don't mean a wholesale scrapping, but it needs some tweaking. What are the opportunities there? So one of the lovely things about going with a Dockless smart bike system rather than the dock based system is that it's really really easy To make changes to this program. Um where the stations are dropped in It's essentially a bike rack that's bolted into the ground It takes one to two hours for installation if we find um station wise that a station's not getting used or is getting used a Lot that's something that then we can look at to tweak the program on likewise if we're having specific issues that keep coming up in I don't know what they would be but if specific issues do keep coming up We do have the ability to to modify the program And I I didn't ask this in advance and it's not clear. Are they um the docks in Units of pick a number six whatever Clusters or are they just individual? They're mostly in units of seven. I believe So there may be as I think you implied Cases where seven makes sense 21 doesn't you know So um, what our vendor has told us is that when you get down to seven which is about the size of a single parallel parking space It makes less sense to do the regular rebalancing. It's a lot more maintenance and operations So if you can find locations that it makes sense to have 14 or 14 plus It works out better. Uh, there are locations where uh, we do have seven where they said that that's one that will work Because there's also in proximity to that regular bike parking nearby Okay, and these were not questions with an agenda. They're just questions. Um, and I do want to ask questions about Helmets, obviously there's not a helmet attached to each bike and liability if that There's some Contractual agreement when people sign up. I understand that and then the liability is with the company and not the city So just if you could clarify that So the first point helmets in california For those over 18 you are not compelled to wear a helmet There's also a lot of research that shows that compulsory helmet laws actually decrease bicycle use and bicycle adoption for Social bicycles in order to sign up with a user account You need to say that you are over 18 So you can only be over 18 an adult using social bicycles And therefore helmets are not required although we do encourage them and on all of our materials It does encourage using helmets To your second point about liability It is on social bicycles And there is a liability waiver that you sign when you are you sign when you sign up for an account I think that's it for now Great council member pro and then council member brown Um Real quick the blue versus red. How did that happen? Um color was not something that we included either in our contract or in our rfp requirements What we were looking for was a vendor who could provide the best service with great project management in the track record So when they came in we did not evaluate any of the proposers based on color Um, and actually originally it had been looked at as something that could mini bike show systems are sponsored Um, so it could have been based on a sponsorship and instead Social bicycles is self sponsoring under their jump brand and their color is this red color Okay, so jump is a separate part of social bicycles And so jump is red and but then then they have they do have blue socials bicycles too So it wasn't they do and so some of their um, that is a system that's sponsored by a health care system I believe that one's kaiser. There's another one that's white also sponsored by Another health care system in new Orleans. Um, so depending on who their overall sponsor Would you say the program's more for tourists or for local workforce? Um, both interesting data point there Coming out of their pilot system in san francisco They're finding that about 22 percent of the rides are occurring during the morning commute and about 25 during the evening commute The rest are spread throughout the day. So they're seeing this as a real commute option Another cool data point is that with the e-bikes They're seeing that rides are about three times as long as non-electric bikes And the e-bikes are being used about four times as frequently as non-electric bikes Not and pursuing the ucsc angle to oh, yeah So we've been in active discussions with transportation and parking services at ucsc We intentionally wanted to make sure that the program rolled out in the city first to benefit local residents rather than all the bikes ending up on campus Um, so ucsc is looking for an expansion in the future onto campus And it's something that we've been in discussions about and they've been in discussions with jump as well So that would be a future phase and I saw the pad installation up there at uh high and bay and how many bikes are going to be there Uh 14 I'm gonna say 14. Yep. And um, I don't know if we can prohibit these bikes from west cliff From the the bike path or no We would I believe have to prohibit all electric bicycles From west cliff. I don't think we could prohibit just a certain class That's my math. You said a follow-up. Yeah follow-up related or motorized because I'm I do remember the whole discussion about segues Oh We'd have to research that yeah, yeah And my last question to just speak could you somehow address the multiple questions about the 20 miles an hour on on west cliff drive? That seems to be of great concern to people Yeah, I would just say that just because these bikes have a maximum speed of 20 miles an hour does not mean that they'll always be traveling At 20 miles an hour they increase in speed in conjunction with how hard you're pedaling So I think for most folks who are easily pedaling down west cliff drive. There'll be nowhere near 20 miles an hour You would have to be you know pedaling very very very hard to get to that 20 mile per hour speed Um, and so we're not expecting that to be something that happens all that often Councilman Brown and councilmember chase So Just following up on councilmember Crohn's question about uh the use intended use by tourists versus Locals, uh, local residents I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the decision to place so many of the Bicycles along west cliff and in the coastal zone as opposed to on Delaware or or locations where Bike commuters might be more inclined to ride Yeah, so one of the things that There's a couple drivers to this one was the community process We went through we asked people in town where they wanted to see bike share So that was the primary driver that then we went out and ground truthed what that looked like Another driver in station sighting was where our best bike facilities. So where if we're going to have Um new cyclists on the road and people taking short trips around town Where are some of the facilities that we've invested in that make cycling safest and west cliff drive? With a completely separated multi-use path is one of the gems of facilities that we have in town And so really linking bikes to great bike facilities was one of the drivers there to follow up on that I'm not seeing any locations close to the bike path towards wilder ranch and not as many as I'd like to see along the Rail trail line because it seems that those will be likely to be More actively used by These bikes such bicyclists Yeah, so out towards wilder ranch is right on the edge of city limits and because the program boundary ends at city limits We wanted to encourage people to stay within As to the rail trail one of the things that we looked at there is the location at Swift and McPherson more or less right in front of Humblesea So adjacent to the rail trail there at bay in california So adjacent to segment seven there and at the wharf roundabout So there are three locations there that directly tie into segment seven of the rail trail And then in front of the boardwalk Which is segment eight on the cycle track and then right near the museum of natural history, which is right near segment Eight still no nine it started nine there. So we're looking at that and then also looking at as we Move to construction on segments eight and nine identifying spaces in that design process for where a future expansion could occur And to member chase I'm interested in the process for I'm kind of following up on member Matthews questions about how can this sort of change as we go forward so Who's what's the process for if the project is going really well and they want to add additional Bicycles so say we're at 14 and they're saying we really want to go to 21 or we want to go even more than that What would the process look like? I mean, I I think that that's Something that council could recommend that if an expansion for a station Was something that we were looking at that it would go to the transportation commission for approval at the transportation commission The transportation commission has asked to see regular updates on usage for each station And we would use that data to decide, you know, is this a viable station? Is this something that we should move? Is this something where we should look at adding more bikes? So we are planning on bringing that information to them regularly and then basing station decisions on that Thank you Council member Naroy and the council member brown So how crucial is it to have bike stations on west cliff to make this successful because I am concerned about the amount of traffic already on west cliff between people who walk Right-of-buy kids with scooters. I mean it there's some days where I'm out there walking and it's like on your left On your right and it it's you know, kind of chaotic so I'm just trying to understand the value of Increasing that type of traffic on west cliff Especially with tools that allow someone to go 20 miles an hour potentially I think for the system It's incredibly valuable to have stations located immediately adjacent to some of our best facilities I think even if you don't have stations located on west cliff You are still going to have people riding bike share bikes on west cliff drive because it's such a great facility So even if you located them a couple blocks away from that people would still be using that as their facility of choice Yeah, I I agree with that but to have them ride on west cliff. I kind of wonder You know like part of this is to get people out of their cars I don't see you know like the purpose of So you can take a leisurely stroll on a bike along west cliff. I don't think it's necessarily one of the goals You know, you know, I as a person from out of town. I park at lighthouse field. I maybe take a bike and come back I would rather encourage somebody to walk Let's say and not increase necessarily the traffic along west cliff drive and an already just, you know, heavily used area So that's why I was asking those questions. Um, if the goal Is to just provide leisurely bike rides. I get why this would be here, but um, You know, I don't I'm not sure I agree that it's with the other goal of actually getting people out of their cars And using them for real transportation. Yeah, I think I'll I'll hit it. I mean, you're welcome to I mean, I'd love to hear a different perspective I think further to that one of the things that we find is when you look at a survey of bicyclists about 60 Percent qualify themselves as interested but concerned that they would ride more if there were facilities that were separated from traffic That's the the number one concern that we here brought up And so, uh, what we find is that cyclists will go out of their way to use facilities like this My personal example my housemate. We live in Prospect Heights She works on the far west side at ccof and she will ride intentionally out of her way to ride down the river walk path To go over the trestle to connect to west cliff drive to then go up in order to avoid having to ride on the roadway in mixed traffic So looking at that as her commute corridor, which is a longer distance But is on facilities that she feels safe riding on Is that the type of rider that we think of for bike share I'll add that we also see west cliff as a major destination within our city And for somebody who wants to go on a walk on west cliff being able to access the station from soquel or from bradway Or from delaware and use a bike share bike to get to west cliff Have a station there to drop it off and then be able to access that facility. We see that as a benefit as well Councilman browning then vice mayor walkins Let's have a really quick question. Uh, so you mentioned that the woodrow and west cliff site is not Coming before us today pending an appeal to the zoning administrator. Um, and I I'm just wondering, um, because I I think we may see more of those kinds of appeals So I I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit more about the process How we will deal with that should we receive appeals on previously approved locations before you answer that You know in terms of that would be a longer informational item Do you in terms of are you thinking in terms is that going to weigh into your vote here? Okay Go right ahead. Yeah, so at the point that you're at today, you're granting the final Permission so the encroachment permit the previous batch that you granted those are done and could go in Tomorrow if we had the facilities in town right now The appeals process there were multiple points for appeals to occur They could have occurred from the transportation and public works commission's recommendation Um, and we did receive four appeals on that they went through that appeal process And none of those or those appeals were all for denied by the transportation public works commission and that was their recommendation Um, the zoning administrator reviewed seven of the locations which were in the coastal zone Which had to be done because uh coastal appealable coastal zone process They had to get a city coastal permit and design permit They had um 10 days to appeal the zoning administrator's decision there one of those locations was appealed At this point, there's no other appeals process that can be exercised So I'm going to turn it to vice mayor walk-ins I'm prepared to move the IMS recommended, but I'll just add a quick comment, which is um The questions that I had had been asked by our our council But I think one of the things that goes to your point um councilmember chase is how we look at when there's a Sort of a threshold for increasing the number of bikes We can also look at to your point councilmember matthews The similar types of concerns that may come up within an area as well in terms of modifications and changes because Essentially, absolutely. This is a big step and we want to be in action But we want to be also responsive if things arise and we can be you know Responsive to our community members or neighbors as well as other types of safety concerns But I do feel this is exciting and I think um, we have to sometimes take the leap and I'm prepared to move the item as recommended to um move this long I have a request to the maker of the motion and um, I appreciated the suggestion of using the transportation and public work commission as a place where we could review concerns specifically around any If we're enhancing the contract in any way, I think that that would be important But I think it's also an important space To talk about some of the concerns that have come up here So I don't know if the maker of the motion is um open to adding I don't know exactly what the language would be if you have a recommendation of what the best way to state That would be so that we do have a process in place Around some of the concerns that have been brought up Would regular reviews and updates at transportation and public works commission That sounds great. And that's I mean, I appreciate you doing that. I think that's important Maybe a second. So if you say to restate the motion Is to approve the recommendations with regular reviews at the transportation and public works commission. Is that Regarding both concerns our potential growth. Yes, I appreciate that. Thank you Councilmember noyan may I make a suggestion that we actually put a time on that that maybe we get an update three months after the program's been launched I accept that as a friendly amendment Did you have any success I was just gonna say we're gonna get monthly reports Both accept that as a friendly amendment that it come back three months after the the opening Any other discussion councilmember matthews? Yes, and I would just ask that whatever reports are going to transportation public works come to us as well FYI because obviously We'll want to know yeah councilmember crown Would you take as a friendly amendment to? send the west cliff drive bike stations back to the transportation and public works and Look at other other places like possibly Delaware Where they're close to the coast but not on the coast I think that that process has already taken place But again, we've built in a process that if there are concerns or if there are potential Things that come about that we will have a review that we can then at that point make a decision So I don't think that's necessarily at the track that I would pursue at this point I would I would make that as a motion to then to the main To the main motion or an amendment rather to the main motion that um the swanton boulevard And um Lighthouse go back to the um the public works transportation commission I'll second that Okay, so are you adding you're requesting that that be within the main motion just a substantive amendment An amendment to the main motion and that the other alternatives be looked at first before um Is there discussion going with those two stations councilmember matthews? I'm going to vote against that because to my mind These different stations will serve different user groups, but clearly The coastal area is so important to visitors and it really is an enhancement to the visitor experience You can walk from the lighthouse out to natural bridges and back Most of us have done it a whole bunch of times, but it takes a good chunk of time And as a visitor you may want to just have a different time frame a different experience And talking to people who've used e-bikes in other communities as visitors I haven't personally, but it's really it's really made their visitor experience more intimate and Uh personalized and enjoyable. So I I think there is a role for some stations along west cliff Okay, so if there's no further discussion on the amendment, um, I just want to say that I've used these bikes in Minneapolis, Houston, New York And I've asked people where do you know where the bike station is and people just direct you to that to where the bike station is I don't think you have to just like I don't think you have to have a parking space in front of a business downtown And you pull up and yeah, that's the only way you'll go to that business I mean people can find the bike stations and they can find the coast as well Great, so the motion by councilmember crone and second by councilmember brand On this item is up. So all those uh support that please say I I Was that councilmember okay councilmember brown councilmember neroy and councilmember crone those opposed so no No, okay That's vice mayor walk-ins. Um councilmember matthews councilmember chase myself. So we'll go back to the main motion um I'd like to See something where we these types of bikes have a lot of data too in terms of reporting I think it's important to look at like when you look at gps or others Not just looking at the operations, but how where they're riding them and also Coming back. So we look at if these locations aren't working, especially those that are in the coastal area I do agree like having them move back, but Having a place where they're kind of like one aesthetically, you know pleasing not only to the visitors But also the locals as well who are going to be using them and um, I think that You know, we do have another one that'll come up for appeal on woodrow But I mean having a process where we look at these and where the placement is So we're getting locals to use them just as much as a visitor is I think really important to the success of this program Councilmember matthews, but isn't that exactly the kind of report that we'd be expecting at the three months? Yeah So that's intrinsic in the motion. