 Council members can turn on there. Hi, Shebra. Make sure and see who we've got. One, two, three. There's Martin. We're going to go ahead and get started. We do have a quorum. Good afternoon. Welcome to the 1pm session of the February 23rd, 2021 meeting of the City Council. I have a few announcements and then we will move on to our meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television Channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, cityofsanacruz.com. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely. I want to thank the public for staying home to view today's City Council meetings. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, call in at the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on using the instructions on your screen. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming, so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. When it is time for public comment, press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak during public comment, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have comment on your item of interest. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Next at 3.23 p.m. We'll mark the eighth anniversary of the horrific day that we lost Sergeant Butch Baker and Detective Elizabeth Butler. Sergeant Baker and Detective Butler sacrificed their lives in order to protect and serve the city of Santa Cruz. They tragically lost their lives during what they love to do, making our community a safer place. We joined our police department and the entire Santa Cruz community in remembering their ultimate sacrifice. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of both Sergeant Baker and Detective Butler. I'd like the council and our community to please join in a moment of silence honoring both Sergeant Baker and Detective Butler. These two heroes will never be forgotten and we will continue to honor their service and ultimate sacrifice. Before we begin our meeting, I just have a few announcements and then we'll go ahead and get started on the regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television Channel 25 and streaming on the city's website cityofsantaacruz.com. If you wish to comment on an agenda item, today instructions are provided on your screen. We will provide these instructions throughout the meeting whenever we move into an agenda item that will be opened up for public comment. Please note public comment is heard only on items council is taking action on and not regular updates and reports. The items that will be open for public comment during today's meeting are numbers nine through 25 on our agenda. I'd like to ask the council members if they have any statements of disqualification today. City Clerk Administrator to announce any additions or deletions to our agenda. Is oral communications on our agenda? Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda. Oral communications will occur at around 5.30 p.m. tonight this evening. I'd like to call on the city attorney next to provide the report on the closed session. Mayor's members of the City Council, this morning the council met in closed session beginning at 9.30 a.m. to discuss the following items. One was real property negotiations, the subject property, Carmelita Colleges, and also Lottie Slide Park. City Council met with its negotiator and gave direction. There was no reportable action on that item. Council also met in a conference with legal counsel for three items of existing litigation. Those are the Santa Cruz homeless union versus the city of Santa Cruz. Don't morph the words at all versus the city of Santa Cruz. And finally, Regents of the University of California versus the city of Santa Cruz. Council received reports from in a direction to the city of Kansas office. There's no reportable action on those items. There were also items of anticipated litigation, one involving significant exposure to litigation with one potential item to discuss the other involving considering initiation of litigation. There was no reportable action on those items. Item four was a conference with labor negotiators involving SEIU temporary employees. That discussion was deferred. Item five was a public employee performance evaluation involving the city manager position. There was no reportable action on that item. Thank you, Mr. Kandadi. I'd like to request that our city manager, Martin Bernal, on the city's business, COVID-19 response and events. Council, good afternoon. I'd like to ask our fire chief, Jason Hayduk, if you could please give us an update on the COVID-19 quarrat with respect to the virus and the vaccination process. City Council, Jason Hayduk, your fire chief. At the request of city manager Bernal, I'm going to give a brief update on where we are here locally and in the state. And the good news is that our case numbers are rearing what's happening in the rest of the state. And in the last two weeks, our overall case count here within the county has fallen by 70 percent. And there's a number of counties that are going to a less restrictive tier of San Mateo and Marin being noticed today. And if our numbers continue in that direction, I would expect that county health will update our local tier and begin to move us into a less restrictive category. If I could have Bonnie Bush pull up the link for the county because this is very much a county public health emergency and it's in their realm. If you go to the county health website, they have a COVID-19 webpage. And if you look at the overall curve, you can see that our case numbers have fallen dramatically after a pre-significant surge that occurred over the holidays, over Christmas, starting a Thanksgiving Christmas in the years. And we are now mirroring the level that we were back in July, which is really good. The caveat to this is that there are some concerns about additional surges later on in March because of different variants that have potentially come into our community. But the good news is, if we can stick with those things that we know that work, as far as social distancing, washing hands and masking up, we can really minimize that spread. And if Bonnie, if you could click on the vaccine link and we can show where people can go for vaccines because those are being distributed. I know it's been a fairly challenging process as far as getting access to vaccines. We are seventh out of these 58 counties in the state of California as far as where we rank for distribution of vaccines to members in our community. So we are doing better than a vast majority of other counties. We're not doing as well as we would like. However, if you go to the COVID-19 website on the county, you can see where we are within the tiers. We're currently in 1B about to go to 1C. They've just hit the threshold, vaccinating 50% of those who are 65 and older within our community. And so they'll start opening up the vaccine distribution. And the county is really relying on the multi-county entities. And those are the healthcare organizations such as PAM, Sutter, Dignity, as well as local healthcare providers to distribute that vaccine. When I would urge everyone, regardless of where you are in the community, that the access to this website and the parameters are changing, which is one of the challenges that we face. We're at a year in this process. But the parameters keep changing for who can get a vaccine and when. So this is a really important source of information for everyone to access where they are in that and then take advantage of those opportunities. If you fit within those parameters, whether it's age, whether it's geographic within the community, whether you're an at-risk group. And when that vaccine becomes available, take advantage of that opportunity and that will get us closer to being done with COVID. And like I said earlier, we've hit the one-year mark where we've been dealing with this. And I know we're all tired, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. And so I just really urge everyone to stay up to date and not just rely on information that you heard a month ago, a week ago, because it does change on a regular basis. And this will be your best source of information. Are there any questions from the council or the mayor? Council, have any questions for Chief Hydrick? Seeing none, really great, great, great news. And I hope we can make it through the March possibility and continue on the downward trend. So thank you to everybody in our community and keep the masks on. Justin, you have a question for Jason? Yeah, I just had one quick question. Do you have any sense of if we're going to move into the next tier when that might occur? I know there's earlier last year there were certain thresholds for maintaining case counts, like the number of case counts for two weeks or so. Is there any update on the criteria for moving between tiers? I don't know that there's been strict changes in the criteria, but I do know that we have to meet those criteria from a time period before we can move into that less restrictive tier. It doesn't work the other way if we have a change in our case counts, they can move us into a more restrictive tier much more quickly. My sense, given the numbers that we have here locally and what's happening in the state, if we can maintain what we've been doing here as a community and as that vaccination gets distributed more widely, I do believe that we will move into a less restrictive tier in the immediate future, but it won't happen until next week. Thank you. Any other questions from council members? Seeing none, thank you. Chief Higik for that update and Martine, I'll turn it back to you. The only thing I would add with respect to the vaccinations we did just with the council knows we did get the notification from the county that they're starting their planning process for vaccinating essential workers that next category and we have city employees that are fall within those categories, so we're working with them to plan for that. So that's a sign that that's coming soon, so that's good news. So they're making plans to roll out that next phase so we can get some of our employees in the city who are in those categories vaccinated as soon as possible. And without that, that's all I have for you today. Thank you very much. Thank you, Martine. I'll call on the city clerk to provide any updates to the council meeting calendar. There are no updates. Thank you. We'll now move on to item eight, which is the reporting out on... Let me grab my agenda here. The opportunity for council members to update council on any external committee meetings that occurred during the last council, since the last council meeting. So this will be the time for council members to report out actions on external boards, committees and joint powers authority meetings. For future meetings, please come prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that occurred since the last council meeting so that council and the public can be informed. There is a list of everybody's assignments in your agenda packet and I will go ahead and call on council member Golder and then council member Cummings and then vice mayor Bruder. So council member Watkins and Calotary Johnson and I attended the city school's committee and I'm speaking on behalf of all three of us, but so we've learned that the school has spent over a million dollars in ventilation to get ready for the students returning to school as soon as possible. I think probably by the end of last week, all of the, at least the elementary schools, teachers and staff have been vaccinated and I'm pretty sure the secondary also. And so we learned that they're planning a robust summer school at Galt Bayview, B40 in Harbor and they're going to continue with the every other week testing through the county office of education for the staff and parents will also have the option if they don't want to return to in-person hybrid instruction to continue a distance learning academy and they're expecting that to be about 10 percent of the student population at this point. We heard from Tony Elliott that we have over 16,000 dollars in scholarship funds. What was it that we spent in 2020? Was that what it was? And then we have 46,000 in the fund currently and it's expected to grow over the next year. Maybe they can fill me in if I missed anything there and that both funds are coming from the cannabis tax and so we were discussing ways to utilize those for pro-social activities for youth through Parks and Rec collaboration and currently Parks and Rec is also hosting a small distance learning academy at the Loud Nelson Center and so the dates for the summer school through Santa Cruz City School right now are starting July excuse me June 7th going through June 25th so three week session with a short break and then June 28th to July 16th and it would just be 830 to 12 for students so if I forgot anything my partners can add on but for update great. Thank you councilmember next up I believe I had councilmember Cummings. Thank you and good afternoon everyone to start the ambag meeting that we had during the month of February was relatively short I think of the actions we took we pretty much just passed the consent agenda but there was a presentation by the executive director and one of the things that came out of that presentation was that the city of Santa Cruz had applied for funding from the California Transportation Commission's active transportation program for the Santa Cruz rail trail segment 7 project and the city applied and was recommended to receive $9.1 million of funding and so this was back on February 11th but at that time the California Transportation Commission was going to be considering the staff recommendation at its March meeting and the expectation is that we'll likely receive that funding so fingers crossed when the California Transportation Commission meets next month that you know hopefully we'll get the funding for the next segment of the rail trail. In addition to that the revenue subcommittee met and I'll also ask that some of my colleagues can also weigh in on this but a big part of that discussion was really looking at the budget projections over the next year or two in different circumstances you know if we have resources from the federal government and if we don't have resources coming in and one of the things that I think became very apparent is that regardless of whether or not we receive resources financial resources from the federal government we still have a structural deficit that we're going to have to deal with a lot of which is being driven by pension costs and having to meet those pension obligations and so even though we're going to be getting funding from the federal government to help offset some of the lack of revenue from the pandemic we still have these ongoing expenditures that are going to make it really difficult for us to get back to kind of where we were and not be in this deficit. I'm not on the criminal justice council but I was able to attend that meeting as a member of the public and one of the things that came out of that meeting was that there was a recognition that throughout the region there's been a desire to address some of the well to address police reform and and and so a subcommittee was created that's consisting of and not limited to members of this uh the city councils from around the region law enforcement agencies from around the region and the objective is to see if there's um policy regional policy decisions that can be agreed upon that all the jurisdictions would adopt and so those the next meeting of the criminal justice councils in may and so I think that between now and then there's going to be some meetings with the subcommittee to discuss policies that can be implemented regionally and then finally the public safety committee is meeting tomorrow at 5 30 p.m. and so members of the public are interested you can go on the city's website to get a copy of the agenda and that meeting will be at 5 30 tomorrow evening. Thank you councilmember Cummings and my cue up here. Too many things open on my computer. Vice mayor Bruder. Thank you mayor Meyers. I attended the visit Santa Cruz sports meeting. I sit on that board with councilmember Watkins and during that meeting there were myself, vice mayor Bruder and councilmember Watkins appointed to that board in those seats and financial statements November December 2020 was discussed and then there was quite a lengthy report on the state industry in the hotel the U.S. hotel rooms are empty and here in the county has seen a significant decrease as you all know and so you know with the decrease in occupancy some of the creative ideas that have come about including working from hotel rooms were discussed. There was also discussion on COVID ready businesses and dedicated businesses with with safety in mind as the number one priority for employees and their patrons in that industry and outreach also through social media channels that that about some did that if there anything else councilmember Watkins could comment on and then the other committee was the two by two city of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz county collaboration and this last meeting was February 10th and we had discussions and updates on project room key and they're currently over 600 individuals sheltered with various funds COVID funds and through those programs we discussed vaccination plans and went through the discussion up to the various distributions through the county public health as well as the various medical distributions but prioritizing those experiencing homelessness and how that process looking at shared distribution at those that are 65 years or older and other certain criteria within that group. There were discussions about the county six month and three year plan which will be coming up on their county board of supervisors I believe March 9th meeting it's a study session plan with basically four buckets of activity. I don't know all the details yet and I think that will be coming but really with the human services department and housing for health department working together on lobbying our state and federal legislators and working together on on preventing and ending homelessness and that next meeting will also be in March and I sit on that with Mayor Meyers. Vice Mayor Brunner next up I have councilmember Brown. Thank you so I have a report from two of the commissions on which I serve the first the area agency on aging group that is representative of all of the jurisdictions in the county and we need to talk about issues related to senior services needs etc. He does a lot of legislative advocacy he's like one of the key people who keeps an eye on what's happening in Sacramento and really works there and to keep us informed and to advocate and so we at our last meeting decided to because the state is actually I just wanted to say this yay the state is developing a master plan on aging finally and really trying to coordinate services and kind of address do needs assessment in a more deliberate way and coordinate services so it's a long-term planning process but we are going to have our we've dedicated our next meeting to discussing that and there's some some really great stuff in the the proposed kind of framework for for this master plan and some people who are interested in learning more about this and or weighing in with our in our kind of you know outreach and brainstorming session that was going to be March 17th at our regular meeting time 10 a.m. to noon to Wednesday you can get more information at the AAA Seniors Council website and we'll do a lot of outreach to make sure it gets out in the community but it's a really great opportunity to learn more about what's happening and it's very exciting because there's this is the first time that I am aware of in my years that the the state has focused this much attention and commitment to providing resources for senior needs and so that's one so March 17th 10 to noon join us if you can and then the RTC the Regional Transportation Commission at its last