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm just want to just make sure that it's not just about You know anecdotal like we really kind of look to see what's how it's working Councilmember neroyan and was wondering as a friendly amendment. Could we make sure that the Report includes any sort of accident or collision data I'm assuming that would be specifically on west. I mean in general would be good But I specifically want to hear about west cliff drive Okay, great so motion on the floor by council or vice mayor walk in second by council member chase those In favor, please say aye. Aye those opposed. Please say no Okay, that passes unanimously Okay, moving on we have nine of 19 and thank you mary for your patience This is your item and it'll be the last one before we oh actually, you know what? Let me just do this While you're studying that but like to call up for oral communications So we could do that. Um, is there any member that would like to speak to oral communications at this time? On our council agenda Okay, yeah, you are okay. Okay, please line up. We're gonna need to try and move this so oral communications You're up. Um, scarlet you can just step right up and begin Go for it. Please begin Oh big wireless made us think that cell phones are safe a special investigation The disinformation campaign and massive radiation increases behind the 5g rollout i'm going to read this title again of a investigative journal report in the nation magazine of april 23rd How big wireless made us think that cell phones are safe? a special investigation The disinformation campaign and massive radiation increase behind the 5g rollout by mark Hertzgaard and mark dowey on the let's see Last thursday, I think was the fifth on democracy now Amy Goodman interviewed the co-author of the article mark Hertzgaard and continued the discussion online And i'm going to give you copies of that 10 minute interview but basically it shows The deception of the industry How independent scientists like george carlo who wrote the book cell phones invisible hazards in the wireless age in 2001 were discredited maligned how agencies Like the world health organization Had a conflict of interest Even though they did categorize in may of 2011 wireless radiation as a possible carcinogen Others said it should have been in the category of probable carcinogen and lennard tardell said It is a carcinogen. Thank you miss garret So i'm going to give you this. Please do next week. We need to go to the next speaker Hazardous technology you just to prove more broadband next speaker, please I was uh, I was informed by the police that i'm not allowed to juggle anywhere but on pacific street in Santa Cruz now I work real hard There's three places on pacific street. I can juggle There's places along the beach where people go I make pennies compared to most people I work real hard for the money that I do make and uh I need to be able to work along the beach I do not block the paths. I don't uh, I don't uh I don't interfere with anybody. I try to be a good neighbor I'm real good with the children the children are are great. I can teach them how to juggle But uh, this is one if this is an ordinance where I cannot juggle anywhere But on pacific street is one I cannot follow So i'm here to let you know that if i'm approached by the police. I will take a ticket I will fight it in court or fight it in any way that I possibly can I'll try to find ways that I can find it But I wanted to inform this this the city council Of my decision before I started juggling back on the on the beach again So I hope you all have a wonderful day. Sorry to Thank you If you could leave your name and contact information on the tablet someone will contact you from the city Mayor can we also get maybe a report back if that's true that you can't juggle anywhere? Yeah, we'll ask the city attorney or city manager to just to report do an informational, but thank you next speaker, please Hello again. Um, again, my name is kirsten liskey. I'm the vice president of our community programs group at ecology action I and my organization are passionate about uh working for a thriving people in planet And we're very grateful to partner with the city of santa Cruz that shares our values of stewardship equity and innovation We acknowledge the city leaders and staff acting for the climate long before it was called that with Being a leader in the state with water conservation Waste reduction and bike ridership. I've used as you've heard so much about today And now really demonstrating leadership in climate action planning and achieving measurable results as tiffany shared There still remains an urgency to act to shift from fossil fuel powered vehicles to electric vehicles and active Transportation and from polluting power sources to clean renewables as quickly as we can Currently as I mentioned in correspondence to you last week, there are incentives and structures in place that make it economically feasible Or preferable to implement solar on city properties and expand the ev charging network That we should act on as soon as possible There are plans and community support for these in place As we noted in our correspondence, we request that the city prioritize these projects as soon as possible And thank you for your leadership in our community and helping our community and environment thrive Enjoy your evening. Thank you. Nick speaker, please Good evening council So I I wasn't going to speak about a few I was going to add a number of things I wanted to talk to you about one is the annoying tendency of people to drive their bikes on the sidewalks on mission Street as if it wasn't hazarded hazardous enough Another one is the weird guy doing the sign thing for barry swanson the 555 pacific As if the corner of uh, laurel and pacific wasn't hazardous enough. Um, but I wanted to talk a little bit about, um The ratings that ucs he has in, uh, uh, uh, us news and world reports forbs and the economist So us news and world reports is tied for 79th It it's up one from 80th. If you want to look at it a certain way, but uh from from when I was a student there and um And uh, but I was very disturbed when I went and looked at the forbes rating Which is uses a metric which is more about like the value you get for your Your education dollars. We all know tuitions have risen, uh, three times the rate of inflation So, uh, you look at, um, the forbes rating and it's 200th not not 70th not not 79th, uh, no 200th And then if you look at the economist rating, uh, it's abysmal. It's like I can't even remember I can't even remember the number. It's so bad. It's less than 600 Place. It's like ridiculously bad And I think there's a definite one-to-one correspondence between why we have such a terrible rating for our local community color excuse me our local university And uh, how tolerant we are of the the event they have there on april 20th So and that's something that I feel like, um You know, they they try they try real basic things to to to deal with but basically it's a drug of abuse People need to realize that it's wrong what they do up there and if they continue to do it It's it's damaging, uh, the university's reputation. Thank you. Thanks speaker Good afternoon. Uh, my name is ross clark and i'm a Westside resident and also his former climate action Coordinator for the city of santa cruz. Um, I just want to reflect on how incredibly exciting Tiffany's presentation was today. We don't hear that kind of Information level of detail in our success as um in other communities And I'd also like to fully recognize the success we've had as a community in achieving all of the The various milestones that have been set out for us and credit city council City manager staff as well as the public for all being taking a role in implementing the climate action plan Um And I second our intention to continue to um to go full out to implement the plan by 2020 We've seen that we're we've reached 85 of our goal in many of the different Sectors of the plan and I encourage us all to continue to work that direction and um, I bring to you How the council can help Tiffany and our community succeed is continue to encourage bold actions and To use the data that she's generating and use the programs that are out there To implement projects and programs effectively to to current potential programs are incentives for electric vehicle charging provided by the air district as well as some Short time windows for expansion of renewable energy on municipal buildings and I'd encourage you to work with staff to Do everything you can to make sure that those programs proceed as quickly as possible. Thank you. Thanks ross nick speaker. Thank you ross for saying that Friends i'm speaking to you in my capacity as a private citizen here And I want to give you a quick update on the campaign for measure s The revenue measure on the june ballot. We've been really encouraged to get great support I'm going to riff off of what ross just said the great programs the city does being very aspirational in what we want this community to do and What we find when we reach out to our community is they want good public safety. They want great parks open spaces They want great community programs. They want to support their local businesses They want our infrastructure and our facilities to be maintained And those are all the things that are supported by our general fund You all know this but I think a lot of the public doesn't And you all know that we're facing a really profound deficit not just in the next year But moving forward so in spite of the fact that we make hard choices and we we build our tax base We like other california cities are facing some really tough economic situations going forward So that's why we all put unanimously put measure s on the ballot a quarter percent increase in the sales tax What that means and this is a good way to explain it to people If you buy something for a hundred dollars right now you pay nine dollars in sales tax City only gets a penny and a half of that going forward if measure s passes you'll pay one more quarter But that one more quarter that one quarter percent will generate over three million dollars a year annually for our general fund to support all these programs and services our community values And so we have About two months To really get this campaign launched. I'm going to pass out to you our current list of endorsers. It's wonderful It includes it includes business groups labor organizations arts organizations human service organizations Environmental organizations and people representing that whole spectrum So there's a place for measure s in everyone's heart. You can get more information Sign up request a yard sign at yes on ask for santa cruise.com. Thanks Okay, um Is there any member of the public that wants to speak to at oral communications? So you'll be the last speaker blue Go ahead I I didn't know the rules. I'm back Beverly Day show with electric auto association central coast chapter um, I'm so impressed with what tiffani presented and um, I know that you all have So many issues. I'm impressed with all of you with all the issues that you Know about and that you take action on and um, I just want to say that when ross first did the Climate assessment the emissions assessment. He found that Over 50 probably closer to 60 of our emissions actually came from vehicles Sonoma county theirs is 70 because we don't have much industry here So I really want to encourage all of you to come and talk to us and learn about electric vehicles That's why I got into it. I'm not into cars But I got into it because of that statistic that that ross came up with and we are also very much encouraging the city to Get as much solar as quickly as possible because that will make us have People can plug into the grid and have an enormous right now It's 70 reduction In emissions just by switching to 100 solar and when it's plugged into excuse me 100 electric vehicle And when it's plugged into solar, of course, it can be 100 emissions free driving So I really want to encourage the city to do that and by the way, we don't really want necessarily to have The charging cost It's just that we don't have a way of getting people out of the spots people use the spots and they don't leave And even four hours is too much but for people who work here. I I understand they need to have longer time Anyway, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Last speaker Mostly wanted to echo what a lot of other people have already said first of all west cliff I use it a lot on my bike and yes, it's often crowded and what reed sir suggested Of having west lift not beat the two lanes of cars and the very narrow multi-use path And I realize I I've actually signed up as a volunteer for the ride share program So I'm not against the ride the bike share program But I think long term we need to get west lift changed And now having it only one way of traffic and having using that road for All the other stuff would help a lot. I want to um Mention that Echo what ross said and what kirsten said and mentioned that in 2012 when the climate first plan was put up People thought there was 15 years most of the scientists thought we have to solve this problem within 15 years. Well um A few years have gone by but now they're saying a year or two The science data is so much worse. It is so much more serious So simply trying to achieve those original goals Really isn't going to do it. We've got to try a heck of a lot harder. I know you do a lot. Thank you. Thank you Okay, that's the last speaker sir, are you ready to Okay, you can go ahead if you're going to speak to your leader last speaker There's oral communications any item not on the agenda you can speak to I'm asking is this this is about the whole water increase. No, that's tonight at 7 p.m Okay, okay. That's what I was wondering about. Okay, 7 p.m Okay, so we're going to move on then to item number 19. It's the waste reduction program Um and recycling program overview. I want to thank those that are uh here and we're patient Thanks for the first graduating class of my master recyclers. I want to thank you for your patience as we did this Mary thanks also for your patience. It went a little long Yeah Well, good evening. All right now it's evening Merituriasis and council members and members of the public and staff Really happy to have this opportunity to talk to you about just our general waste reduction and recycling programs And also to introduce some of our recent graduates of their first master recycler program So we're going to kind of do it in two parts. I'm going to do the first part Which is the overview just I'm going to try to be really brief about it and then I'm going to turn it over to Leslie O'Malley, who's our waste reduction assistant and she was really the Um the leader of the master recycling program So I wanted to acknowledge all the effort she put into making it happen and um and let her introduce the The program and the the members of the public that are here with us today So Our waste reduction recycling programs. They're many faceted We do lots of different things this first slide just shows some of the variety of both written material and programs that were involved in from our annual refuse and recycling newsletter Trash talk, which is a children's newsletter that we've done and distribute through all of our city schools Big belly trash container signage. That's a new Program kind of with the trash containers that are around town mostly in the downtown area Environmentally acceptable packaging where you've been working with our local businesses on the changes that council adopted in 2017 um So that's that's going on and will be fully implemented by our summer season We do a lot of different stickers posters informational information for our public We are a sponsor for the earth day event that's coming up and We also are involved in the ucse move out program. We're in our fifth year. I believe With our ucse partners in Creating a smooth move out for students that are that are leaving the city of santa cruz I wanted to touch briefly on the beverage container recycling program That was sort of how this presentation kind of was launched This is a program that's offered by cal recycle It's a city county payment program and the city of santa cruz has received funding from this program since 2002 So it's an annual we've received It's ranged between about 11,000 and 16,000 dollars a year So it's helped fund and enhance many of our different Recycling programs We've done some things like the picture shows. We're street banners along ocean just encouraging People taking care of their litter We've been the central coast recycling media coalition was actually born out of this funding It was a way for the three tri county um our area Monterey Bay area To create a group that we could pool our resources to do TV radio type Advertising and promote a consistent message throughout the area and we're able to do those messages in english and spanish In a way that we would never be able to afford to do as an individual city So that's been a program that's been ongoing since 2002 And so with this year's grant cycle We really wanted to focus on the the litter prevention side And so that's kind of going to be the the focus of where we're going with this and one of the main projects Is going to be working with parks and rec to get Additional trash recycling bins in some of our city parks And then we've always used Some of the funding to support school recycling programs So this slide shows some of these programs We do the Santa Cruz recycles poster contest every year and those posters get enlarged to become Sort of moving billboards on the sides of our trash and recycling trucks We're able to partially Pay for bus transportation to get students to come out to the resource recovery facility for tours and to learn more about recycling And then other in school presentations and programs that we're able to do and school assemblies In the last few years, we've kind of combined with our stormwater programs. So we've combined messages since the all the environmental programs they all sort of Compliment each other with the goals of of litter prevention Recycling and protecting our our watershed And I wanted to touch a little bit on our organics programs. That seems to be the a big topic of interest These days So we've had our green cycle program Drop off at the resource recovery facility since 99 And our curbside green cycle program since 2001 And so and our average As you can see here, it's 12,000 tons I just got a report from Craig Pearson that today that for 2017 it was a little bit above this so But that's what the amount of material that's being diverted From the landfill now just with yard waste and Wood waste so some of the construction debris that gets Ground up We've also had a home composting program where we've encouraged residents to Backyard compost either with just a regular bin or a worm bin That's been going on since 2002 And so that we've had at 1600 plus residents take part in that program where they get A $40 rebate when they purchase one. So that's helped with our with our Organics program as well and then this year with our work for AB 1826 we launched a food scrap collection program So and our rollout was with 25 local businesses that Have food scraps. So it's been a combination of grocery and Food service restaurant businesses And so we're currently taking that material to The sustainable alternative feed enterprises or SAFE, which is in Santa Clara And we've been taking 10 to 12 tons of material each week for Since we launched in september And the we're working on Pre-processing equipment that's going to be installed at the resource recovery facility We actually have a site visit on thursday with the SAFE Team that is working on this project So we will hopefully by the end of 2018 have that equipment installed and be able to increase This program to meet the next tier of 1826 in january of 2019 So with that Pre-processing here we'll be able to either continue to work with SAFE Which is using the food scraps for animal feed Or it will be prepared to go to the wastewater treatment facility for anaerobic digestion So these are some of the things that are new in our recycling program. We've done the last few years Part of our recycle right And anti-contamination program We've done a variety of different things to try to reach people that Get their information differently. So we've done a couple of different video things We did this recycle right video series, which are short segments that are available on the website Of all the different material types in our recycling program And then we've did the this PSA With the Santa Cruz warriors, I think before you throw and that's been shown for the last two years on TV and movie theater In the area And these are a couple more things we just launched About a two months ago now this recycle guide on our website. So it's a pretty in-depth It's Way that people can get information about how to dispose of just about anything And our goal was to replace the 20 page pdf that we've had on the site for a long time That was kind of an encyclopedia of of what goes where We did new stickers. We've kind of tried to simplify the recycling information So our new recycle guide and cart stickers are represented by the picture in the middle In the last two years, we've launched this buy by mattress program Which is a extended producer responsibility Bill so we're able to work with this program and accept mattresses free of charge We're in the past. We had to charge our residents that wanted to dispose of a mattress And then the lastly here is the scrap program, which is We've worked with economic development and To have artists we've gone done three rounds where they've gleaned materials from our facility And created art with them and had we've had three gallery showings which have been really Successful really popular. So that's been kind of one of those ideas that we've tried to get going for a long time And finally it finally happened So with that Unless there's some questions, I'm going to turn it over to Leslie O'Malley and the master recycler program I had a quick question on composting. Are you going to continue to send it over to Santa Clara? Or are we going to have a place here to do composting? Well, we don't have a composting facility right now. The current plan is Wastewater treatment So where the food material would go into the anaerobic digesters At that at our wastewater treatment facility There's still the regional task force countywide is still looking at the idea of a regional composting facility, but it's it's been a complicated issue that Unfortunately has gotten more complicated with Airboard and you know different regulations So but it's it's definitely something that they're continuing to look at the county's looking at buying a property Near the Buena Vista landfill and they're still actively looking at that as a potential compost facility Great. Thanks Okay, I am so excited to be here to share this new program with you guys So why a master recycler training program? There's a few of them across the country There's one in burbank flagstaff a bunch going on up in oregon And it really came for me through a lot of feedback from the public tours that we've been giving at demioling For the last 18 months the number of tours that i've given has really increased Eight over the summer over the summer months. They're sold out 20 people every tour two times a day on the day i'm offering them And people are just amazed of what they didn't know about recycling and waste reduction Another big reason is to decrease contamination In the collection carts part of my job is I go through the neighborhoods and I lift Blue lids to see how we're doing on recycling in the city and it's not really meant as a punitive thing It's to see where the confusion is Another reason is to leverage the educational tools that mary just pointed out We've come up with some new simplified stickers that we're getting really good feedback on Our new website our interactive tools and then finally to build community awareness I mentioned the feedback here's a couple quotes people really just stand there my favorite part of the tours is they stand There on the pre-sort line watching the machinery watching the people pull the stuff out and their jaws just drop They can't believe what people are putting in there what they themselves have been putting in there So that's been really Some pictures of some of the things if you were to look through my phone You would be amazed at the number of pictures of garbage that you'd see so you see Plastic wrapped cardboard some car parts and if you'll notice on the right side, that's a green waste cart Landscaping debris only So a little confusion going on there If you guys haven't been on the website yet check out that new interactive tool what goes where and then take the quiz yourself It's only 10 questions test your knowledge And then to build community awareness We are the waste reduction team on resource recovery while recycling is very important We want to bring people's awareness back to the importance of the three hours that we all learned when we were younger starting with reduce And then recycle a very important strategy, but it's become the kind of go-to There's a term that's kind of being coined around the industry is wish cycling wish cycling versus recycling right And that's that branding that we're working on the blue bin is not a magic portal to the magic land of a way People put it in and hope for the best hope There's something that they can be done with it because they they don't like to throw stuff away Um, so our vision or kind of our mission statement for the master recycler program Is community champions that will be trained and related to all things waste and recycling? That'll be an ongoing process their participants Who volunteer within our community to educate empower? Their friends neighbor schools businesses local groups and special events to waste less and recycle, right? Um, our inaugural class was a six week recruitment period. We did next door facebook good times the sentinel Janice viscar did a great press release that picked up a lot of traction So these participants 28 out of over 50 applicants were chosen and that signed up for the program Weekly two-hour sessions at the downtown public library meeting room that was donated by them for us to use and Then the members have committed to 20 hours of volunteer service that Um They'll be back So our the county is how we decided to choose them as we focus primarily on residents that live within the city of Santa Cruz Because recycling can be a little different from the city to the county and we didn't want to perpetuate that confusion We wanted to clarify But we also chose some residents that are either change makers in the broader community or who work or go to school within the city of Santa Cruz The curriculum was an introduction to the processes technologies and economics of the recycling industry We talked a little bit what's going on with china and How it's just not a triangle and a number is is the end to recycling We went kind of in depth But still an overview of recycling in Santa Cruz We talked to about our area partners in waste diversion There was somebody here earlier, but gray bears who isn't within the city, but it's a very important waste diversion partner They have the only um polystyrene densifier on the coast And that's one way that we can melt down and get rid of styrofoam or polystyrene without land filling it We've really prioritized The education and the awareness of wasted food education as mary mentioned Composting and commercial composting and residential curbside collection of food waste is a hot topic But back to that resource reduction In the food waste hierarchy it starts with reduce Feed people and then composting is still down low like recycling So while it's just as important to keep it out of the landfill One of the ways we can do that is to educate about how important food waste reduction is We took the participants deeply through the website So that when they're out in the community and they're asked questions, where do we find these tools? How do we direct people? How do we move them from information to action? And so they're much more familiar now how to use the tools that we're working on within the city And then finally the last week we worked on project plans for volunteer hours So volunteer hours will be predominantly Being coaches at waste station at city events clarifying what goes in the garbage bin and the recycling bin Doing education and outreach back to those schools businesses offices neighborhoods Looking for hard to recycle items. We have a member who was here earlier Who's working on a cork program seems like a small little thing But corks are not recyclable and there is a company recork america That if they could get drop bins in different locations you could bring your corks there One little thing that all adds up same thing with bike tires So there's lots of different programs just because we may not take it through our blue cart Or a service collection. There's lots of ways to keep material out of the landfill I'm a program that we're modeling after palo Alto zero waste program is to become a neighborhood block leader We have several master recyclers who have committed to that They're going to take charge of one or two zero waste party kits And they'll be the leader in the neighborhood to lend that kit out to their neighbors and that will help cut down on Disposables for parties. They'll be available for kind of closer in neighbor education And that kind of thing And that's it. So if you have any questions about that finally before we let you get away I'd love to bring whoever's left up here and we'll get a picture with mayor terrazas And the final thing is this is just a rollout and an introduction This time next year a little bit before that before we launch the next annual class is we'll come back and report From those 28 people those 20 hours the projects they did the return on that investment And I think that's going to be really exciting. So any questions Leslie do you ever envision a day Where we can say if it ain't recyclable Don't produce it and if it ain't recyclable. In fact, you can't sell it here We do that with some things already So we have bands in place with the polystyrene packaging the bag bands I think that our way forward in waste reduction is multifaceted. It's through education its behavior change It's bands. It's landfill bands what we're not willing to even put in our landfill. So It's just a multi It's a multi approach So I think so Do you know do you know any communities around the country that are much better like really strict like super like Much harder than any other community. Are there any examples out there? You mean as far as like recycling or yeah You know, there's less in this country Exactly, but partly because we don't have a unified message of what's recycling even from city to county And so we've all been trained. So what I what I have a lot of faith in is that people have shown They're trainable We worked really hard at teaching everyone to turn something over and look for that triangle and look for the number And if it's got it then they put it in the blue bin I have just as much faith that we can move them into more information That that's not the way we need to update and upgrade our information. So there's um Different legislation in place Forcing manufacturers to change that information. Um, if we can get People to just focus on the reduced part We're already doing it with our bags or to go coffee cups or to go water bottles Maybe let's stretch in um start carrying our reusable um utensils a napkin our Own to go container when we're going out to breakfast on sunday morning and we know we're not going to finish that huge omelet Those are just the little behavior changes that if we could change that that would make a big Councilmember matthews had a question, but I don't know if also if you're bringing people up We'll kind of do a little welcome to them while she's asking the question It's not even a question so people can come on up, but I I just 100 love all your programs And just just want to say um I see in the blue cans when people leave their pizza boxes The the collectors hang the pizza box over the lid to suggest that's not recyclable But there's so many renters in town that I know they don't get the instructions that go with the bill So maybe that's something for the master recyclers to do Don't just leave the pizza box, but leave The instructions to I'll tackle that from this end so one of our drivers That's kind of his strategy and we have those new stickers that people are marking off the things that are Offensive, you know that shouldn't be in the recycling bin and it is catching people's attention So we are trying to let people know through those orange stickers And those are some of the efforts that the master recyclers are going to be involved Is there a way that the pizza people can actually serve their pizza take to go? And so I work with ucse ideas program Students and there's a whole group in there in the ideas program that is working on pizza boxes specifically And i'm trying to get them to think about going higher Who do you have to talk to where do we really create the behavior change? And so it dawned on them. How do we get the pizza box companies to put different information on there? Right and so they're working on that right now That's right sure Hi ola Oh, you didn't hear me. You notice they've got their their master recycler name tags on so these are about half of our 28th that finished their program. So we have glenn annie Cat julianne michelle caylee live oley rachel and cat Awesome, I know A lot of time One pressing thing that has changed their behavior Examination It's okay if anyone else wants Of In case you didn't hear me understanding the amount of food contamination in the recycle barrel and One very small container of food contamination can cause a whole truckload to have to go to the landfill Instead of the recycle I'm going to take my opportunity to say that I keep waiting for someone To say that over 40 percent of the waste that goes to the landfill is food waste And we've touched on like the scraps and you know other things about food But that's a lot of food that doesn't need to go there and could be used better I know hey, well, I just want to thank you guys. Congratulations and appreciate your patience Thanks. All right. Thank you. Thank you. We're well over but the one item is the meeting calendar. So Is there any update on the meeting calendar? the couple We have the april 1st Capital improvement plan study session May 1st. Yes has been canceled The may 24th and 25th budget hearings were canceled and June 6th is the new budget hearing date The time to be determined That's it post that Yeah, what about the study session on may 1st? Canceled it was cancelled. It was in it was in our teen had it in his report as a downtown plan one Downtown is a new study session. So right that's in the evening and then the uh, the uh, I think that I think that four o'clock was a cap and then seven it was and I think this it's a four o'clock one That's being canceled. Oh, no, you know what? I'd still like to Or we want to do it in the afternoon. Yeah, we we talked about that on monday Do you want to keep the cap? Yeah, just as an agenda item if we're gonna do that for the okay I mean, I don't I don't know if it needs to be a stand. I mean That's be the only item just the cap Yeah, that's that's a non council day. Yeah, so I'd maybe I'd work it into a council day, right? I think that's what you Yeah, okay. Why are budget hearings being moved to June You can talk to um, you could talk to the city manager's office about that. Okay. Rather than we go and have a discussion here All right, so that's it. Um, we'll recess to the next one. Thanks for your patience I could tell you that juggling isn't illegal But he left his name he left his contact information to 7 p.m. Session of the april 10th 2018 Santa Cruz city council now and this is a joint meeting with our water commission as well I'd like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you. Mayor councilmember crone Matthews chase Brown here norion here vice mayor Watkins here mayor trousers here commissioner baskin president Meckis here shifrin here Schwarm is absent tonight wadlow here vice chair engler And chair wilson is absent Great. So there is uh, the the one item we have for our joint city council water commission We have actually the two the 2018 annual water supply and demand assessment and our water supply study session As a reminder, the order will begin with the staff presentation followed by questions of staff from the council We'll then take public comment and then return to the council and commissioners for deliberation and action So I'd like to begin by inviting up toby goddard and rosemary minard to begin with the 2018 annual water supply and demand assessment Good evening. Rosemary minard water director I wanted just to sort of give you a very quick overview of what we're going to do tonight And I know that the mayor just sort of did that but I wanted to dive just a tiny bit deeper One is we do have an action for you to take tonight and it is labeled as a public hearing So we'll need to make sure to open that comment period when we get to the after the staff presentation But basically we thought that we would agendize this action for the 2018 water supply Outlook and the recommendation Related to restrictions or various activities this summer Because it's really a great teachable moment about why we're actually doing the water supply work that we're going to be talking about second The until about three weeks ago We were looking at a situation that the the weather had been so dry that we thought we would be bringing you quite a different recommendation And it wasn't because we were worried about where we were in storage this year so much But we are extremely vulnerable to multi-year droughts, which we've obviously just come off of A fairly major one in the state as a whole and certainly here So we were watching that very carefully and we thought that bringing that Item to you and telling the story about how we got where we got in terms of the recommendation and the water supply really helped to Frame the conversation we need to have when we talk about the Second year of work on implementing the recommendations of the water supply advisory committee So with that i'm going to turn it over to toby and he's going to run us through the presentation on The 2018 water supply forecast and recommendation Thank you very much rosemary. Mr. Mayor members of city council water commission members toby goddard water department This item tonight as you know is the 2018 annual water supply and demand assessment We used to call it the water supply outlook and we're actually reframing it a little bit in anticipation of actually the state asking agencies to do This same exercise every year And there is can i get the presentation up on the okay Um, so here we are in april Uh 2018 wet season is now coming into a close Um, we have basically six months ahead of the dry season The process for doing this assessment is actually done in three steps We go to the water commission each time we do this we do an initial outlook in late january about midway through The water year we revise it in february and then tonight we're considering our final evaluation The purpose is to give you decision makers as well as the public an early indication of any potential water restrictions For the season and the schedule is specifically set up so that we could put those in place by may 1st We don't have a lot of lead time in santa cruz to institute water restrictions and prohibitions So about 2018 Uh, I call it a year of contrasts first first of all Look, we're coming off of a the one of the wettest years on record last year In terms of the amount of water that came down the san lorenzo river It was the wettest year on record And that translated to good flows in our flowing sources san lorenzo river north coast sources all year long Consequently, we ended this year With our reservoir at about 93 full So that was great condition for us Since then we've had relatively low rainfall and certainly as i'll point out with some of the The illustrations and graphs river flows that we're seeing now that are quite a bit below average We had two standout months almost all december and all february were completely dry And then all of a sudden in march we doubled our annual rainfall And then we had this little insurance rain this last weekend that gave us another almost three inches So even within this season it's been one of really stark contrasts of dry periods Wet periods and right up to the end as rosemary points out Not really knowing how this year is going to shape up and that's part of the character of our water supply system And part of what we're going to be talking about later tonight What goes into this evaluation The usual things rainfall both in town and up in the watershed stream flows But not only for for municipal use, but also for for habitat protection Reservoir storage is important But as most people in santa cruz now know after 2014 and 15 It's really the san lorenzo river. That's our biggest source. So we look closely at the san lorenzo river Both in terms of monthly flows and also the cumulative Output how much water is generated by the river as kind of an index of our water supply Condition we also look at water demand and then we do a type of crystal balling As to how will these sources play out over the dry season and where we will we be at the end of october And what kind of condition will that leave us in as rosemary mentioned in case of the next year So we're really thinking out a season and a year in advance There are other things that are taken into account in this evaluation not explicitly But we can't not acknowledge That these don't exist and i'll bring as an example We had 10 days in the san francisco bay area where we experienced record Warm temperatures during the winter and some of those were in december too. It's easy to forget It's only a few months ago, but we had a really actually abnormally warm winter That's not explicitly in this evaluation, but i bring it up just because it's part and parcel of what we're facing So what do we stand this is a chart of cumulative rainfall the light blue line Is the sort of long-term average rainfall total annual in santa cruz about 31 inches We're right now at about 18 and a half so about two-thirds You can see along the chart as you follow across time from the beginning of the water year october 1st 2017 That we got a little bump in november and then we entered a long quiet period Of december where we got no gain and we're quickly well behind the curve At the end of the year and then we got some rain in january and then it went away again for the most of february until the very end And by the end of february we had only eight inches of rain. It was actually kind of uh unsettling and concerning how dry it had been And of course march march brought abundant rainfall not only to the central coast but to the state of california To a lot of areas and really did a lot of good for for people for plants for fish It did a lot of good. We doubled our annual rainfall and then i've updated this chart Compared to the exhibits in your packet to account for what happened over the weekend with this last little Uh a period of rain from that atmospheric river. So there's another almost three inches that added But as you can see we're still about Two-thirds of our annual rainfall and the season as i mentioned at the beginning is coming to a close It's still dynamic We could get more but For the most part after about april 15th. That's that's pretty well our rainy season Let's move on to stream flows those two dry months Kind of evaporated off the rain. We did get early. We just did not see much response in the in the San Lorenzo river from the rain that we did get it wasn't until march That we actually saw the river none of the months for this year