meeting after many years of study and discussion and many public hearings one of which concluded at our last meeting we voted to accept a report that would provide for alternatives analysis and a preferred alternative use of the rail corridor that includes some kind of public transit rail service so again just one more milestone and we'll you know keep moving forward and I'm glad to hear from councilmember Cummings that funding for our next segment is forthcoming great councilmember commentary Johnson did you have any updates thank you okay great and councilmember Watkins same I think mine recovered by my colleagues thank you okay great I have a couple of updates I did attend the Central Coast Community Power Policy Board meeting last week one big highlight I think our community be interested in is that they did the board did approve the availability of an additional $750,000 for a program for electric car purchase purchases and so that did move forward there was also sort of a legislative package approved by the board as a lot of folks are aware or maybe not aware some of these community choice power authorities are sort of getting some challenges in legislation in terms of their ability to compete with some of the larger power power companies so there's some a legislative package that continues to provide the ability for community aggregate power authorities to thrive in California and so that was was good to see those are the main highlights from that meeting that I attended last week the next meeting I believe will be March 10th there's a continuation of the policy board on a couple of items that were deferred during the during the meeting last week I have a report out from also from Metro on that board as well a couple of good reports from Metro one is that the the Metro has received delivery of the first pro terra bus and this is our first 100% zero emission battery electric bus it has arrived and it's in Santa Cruz so I think this is something that our community is very excited to see and our other three buses will be arriving during the month of March with the next step really with this is that we really have to receive the buses and and then we will put them working towards putting them to service this fall as I think I updated about a month and a half ago the district Metro transit district has built the electric bays that are needed to charge these buses and we have a number of these as I mentioned coming in so we'll have four coming in this month and then the district is set up a capital improvement program to actually purchase more of these moving ahead also the Metro is unveiling unveiling this month the splash pass program which is a which is a mobile ticket app system lined and so that will be moving us towards an app based ticket system and validation system and those are now being rolled out on buses and and we'll be getting tested on various routes coming up soon so that's also really good news in terms of again continued COVID protection for our riders and really trying to modernize the system as much as possible I think most of my other reports were made by my colleagues yeah I think that that is the main thing I think also the other part of one report out on the two by two is that we did the city myself and supervisor Coonerty and supervisor McPherson did produce a letter to the governor regarding the necessary need to move begin to help people that are currently there at the one and nine intersection find solutions and shelter do the due to the city's need to activate a construction project there in April so we did work together on submitting a letter to the governor regarding that particular situation but also taking opportunity to request additional assistance with shelter as well as other needs for case management and social service provisions and so supervisors McPherson and Coonerty were able to sign on to that letter as well so that was a sort of an output of the two by two as well and I think those are my main reports today okay we'll move on to our next agenda item thank you to council members for many people don't know that we also spend a lot of time on these policy committees and various other joint power authority committees so it's good time for us to kind of update the community on what's happening the next item is going to be our consent agenda and these are going to be items number nine through 20 on the agenda today for members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in if you want to comment on items nine through 20 instructions are on your screen please remember to mute your streaming device press star nine to raise your hand and listen to the queue saying you will have been unmuted all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to comment or pull any items today uh council member coming thank you mayor I'd like to comment on items number 11 12 13 14 and I'd like to pull number 17 11 12 13 14 for comments and then you want to pull 17 correct other council members that would like to comment or just make sure I've got my okay any other council members that want to comment or pull items from the consent agenda I will make a comment myself on item 20 which is item number 17 and then I would like to go ahead and ask council members for their comments or questions on items not pulled so those would be council member coming item 11 I have a comment on that with myself 12 13 and 14 and I will comment on item 20 thank you mayor um I just as far as item number 11 so the members of the public are aware this is uh the approval of the climate and energy action plan um and I just want to or for the consulting service uh professional service contract and climate action program 18 month work plan and budget adjustment and I just want to acknowledge all the hard work that uh Tiffany wise west has done with bringing us to this point and also all the members of the public who serve on our climate action task force um in our community obviously you know environmental protection is probably one of the top priorities of our community and it's just really encouraging to see so many members of our public come together to help work on this and then um you know for all the hard work that Tiffany's put into this I think that it really you know demonstrates that we take climate action seriously and just really looking forward to us developing our 2030 climate action plan so thanks to all those who have been working on that um for item number 12 I'm just excited to see that we're going to be hopefully signing on to what could be you know proposed tax on sugary beverages which we know have health impacts especially on lower income communities and so glad to see that we're bringing this forward um item number 13 is the uh COVID-19 pandemic recovery the bar and restaurant recovery act I know that many people in the community have been expressing wanting to see us maintain and continue with the outdoor parklets and allowing people more opportunities to kind of dine outside and um I know that for many businesses that have been negatively impacted this is something that's really helped them and so to the extent that we can and it seems it seems very compatible with our community and so to the extent that we can allow for businesses to continue having part in parklets where it appears that it will have it won't have negative impacts on our community I think that this will provide us with that flexibility and so I'm excited to see this come forward because we've heard a lot about it as well and then I just want to thank the public works department for item number 14 the Monterey Bay uh sanctuary scenic trail second seven the reinstatement of the three-way stop on bay shooting california av I've heard from a number of folks uh around how pulling that intersection out actually made it um more problematic and I've been receiving a lot of emails asking whether we could get that um reinstated and so to see I was driving by the other day and when I saw the stop signs going back in I was really excited to see that um the concerns were taken seriously so I just wanted to thank public works for um working with the community on making that happen and then I'll just also say that to thank public works because I've seen a lot of the lit um crosswalks go in in places where they hadn't been before and I just want to say that's been really um encouraging and I think a lot of people are happy to see more of these crosswalks going in to improve safety on our streets so thank you mark and thank you all your team for everything you guys are doing great thanks we appreciate it and that concludes my comments on those consent items thank you thank you um council member Cummings I'll also just chime on to the um great to see the the um award of the contract for creating our next climate action plan for the next 10 years and again just thank Tiffany Weiss-West for all her work as well as the committee that works on this and um very excited to see um some of the items in the work plan and um those being reflected in our interim recovery plan as well I'm really pleased to see the overlap in those two uh plans um both for near term and long term over the next 10 years for the city and then I just had a quick comment on uh item 20 as well just wanting to thank um the water department bringing this forward and our water director um this is a really important pilot project that really understands whether or not we can do water transfers um with our neighboring water district so Cal Creek water district and um as we go into what looks like another dry year here in California and you'll hear more later on uh an agenda item today um you know these kinds of conjunctive use types of approach to how we stretch our our water supply as much as possible cooperatively and in coordination with our neighboring districts is really important so um another uh important thing that uh we continue to work on and it's uh very excited to see that this agreement has been extended for uh additional purposes and I believe that is the end of comments on items so I will now go to public comments and this will be for items on our consent agenda and if there are people members of the public that would like to speak to any item on our consent agenda with the exception of item 17 um now is the time to do so please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand when it is your turn to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the timer will then be set to two minutes and I believe I have three members in the public with their hands raised and I just want to make sure you're here to speak on item number 17 of our consent agenda and I see items items other than 17 for items other than 17 okay this will be okay I see kb fosters as number as first up thank you let us recognize that while our intentions are good the systems in place for safety have created some very serious problems for those in our community anyone who saw footage of the situation at our local Trader Joe's can see this the ones who benefit from the current system could be argued endlessly in a numerous direction but I did not come here to argue that I'm here to shine light to shine light on the employees in this footage that say it all frustration in this example the managers and employees are caught in the middle of a battle between citizens and the city and state government officials excuse me ma'am I'm sorry but this is for items on our on our consent agenda today this is about number 13 number 13 okay they are on excuse me they are on the front line and they are being abused I'm talking about now the employees and the managers our local people employees business owners students renters landlords are being emotionally and financially flawed division and yes to peace next up is on our consent agenda with the exception of item 17 you can go ahead and the need to approve a resolution that says the city council would have to consider submitting a proposed tax on the distribution of soda and other sugary beverages to its voters if and when av 1838 might be struck down since the council could of course consider it at that time anyway despite whether this resolution passes or not this seems a bit hinky to me to encumber a future possibly different mayor or council to maybe have to bring this up later I'm missing why this resolution is needed at all the original council proving this tax so it was very different than the one before me today as far as sugar taxes go it doesn't prevent people from buying such drinks doesn't prevent people from just taking their business elsewhere to another city that doesn't have taxes is meddling with individual liberty and picking winners and losers in a beverage industry it is also a regressive tax it's not that you can't make a case excess empty calories from sugar isn't good but the case can also be made you're just lining the city cover pockets with people's money and has been tried elsewhere with mixed results north western university is part of a group studying philadelphia's soda tax and found the drop in sales data in philadelphia was met by a similar rise in sales zero to four miles outside the city the overall consumption then fell by far less than local sales data would suggest I personally don't buy any sugary drinks and very few artificial sweetened drinks I'm still fat and this would have a no effect on me if you were really interested in reducing the citizenry's waste lines maybe take a look at what the government covid lockdowns are doing to them really I'd love to know there would be no end to this kind of thing as you can attack salt preservatives fat nearly endless list which in huge quantities can be bad for you when education labeling and self-responsibility are really the solutions eating too many carrots can cause excessive dietary fiber interfere with the absorption of many essential nutrients and cause carrot anemia it's a toss-up whether this resolution itself or me talking about it is more unnecessary thanks bye thank you and next up items on our consent agenda agenda with the exception of item 17 your up next year phone number ends in 5758 Pam Newberry I'm speaking about item 13 on the agenda as the representative of community prevention partners a countywide coalition committed to public health and youth substance use prevention we at community prevention partners express our strong concern with the council's proposed letter of support for senate bill 314 the bar and restaurant recovery act without further review of the implications of the bill's components to youth safety and well-being preliminary research and evidentiary review indicates potential risks to our youth and families we kindly request the city council review potential impacts of SB 314's intentions and ramifications prior to submitting a letter of support we offer support in gathering relevant data research and community input for this purpose CPP recognizes the need for strategies that promote the economic vitality of local businesses however we are concerned that extensively increasing the availability of alcohol runs the risk of proportionately easing youth access to it the center for prevention research and development found high levels of alcohol outlets in the community enable youth access to alcohol through commercial outlets family and social networks the bill also opens the floodgates for advertising time and space to be purchased by alcohol producers something historically prohibited in our community a 2020 study in the journal of studies on alcohol and drugs shows a direct relationship between exposure to alcohol marketing and underage drinking before sending a letter of support we ask that the city council recognize some components of SB 314 may be detrimental to community well-being and reverse years of dedicated effort to limiting youth access to alcohol preventing youth exposure to harmful advertising decreasing impaired driving and effectively managing alcohol outlet density thank you thank you very much for your comments today now looking for a motion on the remaining arms and the consent that would be items 9 through 20 with the exception to item number 17 which has been pulled could I have a motion please council member golder I'll make some motion to move the consent in general with the exception of item 17 and I will I look down when I came back up council member brown please a second up one more time we do roll call on this roll call vote please this would be motion by golder seconded by brown to consent to items 9 through 20 with the exception of 17 council member Watkins I'm Helen Tori Johnson says unanimously 17 I believe council member Cummings you pulled that some of the language the public item number 17 is an amendment to the downtown commission bylaws and within the red line version the bylaws it says that should the county or city of Santa Cruz san Fros California be under a declared emergency natural disaster or an act of God that occurs that causes a change in the qualification for a member to member resulting in vacancy the disqualified disqualified member may continue to serve on the commission until a new appointment has been made been made any other cause of disqualification would result in resignation from the commission and just to be clear I think it might be more appropriate rather than saying you know in the case when there's a declared emergency or an act of God that maybe we could change that to an unforeseen circumstance arises that causes a change in qualifications etc and I just think that there are unforeseen circumstances that come up within many of our lives and I don't think that they would necessarily qualify as an act of God and I don't think that we really can define what an act of God is but stating that rather than in the case of the declared emergency disaster maybe by stating or an unforeseen circumstance arises that that may do a better job of articulating the circumstances under which someone could stay on the board while a new individual is found so that's the change that I'm hoping to make just to clarify that I don't think we I think it's objective to say what an act of God is and you know it could be the loss of a family member that requires that somebody needs to move and no longer lives in the jurisdiction and I wouldn't define that as an act of God so just wanted to put that out there to see if that language change would be acceptable by my colleagues. Oh you're muted Donna. Council member Bruder do you have questions regarding and Calentari Johnson regarding um they proposed you know I'm prepared to make that motion if you do the public comment there's no public comment on the motion if there's a special. Vice Mayor Bruder did you have a question? No okay okay so we have a motion we'll go out to public comment now but I understand we have a motion by council member Golder and a second by Vice Mayor Bruder okay okay we'll go ahead and take this item out to public comment at this time and I see we have Ms Foster this is for commenting on item number 17 which is amendment to the downtown commission bylaws. Ms Foster did you want to speak to this item? Yes I guess I would love to know who wrote the language in there in the first place and then I could better understand why we would take it out. Yeah usually Ms Foster we don't have this isn't kind of a question and answer it's really more of a comment. Okay so it's a comment that we should know the author of this before we decide to edit them. Thank you coming did you want to clarify that for the member of the public? The attorney that prepares these. So it can be the city attorney these these were approved by the city council and in order to be amended the city council has to approve the amendment that the it was a I believe it was the downtown commission's request to make this change and just I can I think council member Cummings suggested revisions also make a lot of sense. Thank you okay we will now I'm looking so we have a motion by excuse me council member Golder seconded by vice mayor Bruner on consensus agenda item number 17. Bonnie could you do the