have actually been Equal to the normal which is expressed in blue the green is is the flows that we've seen mean monthly flows in the river measured up in henry cal park And then most recently in april april is not a complete month obviously, but we had pretty good flow during that time That's a good site uh reservoir storage is good. We're full. We're spilling As I mentioned we came into this year at 93 full, but it was not clear Until march that we would actually spill and it wasn't a big order We only had a like seven percent of the capacity of field Was not clear that we're gonna be able to make our way all the way to the top I'd like to focus on this slide for A minute because this probably is the single most important slide of this Item which is cumulative runoff in the san loranza river the dash line represents the long-term average The green line represents just a few years ago in 2014 And the low amount of water that was generated out of the river And then the blue line represents the current year 2018 Currently we have about 24 000 acre feet. That's how it's expressed in this chart Of runoff. It's about 30 percent of normal It tells us two things. It tells us the water year classification You can see right now it's labeled critically dry But this is not a complete year and we may actually go into the next category But you can see we're only about halfway up to the second line there Which is the lower limit of what was considered a normal water year So we would actually have to have a lot more runoff this year for the year to reach the Classification of normal and I I suspect we probably won't get there at this point This is the same chart Only over the past 10 years and so those of you have been on council now for eight years or more Probably have seen this you can look back on your years of service and remember some of these years This was last year. Here is Here we are currently One tenth of what we received a year ago Here are the two drought years where we were actually Declared a water shortage emergency And the last time we actually had a stage one event was in both 2012 and 2013 so Part of the story of our system besides our isolation on the central coast And from other water utilities Is the variability in water supply conditions from year to year and as I talked about tonight from month to month Here's another good picture. This is our water footprint in Santa Cruz. This is a Measure of our metered water consumption Uh since 2000 it's about two-thirds of what it was. It's gone down a lot Taking a lot of work to get there It's hovered about the same location the last four years You can see there's a little bit of an increase in the last year But not too much. We're actually below where we were when we were actually rationing in 2014 And uh, you've heard reports around the state of rebound We have actually experienced rebound in past droughts, but we've never in Santa Cruz Or gotten back to the exact mark that we have so we expect some of that to be permanent And some of that to you know, if we did nothing We might expect to see A little bit of more rebound this year the slide is about the river this summer So it's going to drain in the next few weeks from these storms The flows are going to drop off quickly After may we'll be getting into kind of a low flow period And it's important kind of we kind of represent The amount of water that's available for municipal use under the current agreement with fishing game And how much water needs to stay In the system for rearing in the lower river and for passage Up and down the river system Specifically for steelhead. So you can see here. This is expressed in cubic feet per second We have a requirement To to leave eight cubic feet per second in the river that leaves actually very little during july august and september From our biggest source That we can treat and put into the system And to make this real to you I included a picture of the diversion at tate street So you see water going over the concrete beam you see water going through The diversion structure it's important we leave Water in the river not only for the lagoon and I know we have other problems with the lagoon And burming there but for habitat but also for being able to migrate across this barrier Because this otherwise would represent a barrier to fish migration on the lower system If you put all this information together on a spreadsheet and say how our supplies and our demands Going to come together and what does that look like on the reservoir at the end of october halloween This is when remember those triple fines for bad behavior right here at the end of halloween We project right now the reservoir to be about 70 full. So that's pretty good Two billion gallons in storage Pretty good carryover a little bit lower than Where we've typically seen it in a little better years 80 percent be nice, but 70 percent isn't too bad And the point is even with low demands on the system we'll be using the reservoir because The inability to really use the river during the three months when demand is typically the highest So it will we will be exercising the reservoir In this summer another thing that doesn't get taken into account explicitly in this supply and demand assessment Is the us drought monitor? In february, we're actually Colored yellow all of santa cruz county was colored yellow and then with march We actually got out of that area that's listed as abnormally dry I think it would be remiss not to show you That we're on the edge of a much larger synoptic pattern in the western united states that extends from california And or again all the way out to the western edge of illinois We're on the margin of that So we need to be mindful of that because that's going to evolve and change over time And it's just an indication of what could be around the corner if we didn't take some early action to to Manage water demand. So I just wanted you to be aware of how that looks as of this week A recommendation tonight is to adopt the stage one water shortage alert I think you're pretty well familiar. We have a a council approved water shortage plan that has five levels stage one is like a Alert to the community That that while we're not in an emergency We have a low water year. We want people to exercise caution We're asking for voluntary conservation for the next six months from may 1st to october There are a couple things that happen by adopting this resolution. It triggers The municipal code to come to life and and gives us power to enforce with penalties against water waste It also means Certain prohibitions and probably the biggest one is really a midday watering ban I've already heard some input about that ban this year It also means no washing of hard and paved surfaces. This is one of the measures that the state imposed For couple last couple years, but we do this when we're in low water conditions training refilling residential swimming pools requiring shut-off nozzles on all hoses A couple of commercial measures for restaurants and for the Basically the tourism sector to know that we're in In a low water condition And so these would be the types of restrictions that go into place Under stage one I'm sure someone will ask about other stages and we also always consider that pretty carefully as Mary mentioned had march not Shaped up the way it did. We might be bringing you a stage two We don't think that's warranted with the reservoir as full as it is and the predictions Have before you I think it's we need to be mindful that All of this short-term conservation and long-term Is a result of the cooperation and trust of our customers when we ask for And that if we ask for things that are not commensurate with conditions, we might lose that trust So I think an important we we kind of balance All the competing supplies and demands and ask for something that is consistent with our our water condition And again being mindful of what might happen going into With that I will turn it back to council for any questions And you know council and commissioners are there any questions? Maybe we could just do it in orderly fashion if I'll start on the side of the room the questions are I'm good with what I see What just does the guy who goes out there and washes power washes the sidewalk on pacific avenue? Is he at all restricted? That's a good question. Thank you for that. There are exemptions for obviously for unsanitary conditions and definitely pacific avenue falls into that category. So we've actually Looked the other way and I think that's in the public interest to keep our Downtown clean and safe Mr. Baskett no question council member matthews chase Just out of curiosity shut off valves on hoses or nozzles on hoses I mean, I just can't imagine a scenario that where we could enforce something like that. So Um, I know it's called a requirement, but What's our record on actually making sure that happens in the past when it's been required? Oh, we have we will be hiring actually A patrol person to be out and we have a lot of water representatives in the field who see it And the point here is that we're asking people no open hoses You can have an open hose in normal times to water your garden this year You need a hose nozzle for any washing of cars. That's always the requirement in Santa Cruz So this is no open hoses when you're water watering your yard or your garden that sort of thing and and For any prohibition It starts with a warning and ask Ask people and we give them away if we see that so that makes it very easy We'll hand them a hose nozzle And then usually that will take care of it Wadlow Toby you indicated that we're likely to end up either in a critically dry year or a dry year potentially Um, but you also talked a little bit about fish flows. Could you go back to the fish flow slides? My question for you is Whether we end up dry or critically dry we had a very unusual pattern of precipitation this year as you discussed Does that raise any particular issues with regard to fish flows anything About that unusual pattern of precipitation That might have an impact that we need to be aware of on our fishery commitments Thank you for that. Um, the actual fish Low regime that we operate under now Is on a monthly time step and not on an annual time step And so if we encounter periods where we have very wet months and then it goes dry again The following month we have to alter the flow regime But it towards it towards this time of year It tends to stabilize and our conditions don't change much once we go dry But let me say that Um, the eight cubic feet per second and nine cubic foot per second releases Those are our obligation for Dry and critically dry years had we gotten maybe Five more inches of rain. We would be looking at numbers for Normal water years that are substantially higher than this Which actually might have the effect of reducing Water from the San Lorenzo river even though there's more water in the system So it's a little bit of a balancing act of again What's what's water needed for fish rearing and migration and what's available for the city for municipal use? I just want to add one thing to that which is the This fish flow regime, which is kind of a basic share the pain share the wealth kind of strategy Was very explicitly taken into account in the work that the water supply advisory committee did so this is not a new regime and the and the impacts of Fish flows were integrated into the definition of how big the gap is Commissioner Schiffman had a follow-up Could you talk a little bit about what's happening with the north coast streams? They were I think as I remember about 20 of the city's water supply With the fish release Controls what's going on now at those streams? How does that relate to what's happening in the san lernzo river? It's very close the the north coast More than a decade ago actually contributed about a third of the city's annual supply back when our Demands were much higher and now it's more like 15 to 17 percent and that's primarily because Laguna creek has been largely set aside Which was the biggest of the three north coast sources for habitat protection purposes. We still operated diversion and we Sometimes make water from Laguna creek, but we're primarily drawing from Liddell spring And a little bit from majors creek now. So you can look at the coast Really as sort of been reduced by about 50 percent Follow up with that you're it sounds like there have been agreements about what the requirements are in terms of the the fish habitat But as i'm not aware of the city completing a habitat conservation plan or any formal approval of an agreement What what's the status of that have the of the regulatory agencies agreed to this approach? So that we just have to go through the steps of having the documents or Is there still negotiations going on that might increase the amount of or decrease the amount of water that's available To the customers So I can answer that question. There's there's sort of an existing agreement that is called the tolling agreement that is a sort of a Holding off on a legal enforcement action that The california fishing wildlife filed against some of our operations a number of years ago and so the fish flows were We are Giving now under the terms of that agreement are updated on a kind of an annual basis now So we're looking forward and we're saying what should we what can we give given the water supply situation? And so that's the basis but for this year and last year We have used the flows that have been agreed to although not fully documented in the habitat conservation plan They've been integrated into This particular tolling agreement flows and that's how we're operating now And I think it's it's good because it's helping us get our arms around what this really means in terms of available water supply and helping us really understand the constraints as tobi mentioned Higher flows in the river that might drive the you know us from a critical critically dry or Dry condition to a normal would mean higher levels of flows that could actually result in lower reservoir levels at the end of the the dry season so it's it's a it's the fish flow issue and the commitment to fish flows and fish restoration for the Endangered coho salmon and the threatened steelhead trout are a major part of what's driving Supplemental supply requirements in our community Any other questions on this side? I just have one from historical perspective You know we've gone to a stage one drought before we've gone to stage two And I think we even went as far as a stage three during those doing those Two or three years of drought Do we have any historical perspective on what that meant in terms of water saving? So we moved to stage one. How does that kind of benefit our our our water supply? See that a little bit in this chart actual plan that we operate under now was developed 2006 to 9 time frame and then we immediately launched in I think maybe some of you were on council at the time we immediately launched in about the same time that the uh housing crisis and economic crisis took place And that was a result for this was a stage two for this reduction right here in 2009 and in 2012 and 13 you can actually see us going up Even in spite of restrictions, but that doesn't say what would have happened in the absence of those So it's really hard to tell with this set of measures Quantitatively how much savings there is and then when we went from Stage one. I don't know if you remember, but we continued that through the winter and then in february We got kind of out ahead at your direction and commissions direction We went immediately into stage three and you can see the dramatic decrease in demand Resulting from water rationing that was in place for two years. That was accompanied in the second year with a lot of state media presence about statewide drought and that actually drove it further down in the last two years It's been hovering without regulation But as you know the rates have changed and there's other factors at play now All right, thank you. So seeing no other questions I'll um turn it over to the public if there's any member of the public that would like to speak to this item Now is your time you can step right up and you have two minutes We're gonna we're gonna have uh, well Two minutes you have two minutes so you can begin my blood pressure is up about 400 points since I've been sitting here Okay, so do you want to sit down and wait or well? I thought you asked for public Yeah, you can speak right now. You have two minutes. Okay You guys are like You're not talking about the issue You guys will water this water that you know what everybody in this town did everything we could do The jello would smell a brown flush it down. What do city calc do tear down one house and put up 15 The problem we have here is we have too much growth going on Okay, you guys are talking about this that and the other thing We don't have the infrastructure building an opera center or i'm more construction. Okay. I've done that my whole life I'm all for it But it's got to be balanced We got people wasting how many hour man hours are wasted our women hours or whatever hours are wasted out on a freeway Every day when people trying to get where they got to go I mean how much time in carbon emissions and all that stuff's doing you're talking about water Well, you said we have to trust you Well, guess what can you protester do you speak to us? All right fights. We want to trust him You know what we did our share and what did the city council do? They turned around and started building houses left and right and doing a whole infrastructure taking out one house and putting in 15 Okay, now what's going to use more water and so now why should we The people of santa Cruz Go over there and like bend over backwards and accommodate you guys again We're going to do the same bs You know, it's all you guys aren't talking about the issue. Oh, it's water this and salmon that and this said the issue is Growth we don't have to support everybody that comes here. Okay. I want moved to atherton You know pebble beach whatever I can't afford there. I grew up in los gatos and 40 years ago I bought a house in santa Cruz because I couldn't afford to live in santa are in los gatos I drive over the hill Okay, guess what we all do what we have to do. So you guys saying well, we have loving people coming here who want to live here every day I mean, it's not Get a grip guys. You're supposed to be with your dad representing. That's not the warranty part meeting Thank you, sir. Thank you for your thank you Next comment, please next public comment Next speaker, please Next speaker Whoever'd like to come up next step right up I just want to say this is i'm synthia from santa Cruz tenants association I want to say thank you for whenever you approve lots of units because they use so much more Water in the single-family homes and in the multifamily units Extremely a lot more if lots of studies showing it So the more multifamily units you put here and get rid of some of the single-family homes your water use will be better overall Thank you Thank you next speaker, please Thank you My name is scott mcgillivray. I'm a member of a group called water for santa Cruz county This is an annual ritual. It's a very important ritual because How we figure out how we're going to get through the year I've enjoyed watching toby do this for this is my eighth year I want to talk about something that you'll get to later about That comes from the same numbers that inform what you're looking at here Whether you make a decision to have a drought declaration stage one or not is is really up to you But these same numbers If you could go back toby to the water supply scenario number two these same numbers also Reveal another True fact about the water supply in santa Cruz, which is despite that we have A 64 percent of the precipitation of a normal year We have abundant water that we have rights to That we cannot use And that water could be very easily shipped To socal creek and used by socal creek, which would allow the wells in the Jerusalem aquifer to rest Um, I wanted to table two scenario two this guy right here. Yeah, I didn't have that in the presentation. Yeah, you do You have this is 2018 You didn't have this. Yes, you did It's in your packet. I'm sorry. That's unfortunate. Uh, if you look at the month of april Uh, total production without the lake is 267 The number below it is projected system demand is 240 If you look at may the projected Production is 327 And the projected system demand is 248. So there is a surplus of water in this year That could be sent to socal creek. We will be back to talk with you about this I just want you to think about it while we're focusing on these numbers. Thank you. Thank you next speaker, please Good evening. My name is becky steinbrunner. I'm a resident of aptos And I am here to talk with you also about water for santa Cruz county in that We um, we all need to work regionally here to help solve the region's problem Fred kealy himself recently said we don't have a water supply problem We have a water storage problem And I would like to encourage you to begin thinking about the socal creek water district aqua area aquifers as storage to help Alleviate and solve the areas ground water overdraft socal creek water district declared a groundwater state of emergency in 2014 their water demand offset program has been enforced since 2003 and still according to the danish study that was released to the mid-county groundwater agency in march of march 15th The seawater is at the beach The district has been told they have two years when that occurs before the seawater will be at their production wells We truly need to be looking at a regional solution here and Your district has already worked beautifully with socal creek water district by establishing an intertie Socal creek water district supplied santa Cruz city water with over three million gallons when Your customers could not be convinced during the rainy season that they needed to convince to conserve water When you had major system failure Increasing the size of that intertie would allow further cooperation and socal creek water district could get more water from the north coast As mr. Mcilver has said and let those overtaxed wells rest We can work together here to find regional solution that will be sustainable for our entire county I want to encourage you to look at To at increasing the size of the pipe from the felton diversion So that you can refill this lock loman reservoir faster when there are these flashy storms that are predicted to occur With climate change and to use rainy collectors. So you can use the winter storm water From the river Okay, you'll need to wrap up. Thank you. I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you All right. Is there any other member of the public that would like to speak to this item? Please step up Thank you, uh, as most of you know, I'm jerry paul city resident of masters in electrical engineering And I put in 6 000 hours pro bono on our water problems in the region Uh, I want to second a lot of what becky just said Uh, and uh, toby, uh, you you showed how spiky and intermittent the river flow is That is a big reason to make sure that the pipe from felton to the lock is huge If you take, uh, 30 million gallons a day multiply it by 70 days That's 2.1 billion gallons. That's how much water we could get out of the river In 70 days, uh, you know, 30 million gallons a day if the pipe were big enough right now Our pipe is destined for only 13 That means that in a spiky year like was just on this graph We couldn't get that much water because we don't have that many days shot at it So in the future when we have so few days of shot at it make sure the pipe is huge 30 mgd And and you'll do yourselves big favors, especially in the years that are most dire Same with the intertide potable intertide is so cal 6 mgd Their peak capacity peak use is four and a half mgd in their summer peak and uh, and they'll To account for growth and for water return that needs to be big the other thing is From the lock we can use Dr. Andy Fisher's from UCSC map detailed map Of places where we can dump or percolate water in the Santa Margarita aquifer. There's hundreds of them Very high definite high definition map And uh to take water from the lock and not have to run it through a treatment plant Especially a new expensive a treatment plant and just dump it on the ground or percolate it It's extremely cheap. It stays at high elevation So you don't use any energy to to take it from the lock there And then the the water in that aquifer is clean and above our heads So once again, it's a great use of energy and what seeps out is great for the fish And we can take it again at Tate street. We can double dip the same water twice in a year. Thank you Appreciate your comments. Okay. Um, is there any other member of the public that would like to speak to this item? Now is your final chance any other member of the public that would like to speak to this item? Please step up. Okay. You have your turn It's always illuminating hearing members of the public address any issue some of the impacts to water that I see are huge industrial model Agriculture agribusiness in the Pajaro Valley. I know organic ecological sustainable farming Uses a much less water. That's one thing the wireless microwave technology heats up the planet has a huge carbon Footprint and all the manufacture of the the cell phones the transportation the heart program The military uses huge amounts of water And those are just some of the factors I see and by Watching what we do at home is a small part of it But I think some of the bigger pictures Are not looked at. I always appreciate the comments of previous speaker and becky steinbruner I think You know, I I've got this detector microwave radiation. We know microwaves heat the planet This is way up here. Here's the sound impact Frequencies amplified Uh, it's a big factor in killing the bee population. I'm going to give you a copy of an article by barry trower Whose expertise is microwave radiation weaponry He served in the British secret service in the 60s and 70s with that specialty Microwave radiation weaponry and he says that's what wi-fi and wireless technology is This is titled will the communications industry be the finals drawn our planet's ecosystem. It's a big system problem I think it's a big capitalist system problem, which is so destructive with the planet in every aspect. Thank you Thank you Okay at this point. I'd like to bring it back to the council for deliberation council and commission for deliberation action This is a um city council resolution declaring a stage one water shortage alert. So If there's any council member norion I have to go ahead and move the recommendation Second okay motion by council member, uh, norion second by council member matthews any discussion Council member matthews. I'll just say I thought this report made it really clear how many factors are at play At any given time and variable in any given year and the logic for this conclusion was very well laid out Commissioner shifrin as I remember normally the Recommendation comes from the commission to the council and sort of all got compressed tonight So I wonder if it would be appropriate to make a motion that For the commission to recommend to the council that they adopt this resolution And maybe we could vote on that before assuming that it's a second We could vote on that defer you know It's interesting because I was you know the way that this was agendized and it was like okay We could all vote together, but I think yeah, I appreciate that suggestion to first have uh the advisory But maybe hear from you first about this. I I mean I'll I think that we have uh an incredibly strong water Commission and I really appreciate you all being here today So it'd be good just to hear your um your your recommendation first and then we'll we'll leave that the motion here and And um go forward well, I would move that we do recommend the recommendation. I appreciate the staff report I think um, I was uh concerned about whether this recent rain had really up the flow in the river and it just I understand that it's just still way below what was really be enough to get us through the dry season So I would move the uh the that the commission recommended the council that they adopt a resolution So I'll ask if there's a second by one of the commissioners second Okay, so motion by commissioner shifrin second by commissioner baskin So what what any of you the commissioners would like to vote on that just that before we take action that that would be uh appropriate So all those in favor of the motion on the floor. I There's a post so passes unanimously with um two commissioners absent this evening You'll have to record that for the minutes Okay, so we'll bring it back to the motion by council member, um Narayan that was second been seconded by council member matthews and had a little discussion on that already But I just think that I want to thank this the staff presentation on this to give the historical reference points As far as where we've been as a community in terms of our water conservation. I think if you were to look back Um, you know three to four years ago. I mean that was top of mind. I think everybody was water Was the the very issue it still is but I feel like there's been a lot of good working controls That have been in place to make sure that we have a a stable supply and we're working towards addressing Some of our infrastructure needs so I think that goes a long way of seeing kind of this discussion here today Any other um council member uh discussion on the motion on the floor Okay, we've got the motion in a second all those in favor. Please say aye. Aye Any opposed so that passes unanimously with all council members present. So thank you Make it through that first item we'll move on to the second item, which is the main item the water supply study session As we've done last year at least We're we're here tonight for the second item to kind of give you an overview of The work that we've been doing on the implementing the recommendations of the Santa Cruz water supply advisory committee Which was a advisory committee established by the council in 2013 2014 and uh met and did their work between Uh the spring of 2014 and the fall of 2015 a couple of members of the Commission the water commission were on the water supply advisory committee and we have at least a couple of members of the Uh of the committee in the audience as well. So we've got some representation and I I suspect there's a few others watching from home You guys make it so convenient So what I want what we have is three items that we want to talk about and it's kind of it's great because I think that In addition to the sort of update on the Work progress we've been making we also have a conversation a little bit about the decision process and the structure of the decision making That is going to happen here at the council and at the water commission before the council And obviously the community will be engaged in that In about two years time So that's a really important thing to kind of get that stuck in our mind and keep remembering What the structure of that decision process is and why it was structured in the way it was And then the last thing we're going to do in this of the section of the meeting is we're going to talk a little bit about the regional engagement and Including the sort of policy framework at both the state and the local level for Why we do regional planning and regional collaboration with a lot of our other agencies So I think that addresses some of the concerns you just heard a little bit ago So with that i'm going to turn this over to hidey looking back who's going to give you an update on the status of the scope of work and a little bit of background on the process itself to sort of reframe it again Thank you rosemary. Good evening mayor council members water commissioners hidey looking back water department As rosemary said, I am pleased to be here tonight to share with you the status of our work following two years of implementation of the water supply advisory committee work plan um I'm going to take a few minutes just to walk us through their timeline Just to set some context for the work that they performed Um before diving into the elements of their work plan um So october 2013 the city council directed staff to develop this community engagement process um in november 2013 They accepted the framework for what was then called the drought solutions citizen advisory committee Which wasn't mouthful and a point of great debate among the commission the committee if i recall correctly uh february 2014 they approved the membership the 14 members of that committee and renamed as the water supply advisory committee They worked from april 2014 to october of 2015 And in november There was two meetings where Their findings were brought to the water commission and the city council and the city council Proved their final report on agreements and recommendations I've got my soul. You know what that might mean and i'm soft So um, so here's your water supply advisory committee and as rosemary said several of them are sitting next to you And several of them are sitting in the audience 14 members that um Came from both sienna crew the city of sienna crews as well as live oak To represent the water department service area Appointed by the city council and representing intentionally of course a diverse um Cross section of our community and in so doing um, I think we really were successful at um Eliciting from the community different perspectives Different points of view about water supply and water supply planning And we're able to incorporate that into the to the work that they did Um, I want to direct your attention if you have it with you the the staff report because an attachment to the staff report is The work plan that staff is implementing Um, this is their work plan This is the work plan that was developed for the water supply advisory committee and as you can see it This is a slice of it from december of 2014 to march of 2015 But I think many of the former committee members can attest to the density of their chore I want to point out just a few things besides how dense it is The first is they met each month and they met over a two-day period for four or so hours They divided their work into two phases as you can see at the top of the screen It was a recon phase and a solutions phase And during that recon phase They did the body of work below which is to To inform themselves on the water system The challenges that we face the work that we've done in the past and start to think about how we need to Frame a solution that will Be adaptable to any conditions that we face in the future. So they talked about demand management they were We all had lessons on potential climate change impacts to the community the fish flow Issues that toby and rosemary talked about earlier. So doing all of this in a six month period brought them to A point at which they felt comfortable developing solutions for our water supply Their work was not done yet But it did allow them to develop a problem statement And as we've already heard tonight the the top of the list was limited storage as we all know we have lock loman as our storage And we use that during drought and we use that when our flowing sources are too low So that was the first thing that they recognized as something that we needed to address Again toby was talked about the fish flow requirements and potential climate change impacts creating really an unknown Looking forward we know a lot more of course about the fish flow requirements working through the habitat conservation process But we don't know the impacts that climate change is going to have So they grappled with both of those items and recognized that whatever plan was developed has to have An ability to change and adapt as well to a future condition that maybe we have or maybe we have not And like rosemary mentioned She's going to be talking about the change management program or a strategy that was built into the water supply advisory committee work plan Um, finally they concluded that a supply project Needs to satisfy a gap of 1.2 billion gallons per year And that water conservation is not in and of itself a water supply solution. So these were the recommendations Um, the first of course is to continue to implement Current and new water conservation programs. I'm not going to dwell on the conservation efforts Um, we do report out to our water commission at least quarterly on the work that's being done towards water conservation In terms of water supply and the and these are the The elements that are on the work plan that's in your packet The first is in lieu water transfers or exchanges And I just want to make certain that that concept is understood Because I think in lieu is a term that we've adopted and are using and maybe it's just not clear what that means In this in this context, it's Providing water to other agencies in lieu of their need to pump their groundwater So it's a form of and I'll use this term later of passive recharge of the groundwater That's in lieu or water transfers where the city is moving water out to other agencies Exchanges is where we move it out and then during a drought we receive water back Built into that program So there's in lieu there's aquifer storage and recovery Which is viewed as an active form of storage. This gets to the comment about we need more storage And this is actively creating another storage for the city and then The third element was recycled water or desalination Um, so just to wrap up the background November 24th 2015 the city council took action on the final report on agreements and recommendations of the water supply advisory committee And directed it to be incorporated into the urban water management plan Those items have been done and since then again, we've been working with the water commission and report out at least Quarterly on the work that we've done So unless there's any questions about the kind of background and how we got to where we are I'm just going to go element by element great in lieu Water transfers and exchanges. So again the idea here is that um, the city of santa cruz has excess winter water And we would partner with neighboring agencies scott's valley soco creek end or san lorenzo valley water district And we would Offset all or part of their current demand, which is currently primarily groundwater um It's founded on work that we we hear about that was developed in 2013 by kennedy janks Working for the county of santa cruz and that was the water exchange project And that project specifically looked at the water transfer idea only It was only focused on Creating those opportunities To move excess winter water to other agencies so that they could rest their groundwater basins And then it did not include the concept of bringing water back So for in lieu, we've been pursuing two different efforts We signed an agreement with soco creek water district in 2016 To help us further the evaluation of the feasibility of an in lieu transfer end or exchange So we're looking at um How their system would respond to receiving our surface water And also how the basin would respond both in their Taking our surface water in there by not pumping But also how it would respond if they were to in fact send water back to the city Those are two, um, they're very different concepts and approaches and It's just it's not to say that if you transfer water over to them that the groundwater basins And it's not to say that it's going to be available to bring water A lot of um technical studies focused right now at really understanding how the groundwater basin Is going to respond with this concept The other piece of that is we hired black and beach a consulting firm in 2017 To do what's called a pipe loop study And in the industry we've heard recently about different agencies who are Um exploring the opportunities of Sharing their water resources so sharing surface water with groundwater agencies And those two types of waters aren't always compatible with each other and they can result in water. That's not necessarily harmful But maybe has aesthetic issues So we wanted to and working with so called creek water district really understand How that how any surface water that we were to deliver to So called creek could could interact with their water and create So that study is underway It's two phase study and we are conducting and completing the first phase And that should be done by the end of april And if those results Based on those results, we'll know more about if we need to enter the second phase. The second phase is a much larger um Project where we would actually harvest pipe sections from their distribution system and run it actively with our water and their water First one is more of a kind of lab experiment where we don't Impressive about that I wanted to show this graphic just to help us get oriented on um Who we're working with so this is the city of santa cruz service area um These are the inner ties that we currently have with so called creek water district. These two are fairly old and we're Small and the intention was just for emergency Good function as a uh more high rate in lube project we are also um considering The ability to share water with scott's valley water district up in this area and or san lorenzo water This is a picture of the inner tie that we share with a creek water district um And the next steps for this project like I mentioned, we're wrapping up the first phase of the pipe loop study In may and we'll make a recommendation as to how to proceed with phase two um, we're continuing conversations active conversations with all the agencies to um really understand concerns Interest in participating in in lube projects and what the nature of that participation would look like And then we're continuing and will continue to do the groundwater modeling to understand Not only will the in lube project or projects benefit the other agencies, but how it might benefit the city of santa cruz That's a wrap up of the in lube the in lube project is on schedule at this time um aquifer storage and recovery is the next water supply um concept and the idea here is um That instead of delivering that water to another agencies you pump it into the ground creating that stored water And so that during the drought you could take the water out of the ground and use it for our This project we're looking this is a similar graphic to the other one where we're looking in our service area We're also looking in soko creek water district service area as well as up in scott's valleys water service area for the potential for an aquifer storage and recovery project to work To date and um To date we've completed a technical analysis similar to the in lube project it's not um It's not a given that you couldn't inject water into the ground and first it'll stay there and be there