roll call vote please? Yeah can I just get the motion read against the language change really quick? Yes I believe it is to strike the motion is to strike the language active God and replace it council member with with the term unforeseen circumstances correct? Unforeseen circumstances circumstances arises. That's unanimously I'll move on to our general business agenda and this will be our first step is our is item number 21 which is amending the city of Santa Cruz environmentally acceptable food packaging and products ordinance for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now's the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be presented will be excuse me the order for this item will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action and I will ask Leslie O'Malley our waste reduction manager to provide the presentation thanks for being here Leslie. Thanks for having me good afternoon Mayor Meyers the council members and here to include publication and ordinance amending chapter 6.48 of the Genesee's municipal code pertaining to the environmentally acceptable food packaging and product ordinance on January 14 2020 council unanimously voted to pass an amendment to chapter 6.48 of the code pertaining to the environmentally acceptable food packaging and product ordinance a summary of those changes included uh adding a 25 cent charge for disposable tests clarification and refinement of several definitions a change in accepted materials moving away from bioplastics to PFAS for polypollinated chemical free fiber-based items and expanding the upon request mandate for straws, utensils, condiments and other accessories. September 8 2020 was identified as implementation date with a compliance and enforcement deadline of March 8 2021. The unexpectedly long duration of the coronavirus pandemic created several problems that make that deadline schedule problematic. Businesses have reported hurdles along the supply chain that make procurement especially difficult. A large part of the ordinance focused on the 25 cent test charge and that was to deter the use of non-recyclable disposable tests while there is no health order and a fact restricting the use of customer-owned reusable tests. Out of an abundance of caution many businesses have not returned to filling customer-broad end tests without a viable alternative to paying for non-recyclable tests compliant to be held at this time. As we balance the immediate needs of our residents and business community with our long-term goals of a healthy ecosystem we think that delay of one year will provide time for businesses to return to more normal and predictable operations, to work through the challenges with procurement, and to get systems in place to allow for the safe return of reusable tests. Way through that can staff will continue to provide education and outreach on the specifics adopted in January 2020 as well as to enforce the existing provisions with strictly non-composable and non-recyclable plastic fluid. Therefore staff recommends that the City Council introduce for publication the amended City of Tennessee's municipal code after 6.48 pertaining to environmental acceptance to packaging and compliance products with a compliance date of March 8, 2022. Thank you Leslie. Are there questions from council members at this time? Seeing any hands raised? Leslie, yeah being one of the council members that worked with you on this I definitely understand the and agree with the with the extension of time. I'm just curious about I would imagine with the COVID timing hitting how did you feel that your outreach and education was going and whether or not this extra time is actually going to be helpful in trying to you know get people as ready as possible for that new date of implementation. So in other words having that additional time and being able to have the outreach and education period extended do you think that will be I guess more effective at compliance with with the ordinance moving ahead? Most definitely. COVID you know has hit all of us at the City and our furlough and our time in the office. Our team has done a good job of reaching out but we can certainly do more and the gift of time allows us to collaborate more with economic development and reaching out to the business community and I think that it'll just be better all the way around. Yeah okay great that's good to hear. I mean I think COVID has set us back in ways with regards to our waste management goals with all the things that we've had to change to and all the new all the new things that are basically you know now coming into our waste stream which is hard to see and also some of the containment of some of those materials is I know difficult so I appreciate you bringing this forward. I know you and I talked about this a little bit earlier this year and really appreciate your thoughtfulness and trying to kind of make this work for our community and also for the environment. Councilmember Golder do you have a question or a comment for our questions from council members I'll bring this out to the public to see if anyone would like to comment on this item. This is item number 21 amending the City of Santa Cruz environmentally acceptable food packaging and products ordinance and I'm not seeing anyone in the public so we will I will bring this back to council and councilmember brownie. Yeah I'll go ahead and move that we introduce the revised ordinance with the date change as recommended by staff. Okay and I see councilmember Watkins. Sure I'll go ahead and second that. Okay we have a motion by councilmember brown seconded by council walk seconded by councilmember Watkins to introduce your publication and ordinance amending chapter 6.48 of the Santa Cruz municipal code pertaining to environmentally acceptable food packaging and can we have a roll call vote. Councilmember Watkins. Hi. Councilmember Johnson. All right we'll now move on to item number 22 which is the interim recovery plan update for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now it's the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation in action and we have Laura Schmidt our assistant city manager will provide the presentation today. Thank you mayor. Very honored to be back with you to discuss our interim recovery plan which you adopted in the end of November and the progress that staff has made to try to take your vision that you articulated in that interim recovery plan and operationalize it for moving forward for the city. Can you all see my screen? What I'll be covering today in this parallel to your agenda report that you received in your packet is the refinement work that staff has done to date and the alignment work of the projects out there in the various departments to be able to support the interim recovery plan, the oversight and the reports that we're proposing to report back to you on a quarterly basis at council meetings and what our next steps will be. So once you approved on November 24th the final interim recovery plan and you had developed that at the end of October and a special city council workshop being facilitated by management partners staff took the guidance that you articulated in that November 24th adopted plan and what we targeted was being able to have anybody in the public in all of our departments understand the interim recovery contents and then also be able to digest it and what we ended up doing we hope is trying to simplify it a little bit more as well as pull it all underneath and umbrella thing that hopefully will resonate with you and the community. So in order to honor the work that happened after the Loma Prieta earthquake that effort in that rebuilding process was called vision Santa Cruz. So staff's recommendation moving forward for the interim recovery plan is to call it re-envision Santa Cruz building a future for everyone together and in this hopefully dawn of our re-envisioned community the three focus areas that you articulated were fiscal sustainability and that was short and long term downtown and business revitalization as well as infrastructure and within the infrastructure it is the traditional roads but also out there on the horizon is the enjoyment of all of our natural resources and our parks and our open spaces as well and that was a little bit different twist that you guys put on infrastructure which is not the traditional just facilities buildings roads and surfaces and underlying all of these focus areas are critical guiding principles of sustainability and green economy and engaged community equity and well-being and essential service delivery based upon this new vision of Santa Cruz what staff did was then went out hunted and gathered all of their projects and work that was in process to be able to align it to the focus areas or the guiding principles so what we focused on as far as projects are distinct a project is something that has a distinct start and end date they're truly projects and they're therefore not our ongoing operation so it has to be something that starts and then we know when we're done versus ongoing maintenance that we may do in any given part of our operation those are not necessarily projects those aren't contained in the list of items related to a given focus area we also put that they had to be more than five months in a lot of time and because the smaller ones that were done more quickly we didn't think that we needed to include those on the radar at this point and then because it's the 12 to 18 month window the 18 month window on the outside is June 30th of 2022 so these projects have to have a start or an end date between now and we put now as January 1 actually and June 30th of 2022 so what you have in your agenda packet are two lists one of them is one of them contains the projects related to the 12 to 18 month focus areas so the three focus areas of fiscal sustainability downtown and business rural vitalization and infrastructure and there's a second list in attachment three for the project supporting the guiding principles for recovery so that basically in a lot aligns all of the project work in the city to a focus area or to the guiding principles just to give you a perspective on the work that you find on the department all on the list you'll find an enormous amount of work that the departments are embarking on in any given area but those are really kind of what you see in the iceberg photo shown here where that's what you see above the line what is below the line is actually more reflective of the additional mass of work that the departments are doing operationally and on a day to day basis so because what you see in the list is what the departments are working on related to the focus areas as well as to the guiding principles doesn't mean that includes the full mass of the scope and the breadth and depth of the work that any given department is doing on a day in the out basis so that kind of is what happens below see what you could see on the ocean horizon in your packet in the attachment to these are all the projects that departments still will move forward any given focus area and it's sorted by the top area is ones related to they're just fundamental to the interim recovery plan so they're not necessarily associated with the focus area and then they're sorted by the different focus areas downtown and other business revitalization then fiscal sustainability and infrastructure so that's your attachment to in attachment three these projects will help us make progress toward our guiding principles for recovery so I added all funding courses in there but just because it is it was an it was an articulated principle in process it didn't make the final simplified graphic but there were pretty important projects here so I wanted to make sure that those were included and then the rest of it parallels the guiding principles that you articulated during the interim recovery plan workshop so that brings all of the different projects together that support either the movement forward on the recovery or the guiding principles that underlie our city's recovery so basically we have those projects and we have also performance measures that council approved us to be able to gauge how we're doing as it relates to recovery so what's the oversight mechanism for re-envision Santa Cruz how will that work but staff is proposing to you is there are three components of our quarterly report back to you the first component of our quarterly report back to you is an outcomes report so for each area each focus area fiscal sustainability downtown and business revitalization and infrastructure we're going to articulate to you what progress has made in each one of those focus areas and we're going to focus on outcomes that we've achieved rather than just output so anything in the list of projects we may report on but we're not going to report on every single project in the list because as you can see the list is quite substantial and long so our ability to to report on every single one of those every quarter is not feasible but what we will do is report on outcomes for each focus area and the narrative and the format that will do that with you is a narrative and the beginning of the narrative is included in attachment for are the descriptions and the goals for each focus area and then underneath each one of those description and goal areas will articulate the progress and outcomes under each area so that would be the first part of the quarterly report that we give you the second part of the quarterly report that we would give you is the performance metrics report and those that performance metrics report we're envisioning as having two pages the first primary page is the 13 identified metrics that you that you voted on in the workshop so how are we doing on each one of those and are there any trends or issues that we want to bring to your attention and the format of that for on the top part of the quarterly performance report we would graph commercial occupancy rates and sales tax so those were the two that we thought graphically were possibly the most indicative of how we're doing as it relates to recovery and then there will be a table for all 13 metrics that you identified the fiscal year 2019 year to date as of that quarter in fiscal year 2019 because that is kind of the last normal full fiscal year that we might have had and then the delta of that current fiscal year today to compare it to so this is how we work for this metric in the fiscal year 2019 this is how we are in fiscal year 21 as a comparator and then we'll also report the current quarter the previous quarter what the designer trend should be in any comments related to that there were also thought that in this in the in the realm of metrics there are also other important things going on in the county that we may not necessarily directly have impact to but it would be very informative for a consumer of this information to have as it relates to recovery in our community so in a secondary page what we're proposing is we would put information of interest about our surrounding community and county and how things are going but that we might not directly have an impact to that our work doesn't necessarily move this piece of it so we would have additional graphics potentially other information such as the COVID-19 case rate the COVID-19 vaccination rollout tourism transient occupancy tax any other industry updates and trends in the restaurant business that sort of information that would be helpful to search somebody to understand how our community is doing during this recovery period the final component of the packet that we go to you quarterly is we put together the two project lists that you have it in relative short order so as we make adjustments our additional information our descriptions need to change we'll update that but those lists will always be available in your packet of these are the projects that are related to the focus areas these are the projects relating to the guiding principles for recovery so that you'll always have that depth and depth of work available for you to review and the community to review and then you can always ask questions related to those items should you want to the next steps that we're proposing is we would have a one to two page re-envisioned Santa Cruz handout so I don't remember how many pages the adopted interim recovery plan document is but it's fairly substantial so what we're proposing to do is condense that into a one or two page handout that clearly articulates what re-envisioned Santa Cruz is all about and what the focus means and then you would receive the first round of quarterly reports whatever it is that if you accept our staff proposal today are adjusted you would receive those that a council meeting in April and those would represent data from January February and March so the first calendar quarter additionally we'll be working with our communications manager Elizabeth and any other communications people in our department that can help us on a citywide strategy to further align our work with what we're doing because city work needs to align to the vision that you have articulated in re-envisioned Santa Cruz and making it all tick and tie from the what we do on a day-to-day basis to the projects we prioritize to the way that we budget all this needs to hang together to what you articulated for us to do as far as your direction we would put together a campaign plan for community awareness and engagement we'd get stand up a webpage with information so it's easily accessible to folks and then we'd also incorporate this into standing communications that we already published like the city manager's newsletter that's staff's optimal rule I can't even say the word that is how we propose to operational lives the interim recovery plan to re-envision Santa Cruz and the components of the oversight that we would like to do back to you on a quarterly basis and with that I appreciate and open it up for questions Donna I think you're muted our Mayor Myers sorry yeah thank you Laura thanks for that and yeah for taking a yeah like as you mentioned a very long very long document as well as a lot of bits and pieces of really good work but really bringing it together I think in a really really understandable way and a really most importantly a really clear operational way so thank you to you and I know all the departments have been spending a lot of time with this so I just want to express my support and my appreciation of all that work and councilmember commentary Johnson and then councilmember Cummins great thank you thank you so much Laura for the presentation and to everyone who put so much work into this I want to state for we have this conversation but I want to state for the public that there there are some parameters out there or suggestions from some folks are how to make jurisdiction grant ready as we know that we will be seeing federal and state funds coming through and the steps that that you're putting forward and the team is putting forward are really essential important steps in making ourselves grant ready in particular the one to two page handout really concisely will synthesize what we are going for and what we want to do I think the quarterly reports will also serve a sort of almost like a case statement LOI for us to work off of one sort of question suggestion I have is on top of listing what our goals are what our outcomes are or which outcomes we've achieved perhaps having a column of what are the remaining gaps does that'll help us articulate when grant opportunities come up and if feasible what are the dollar amounts connected to those remaining gaps I think that'll be important for us to know in terms of grant readiness and then it you know in terms of the indicators the metrics that are reported one thing to consider to add is how many grants have we pursued and how many have we secured as another way for us to look at success around the fiscal sustainability piece thank you for all the work this is really great thank you councilmember I'm I'm I'm writing