available to you when you need it Or it won't have water quality impacts to either the groundwater basin or to the product water that you remove So we're doing the analyses currently to understand those interactions to make sure The water is there and it's of good quality for us Um, we're also we're screened all of the existing wells in all three service areas to see where we might pilot test an aquifer storage and recovery project Um, we're completing the pilot test program and we are on schedule to start that program at the end of this calendar year And again, we're going to as we collect field data will continue to improve our groundwater model With in anticipation of developing a full aquifer storage and recovery To date we have not seen any fatal flaws given the results of all these analysis Um, so we are on schedule and it's final two water supply concepts are recycled water and desalination Idea with the recycled water which is to take the treated wastewater from the city-owned wastewater treatment facility and put it to beneficial use and the water department partnered with the public works department on this project And when I say beneficial use, um, it and you'll see this in the recommendations The both the water department and the public works department um Had different objectives for this study The the water department obviously looking at it from a water supply perspective and then looking at it for where Anywhere where can we make a beneficial use of this product water? and so We hired kenny janks in 2016 and they evaluated well over 40 different alternatives for using this water Are currently finalizing that study And we do have several projects that we are recommending This graphic is just showing, um Some of the projects that we looked at again. It was multi agencies. We had We partnered with the public works department. We also engaged the county of santa cruz scott's valley water district We received a grant from the state water resources control board to do this work. And then we also worked with ucsc Potential for recycled water use um Of these alternatives and you'll see this and I think that the next couple of slides We have a few few that we're Going to continue evaluating but not necessarily implement. The one is the surface water augmentation, which is Sending highly treated wastewater up to lock loman to expedite the refilling of lock loman And then recharging in a similar way as aquifer storage and recovery Both the santa margarita groundwater basin and then the prisma groundwater basin in soquel um And then we have the the winner of this study was the irrigation Projects so this is a slide that our conservation section actually developed that Shows all of the irrigation parcels In the santa cruz service area And while they look abundant The irrigation demand is between two and three percent of our overall water demand And as I think is quite clear on the graph, there's no straight line really between any of these So what we did in the study was we kind of quartered the service area To try and identify an efficient irrigation project and we came up with two And the overall recommendations from the study was twofold. The first was do near term non potable or landscape irrigation projects To kind of get the wheels in motion of understanding how to treat wastewater to the standard Getting it into the community getting public and Two projects the irrigation projects are one that's called santa cruz public works title 22 project and this concept is to continue what they do do which is um use highly treated wastewater for internal use within their plant The idea is also to irrigate la baronca park, which is the park that um is adjacent to california As well as create a bulk water station for construction vehicles So that's concept number one that's being pursued by public works and then the second concept is We're calling it the bay cycle project and this is an expansion of The first one and it sends the highly treated wastewater all the way up bay to the university and picks up all the irrigation demand So those are the two near term projects that we are working with public works as well as ucsc on to see if we can And then other projects that we're going to continue to look at are Continue to work with soco creek on their pure water soquel project And then as I mentioned continue to understand the benefits of using recycled water as a groundwater replenishment project In addition to or as opposed to And the last but not least is the desalination study So we were asked in this case To look at the prior desalination project the scwd secured project And through today's lens. So what is its cost? Is it feasible? Is there anything that's been changed? Is there a change condition that would make this more or less favorable? We hired dudek in may of last year to conduct a desalination feasibility update And as a reminder for those that this is familiar to this was the squid squared project components and so dudek went through that project and read and deciphered all the comments from the draft environmental impact report Swept through all the regulations and Came up with this project, which as you can see is different by the number of intakes Along the ocean and the number of pump stations on shore It's focusing the project over on the west side with the treatment plant and then over on near the wharf where the intake would be so They also If you if you remember they're part of the project did include the intertie with Soco creek water district dudek analyzed a width with soco creek water district And without soco creek water district option To satisfy the kind of recommendations of the water supply advisory So their findings were that the project could meet a 1.2 billion gallon per year demand requirement They were able to refine the costs of course Based on the change conditions and the regulatory environment the one issue That did come up had to do with new regulations In the ocean plan. So there's a 2016 desalination amendment to the ocean plan Which makes it much more Analyze And create and get permitted a project for ocean water And We took our findings to the water commission earlier this year And they recommended to us that we reach out to the agencies So we met recently with the state water resources control board the coastal commission and the regional water quality control board to ask What are what additional work would we need to do to evaluate the feasibility of a desalination project here? and They were very open and honest about the challenges of getting a seawater desalination project They were very excited by the idea that we had alternatives including recycled water that we could also pursue And while not off the table necessarily I think between the timeliness question the question around the timeliness and ability of getting this project permitted And the added cost because the ocean plan amendment requires A full or partial sub seafloor intake project the cost of this project in the duration bigger and a lot longer So when you say new regulations who who were putting those new regulations as is this a bill by the state legislature Yeah, it was amendment to the um The ocean plan which the state water board um dates, yeah, and so um It it kind of was in the works and I want to say 2012 2014 in that time frame and the initial objective was to regulate Power plants with um They're once through cooling power systems and um it was a very um Power plants use a lot of water to create It was initially targeted towards that technology So it was initially to regulate water use around power plants, but somehow now it's wrapped up in desalination. Yeah, and um, maybe five or ten years ago um project desalination projects were partnering with power plants And they did this because it's it's a benefit. There's a lot of the infrastructure. That's there A power plant will warm the water because that's part of that mechanism of cooling the power plant is you warm the water And that creates a better opportunity to treat the water for drinking water purpose So it made sense from a technical perspective to have that partnering and so as a result the regulations Um included not just the power plant cooling systems, but also Wow and in the process it made it more difficult To get permits for desalination plants because it's all folded in that same way. Oh interesting. Okay. Thank you Thank you Oh councilmember baskin You might want to explain on on that issue commissioner baskin. Excuse me You might want to explain on that issue thinking about the difference in the subsurface intakes and whether the technology is actually proven Yeah, so um the regulations the the um Ocean plant amendment um is very clear And prefers a subsurface intake which is to say that you you create um a filter in the ocean floor And by gravity you're you're bringing the water to your treatment plant, but you bring it through the seafloor So it's a very passive technology With the thinking that it's preferred to an open ocean intake which is a pipe Between the the ocean surface There's a pumping um that's required and so the preference of course is for the sub seafloor technologies the issue however is that the The locations along the coast are not all favorable to that kind of technology So there's been a lot of discussion about how how do you how do you study how much do you study? How far along your service area coastline do you go to really understand it? be a benefit to your project and And even so far to say how much of your project can you um how much water for your project Can you bring in through subsurface hops you have to do both and the cost actually that you'll see in our final report Reflect a concept where we do both. So you have in the same project. We have an open ocean intake. We have a sub seafloor Project concept that has both one All are part and if it were to fail then we have the other one. Okay got commissioner Eddie can you describe how much experience there is See intakes and sandy conditions um The last time I read the literature, which is maybe two years old But there have not been a lot of diesel projects There's a sub seafloor intake in japan Which actually does function really well the environment The material the sub seafloor material is very conducive Um, there are none at the moment in And there's uh and not to say that they haven't tested them. They have done their studies to um from san Diego up to California to demonstrate that Seafloor along the coast is just not conducive Just as a reminder this is being recorded on close circuits So when you ask questions just speak into the mic so they can get it for our viewers at home and those here in the audience um, so are there just wrap up really quick. Please do so um The like I said the in lieu where um, we're going to finalize our phase one work with the pipe loop study possibly do around two and possibly transfer water to um neighboring agencies this year The asr project we are hoping to start piloting at least one well if not two wells this winter Which would be great in two different service areas Uh, the recycled water study. We're completing the study submitting it to the state who's already reviewed it Um, we're going to continue to to work with soco creek and support their pure water socal project public works with their irrigation projects Um, and then continue to evaluate those two projects that I mentioned the groundwater recharge project as well as the surface water augmentation the augmentation of Um and desalination we need to finalize the report On the bottom. I have just kind of two more general Tasks for us each of the alternatives that we're looking at the in lieu asr recycle water desal. They all have to have um Data for an equal comparison the water supply advisory committee provided a number of different criteria Um, three important ones are the cost timeliness and yield So we are going to spend a little bit more time looking at all the alternatives to make sure that we can really do an apples to apples comparison because we Based on the work plan. We do have decision points in front of us in terms of selecting different elements So we're spending a little bit more time Developing those metrics and then if there's been a little bit of a conversation tonight about what else are we doing to kind of inform The water supply projects because they're not they're not functioning in isolation We're doing a facilities plan at the gram hill water treatment plant To understand how we can treat more turban water how we can treat more water At gram hill do we treat it somewhere else? So those are all issues that will or concepts that would inform where we Select a water supply project and where we would put a water supply project And then we're also we're Going to bring to our city council a contract for a riverbank filtration Study that we're doing to see if in fact this rainy collector concept would work So we're doing a lot of other work that will feed into the decision making Oh just in just in terms of a time check there's a couple other sets of slides Or were you thinking we'd go through those? Entirely or how do you want to I think it would make sense if there are questions About this work that we answer those or get those on the table now just because There's a lot of other stuff and I think we can go through the The other two presentations a little bit more quickly But this is really the meat and so I'd really like to get a chance to Make sure that if there are questions and comments on this we hear them So and I'll go to the public after we go through the entire set So are there any commission commissioners or council members that have questions at this time council member matthews just very briefly Obviously staff and the water commission are just working really hard all the time on this And it's my impression that you are pretty much on target for the work program. So I just want to confirm Yes, and really I the the quarterly Updates to the water commission talk about both, you know, what's going on kind of how much money is getting spent but also What it's falling behind and what's keeping up and basically with the exception of groundwater modeling work We're pretty much on track for all of this work And just just for the benefit of the commissioners we had what? Eight or so water items on our afternoon consent agenda some of which were really big tickets, you know Yes, we in our port we have a lot of big things going on in our neck of the woods at the moment See any other questions you separate councilor crony Yeah, just I want to know if I heard you right about uh, was it the state water board and um Desalination it seems pretty remote. Is that what I was They've indicated A number of issues about the Amount of time and the complexity of the permitting process, which is really no big surprise because You know, if you've been following what's been going on with the cal and project just down the coast for example You know, they've been at it for a really long time the carlsbad project, which is a 50 million gallon per day Desal project down in san diego took years to permit and I think that the Heidi's comment is that that the The water supply advisory committee's decision framework includes both cost yield and timeliness And the timeliness one is likely not going to be Compatible, you know with the complexity and the time consumption required for the permitting process Thank you Thanks commissioner baskin. Yeah, Heidi In comparing the recycled water alternative and the desalination alternative For desal you've got findings the next steps that the project can produce the yield of the 1.2 billion gallons per year But you don't have a finding like that for the recycled So what what does recycled Water present for us in terms of an actual supplemental water supply that could meet our gap Is it is it feasible or are there are we seeing some insurmountable problems? We the study was a bit limited and when I was saying that we partnered with public works In doing that, I think we limited the scope And so it was a great study and we we got a lot of information about the potential for Recycled water in the community What we need to do and what i'm saying here is that we need to really understand the potential for groundwater recharge And what that may mean and what we're doing for the asr work is going outside of our service area to see Is there opportunity outside of our service area to inject that water? So it's very it's positive We need to do a little bit more work to bring it up to that same level for comparison in terms of that cost And and what's the status of consideration of direct potable reuse? Oh, that's a great question. Thank you for asking that Because the surface water augmentation Which is the idea that you treat wastewater. You send it up to a surface water lock loman Was something that we were going to take off the table because it wasn't regulated Those regulations were just approved by the state This year last month and so the thinking is that we would leave Direct potable on the table as well because those regulations are in the works And that would be a very efficient way cost-efficient way of using recycled water for There's other issues associated with direct potable reuse But I think because the state is actively pursuing the regulation the regulatory framework around that It would be worth including it in The the final question, which I don't know if this is the right time to answer is Where do we tie in the benefits of the diversification of our supply portfolio? So we're not so entirely reliant on the surface water It's in the decision framework. I'm going to talk about next Okay, then why don't we go right into that? Unless you had any other questions How will your transition eyes want to recognize? Chair of the SoCal Creek Water District Bruce Daniels is in the audience and john ricker from the county. So thanks for being here tonight Great, so we've Heidi mentioned and Number of in a number of her slides the discussion about cost timeliness and yield that's being the Some of the key decision criteria that the water supply advisory committee Came up with and I'm going to talk I'm going to give you more information about what the decision framework is I'm not going to talk so much about the change management strategy because that's It's a little bit less at the focus of what I wanted to really cover tonight But there is a change management strategy that allows us to adapt based on information that's developed during the study process We haven't really had to do that yet But the decision framework is something I want to keep your eye focused on as we go forward because It does set a framework for How we think about what's going to come forward and so it's about sort of expectation management so really the The key message here is the recommendations from the wassak Were about what supply options to explore how to make decisions about which option or portfolio of options to pursue And a timeline for when that's going to happen and that's basically the decision framework So the what you you heard Heidi has described the The range of alternatives Basically, it's to simultaneously explore two different approaches for supply augmentation To look at technical feasibility To develop comparable information about the key criteria And to include other kinds of criteria like energy use environmental impacts, etc These are the strategies You've seen them the groundwater strategy and then the alternative which is either recycled water or Desalinated water. This is sort of the backup if you will the how was to Create that to apply the guiding principles that and the key decision-making metrics to conduct this qualitative and quantitative comparative analysis of all the options the goal is When this decision comes to the water commission and the council and the community, obviously That everything is on the table at equal levels of development so that all the all the options are Available and can be chosen and that you can't say well, we don't know enough about that one to decide The goal is to make sure everything is there so that a decision could be made with all comparable information Again Transparency is a big issue for us making sure that we have comparability level playing field for robust decision-making process and Produced decision that has the community support needed to enable implementation to proceed this was a really important criteria for the water supply advisory committee and The goal again is to make sure that when we come out of that decision process That's supposed to happen in the fall of 2020 that we really do have Something that we all feel comfortable and confident can get done Because we need to do something. I think we've tried to demonstrate that in a number of ways in the earlier parts of the conversation tonight the when was to Line up that work so that we could produce the information needed for decision in 2020 and Even though that's still a couple of years away It's really important to be thinking about what we're trying to do here So that when you get the information you have that kind of sense of continuity of Where we've come from and how we got the decision framework we We did so this is a the complicated Work plan that you've seen there's the decision point where the information from all the different options are lined up and the goal is to Put that in front of the community the water commission and the council in that time frame and to make a decision And then move on to the implementation phases, which would happen over the following five or so years So i'm going to talk just a little bit sort of definitionally about The key decision metrics that we talked about the guiding principles the preference statements, which are also Really important in thinking about the deciding What decision to make and then the project performance metrics so The key decision metrics as we've talked about these are quant then tended to be quantitative And they're the most important. They're not certainly the only Criteria, but and you've heard about them I'm not going to read this to you, but one of the things that The the goal of this cost metric is to provide information in very comparable form using something we made up and the the water supply advisory committee worked pretty hard on which is to levelize the projects and thinking about The annual cost per million gallons of average year yield and it's a way of Not saying this one's only good in the in the drought years or this one is only good when we have a lot of water it's to create that kind of average year yield so that you have a A real comparable across a whole range of kind of ideas about what the water supply conditions are and this metric includes a preference for Using the winter water harvest strategy the groundwater strategies Even if they're up to a 30 percent more expensive than the other alternatives And that's part of the preference and the guiding principles that were also Strongly, you know considered and heavily debated by the water supply advisory committee The yield metric is The 1.2 billion gallons of water for worst-year shortages. That's the calculated average Based on the fish flows that we're we've been talking about plus the You know a climate change scenario that that looked at a somewhat drier condition than we've seen But it's 1.2 billion gallons in a worst-year shortage of 76 77 kind of timeframe uh, it's typically a kind of the worst year is typically a uh, second year of the of a Multi-year at least the second year maybe sometimes the third year of a multi-year drought So that we've looked at the multi-year droughts as well and that timeliness Is in order to address the water supply reliability and the water security issues that our community has had for decades Is to get something in place Within 10 years So those were the key metrics The guiding principles are more qualitative and their value-based statements or goals of goals preferences or requirements That are considered to be considered and there's a whole series of them and again, there's information in your Both in the handout you have but also the The staff report about these public health Really looking at making sure that what we're going to have has, you know, public health as a centerpiece of water quality so that we can really depend on that and You know use that water with confidence in our community public acceptance means that in addition to The yield and the cost and the timeliness There's other factors energy use environmental impacts that we really need to be looking at and making sure that we've taken into consideration and that we're providing information about and to support the decision-making There's a strong Fighting principle on regional collaboration that talks about promoting regional collaboration to improve regional water reliability Meeting that plan goal is a really important A plant, you know, obviously a goal for and a principle that we need to be Working towards and then finally incremental implementation This is a way to stretch out a little bit the cost and to the extent that we can, you know Incrementally implement something that's a possibly a way to Make it a little bit easier to actually get done what we need to get done These are the preferences that are stated in the document. This is again prefer the groundwater strategies Move away from these strategies only in the event that all reasonable steps to demonstrate technical feasibility of these strategies indicate They cannot meet the plan goal or exceeding key thresholds, particularly the cost criteria Advanced treated rate recycled water over desalination that was definitely a choice based on the assessment of the committee that Recycled water is more sustainable has a lower energy footprint and therefore is preferred And then consider how preferred system supply projects will contribute to system robustness Which is part of the Comment that david asked a bit about a bit ago what having to do with robustness in this situation is really diversity Sort of ability to withstand a variety of conditions that maybe are outside what we normally see So that's a that's a diversity of supply kind of Robustness is a kind of a word for diversity of supply resiliency is adaptability to different situations redundancy is obviously having multiple choices When we were having the water supply Problems we were having in the winter of 2017 for example redundancy was something that would have been really nice to have you know more pipelines or better Ability to draw water from very turbid systems obviously and then adaptive flexibility There's a lot about the future that we don't really know and we don't have control over And obviously climate change is a big one, but it's not the only one and so thinking about how are these projects might adapt to future conditions and how resilient they would be across a range of alternative futures really is a way to Help us make sure that whatever investment we're making we're going to get the biggest bang for our buck Finally several of the one of the project in particular Had perform project performance metrics associated with it, which was aquifer storage and recovery and that's in a The project performance metrics are in that particular case and in other cases where we're going to be developing these Working with the some members of a working group of the water commission It's about Determining whether various approaches are technically feasible. So the example is For aquifer storage and recovery That the average injection capacity for a well must be at least 250 gallons per minute and the point behind that number It's not just random Is that if you can't get that then you have to build more wells and the more wells you have to build The more expensive it gets. So there's a kind of a Weighing and balancing of where's the right threshold? but there's a whole series of these project performance metrics that were created for aquifer storage and recovery because it was considered as potentially a large part of A solution that might look at winter water harvest is what what can you do with it and If it works then against these key metrics and these performance criteria, then that's really You know having some objective measures is really important here Those kinds of objective measures were not these project performance metrics weren't developed for the other alternatives but that is one of the things that the Group is going to be working on and those will be part of what gets vetted out through the water commission process Imagine that it's two years from now and you have a table that looks something like this with all the criteria and The you know the boxes filled in with qualitative and quantitative measures. We're thinking for example on the qualitative ones You might use something like the consumer report type signals or symbols, but This is a way that you know it there would obviously be lots of information behind this but at the summary level you would have in one place the information that would allow you to look at all the alternatives in a Very comparable way and that's really the goal of the Of the process So what's next is we're we're continuing to implement the work plan to produce the information needed And as I mentioned the water commission working group is assisting staff with further development of the comparative analysis framework And we're going to be reviewing The full water commission will be reviewing the working group And then ultimately the the plan is and this is the direction in the water supply advisory committee's report Is for the water commission to make recommendations to the council on the details of The decision-making approach that would for council's review and action so that the council would have an opportunity and the public would have an opportunity to discuss the full thing before it actually gets populated with data and Then we would go back and fill in all the information and if only were that easy that would be really great So with that i'm gonna I can take your questions We'll take a pause. There's one more brief section So if there's any questions right now people have or we can hold council member matthews again It's a quick one and i'm sure it's in the timeline, but what's the approximate benchmark for Bringing the water commission's recommendation on the decision-making approach I would say before the end of this calendar year sure Commissioner angford comment on that um for the for the sake of the the council when we bring that You have an opportunity not just to review the work that we've done in the context as that rosemary's laid out But also to provide new criteria as this as the city's values Or other competing issues have have come to the fore. So we're hopeful for a a good two-way conversation at that time Before we move on in the second next section who is on that subcommittee that's looking at it if you don't mind And so it would be bringing the water commission's recommendations for the decision-making approach a vigorous discussion feedback perhaps revision and then process it Great, okay. We'll move on to the the last leg before we get a public comment the one thing that we heard a little bit about in the um earlier presentation From in some of the public comment was the need for The water department in the city to work regionally and I um I took a lot of time in writing the staff report to provide some background about the sort of policy framework from both the state and the and the regional local level about why we should be working regionally and I'm so I'm not going to repeat that but I am going to just um, this is a very quick summary of some of the big drivers of Why we're doing collaboration and of course it's the right thing to do because Over here on the side of the hill if we don't work together to Help support our you know and improve our regional resiliency No one is going to be here to help us. We have to help ourselves so it's and I think that that the the staff and the um, and you know, a lot of the elected officials for the various Organizations that are involved in the work we do regionally all we all get that it's like we're on our own over here and we need to Work together because we have resources and if we work together well, we can create better resiliency and reliability for everybody Um So a number of things are going on on what regional water supply planning collaborations Integrated regional water management planning There's I believe been three earlier versions from the 2015 version and maybe even some earlier versions from that But certainly we uh, the city plays a role and is engaged with other regional water purveyors and the county and the public works agencies and what have you and working together on updating the regional water management plan um And then also working to implement various kinds of strategies that are the follow-on to that One thing that's going on right now is that there is a grant for looking at how to increase affordability and reliability of water to what are called disadvantaged communities that has a very specific definition in the But we're looking at it in a way that is because we don't have very many of these disadvantaged communities in our service area I was thinking about it in a creative way and we've had some feedback from the state board that that might be feasible to them So we're working very hard on this and we'll be exploring this More as we go forward through the grant the planning grant and then there's money for implementation Come after that Sustainable groundwater management act the city has been very actively engaged in both the mid county the santa cruz mid county and santa margarita groundwater agencies And the development of groundwater sustainability planning particularly the work that's underway in the mid county basin We do have representatives On the board of the mid county basin, which is the council member matthews and then commissioner baskin commissioner baskin is on the advisory committee's a glutton for punishment and we're so glad that he is On the advisory committee for the development of the mid county groundwater sustainability plan And then commissioner anchor is sitting representing the city on the santa margarita basin Staff is very actively engaged in a collaborative staffing of these two agencies which are relatively new like the mid county is created in march of 2017 and um And the santa margarita basin was created in the summer of 2018. So no 16 and 17. Sorry And then We've done some things specifically related to working with our Our regional partners of water supply partners We have the Highly mentioned this we have a mo u from 2016 with so-called creek for a pilot program on water transfers Focus right now is on water quality compatibility and we do have ongoing operational analysis and planning happening With that to sort of see if we went this down this road. How would it actually work? Uh, we did a 2017 memorandum of agreement with the santa margarita basin water districts in the county to explore the conjunctive use of Surface and groundwater in the basin. One of the advantages of the santa margarita basin is that we have big infrastructure in that basin We bring water down from lakloman. We have the felton diversion. We have the felton booster We have infrastructure in that basin that could help us move water around And so a lot of what we're talking about with them is who needs what how could we do it together? and that's a little bit more um embryonic if you will then what's going what's been going on with the um The so-called creek basin, but nevertheless, I think it's a it's a good sign that we're working together and really putting our money where our mouth is in terms of regional collaboration and then I wanted to To talk a little bit very briefly about some efforts that we have ongoing Related to natural resources management and planning and one of them is the san lorenzo 2025 It's a regional partnership that we formed with other parties Including the county and the watershed council and the san lorenzo valley water district A number of players involved the involving specifically the um san lorenzo watershed Because as you saw earlier and you've heard we're we're going to be making a big investment of water supply in that basin to support these threatened and dangerous species And it would be really a good idea If simultaneously with our making that water supply commitment that the watershed health is actually being restored to a point where You know, we're going to maximize the potential that we're going to get the result from that investment of water supply that we really want to get So it's not coming up with new plans. There's been a lot of planning done on what watershed health An aquatic ecosystem improvements can be done and could be done, but there hasn't been money. So it's been really focused on strategically working together to obtain funding from the various state and other kinds of sources to Make some of these projects actually happen and we've had some really good success and we're hoping to have more And then finally the long-term monitoring for juvenile steelhead in regional streams The city and the county and so cal and others have been involved with this effort for pretty long time now and I think that the work that's been going on in San Lorenzo 2025 and the habitat planning work that this Conservation planning work that city's been doing has really brought this into focus again. And so there's renewed Effort and trying to look at How to take all the data that's been collected create a functional database that people can access do data analysis And then redesign the program for the future based on what we learn out of that analysis at the same time continuing Make that investment in Oh with that I think You said that's the last portion of the presentation. Are there any questions before we open it up for the public Commissioner wadlow It's really a schedule question that goes to the issue of regional collaboration You mentioned and it says in the staff report It notes that the city's been actively involved in both the Santa Cruz mid county And the Santa Margarita groundwater agency work If I understand it correctly the mid county work Needs to lead to a groundwater sustainability plan by january of 2020 How does that integrate with our schedule? In terms of decision making around groundwater alternatives Because clearly that would be a major component of achieving sustainability in the basin So how do those two things kind of mesh? So, uh, the issue that we're looking at I think with respect, you know, um, maybe I should say it this way that Although we're putting information together It's not like it we don't know anything and then you know It's six months down the road and then we know something and there's another six months So it's a kind of a continuous process So what we're doing and what we will do in that situation just as I think so kell will do with respect to You know their pure water so kell project is whatever the state of the information is at the time will be You know described discussed whatever and However, that plan might come together would deal with whatever the information is That's available at the time. I think one of the things we all recognize is that we don't have Would be better if we had all these schedules synced up, but they're not synced up and That's just the reality of the world we live in so we're going to do the best we can Thank you Maybe I wasn't understanding you correctly, but in terms of the four different strategies and intention to reach decisions in 2020 on what to pursue It seems to me that it's extremely optimistic to think that all the information is going to be there That will allow the evaluation of the feasibility of one or more of those strategies There's a lot of work that needs to be done. There are a lot of variables I think the the city is proceeding in good faith to have the information But that's a a pretty stiffly, you know stiff goal to achieve Are you saying that in 2020 the decisions will be made based on one of those or more of those strategies? Based on the information that's available Or is it your sense that before the decision is made the The information has to be complete enough to really understand the relative feasibility between the different alternatives Um, can I ask a clarifying question before I try to answer your question? Sure. Are you speaking about the decision about the water supply project for standard price cruise? Okay I think one of the huge benefits of what the water supply advisory committee did in laying out a the decision process is Put us on notice from the beginning about the kind of information that needed to be developed for all the alternatives And I think that we are specifically designing our technical analysis to Feed information into that decision made matrix and I think that Uh You know, we recognize that there's a lot going on here, but our goal is to try to provide comparable information Across the whole range of alternatives at the same time for the decision process in 2020 okay, um Man proposes god disposes. I mean Departments had all sorts of goals in the past some of which have been met many of which haven't things get delayed Somebody doesn't come forward. Do we don't have this information? You know, I mean downer. I mean Well, I mean I want to you know instill a bit of reality in the discussion This is all very theoretical in terms of what is hope will be achieved by 2020 And I guess my real question is if that achievement doesn't occur For uh reasons beyond the control of the department and it's hard enough You know, I've been on the commission a long time on and off and I know how hard it is to do one simple thing we're doing four complicated things and Just you know having to do loop studies and this I mean it's You know, I get lost fairly easily in all the requirements that all the the information that's going to be needed in order to Um to to know enough to really be able to make a decision As far as I'm concerned every time I read about a study on the so-called creek water Water aquifer it says something different in terms of whether the water moves through or the water stays there Maybe we know that now. Maybe we don't but if we don't know it in 2020 Are we really going to be in a position to make a decision on the first two strategies? And I guess my question is if we don't Are you saying we're just going to have to make a decision because we want to move forward with a project Or will in fact the whole process have to be delayed until we get a sufficient amount of information to really be able to compare Those alternatives So I would say that the answer to that question is that the water supply advisory committee Contemplated the need for two kinds of changes to the plan that they laid out One of them is called adaptation, which is uh, you know, more or less, uh I'm sorry if I'm getting them right. There's two adjustment and an adaptation and adjustment might be The small