down notes and I'm on the dollars connected and the dollars missing one of the things that we could also do and we started to do in the attachment two and three of when we're missing funding for because some of the projects on this list are unfunded so that would address I think what you're suggesting that we do and would help us as we pursue grants thank you councilmember Cummings councilmember brown and then councilmember Watkins thank you and thank you lower for that presentation I had two questions one and maybe you mentioned this but what I was hearing from some members of the public was just some confusion and concern around what is you know with that I mean there's like maybe not full but about 18 pages of you know project names departments and who's doing what and I think one thing that I've heard from members of the public is that things like there's a lot that's been there and for some departments there's obviously more than others but what's the prioritization of around the different items that are in you know that they're they're being proposed because I think that the question becomes this looks like a lot this looks like there's a lot of projects that are on the horizon but what which ones take priority especially given that we're in a very financially stressful situation right now the times we're living in so what's going to take precedent over other things and yeah so I'm just want to be comment on on how the city is intending to prioritize the different projects for each of the different departments I think for one of the and we can make this more clear in the attachments one of the ways to look at priority is actually if it's if it's a high priority and if it could already be active so you'll know that it's active because of the start date and then if it is and once we put the funded not funded we'll know whether or not there is funding associated with that and then as far as for other prioritization related to funding if something is unfunded whether or not we pursue something in grants but if there's a request for budget for fiscal year 22 for instance that would indicate and you would indicate to the department that's requesting funding through the budget process your approval of that being a priority or not by whether or not you grant funding for it through the budget process so those items that are active or prioritize they're in process those items that are not started it could just be a timing issue but we will indicate through funding or not funding whether or not we're able to move those items forward if we have the budget associated with it and then you would obviously direct staff through your approval or not approval of funding request through budget in fiscal year 22 but I was there a second question or did you did I answer your questions thank you okay I have a council member brown thanks for the the report and thanks for all of the information that was included our packet I um I guess I'm what I'm looking at here is you know it seems that you know as the council member Cummings said there's a lot here it's not entirely clear how we're looking at priorities or prioritization and it feels like you know kind of an inventory of what the city's currently engaged in either because we need to do it or because we you know decide that that's the direction we want to go policy or program-wise and some of these look to be significantly longer term although I get it that they may be initiated during this interim period but what I'm having a hard time with them I you know and I'm hoping that you can help me understand and think about how to articulate because I think what the what the public wants to know and the community is asking for is you know is a is a sense of of what we are doing now specifically the tangible things specifically in the service of recovery how that will support our community of various interests you know in a healthy way our workforce businesses marginalized community members etc and then you know to demonstrate that they will actually help with the recovery process rather than just managing you know business no you know and no government there you know obviously these are things we need to get done so I'm just having a hard time when I think about trying to explain to a member of the public why this is an important component for our interim recovery plan you know and many of these instances like how to do that so if you could help me understand how to make that more apparent and tangible to the community that'd be great you're on mute now we can hear you can you yeah can you hear me okay my zoom rebooted and so I don't know what it's it's lagging but councilmember brown um and councilmember Cummings I hear what you're saying and I will cycle back with the department on the information that we have to see how we could better articulate that and so it could be more clear to the average person of how any given project progresses the interim recovery and prioritization of those we'll see what we can do the other thing of course that you know during an emergency or when you're in a crisis mode you know continuity of services is really critical to and so that's a big part of this as well ensuring that that occurs um and then again also going back and focusing on those areas that the council identified as the priority areas and so to a large extent also given the where we are with the pandemic and fiscal situation a lot of it is also trying to preserve and keep what we do we have that's that's by the nature of what we're experiencing has to be a big part of what we do um and we are a um ambitious community so we have a lot of things in the works which just just to complete the things we're already doing would be an incredible achievement if you think about all the housing and all the various you know projects that are being that are in the works it's it's pretty incredible so it just by its nature is a big part of it just to kind of note that councilmember brown councilmember watkins for your work on this and appreciate the comments made by my colleagues i um i have a few comments one is in sort of the spirit that councilmember calentari johnson brought up with being grant ready and i know we talked about whether or not you know we need to provide more support for grant writing for the organization as well and so i just really want to kind of highlight that as um you know as an essential element to bringing in funding to do many of the um activities and goals that we have laid out in this plan so um also adequately understanding how to support the staff and receiving those grants and the grant support as needed um and then the other comment i have or um suggestion is how to align um our various activities with our existing plans and we mentioned earlier in the agenda that we had a kind of an item about the climate action 18 month work plan with with alignment to goals there i know that came up a lot in terms of our planning process we also have the health and all policies outcomes metrics that are coming up so um how can we integrate those into this plan so we're seeing that between existing work and efforts and initiatives underway and i think to kind of some of the work with the health and all policies is just looking at that through an equity lens and thinking about how we're factoring that into um metrics or decision making as well so those would be my comments as enhancements moving forward thank you um i wanted to acknowledge that thank you for the appreciated appreciation and i wanted to acknowledge the all the work that the department put into this as far as sending in their information and they were they they worked like gang investors and were really on time so i really appreciated all the coordination efforts that happened within every department to get everything back to the city manager's office and there was a subset of department heads that worked on um filtering and continuing to refine the information over and over again so i wanted to acknowledge that there was a sub team associated with this as well and thank them for doing that work related to your first comment on the grants front back it's been a few months now probably as the interim recovery plan began to emerge and the grant opportunities began to be very apparent of what we were pursuing and the fact that there were opportunities that we were missing as well the city manager's office started putting together a business case so assistant to the city manager suzi ohara is working on a grant writing business case of being able to justify the use of general fund budget to expend because if we expend you know x number of dollars working with the consultant to improve our grant writing capacity and ability to pursue opportunities x number of you know hundreds of thousands of dollars will come back to the city in in awarded grants so we are in the process of finalizing a business case there and getting that in front of um we've asked uh council member colin tarry johnson to kind of be a special advisor on that piece of it because all the work she's done with grants and then i'll go to the department has been what we'll do is we'll coordinate better the grant opportunities across the department but also um hopefully hire a managed service partner to be able to help us increase our grant writing capacity so that we can win the dollars and win well back more than we would invest in that service in that consulting outlay um regarding the alignment of all the different plans and activities um rosemary minard is amazing when it comes to putting multiple pieces of long-term strategic visions together and then making sure that the puzzle all all works effectively so she's been very helpful and is continuing to uh move us forward as far as uh pull together all we we have so many plans and strategies the warf master plan the health and all policies interim recovery um roads like there's we have all of it but pulling it together to see how they all enter interconnect and what we're working on and prioritizing and be able to move be able to move that forward in an integrated articulated way is something that um we need to do more of and so she's helping us get that part figured out and um that is part of one of the uh first uh rows of projects in the attachment to that has the 12 to 18 month focus area projects so we recognize exactly what you're saying and um we're working on that as well thank you thank you yeah yeah mayor i think you i'll chime in here a little bit um really appreciate the work um what strikes me on this is is is the 12 to 18 month period but more largely the really the rollout over the next what i would really realistically say is about 10 years of really change in the city of santa cruz and so um i think this plan represents sort of a really a decade type of you know decade time frame that that it will take us to come out of the covid component but also the goals and the things that we are looking at to help our community come out of the out of the pandemic with um i'm excited that we've included things like our green and green infrastructure along with our traditional infrastructure and we've also identified the um the housing that we're looking at as well because all of those things um new bike trails um housing a new library all of those things come together really i think over a decade um of really probably the most investment in our community really since the earthquake in 30 years um and so you know every community i believe you know we're gonna go through periods of renewal and i actually do think um and i appreciate the very uh sunshiney uh logo that you've come up with because um i think this plan little and mighty as it may be actually really establishes sort of a forecast for work ahead and really one of those probably uh you know 25 year kind of change in our community so i'm excited to see it all in one place um and i think unfortunately um despite all the uh you know with the horrific things that covid has brought um i'm glad to see that we now have also a federal government that's willing to invest in its people again and um i think we have to be part of that solution and we have to be investing in our community and the people who live here so um i'm excited to see it all in one place um ready for my t-shirt with the cool little sun on it and appreciate the work that the staff has done in doing this so if you you can't get there if you don't have a vision and the vision may look big may look complicated but um i know that um if we don't put it out there it's we won't get there so thanks with our budget situation i may have to whip out my homemade printing press and iron on something for you on a t-shirt you could make some iron arms i we could sell those you make money off so thank you very much laura i know you've put a ton of time into it yourself and appreciate yours and martin's guidance and really really kind of stepping outside the comfort zone and putting out a pretty big vision so really appreciate it other comments from council members before i take it out to the public based on funding i think what i was trying to articulate is if an item is unfunded um are funded that would help address a council member call on tarry's point of we need to be able to identify quickly um for grant purposes those things that we aren't able to do because of a funding situation and then um i followed that with an answer i and what i was trying to articulate is um you guys can articulate the council members can articulate priority back to staff that is something that is unfunded and we come to you in the fiscal year 22 budget process asking for funding you can you can articulate your prioritization and your desire for us to make something a high priority by your actions of funding or not funding during the budget process thank you that's helpful you're welcome question okay i'm looking uh out to the public for any public comments i am not seeing anyone with their hand raised but if you would like to comment on this item which is item number 22 the interim recovery plan update now would be the time to raise your hand so we can get you on boarded for making those comments okay i am not seeing anyone out in the public i'll bring it back for any final um comments from our council members i see council member walkins and vice mayor bruner and uh assuming maybe there's a motion in play council member walkins you assumed correctly i was going to move the item and the recommendation to accept the staff report and to work on opera opera recovery plan and adopt ongoing status reporting formats with uh suggestions that were noted by councillors today who that is a tough one and vice we have a motion on the floor for walkins seconded by vice mayor bruner to accept the staff report on work to operationalize the interim recovery plan and adopt ongoing status reporting formats and can we do a roll call vote please council member walkins hi calentary johnson that motion passes unanimously thank you thank you very much laura next step is going to be item number 23 um we have a little bit of time in our schedule that we've gained and um rosemary i hope you don't mind but i'm hoping we could just take a five minute break to um just absolutely okay thanks so much so we will come back back at 255 please that works for everybody and then we'll probably get out a little early we'll come back at 255 thank you we'll go ahead and get started uh council member a work meeting she had to attend to so she'll be returning back for the 530 session we are now on to item number 23 an update of santa cruz's water shortage contingency plan and i will turn this over to our water director rosie rosemary minard thank you uh mayor meyers vice mayor bruner and council members appreciate this opportunity to bring forward today a really important uh piece of work that we've been working on for about a year now and that uh that's a pretty good sized job of updating an existing product that the council took action on in uh 2009 so with that i'm going to share my screen and um hopefully we will get to a place where we can uh to see my presentation okay somewhat lengthy presentation here is uh there's quite a bit of material to to cover but i would like to kind of pause and uh at the end of the kind of introductory and sort of what's change phase and let there be an opportunity for questions at that time then talk about the direction where we want to move in terms of the how the um allocations and and targets were created and then i then finally sort of pause after that and then also to um then do the last bit about the actual specifics of some of the allocation strategy so that you can sort of see what we have in mind this this project is being described because the plan is being described as an interim update and the reason is that there's some elements of it that aren't included here that will are being developed as part of the urban water management plan update and will be ultimately married in and when you get the urban water management plan to take action on probably and sometime in the late in the fall then we will put the pieces together and we'll we'll repeat that but because of the the significant changes we've experienced in the nature of water consumption i wanted to get this plan in front of you and in front of the community before the coming uh demand season and the off chance that we need to implement it so that's kind of what you're being asked to do is to sort of take that action to adopt um this this plan um so again my my plan today is an overview of the existing plan adopted in 2009 and then a talking about change conditions which are really at the heart of why this current plan is going to look so different from the last one and then talk about some uh the reduction targets and the elements of the new plan and then demand the customer demand reduction strategy as mentioned we do have an existing plan uh it it has it it was the basis for what was used in the rationing that we did in 2013 2014 and 2015 and uh we have implemented that plan a number of times you can see that we have uh about half of the years between uh when this plan came out and now we've we've had some version of it in effect really only the years um you know these 2010 11 and then 16 and 17 which you will recall is a very wet year and then 19 last year we had a dry year but we decided not to implement the plan in part because things were pretty um chaotic in the community already and having water restrictions on top of it did not seem like a good idea and we were you know in a good enough shape that we felt like we could avoid that um the plan the current plan has uh five stages as a required new plan is the the initial stage in that one was only a five percent and the second stage was a 15 percent that particular 15 percent goal was to define the um the the activities that would occur achieve the routine 15 percent curtailments that were included in the integrated water plan adopted in 2003 so that as I mentioned uh and some of you have talked about this it was a sort of a three-legged stool that was adopted as part of the IWP about a water supply strategy one was routine curtailments of up to 15 percent because that really was mostly focused on residential irrigation and reducing that making that a little bit more efficient there was a long-term water conservation and then there was a supply augmentation piece to that three-legged stool requirements in the urban water management planning act that we comply with that require us to have a an existing plan like this and I think the really important thing for us to talk about here is that the uh this this particular plan that that plan the 2009 plan was based on water use characteristics and demand in the 2002 to 2004 timeframe and many many things have um have changed since then all of us probably weren't carrying around cell phones and quite the way we are today or you know having the internet being quite so big of a part of our life but uh in addition to those kinds of things that have changed just in our community in our society the overall level of water demand is now significantly lower than it was uh when the original 2009 plan was uh created the peak season demand is also significantly lower but our water supply crunch the problem we have which is the peak season and lack of storage in our system to get us through dry years and particularly multiple dry years has not changed so that those factors are you know that problem is still in place this graph is a little bit crazy but I think it really does a an interesting uh it presents the the basic change that we've experienced in a pretty interesting way all of these sort of gray and blue and this sort of dark black color these are annual daily demands sort of going around a sort of an average that occurred in the um 2013 and before and everything that's the sort of pink and red and these brown colors 2014 and later all the way through um I think this goes to 2019 but the trends right now that we're experiencing are are exactly the same and this is represents a fundamental downshift in the way our customers are using uh water in our in our community I think it reflects a very long term commitment to water conservation and it also does something that's called hardening of the demand which means that that that 15 percent we used to target to go after when we had dry years really isn't there to target anymore people's use has been uh you know substantially changed um the sort of this table kind of talks you can see that every one of the line items here is you know 30 to 40 percent lower than it was in 2002 to 2004 um and that has really big implications on both how our system operates and how we have to plan for our our water shortage contingency restrictions when we when we have that situation these numbers reflect uh these changes in population which again is a demonstration of the very high degree of commitment to efficient water use that exists in our community really a tremendous performance um a little bit of a double-edged sword so we're going to talk a little bit more about what that all means that the last two charts down into a little bit more detail so you can see for each one of the customer groups that we have uh the kinds of changes that have occurred in this um in this period in particular the representation of the the you know 40 percent decline in single family is it is a huge recognition of the fact that irrigation is not something that's going on in the way that was going on 20 years ago in this community and I think that we all see that in the way our front yards look like and you know what people are doing in their front yards to improve water use efficiency so this cumulatively really changed how we started to think about what we needed to do when we talked about going forward with with fixing you know to updating the water shortage contingency plan this the the demand season that we really plan for is has about you know 40 percent of the uh or 60 percent of the total demand in the annual demand so our number is about 1.35 billion and this shows you how it's allocated among our various customer classes the the just plain irrigation number uh is over here it's a much smaller number than historically would have been the case there is irrigation in this uh in the single family area in particular you're going to see some more data on that a little bit further on in this presentation but this is the place where um you know these changes are pretty dramatic and you'll see that this uh the the goals that we have to reduce the demand under the new required 10 percent per stage water shortage contingency plan requirement that we have from the state are driven by this number this 13 uh 158 million gallons and I think with that I'm going to stop for a second and see if council members have any questions about the nature of the changed conditions before we move on and are you council members any questions on your end okay okay all right so moving on when we when we get a situation when we're starting to do this kind of planning we are looking at a set of priorities it's uh it's it was a process that was developed in the last go round of the planning process and for water shortage contingency planning and it really does help to us think about what are the priorities for water use among our customers and the way that it was done last time and that we've maintained this go round is health and safety water is the highest priority so the goal for us is to try to figure out how to you know protect that water as best we can as we make the sort of sequential cuts that might have to be made in the plan or in the implementation of the plan um commerce water water used in um in business uh whether it's a production kind of business or whether it's a you know a restaurant that's using water for cooking food that it's selling or it's a hotel motel that's using water you know for its guest rooms that kind of thing that historically has been protected all the way through like stage four relatively little cuts were few cuts were made to those that kind of usage in the old plan and unfortunately with the demand requirements being what they are the demand characteristics being what they are now we're not able to protect that use and quite the way we were in the last go round and then the lowest priority is irrigation water and you know we all know that this isn't a completely zero value because we know that parks and open spaces are a really critical part of our community but on the other hand it's also the more discretionary use that does exist in that that we've really targeted this for reductions at a higher level than the other than the other uses when you take the same hundred thirteen fifty eight million gallons and you divide it up into those characteristics health and safety and commerce and irrigation you get this picture and it helps you to sort of see that even in the situation that we find ourselves in most of our water these days it's being used as would be expected to support health and safety activities in our community. This table shows on the individual class basis the proportionate share of the you know they're the total use for that class how much is in health and safety how much is in irrigation and you'll see that in business and industrial for example um typically all the business and industrial irrigation is happening under this category so there's no irrigation but we've divided it up between the health and safety uses this is a a business that maybe has you know employee restrooms that kind of thing and it's not using water much in the production of products or you know the sale of products to or services such as hotels or restaurants. UCSC has a fairly good size chunk in health and safety and another chunk in irrigation water and then municipal includes all city facilities including parks all city parks are in this this category and then just general irrigation and we have a couple of other categories here um the the golf course irrigation in 2009 there was a lot of discussion with this community about whether they're a business or whether they're an irrigator and there was a sort of a compromise made to give them a chunk of this water uh as a recognizing that golf courses in general are businesses uh at that time it was Pasa Tiempo and Vela Viega golf course were the two that were in that conversation and then finally north coast ag irrigation so you can see that that the water has been sort of divvied up into these various categories and um from there we uh you know we've prioritized it and um really are looking at uh now allocating uh for each each kind of stage how much of the original sort of baseline water would be provided and you'll see that in some of these later on that in some cases the numbers don't fall in the sort of general like 95, 90, 85 that kind of thing and it's because of the mix of um of irrigation water as that's targeted more heavily for curtailment and then health and safety water so the plan requires that the uh the state requires us to come up with a six-stage plan a greater than 50 cut in the last stage uh these are huge changes and we can talk a little bit more about this toward the end where I'll sort of show you in a kind of a framework what this means but uh these stages I will tell you you I think that anything beyond a stage two here is really uh it's a really a painful cut that we would have to absorb in the community and we are certainly doing everything we can to get supply augmentation in place so that you know the sizes of our um more steer shortages are lower and more tolerable and you know maybe a stage one or a stage two at the most um someone and the water commission's been very involved in this conversation asked me at one point about you know how could we really do these higher stages and the answer is well in our case we really can't so we have a strategy that's a combination of you know some curtailment even though we've have to produce this larger plan but really its supply augmentation is is the thing that we have to be focused on at this point and you'll see that at the various stages the proportionate share of the um the normal year consumption that will happen and kind of you can see that after stage three there is no irrigation water to cut uh this is this is pretty draconian and you'll see also in a in a very you know at the lower stages the amount of water that's available for commerce is really significantly impacted also and there's no way to protect health and safety water for you know residential customers or other kinds of uses so it's this is this is a big change from the plan that we currently have I know this this uh this table has a lot of um of information on it and I don't want anybody to have to um you know sort of there's not going to be a test let's put it that way but I will say that it does show the level of detail that we've gone to in trying to figure out you know how much each um each customer class gets and and the allocations associated with it and you need this level of detail in order to really look at it and say okay what are the right demand reduction strategies that get us from you know a 517 million gallon normal demand even under stage one to a 463 million normal demand or in a stage two to you know 100 plus million gallons a day less and that's really the purpose of this particular uh this table um Ben and uh Ben pink from my staff as well as Toby Goddard did a lot of work on this before he departed about a year ago to really get us at this level of detail and again this chart is really helpful in helping us think about how do we achieve these cuts in the event that we need to we need to have them so any questions on that part about the sort of general uh you know what are the targets because now we're going to move into the demand reduction strategies questions I have a question rosemary that any other questions by council members no okay question about well one question I had rosemary was um how do how to hospital where where do hospitals fall in all this they're not commerce they're not personal or residential where do they fall if there was some of those scary now they're they're in the business and industrial class and actually we do have a kind of an exception policy for certain businesses we've had a lot of conversations with that because you know you take this information and then you start to operationalize it and you get to these you know the places where you say to yourself okay so what are we really trying to do here and what you know what can we do um to protect certain kinds of critical businesses and hospitals are certainly one of those healthcare facilities in general are open that group um okay so it's it's kind of done on an exception basis great and then on the I know the north coast um agriculture I know that that we provide city water up there correct and that is are those existing rights that that those I'm just curious about the north coast add because I remember there's some kind of obligation on our end for that correct yeah so we have two kinds of customers in the north coast we have raw water customers who are irrigation only customers and those are typically growers either on their own land or on tracks that they leased from trust for public lands under coast dairies or the state parks for example and and the use of that community has gone down substantially in the last 10 years I would say at the time that this original 2009 plan was developed there annual use was estimated about 63 million gallons a year and as you can see in the in the 2016-2018 year that we use as our base year it's about 13 million gallons that's because of alternate sources that have been developed over time by many of the the farmers um so so we have uh you know long-standing relationships with them and those are kind of you know in in place other kind of use we have is a is a back feed of treated water that goes up the coast to field domestic uses and that one is those people are those folks are treated exactly in the same way as residential customers okay and I guess my last question when I look at especially like the stage four it's where you're cutting back so much but your cost to produce that unit of water doesn't decrease so you are still you know you're getting you're incrementally reducing what you potentially your rate would be paying um because they're you know everybody's using less water so you're yeah I'm just curious um tell because if you if you had the double whammy of a long-term drought which causes economic downturn and then you also are producing water at the same rate that you're it's costing you to produce it you get the money I mean this is all about climate change this is we're living in a brand new world basically moving towards a brand new world and so maybe just a couple comments for you know just your thoughts on that yeah so so it's really a good point I mean a very little very very low level of the water department's total cost of operation are variable in other words if we produce you know 10 fewer gallons or 10 more gallons it our costs don't change very much really the only team when we did this we did work with the council to put in place what we call then the drought cost recovery fee so you know the unfortunate reality is that we cut production and we ask people to cut their use and then we charge them more because we had to make ourselves financially whole right right so at the at the time that we did the 2016 water rate adjustment we built in a set of drought cost recovery fees that would go into place automatically in the event that the council declared you know a stage for reduction typically in the spring like april we bring the council a recommendation saying okay here's where we are and we need to you know we're recommending that you implement stage two of the water shortage contingency plan at that point the drought cost recovery fee effects would go into a place on the meter charge of fixed charge that would happen over a whole calendar year and then would be taken off once that had run their course and we will be bringing something like that again when we do the update to the water rates which will happen later on this year so so it's it is a very you know it's a very difficult thing the community to use less pay more right but that's kind of where we are with our with our water supply situation and one of the one of the really important strategies for moving forward is to get that supply augmentation in place so at the very least that people are paying more they have a reliable supply of acts of water you know that they can depend upon okay okay thank you continue on rosary thanks for that okay strategy will get us where we need to be at each one of these stages we really understood that the new demand characteristics you know less and our ability to do a sort of less painful kinds of curtailment things where we tell people don't water your lawn between 10 a.m. and 5 p.m. people aren't doing that so there's no point in telling them not to do it and and that really made us realize that we have to do curtailment we need some pretty strong you know guarantees if you will that we're going to get the kind of cuts that we asked for because we don't have a big backup or you know anything that supplies our needs in the event that we run out so it's really important that we accomplish what we aim to accomplish and it also is important that people feel whatever happens is done fairly and that it's easy to implement or relatively easy to implement and for customers to understand so those are the kind of criteria that we were using and thinking about what the right strategy would be as mentioned there's really generally two kinds of strategies here one is prescriptive measures and prohibitions at the last in 2014 we had you know one of the prohibitions that went into effect when we did stage three was you couldn't fill your swimming pool or your spa and we did have some real pushback from the local businesses that sold you know hot tubs saying you're hurting my business because you know you're telling people they if they buy one of these things for me they can't fill it up and so that certainly is a strategy that has been used and that under you know pin the first three stages of the last plan that we had and the second strategy is sort of customer allocations it's that's allocations it's kind of another word for a ration this is what you get and we actually are recommending that we use an allocation strategy because it gives the customers freedom to use water as they see fit within their allocation and it can be implemented using the mechanisms of the billing system so the strategy that we're pursuing actually is from stage one for all customer classes reduced allocations monthly use is 6.1 ccf and we would be putting a five allocation five ccf in the uh in as the stage one it would still be five at stage two but after stage one the um excess user fees with new fees would go into effect the billing system can only have uh duck with you know we can't say your allocation is 5.5 this go around and and 4.9 the next go around so we've got some rounding and then uh b3 uh and or stage five four and five it would be uh three it's it's um important to note that in 2013 2014 2015 patient for single family residential customers the ration was 10 ccf so this is a lot less going into it we've sort of done a lot of work thinking about how do businesses use water how can we ration them or give them allocations that match what we're uh what we really are trying to do and what they need and what we've sort of concluded is that the best strategy is a kind of in the individualized approach um that would I'm sorry where's my graph go here it is um this this would say for take take a business with a seasonal allocation uh or a seasonal use pattern that's the the up here where they you know think of a hotel or a motel where their use in the shoulder seasons might be low but there it would peak in the summertime when we have a lot of visitors and actually cut them back based on the percentage at each stage so that they're um they wouldn't have more water than they need in the shoulder seasons and not enough water to meet their needs in the peak season so this is a more labor intensive process but also I think will give us a better likelihood that um our business customers and industrial customers will be able to um to to work with that and I think that the other thing to to make note of is that there will be a real need for a lot of customer resources that help people to identify ways that they can take action to meet the needs that they have with you know in the best way they can within their allocation um one of the important things that we that we know is that those people who are already conserving you know and we do have many customers in the single family group for example who use fewer CCF per month than six even in the even in the summertime will have an easier time of being able to um comply particularly in the first couple of stages of this someone who's having you know either a larger household