thing to say, okay We're going to look at this this way instead of the way that they might have contemplated And the other one is called adaptation. There's very specific direction That's laid out in the change management strategy that if it appears that we're not going to be able to meet the criteria of having reasonably appropriate data for decision making at the time that was established then we will go through the process of doing the The adaptation and that is a process is laid out and defined that requires counsel Action it just it requires a public review and comment of it. So the goal is not to You know not to throw the whole thing away because we can't get there in the date that was contemplated But to work really hard to try to get there and if we can't there's a the change management strategy could be employed Mr. Baskin I think it was commissioner commissioner enghford's baby called adaptive flexibility that that we built into the plan to The risk that we wouldn't would get to 2020 and not be ready to make a decision And we've got and as rosemary said there's a whole process for dealing with that Believe me, none of us thought there was any guarantee that by 2020 we would be able to make a Decision but we also realized how important it was for the community and frankly for the functionality of our water system that we Have a tight timeline and it was optimistic Yeah, and it was late 2020 by the way Let me just say that that is a It sounds like a reasonable approach, but what does it really mean? Adaptability means when we get there we try to figure out what to do next And I think that's what if we don't have the information we're going to the council and the commission But mainly the council is going to be faced with having to decide well Where do we go from here in terms of do we accept some project or do we start another whole process to plan and Do more studies. I mean that's what's been going on in the city since I went on the water commission in 1993 I mean we've been looking for a water supply alternative and Now we're looking at for water supply alternatives and you know, we They're all it's just points out that it's very complicated to get An option that meets the city's needs and is acceptable to the community and can be done at a cost that People can live with well at this point. We're going to continue to take questions So if there's questions that people have and then maybe we'll go to the public See no no questions at this time. We'll go to the public for comment if you'd like to speak up Now is your time you have two minutes And this is in regards to the water supply study session presentations Hi, I'm john eard. I've been kind of tracking on this whole process for the last Two or three years, whatever it's been number one, I'm very encouraged about the priority and effort that's gone on by the our water department in Fixing up the system that we have which had a lot of problems in it And in a sense was wasting water. So we've got a more efficient system I think we're looking at it in a more systemic way as to how we manage it which improves Productivity as well. And so I want to just applaud that work and then an extra applause for the Work that's going on to look at this collaboratively because frankly if Except for history if we were going to start from ground zero here We would create a different kind of agency We'd create a regional agency and we'd then be pursuing things Probably with certain kind of different priority But that's you know, we've got what we've got in terms of our heritage here But I am really encouraged by the efforts that rosemary and your team Are making in the soquel water district board and so forth We have a transfer program right now And that is we're transferring most of our water to the ocean It's just not A system that we're paying for except by the absence of it being Productively turned around and used by either our neighbors or ourselves I'm less worried about the question as to whether When we transfer water if we can transfer water as to whether we're going to get it back Because we're that water is going right now to the ocean. We're not getting that back So I think that's a problem that can be solved We transfer whether we look at it regionally. We try to transfer it. We work cooperatively Our our our neighbors pay something into us that helps the system And we'll get to the question of Reducing our risk. I think over time. So anyway, I just applaud applaud the work that's been done here Right on time. Thanks john. Is there any other member of the public that would like to speak to this? Sir, you can step right up any other member of the public now is your time to stand up Hi, I'm still jerry paul I also want to applaud the effort of the structure of water supply advisory committee um, and it seems like you really are following the uh procedures and guidelines that water supply advisory committee sat um I When you lose a coastal well due to saline incursion, it's a triple whammy You not only lose the well, but you have to find a water replacement source And you need to find a way to transport the water to the vicinity of where the lost well was And you have a time delay. You might lose six years or something With that water like john was saying goes out to sea Triple whammy We share an aquifer with so cal creek water district. I think we owe it to ourselves to fill up their aquifer ASAP and I think we're going to do it with stream water transfers in lube Starting this december And I invite you to If there is going to be a loop test accelerate it And run in parallel with whatever else needs to be run so we can actually Turn a valve. This is the one thing all this water discussion hasn't done in the in since 2011 when When uh, uh, the county issued the report on conjunctive use we can actually Do something with I mean actually move some water this december If we set our minds to it and I invite you to Set that as a goal and and then after that set us the big goal that we have big pipes um in the places mentioned and uh, uh, A thing I call lack refer you can use any word you want We don't have a quote On how much lack refer would cost widen two pipelines put it in a well that felt and get water rights jointly Please Make a quote the other things have quotes. D cell has a quote. Thank you, sir. Next speaker, please I mean council members commissioners and water department staff I wanted to touch a little bit on the earlier presentation too where I think it's so important whenever we talk about Whatever our water supply options are is that our usage here has been flat for Years and that if I recall correctly our water consumption peaked in the late 20th century to spite thousands of more people living here so when we get frustrated community members about Housing or homelessness or traffic that these issues are not intractable and we have to address them all continue like in concert and that the flat wire usage Pattern or trend that we've been observing is a long-term pattern and that we really need to look at localized collaboration not only across the region, but also within the departments like with public works and um and parks departments so that We utilize stormwater management techniques um, whether it's green walls or curb cuts So that when a Community member goes to get a permit They can actually know that they can make a little mini water resources of management project instead of just a remodel of their home Um, and big picture. I think that there's moving towards recycled water is the best protection We have against climate change variability looking forward because that is really the most sustainable option is to reuse What we're already extracting from the environment and not pulling every cubic foot out of the sands or rivers that we can because The fish really need that habitat that we've been taxing for decades. So thank you all. Thank you Next speaker. Is there any other member of the public that would like to speak on this item? Okay, you'll be our last speaker for the evening Thank you. Good evening. Becky Steinbrenner from Aptos Thank you all for your hard work and your good reports and your dedication to solving this problem um, I I have a question in the Recycled water plan. I was surprised to see that did a la viega golf course was not Included in that it seems that it would be a good use of recycled water to water the golf course Which I understand requires uses almost as much water as ucs. He does so there we go um And I would like to thank commissioner shifrin for asking the question about the north coast of fish Fish habitat requirements. That's been a question on my mind as well So here we have the north coast stream water that is um able to be sent wherever because it is pre 1914 water rights And so what I am again asking is that that water go more to the mid county area It's not just so cal creek water districts aquifer. I I am in a small water district Also in the parisma aquifer So we have to think about those other water companies those private well users and it's not just so cal creek It is the health of the total basin area I would like to see um Rainy collectors put in along the river and the turbidity Turbidity requirements adjusted so that you could take more water from the the river storm flash flash flows um I am really happy that so cal creek water district has had the foresight To put resources toward the pipe loop study and that as I understand from mr. Taj du for is looking very good So the problem that flint michigan had hopefully we will not have here between using Ground water and surface water and the chemistry problems that could come up. It's looking very good Thank you. I do not want to see you wrap it up. Thank you. Thank you My my final thing is it's like your final sentence if you could wrap it up All right I don't want to see things injected in our aquifers because if there are problems you can't get them back And my final question is how much are you willing to sell to other areas? And how soon thank you. Thank you Okay, we'll bring it back to the council for just fine and commission for final discussion I'll start on the left. Um, there's no action that looking for this just receiving the report So if anyone would like to provide some final comments as we go around the room, I'll start with you commissioner shifrin Well, I've been trying to contain myself. I haven't done too well um, so make one final point is that We and you represent the city of santa cruz And our fundamental concern and what the water supply advisory committee worked on what the commission's been working on what the council's been concerned about and what's been sort of Defined quantitatively is how are we going to get 1.2 billion gallons of water a year? That's seems to me the primary concern If so called creek water district wants to pay the city the cost of moving water From excess water that the city has into their aquifer that's well and good But unless there's some part of that which is going to provide water to the city when it needs it Up to the amount that the city needs then I think it's not the priority the priority is coming up with Strategies that are going to provide 1.2 billion gallons of water for the city That's from my perspective what this is all about and The other Aspects of this like just what's being called the in lieu. It all sounds great. It's very conjunctive. It's very Is it it's very cooperative, but it doesn't solve the city's water supply problem? And that's our primary responsibility And you know, I don't think that's going to get lost in the process I know the staff is very well aware of it But from what we hear sometimes it's not universally shared The final thing I want to say is just to thank the staff for their presentation tonight They took what is an extremely complicated and technical amount of information and made it relatively Comprehensible, so thank you very much and within a not too terribly long period of time Thank you Councilmember brown here here. Thank you for a very thorough presentation and report and for making it Digestible to people who are not as familiar with our water system As you all are and we don't spend all our time working on it. So, um, thank you. Appreciate it Sure. Wadlow Councilmember norion. Thank you. Okay vice mayor Watkins. I just had a few comments. I agree. Thank you so much for your presentation and for Helping us, especially newer council members get caught up Um, I also want to thank our commissioners here as well for their hard work and passion to help solve this obviously very complex Situation that we're in in Santa Cruz My insight is um a little bit outside of the scope of what we discussed tonight And it's essentially around and I'm sure many of you have followed Around sort of just health equity and access and looking at affordability And if you're looking at international examples, you can see it in australian south africa and such We're seeing that folks are increasingly being coming unable to access quality and affordable water And we know that our situation in Santa Cruz is um not to that level Thankfully and that we are seeing an imbalance of equity and cost of living and household costs as as it relates to affordability here And so i'm interested in learning more about and perhaps it's for a future discussion when we discuss our values about how we can look at health equity Look at some of the aspects of affordability for water and access to all Especially recognizing that one of the thresholds is a 30 percent You know increase uh or 30 percent more for the cost component Which could essentially or will essentially most likely be passed to the consumer But um, i'm sure many other council members also hear that we have um, you know increasing fees and imbalance of household costs and and I think that we don't want to see ourselves in a situation where we have to Try to repair extreme imbalance and and how can we be mindful about equity and How that fits into affordability of of accessing a key resource or essential resource such as water in addition to the addition all the other concerns that were mentioned previously about just the complexity of how to diversify the sources and and to um commissioner shifrin's uh earlier comment about you know We struggle with enough information constantly and also increasing technology and ability to understand to gather that information for The best decision we possibly can and that's where I instinctually go And I think we have to be in action because inaction is also a policy decision So how can we balance the two moving forward to ensure that we were thinking about long-term policy solutions? Which is incredibly complex, but I appreciate the opportunity. I'm learning every time I come I learned so so much. I appreciate the presentation opportunity and for all the hard work. So thank you wish your mechas unless City manager Bernal wants to say anything I think there should be a high level of urgency around trying to make the decision in the 2020 timeline And the decision was made tonight for a stage one alert. Why because we have a very fragile system We do not have redundancy. We don't have robustness. I'd like to give One concrete example of that in one of the wettest winners in a decade last winter in february We had a break of the pipeline that comes from block lomond and No water coming through there Very little water from up the coast because we had pumps under water We were trying to pump as much water as we could out of the belt swells But draining the storage we have in the city We were in within days or a week of taps running dry That's our primary water supply. We don't have redundancy and just a couple of months later We had an algae bloom that had to take it offline again. The good news was the river had cleared We could pull water out of the river like we couldn't earlier But if that had happened like summer Again into serious problems We don't have redundancy And in our system and and that should be a goal that's a near-term goal Not wait until the last Finest data point is found three decades from now So I think the urgency is there and that should be a key element in our thinking Councilmember crone Thank you. Yeah, I I want to reiterate but folks have already said but I really appreciate the The staff presentation tonight. It was quite illuminating and just you know taking a lot of difficult information and boiling it down and I guess the last thing I would say Was when you talked about disadvantaged communities? Rosemary and I assume you're talking about sp 350 and that there's some sort of I understand that there's like We're supposed to minimize the impact on rate payer bills. And so I I I do want to keep that out there too In because there's a definition of what disadvantaged communities are but just in general In this community to be be aware of those rate payer bills because I hear a lot about that And uh, thanks again for the presentation Mr. Nabaskin For about six years now since I got on the water commission. I have been unfortunately, I suppose immersed in water To a degree that I did not think possible And I will tell you that the thing that I appreciate the most From our staff is Their ability to manage what is a very complex system and a very broad range of complex problems It is not by any means a simple system and the solutions that we're looking at are not by any means simple solutions As we go through the decision-making process to comment on something commissioner shifrin was saying We might get there in 2020 and need to buy a little more time to make a good decision But at least our process defines how we will consider that so that we won't be just sitting in a vacuum when we get there And I think for all of us as we deal with the issue of having a sufficient water supply we should Manage to keep in mind to not let the perfect serve as an obstacle to doing the good None of these none of the systems we're talking about are perfect systems They all have pluses and minuses Things that we might like better about them Thing but hopefully we will stick to doing a data driven process That really enables us to sort of put away our personal preferences and look at what's really going to work for the city So that we have a functional system Thank you cut some over matthews A combination of the staff report and the power points is a great pair. So that Put it in a binder and refer to it I want to say amen to andy's comments about our primary charge from day one has to been to meet the long-term needs Of the city of santa cruz water customers And to the extent anything we can do regionally and collaboratively we will make the effort to do But our responsibility is for our water customers And I second the other comments about Moving towards a A functional decision in a reasonable amount of time that we we do not have forever on this Just a brief comment, please know that the relatively Few questions that you generally get during presentations is really a product of having incredibly thorough and detailed Presentation so I just I want to say that because each time you present to us We don't tend to have a lot of questions and I really just it really is the amount of detail and thoroughness that you Prepare for us. And so I just want to appreciate that The Continuity expressions of gratitude to staff. I'd I'd like to note the the level of credibility that We've developed with the members of the public who've been attending this subject for many many years and have come to appreciate The focused work that you all have been doing. I think that's a a big step forward and provides a foundation for us to be able to Implement the decisions we make down downstream Oh I'd like to say this and that um, you know, I think the process that's been set up as a good one in terms of one the The water supply advisory's recommendation is also One that set a foundation for us to look at not only our infrastructure But you know having to expand the water supply What I think it also speaks to is the water departments Look for the future about how to build out our infrastructure You know, we have not as a city really invested in our infrastructure as much as we should have and how we kind of move forward to Look at our needs not only in the water department others I think this is a really good example on how we should be really considering the desperate need for us to invest in In infrastructure citywide I want to congratulate the commissioners for all their work on this. I mean, I feel like we're in good hands With you as well in terms of your review and just by the nature of your questions and thinking And time that you put into it. I feel very fortunate to have commissioners Like that providing us with their advisory opinion. So I feel good knowing that the recommendations I'm confident are one that are based on really good sound You know reason and also based on available data and information So I thank you for that and then last thank again the staff not only for the earlier presentation But just the time that went in I think this was really time well spent and I'll look forward to future updates and And I think make it an annual thing. I guess we'll we'll probably have another one in next year where the commission will join us again So thank you Commissioner our councilmember matthews and just to state what I think is the obvious These materials would be put up on your webpage and available to the public See no further con comments. We'll adjourn the meeting and again. Thank you for being here this evening