which that will be an exception process but someone is less conserving for whatever reason will be struggling harder and I think you did get a a piece of communication from one from a community member kind of commenting about you know what he saw as a challenge for his um his household um so we will be developing you know a whole set of these kind of community resources that help people you know understand what what how there might be using water in their home or their you know and their residence and then but for opportunities that would create opportunities for them to improve that or to reduce the um their use and then finally I just wanted to sort of point out a couple of metrics here that I think really tell a story about what this means uh in this in this calculated residential gallons per capita per day line you can see that it goes with no deficiency again in the peak season from about 50 gallons per capita per day which is still under the state the state goal away substantially under to roughly half of that at at stage five um the the ccf per month is pet roughly in half obviously our average production out of the water plant in uh you know in the summertime is around eight million gallons a day down from you know what it was obviously 20 years ago but that would roughly go in half again as well so these are these are significant changes that are uh you know hard to imagine is actually getting to a place past this sort of 20 percent deficiency um but it really means that we've kind of got ourselves in a situation where there's there's not much room to maneuver if we have the 76 77 kind of event or you know a couple of 2014 back to back uh which we're not really in that situation right now in spite of the fact that last year was dry you know we are going to be in a kind of a world apart and we're going to need everyone in the community to step up and do their part and I think with that I will take your questions just as I finished my coffee just now um yeah I have council member excuse me vice mayor bruner and then council member Cummings go ahead vice mayor thank you for that report rosemary uh very sorrowing to learn all about what we're facing so allocation strategy can you speak a little bit to how that works with multi residential homes or multi family residential it's basically strategy is used it's based on number of units so if the allocation is for residential is five and there's a multi family residential that has you know five units it's going to be 25 units for that for that monthly allocation there's a little bit of a tweak in there regarding whether they have a separate um irrigation meter on the property for that whatever landscaping might exist or whether it's an integrated piece it will be a tiny bit less than the event that it's a separate irrigation meter because that irrigation meter would be being regulated under a um it'd be regular being regulated under an irrigation curtailment on that meter so that's the that's the strategy and we do something similar to that right now with respect to the way the rates are structured so there are tiered rates for single family and the same tiered rate structure exists for the multi family except for its the allocation and each one of the tiers is multiplied by the number of units in the building and that's assuming they kind of each equally uh use the same or similar amount yeah and we propose here is it includes a assumption about three person per household but there's a provision called an exception process with more people in it a higher population density to come and get additional water allocation and that would occur in the in the single family or in the multi family as well although it gets a little bit more muddled in the sense that you know you you would probably create average population density over the whole set of units rather than each for each unit right because most of the multi family that would be covered in this kind of a strategy does not have a individual meters on their individual units right and and most of them that I at least that I'm aware of has the water cost folded in with rent right property manager to you know keep in mind what the census is for the the building or the property and coming to us and asking for additional water if it's more than an average of three per unit great thank you I just wanted to get some clarification because it sounds like you know this structure provides some context I recently was speaking with somebody about the water rationing the previous time and they had been mentioning how they would very very much like to see this kind of like customer allocation strategy because you know if one person wants to you know water the lawn or wash the car versus taking multiple showers a day versus somebody else who may have a large family where everybody's bathing that having that option is really helpful so that individuals can control their water use so I just wanted to just see if you could clarify that and I guess along with that is you know under the customer allocation strategy I'm just I'm trying to make sense of teasing apart single family versus irrigation so under this strategy for a single family home would that person then have the option of whether it's you know deciding whether they want to use the water that they're allocated to water their lawn versus indoor use is that absolutely yeah yeah so the current municode 1.10 or something but anyway there's a whole section in the municode that is the implementation strategy for the current water surge contingency plan and it includes in that prohibitions and restrictions and prescriptions you can do this but you can't do that with the with the exception of water waste which we don't allow any time under any circumstances all of that information all that content will be stripped out of the municode and the municode will be the municode will become more of the you know the backbone of what the basic allocation strategy is and customers will have how they use their water and what they want to do with it if somebody wants to microt can tell me during the water supply advisory committee process that he likes to grow corn well if he wants to stop bathing and grow corn you know he can stop bathing and grow corn not that he would but you know what I mean sure no thanks I think that there's going to be a lot of folks who appreciate this approach and so I just want to thank you and your team for all the work you all did to bring this forward and with that I'll I'll wrap up my questions that's all I had thank you okay uh martin uh councilman walken did you have any questions I saw your hand up but then it went down went down yeah no I don't have any questions thank you rosemary well maybe I just have one just have one question one is I think um thank you for your work in your and to the advisory committee as well and I think as the vice mayor put it it's very sobering information and concerning I think compounded by climate change and the risk to our water source um as a result of you know fires and runoff right so I know you've looked at that and that's also factoring and sobering um component as well I know that we've talked in the past about kind of thinking about an equity um lens for water rates for folks who are already stressed in the past right and so I just wonder what your thoughts are on kind of that population that could be really financially impacted as a result of this that's a that's a really important question and a big question and and I will tell you that the good news on that topic is that there does seem to be for the first time both at the state level at the federal level a real recognition that like it's a human right and we should be figuring out how to support that and and I think in um in California with prop 218 but in other states where they have similar kind of constitutional restraints there are there are many constraints to our ability to um you know lay out a program of um they will be that at the state or the federal level there are some opportunities that are going to arise that could you know provide that safety net and there is a there's a whole conversation going on right now at the at the state level and at the federal level about the 638 million dollars that was in the water rate assistance or the utility rate assistance segment of the um COVID response bill that was passed at the end of December conversation about the the assistance program like I think it's it's uh it's uh you know acronym is and um talking about how you know a strategy like that may need to be put together for uh water issues and I think that while undoubtedly that's not something that's going to happen overnight it it could be an important element just in general for especially as we're looking at the kind of capital improvements that the water department is working on you know and rates that are going to be coming forward to you guys you know later on this year uh it's going to be important for us to keep that you know square in our on our radar and we might have few opportunities to do something with it you know with local resources but that doesn't mean we shouldn't be advocating really loudly for uh help from other places and we and I'm already doing that wonderful well thank you and that um yeah that's heartening to hear about that could be potentially something we can ask for and if there's anything the council can do to support you and your advocacy um you know let us know please we'll do well thank you Rosemary um for the presentation I'm going to go ahead no more um there are no more questions from council members um I'll go ahead and take it out to the public so this would be if you're here to um speak to item number 23 on the agenda today which is the update of the of the Santa Cruz water shortage contingency plan if you could please raise your hand so we know that you'd like to speak I'm not seeing any so I will bring it back to the council and uh council member Cummings again thank the staff for all their work on this and uh I'm happy to move the staff recommendation to adopt the 2821 interim update of the Santa Cruz water shortage contingency plan council member Brown I'll second that and also second and third and fourth appreciation for all of the work that has gone into this and your ongoing to uh trying to navigate a very um unclear uh future and a very daunting potential set of scenarios and um just echo uh council member Watkins uh point if there's anything that uh you know we can do just call on us to try to help with that you know the outreach efforts or kind of you know whatever whatever we can do at our end it's uh it's a lot so thank you great and uh yeah Rosemary I'll I'll echo just from line yeah just the appreciation of your department um many water departments throughout California do not have the mindset of really what um Rosemary and all of the water all the water folks um in our department that are really projecting and using the most current tools around climate change and drought forecasting and you know we're lucky that we have such a sophisticated department based on um amazing science and at the same time they're also trying to take care of our threatened endangered species aquatic species that live in the watersheds that we actually share our water supply with so um the only thing that's missing from your charts Rosemary is the frogs and the fish there and figuring out how they're going to make it through all of this as well yeah um I think that um we have an outstanding water department and and we're keeping the environment and um the safety of our residents and our businesses um actually all on a on the same scale and in the same thought in terms of planning so thank you for the work um so I have a motion from council member Cummings and a second by council member Brown to adopt the 2021 interim update of the Santa Cruz water shortage contingency plan and could I get a roll call vote please Bonnie um a hand did go up from a member of the public sorry okay uh why don't we go back um before we do the roll call Mr. Tabas there we go can you hear me now yes we can welcome thank you my question for rosemary is uh in terms of capturing rainwater runoff for residential properties is that a strategy that is valid and every time I look at it every time I try to evaluate it it's you know creating the uh you know the storage reservoir is more way more expensive than uh it's worth to in terms of the cost offset of buying the water from the city um so going forward as water gets more expensive is there any possibility or is there is this something that's done in other places that have already faced this where um there's some incentive programs to install water tanks for just for like outdoor irrigation use type stuff is that a reasonable strategy and and have we is that is that a efficient enough use of uh resources of the financial resources all right do you want me to respond yeah usually um Mr. Tabas we usually don't public comment is usually a time to just uh it's we usually don't have a back and forth but yeah I'd be happy to have the water director answer your question thanks appreciate it um well thanks for that question the I think the issue for us here locally is that our rainfall pattern our annualized precipitation pattern is really concentrated in the winter time and so and the need is really for irrigation water is really in the summertime and I certainly don't want to say there's there's no potential value for sort of on-site rainwater collection but typically it's not going to be enough to get you across through the whole sort of summer demand season so there's a there's a limited ability of that particular strategy to work well there there I think was a um other places many other places including the midwest and the and to some degree in the east and certainly in places like Australia where the precipitation patterns are less seasonally concentrated it's a better more useful strategy okay thanks thank you really uh yeah I see we'll take one more one more uh we have call-in user one you're you're you should be unmuted shortly here a thousand acre Monterey Bay SGR National monument another project my time here dealing with the state water resources conservation board and coastal commission recently management in the tri-county Monterey Bay Monterey you have a sustainable water use and plan here may I come and run down my plan for you I've offered oh I've offered many times I don't get any response back I know Donna Myers for your mayor 25 you know oh uh please go to lawandorderliberal.org from 25 years ago and that kind of outlines my plan thank you very much thank you councilmember Golder is absent vice mayor Brunner houses unanimously thank you thank you very much um Rosemary on to item number 24 implementation working group update to the city council for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order of this item will be a presentation by staff or excuse me by the council members who brought the item forward followed by questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action again if you're interested in commenting on measure you implementation working group update to city council press star nine on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the timer will then be set for two minutes we have a presenter Morgan Bostic is here today she's the advocate for the city county task force to address UCSC growth and she'll be providing the presentation today so welcome morgan are you here hi you are there you are thank you very much let me just share my screen really quickly all right are we all looking at the same thing we are great um good afternoon thank you so much for having me and for providing this platform for me to share how concerned community members can participate in the UC Santa Cruz long-range development plan review process um my name is Morgan Bostic my pronouns are she her hers I am a UC Santa Cruz graduate and the advocate for the Santa Cruz city county task force on UCSC growth plans which is the designated measure you implementation working group by the city and county and is served by Mayor Myers council members Brown and Cummings as well as county supervisor Ryan Coonerty and Lee Butler who serves as an ex officio member the task force with Morgan I'm just going to stop you for one sec your it looks like you're maybe not in full live mode I don't know if you want to switch to that there you go that's better yeah just very hard to see perfect thank you so sorry thank you for catching that I appreciate it um okay so the task force was formed in response to local ballot measure you which was passed in 2018 by 77 percent of Santa Cruz city voters the primary objectives of the task force as directed by measure you are to fully participate in the LRDP review process to take policy and legal actions to ensure responsible growth for UCSC and to eliminate or at a minimum reduce the adverse effects of additional UCSC growth on the Santa Cruz community and environment particularly in the areas of housing traffic quality of undergraduate education then and public services like water commenting on the EIR and participating in the LRDP review process is an opportunity for all of us to collaboratively craft the future of our community and campus to recommend policies for responsible stewardship of our community's natural resources and environment and to ensure that all future UCSC students have the necessary resources that they need to succeed long-range development plans are legally binding documents that are produced by the University of California and in this case UC Santa Cruz and they identify what resources and infrastructure will be necessary to support the success of future students based on academic goals and projected enrollment levels the current UC Santa Cruz LRDP limits enrollment to 19 500 students and will schedule to expire in 2020 early last month UCSC released their draft long-range development plan for 2021 through 2040 and the associated draft environmental impact report this plan envisions up to 28 000 students on campus by 2040 and also includes suggested land use changes to have the potential to radically transform the landscape of UCSC and negatively impact UCSC students the environment and the community at large i'm going to share the very basics of the proposal but for a fuller picture of the 2021 LRDP i recommend that concerned community members visit UCSC's website lrdp.ucsc.edu so they can see the complete document UCSC is planning a 44 increase in enrollment a 56 percent total increase in on-campus populations by 2040 um while the plan includes the objective to house 100 percent of additional students and up to 25 percent of additional faculty and staff on campus these are not included in a way that would make these goals legally enforceable additionally the LRDP and associated documents do not tie enrollment growth to the provision of critical infrastructure like housing and finally UCSC is planning for significant development in north campus about 43 percent of the housing development and eight percent of the academic and support space is planned outside of the city's municipal services boundaries and within a cow fire designated high fire hazard severity zone this will have an impact on the city of Santa Cruz's water supply and increase the fire risk in an already vulnerable area of our region UC Santa Cruz's initial announcement of a nearly 50 percent increase in enrollment Santa Cruz city voters overwhelmingly past local ballot measure U which among other imperatives directs the city's participation in the review of UCSC's proposed LRDP and guides how the task force communicates the response at the campus level to the UC system the UC regents and the California state legislature our goal is to ensure full mitigation of all adverse impacts of any proposed UCSC growth on the Santa Cruz community particularly like I said before in the areas of housing traffic public transportation and public services like water and public safety in particular the task force's primary objective is for UCSC to enter into a legally enforceable agreement that includes the following that UCSC will house 100 percent of additional students faculty and staff on campus and that UCSC will provide all of the critical resources and infrastructure includes including on campus housing prior to or concurrent with student submission and faculty and staff hiring as it seems now UCSC's plans will not meet the objectives that are outlined in measure U in the draft EIR UC Santa Cruz outlines some of the anticipated impacts of their proposed growth again to get a complete picture of the anticipated impacts of the 2021 LRDP I recommend that members of the public view the documents on UCSC's website um but just to cover some of the the most egregious uh uh an outstanding ones UCSC is projecting a significant unavoidable negative impact on the availability and affordability of housing in the city and region as a result of their proposal UCSC anticipates the removal of about 12 acres of protective habitat that's reserved for endangered species um UCSC anticipates the increased growth of campus will contribute to the city's need to identify alternative water sources and finally UCSC's draft EIR discloses that in order to meet statewide emissions goals and the UC's own sustainability objectives they will need to purchase thousands of metric tons of carbon offsets uh their proposal additionally as it seems now is not expected to meet regional air quality goals the release of the draft uh a long development plan and the draft EIR for 2021 through 2040 presents a critical opportunity to come together and envision what development and infrastructure will be necessary uh an essential to the success of future UCSC students faculty and staff over the next 20 years the task force is searching all concerned community members to review the documents and to share their concerns with the UC directly before the public comment period ends on March 8th task forces goals and advocate for the will of the broad majority of Santa Cruz voters over the past year the task force has initiated a public campaign informing the community about the details of the university's plans we are actively participating and have been encouraging community members to actively participate in the LRDP review process the task force has organized topics specific working groups that are providing new tool to support for those who are interested in commenting on the DEIR as they share their concerns with the university um additionally city and county staff are currently preparing detailed comments on the draft EIR as well as COVID pushed most of our efforts online we have created a robust social media presence we have a regular newsletter uh we attend numerous uh virtual student organization and off campus community meetings uh where we discuss this issue and share how to meet how members of the public can have their voices heard by the university um in addition we've begun lobbying our state legislators for meaningful action on this issue should UC Santa Cruz not be persuaded by our local campaign efforts commenting on the EIR like I said before is a critical opportunity for those of us who are concerned about the future of our community and our campus to recommend policies for responsible growth and for responsible stewardship of our natural environment and uh sacred natural resources um the task force is urging those concerned about the future of our community and environment to comment on the draft EIR which will be accepting public comments until 5 p.m. on March 8th you can email your comments to eircomment at ucsc.edu um members of the public should feel free to contact me directly my email is listed on this slide it's morgan.bostic at act on ucscgrowth.org they can also reach the task force directly by emailing info at act on ucscgrowth.org thank you all so much for your time and support as we advocate for responsible in the ucsc growth plan um and i'm happy to answer any questions of the task force may or the council may have sorry thank you thanks so much um morgan we really appreciate your presentation really really clear and well done um laying out what's ahead i'll turn it over to council member um Cummings or council member brown i don't know if you guys have comments as well uh go ahead council member brown don't speak a few comments uh first i really want to thank you morgan for the presentation and for all the work you've been doing it's been wonderful to work with you and the task force uh around uh really challenging issue or set of issues i um you know i've just been uh just really grateful for your level of sort of clarity and organization in kind of getting us to move forward and i'm really grateful for the opportunity today for this information to be uh you know provided to the public in a more public venue so those who are out there listening uh really know uh a little bit more of the basics and how to be more involved um i would say that you know we are uh you know we we face a serious challenge here and and the community has uh pretty resoundingly with an advisory measure uh stated support for us negotiating with the university around these these issues and you know in particular with respect to the binding commitment you know i think i you know i just want to put it out there because you gave us a great presentation and you know so i'm going to editorialize just a little bit um and say you know that this is this is a really challenging piece right because um you know for one it would be precedent setting and i think that the you know that you see regents are probably not wanting to go there um and it's it's also um you know it's also tenuous whether or not they could meet those commitments even if they do make it binding right so there there's um you know there's a lot of unknowns there's there's a lot of challenge but i think that um that this work to try to really make clear how untenable it would be to just move ahead with a you know significant significant increase in the student population would not serve the students or the community and so again i just want to you know i just wanted to say thank you for all of your work and i encourage folks out there to uh you know get involved to you know voice those concerns it really helps us as your city representatives tasked with trying to uh uh you know speak up on behalf of the voters about this issue it really helps us to have more input and and feedback and um and so i guess i'll leave it there um i um chunk of never coming it looks like you have more to say and um um so thanks again for everything go ahead uh council member coming please thank you um and i just like to um morgan thank you again for all the work that you've done on this over the past year and a half it's been um a really um positive and collaborative effort that we've been leading pulling in the county and then also um all the members of the task the the community advisory group it's really been putting in a substantial amount of their time volunteering to you know help the city and the community address this issue of really trying to figure out that balance between university growth and community impacts and i just want um members of the community to understand too you know as we're faith you know we're faced with many issues this being just one that um i haven't started community but you know we're not alone in this effort um we last year as a task force were able to meet with the city of berkeley and they have been experiencing similar um impacts as it relates to the growth of uc berkeley and the impacts that that has on the berkeley community so i just want members of the public to know that um you know we are one of a number of cities throughout the state of california who are really trying to we're dealing with these issues and really trying to figure out a way for the regions to acknowledge um our concerns and really trying to work together to find a way that we can move forward um to make sure that um the growth is compatible with cities and so i just want to thank more than you and and all the folks over the years who've worked on this task force um to really try to get us to this point where we are today and to continue working on this as we move forward any questions from other council members at this point i guess i will before we open it up to public comment i um yeah i mean i think that um morgan's work is really helpful um there's an excellent website um obviously those um web addresses were given out um and uh morgan what is the what's the easiest way what's what some people search on if they're trying to find is that under measure you working group or what is what is our actual group name yeah the santa cruz city county task force on ucsc growth plans i've tested it you can just google task force on ucsc growth and it will direct you to our website um so you can get hold of us that's an easy way to get there um morgan's done a great job and um again we've been working um also with other as council member um Cummings mentioned other communities um and uh i just want also um folks to know that our planning department actually all city departments um are reviewing the environmental impact report and certainly will be the city will actually um from the sort of departmental internal perspective of um what what kinds of um concerns the city may have um there will be a letter transmitted from our planning director to the university of california on the on the l rdp er so i just want to make sure that that's clear um and that will be the city's communication um in terms of official comment or full comment um morgan i didn't know if you wanted to clarify anything anything more on that at this point the city council itself is not making formal comment but that comment will be coming through our departments and all departments have been asked to review the eir and those comments are being consolidated into uh an official submittal on the city's behalf and morgan i don't know if you have any comments on that yes i also will be submitting comments um on the eir great on behalf that will be in addition okay on behalf of the workforce so we have two vehicles that we're trying to express our um our comments through on the long-range development plan environmental impact report and uh certainly encourage the big big big huge thing for our family for our community so uh please get involved and morgan we really appreciate you being here today to update everybody i'm going to go ahead and take it out to public comments and um i see mr lon genotti's on go ahead rick city council members rick lon genotti um i um you know just being observing this process over the last couple years i realized that uh you know this the university's uh failure to commit to legally binding uh goals for housing new students um that's not an accident it's not an oversight um the chancellor convened a community advisory group a couple years ago and that was a goal of that community advisory group for the last couple years and and the university decided it was not going to make a legally binding commitment so that's what that says to me is that the university uh expects they won't have to make a commitment to add even a single dorm room for a an additional student unless they get sued and so this time period now before the close of the comment period of march eighth is important because it lays the ground for a lawsuit and uh i'm a little concerned that the council has not given any direction to the city staff about what to say in their comment letters uh i think the comments need to be tailored to prepare for an eventual lawsuit and i'm hoping that what you can do with this meeting today is certainly individually speak to staff and let them know uh to to to make a unified strategy not just you know one department here in one department they are making comments but a unified strategy that will lay the basis for a strong lawsuit thank you very much thank you are there any other members of the public that wish to speak to this item i see none uh we will go back to deliberation and uh comments or further comments or questions or um comments or or deliberation uh council member coming again thank you for uh that presentation morgan and for those members of the public or that member of the public who's able to chime in thank you as well um i had prepared um a motion to make um and in part through this motion just given that we're having this discussion today it's pretty to um provide some comments from this group on the l rdp and so i sent them message the the motion over to bonnie if she can display it so the motion would be to um one accept the report and then to direct the mayor to write a letter to the ucsc chancellor larive expressing the council's concerns with proposed campus development under the draft 2021 long-range development plan and to request the consideration of the following revisions to the plan one consistent with measure u include a legally defensible commitment to house all additional students beyond 19 500 on campus to tie the increase of campus population to new campus housing three designate the creation of housing and child care at 2800 Delaware to support off main campus housing as a high priority for legally designate the ucsc campus natural reserve as a permanent reserve ineligible for development in purpose duty for the purposes of environmental conservation scientific education research and recreation five prioritize areas with low endemic biodiversity for development to protect the most biodiverse habitats on the campus and areas that have undergone substantial regeneration six adhere to or exceed the strictest statewide regional and uc specific greenhouse gas emission targets and air quality standards and then seven given the increasing severity of wildfires due to climate change and the urban wildland interface it's imperative that the university adequately analyze and mitigate the increase in wildfire risk that the 2021 lrdp won't pose on the campus and by extension the community and you know a lot of this too is addressing some comments that we've received from members of the public who were wondering what stance we're going to take and I think largely you know really trying to express on behalf of the community the concerns around growth the concerns around environmental impact in the upper campus and really trying to you know encourage the university to develop in areas where they're going to have the least amount of impacts on the environment is really the intention behind the motion and the comments that I'm hoping we might be able to express on behalf of council today and so with that I'll close my comments out and turn it back over to the mayor councilmember brown yeah I will second that motion and you know appreciate your councilmember Cummings you're putting this together I think this reflects a lot of the kind of ongoing conversation that we've had at the task force also with members of the community the input that we receive and you know I think that that framing it in this way you know I mean we are recognizing that you know this is that we're requesting consideration of these things right so you know it really lays out some of the key concerns like in a in a clear way and it doesn't you know it doesn't get into any you know challenging areas around you know the commitments that well anyway just it does it makes it clear that we are asking them we are kind of really exploring them to think about these things and work with the community in a formal way and I think that that it would be it would really benefit us to get that in through this process get those comments in yeah I'll just maybe make a quick comment and then I've got councilmember Watkins yeah I'm on the committee so I'm I'm a little bit confused as to why we didn't bring this through the committee I guess is one of my questions so and that's the only procedural thing is that I think we so I I'm not sure why we didn't have a committee or try to figure out how to maybe do this with the three committee members but I appreciate definitely appreciate the intent behind it I'm just trying to figure out whether this should come be coming out of the committee and we not quite sure how we do this right now so I will go ahead and turn it back to so we have a motion by councilmember Cummings the second by councilmember Brown and I see councilmember Watkins you have your hand up and then councilmember Cummings come back to you I am I have a similar question but I think you just answered it as to whether this went through the committee and or if there is potential benefit to having it go through the committee to affirm and or add any additional language before sending these kind of priorities I don't know if there's and if there's a timeline if maybe I can understand the timeline or the urgency or if there's a willingness to kind of have this be just given another set of of eyes patient and or additions and I also want to thank Morgan for her presentation she was great job councilmember Cummings and then councilmember Brown great thank you mayor and just to answer some of the questions I know that the committee met earlier this month I will or early this month or late last month and I will say that I wasn't able to attend that meeting one of the concerns that came up was that all the comments have to be received on the LRDP by March 8th which meant that the only time that the city council would be able to meet before the deadline was today and so Morgan was able to pull together and we were able to bring forward this item that's on our agenda today but unfortunately given the timeline for being able to get this on the agenda we weren't able to meet to discuss any recommendations prior to this meeting um maybe one and so I think that what we were hoping to do is have an opportunity to get the council the way in in case we're able to put something forward on behalf of the council I do think that something that you know there's a concern around this needing to go back to the task force and the task force moving something forward you know one thing I think we could see happening is if the council members want to weigh in the direction could be that these recommendations go back to the task force and that the task force craft the letter and authorize the mayor to send that letter out on behalf of the city council after it's gone back to the task force for further input and bringing an input from the council today or the you know that the task force can write a letter on behalf of the council as well I think that the intention today was to get some kind of feedback from other council members so that we could provide a comment that's based on the sentiments of the city council and we were just really hoping to get that in before the deadline so um you know I'll leave my comments there if we were to meet again I would just ask that if the task force members if we could try to find a date early next week so that we would have enough time to be able to craft the letter you know get the appropriate signatures and then get it to the chancellor by March 8th I think that that's something we can we can do together so I'm all in my comments there and it looks like council member brown well I'll turn it back to the mayor to call on whoever's on staff uh council member brown and then council member Watkins and then I have uh lead Butler planning director yeah thank you so I just uh echoing uh in kind of building on uh council member coming to comments about this yeah I mean the so the urgency really was related to the the deadline for for comments and um and I guess I would say that you know the two things about uh you know the procedurally it coming to the council in this way at this time you know one I think uh all of these uh perhaps not with the the level of detail uh in some of the items have been discussed um at the task force and in other venues um you know we did not deliberate on them as a you know potential set of comments that uh the task force would recommend that the city submit or the city council submit but they have been talked about as you know important components uh over over time and the other being that uh we have not really had a venue at the city council a space in order to be able to have this conversation or put this kind of recommendation forward and so this is really the the space that has was created uh and so it part of that is just about the necessity of you know being able to you know conform to city council protocols and and do this in public um you know with an with an agendized item so um that's I think kind of where where I you know it made sense to me to go this route. Council Member Watkins and then Director Butler and we'll try to wrap up. Sure. You know I appreciate um what council member Cummings brought up in terms of having this sort of just another set of eyes and revisiting the city prior to sitting I think these are really important asks and big asks and I think we want and so since this group has been working really diligently on this and unfortunately wasn't able to have it be part of the conversation due to um the meeting schedule that um if they could have uh the time to revisit and really kind of affirm that this strategy um embraces all of our concerns and aligns additional um input the staff may be bringing um and then on behalf of the council moves there's no real harm in having that process ensue so I don't know if we want to make that some sort of friendly amendment or um uh sort of a just a motion to um have the committee read prior to sending it on behalf of the council. Um I'll see if Lee uh yeah I think I'll just make a comment I do I did attend the last meeting uh uh council member Brown and I were there and in in my understanding we had made a we had decided on a process um that was gonna so again I'm just I'm trying to understand exactly how we're working I would prefer and I think it's important to use the task force the full membership of the task force to try to try to craft I'm not I'm not disagreeing with the intent of what's here on the list but um uh you know it we I worked we worked hard to get this on the agenda and you know a lot of this is kind of been kind of coming a little bit disjointed so just trying to understand and make sure that the task force has the ability to um look through this and and move forward with it first time I've seen any of this and again as a member of the task force it's sort of a little bit broadside yeah so uh director Butler thank you mayor Myers I just wanted to um share one uh perspective on item number three um and council member Brown mentioned earlier the um vote that recently happened at the regional transportation commission about um the rail transportation and um one of the things that drives rail transit is employment um more so than um residential uses and with the 2,800 Delaware being in close proximity to potential future rail transit locations um we may just want to consider that an employment center there would have a higher um likelihood of driving um uh transit use than residential would um and so this is a comment that I shared when we talked about this at the committee advisory group and um so there are certainly other options to consider with this you know if um there is employment and then the housing that's associated there um is um uh prioritized for um people that are employed on site for example and so you know I just wanted to share that perspective and and consideration as part of this and I will also tell you one thing that the um a university uh group um commented on they uh at the time mentioned that um their preference was to have people on campus for residences so as to encourage them to participate in um after uh hours lectures and programs and so forth so um I just wanted to share that perspective with the council as they're uh considering uh these particular items thank you me of course more officially for this but I think the other thing that uh the other point here is that we are um the recommendation is just to get to ask the the city council to make these uh recommendations and so um you know to have the task force which is not entirely city centric work and then deliver it to the council um you know it I mean I could support um doing it in that way if we can get to the you know the the goal of getting some comments in on time but I also just want to remind us that this is about the the council as a body weighing in and the task force is also doing quite a bit of work uh and then um because Lee because you brought this up I um I hear you about the um the issues around uh industrial or business uses uh being more likely to uh generate uh you know passenger uh passenger demand uh with a potential rail service and I'm just I'm just wondering um I think part of the conversation that we've had around this site as a potential site for housing is um it's not entirely clear what the university's intentions are with that site um you know I hear kind of different things different moments and so I think you know I don't think that the goal was to suggest that make this kind of recommendation to preempt other use business uses right that generate employment uh it was more to uh you know think about how that site can you know potentially provide uh you know both or you know or other other uh uh functions as well so um anyway just wanted to to get that to because I totally I hear you I think that that's uh that's a concern and we you don't want to overstep um on something that we may not even want to see happen entirely. You're muted Mayor Myers. Council member Cummings and then uh Lee and then I'll put myself back in the queue. Mayor Myers yeah I was just um I wasn't trying to you know suggest that um we completely remove industrial I wouldn't say industrial but uh commercial slash office space use at this site I think that having it as mixed use would probably be obviously the most beneficial for the community um but wanted to express that I mean even hearing in the community that people have expressed you know the the desire to see housing going there because of the fact that we have so many students postdocs faculty staff that are working at the coastal campus additionally that are working at 2,800 Delaware and um you know this notion that you know providing more housing can also can one activate that area because we do know that um at night time there's obviously a lot of use of RVs in that area and so you know what can we do to activate that space and in addition that provide um you know additional housing off campus on the west side that could help support the functions of the coastal campus and um the operations at 2,800 Delaware so just wanted to clarify that the number three was not to um completely remove any kind of commercial use from that space but to consider the incorporation of housing within that space as well. Thanks um and I appreciate those clarifications as well I just wanted to add one additional point for consideration a number of these are directly related to the EIR and should adhere to that deadline of March 8th I think it is um whereas others are more broadly related to the LRDP itself and wouldn't necessarily have that same strict deadline and so you know there could be opportunities for further discussion of some of those policy items um and there there could be some additional time for that whereas we do want to get the um the EIR comments um in um fairly quickly so I just want to make that clarification. Thank you Lee um so I have a question for the maker of the motion um if the committee if the task force can be convened um and a letter communicated regarding this uh this is um are you amenable to convening the committee next week to try to actually run this through the task force I understand that the intent is to somehow have the city council weigh in but the task force is a city count county task force we actually are supposed to be working as a city county uh response space so I don't my understanding is that the the LRDP comments would be coming from as a representing the city county task force so I'm confused as to why the council would be taking action if I'm just confused so is there a friendly amendment or would the maker of the motion consider maybe convening the committee early next week I'll make myself available um otherwise I'm not going to I can't support the motion which is puts me in a very awkward position because as a member of the committee um I would like to discuss this but um a motion's been put on the floor that I actually had no idea that was going to happen and as a member a three-person member of a committee that's typically that it's just surprising to me that to have this be put on the floor right now so if there's a way that we can convene the committee and potentially work through um the strategy I would appreciate that as a member of the committee you know having the committee weigh in on this and taking into account the fact that we do have a supervisor that's on the task force um I would like to maybe hear from other council members their thoughts on you know if they'd have any comments or if they would be willing to provide the task force or the city members of the task force to um express um their concerns or their comments on behalf of the city council and that the letter that will be coming from the task force would also include the sentiments expressed by the city council of sanitary and because I think that the the point was to try to give the city council an opportunity to weigh in um and then you know because I think that the task force obviously is the community advisor group along with the county supervisor the three city members but as council member brown pointed out you know besides from that task force kind of working with our county supervisor and other representatives we haven't had a chance to allow for the city council members to weigh in on this and so I'm I'm totally up to um you know the if we can get direction from council to take this back to the task force and to draft the letter I'm happy to to make that as a friendly amendment but I think it'd be good to hear what other council members have to say and figure out what the appropriate direction will be from this body okay council member uh excuse me vice mayor bruner and then council member walkins and then council member con tarry johnson okay thank you um I wasn't aware that this would be an action item I was prepared for an update on the measure you implementation and the update on the concerns with the proposed development um so with that uh these seven items I have no um I'm not I wouldn't be prepared to uh uh without I'm just seeing this now and so you know we've had our packet since Thursday and there was a lot of information to go through already and so to comment or or vote on these specific points I I don't know I have sufficient information or understanding to do that um the the motion to direct the mayor to write a letter sounds straightforward but I also feel there is there there would be weight um to have uh force uh voice the the concerns coming from the working group that's been working on these issues um and concerns um so I think there is value to um uh direct this back to the task force you know Lee Butler did bring up that I don't know which items would be the March 8th deadline and which ones aren't can can anyone speak to the specifics on that I I could speak to the to that um generally um so uh and just taking a quick look at this um one two and three I think are more policy statements um certainly there could be an argument that too of tying the new campus housing to uh the campus population um but you know really the EIR is evaluating the the total build out um and so I think really four five six and seven are more tied to the EIR um and um understanding the concerns that you have Vice Mayor Brunner um you know the the council could if if the council chose to weigh in on uh collectively they could uh four and five are really speaking to um protection of biological resources and habitat and so forth and so the council could weigh in and say that uh make a statement about you know including comments on the EIR that um uh seek to uh strengthen the mitigation and ensure that uh biological resources are protected something general like that and then that can go back to Morgan and the crews working on those comments and then uh similarly I think six is a something that could just say yes thumbs up um and um that can go in as a comment um it's pretty broad um and something that I think um you know the council may not need additional information on and then seven of course the risks for wildfire um those are are pretty straightforward as well and also something that we would want to comment on on the EIR so if uh and so just my own perspective and something that you may want to consider is you know a general statement covering four and five um prior providing a direction to Morgan and then uh six and seven you could adopt and then the policy statements in one two and three could have additional options for consideration just an idea to throw it out there to as I'm trying to keep as I'm hearing the council debate these issues contrary Johnson council member Watkins and council member coming I'm excuse excuse me yeah council member yeah I share some of uh vice mayor brunner's um sentiments and concerns that I wasn't prepared to um this motion or or um take a vote on a detailed motion like this um I don't have very expensive knowledge in these areas they they on the surface they seem very much aligned with what we just saw in our presentation um I think if we have an opportunity to provide feedback um we want to make sure that we're thorough and we're not missing any pieces and there aren't any gaps so I think um having this go back to the committee and doing it in an efficient way so that we are able to not miss the march eight deadline would be my preference um and then in terms of um items one two and three I guess in particular three if we were to to move forward with this language I think some um further language and clarification that we're speaking to this as a mix potential mixed use um type of a project thank you council member uh council member Watkins I wonder for the purposes of trying to move this board given um I think where I'm sensing the council is with this and just um sort of echoing what my colleagues have stated um in particular to not sort of anticipating making a decision specifically on that that we move forward with having this committee um review this and um additional council members could potentially weigh in is by emailing the mayor who sits on this committee our input um after we have a chance to digest sort of the information um and we could get it to you uh ASAP for your deliberations as a committee given the short timeline if that's appropriate remember coming yeah I'm just if we can just get the language on the screen then see what the friendly amendment is sure obviously I don't know Tony I thought that you popped on here I don't know um the concern I have is that that would entail a quorum of council members working on a uh item of city business outside of a notice meeting so there's a brown act issue with regard to weighing in on uh some letter that the committee might be uh drafting because of the brown act issue right so just to have here because I know that we had an opportunity to weigh in um with the mayor on the letter to the governor as a as a council how is that different than this potentially with the process that was uh that was followed in drafting a letter to the governor so I'm not really prepared to comment on that that we could explore but given the input arc confusion of our C and 30 I it appears that that maybe isn't we just consensus on that these are areas that we are as a council supportive of the task force exploring in the letter to the chancellor including what was discussed in item number three which is essentially factoring and transportation but also prioritizing housing and childcare um and leave and we can leave it at that if unless others have additional comments is this a friendly amendment or I think what I mean the amendment would be to have this go to the back to the task force for review prior to submission at this point I think and leave it at that have the task great state that sure have the task force review the motion kind of letter being sent to the chancellor to play a letter from the mayor or a letter from the task force can I see the can I see the um this is where the confusion lies because essentially the task force is a agreement of process between the city and the council as a result of measure you for how to implement our advocacy efforts on behalf of measure you so I think when you have it from the task force it includes the council's concerns because the task force is representative of the council but almost could potentially have more strength because the task force is beyond just the council right so um so I guess it would be on on behalf of the task force essentially because I mean you know I defer to my colleagues to sit on this task force for clarification happening is that you know as the the amendment would be to have the task force review the comments proposed above with the other members of the task force and then submit a letter on behalf of the task force and the city council to the chancellor including comments that have been approved by the task force does that sound like it's a I guess what I'm trying to get at is that we've had this opportunity to discuss this and I will say there was a um you know recommendation that maybe we include the EIR LRDP but those documents are so big that there was no reason why you know it was discouraged to include that in the report but um you know part of what the recommendation was was for us to provide input as appropriate which is why these um suggestions have been made today but you know again I I don't have anything wrong with with us taking this back to the task force and um you know having the task force be the body that sends the letter I think that it would be good though to understand if that when sending this letter out on behalf of the task force if that also includes positions shared by the city council and the reason why was because prior to putting this on the agenda we were receiving emails from people who were asking whether the city would be willing to sign on for example to um you know whether it's a petition or if they would be willing to take a position on you know upper campus development what have you and so that's you know part of what motivated bringing this to council and really wanting the entire council to weigh in because while our individual opinions matter in these in these types of comments on the on the LRDP that having a position that the city is going to take also carry some weight to it um and you know if it's if it's most appropriate that that that those comments come from the task force I think it would just be good to know whether or not that will reflect the position of the city as well so we're able to act on behalf of the city council as a whole maybe that's the question for Tony but my understanding is that the task force is convened as and members of the city council sit on the on the task force as does members of the county and so I would assume that since there's members of the city council on the task force as is supervisor Coonerty's office that the task force would represent those two entities moving into any kind of communication from the task force but Tony please please Claire I think that's I think that's right is that the task force would be corresponding on behalf of the city and county and the council could give the task force that authorization so Bonnie I think the letter the so I just need somebody to state it from someone council member Watkins amendment top forward back to the task force for completion a letter from the task force regarding the it says up above Justin the draft long-range development plan but I'm thinking you're also wanting this to also be part of the EIR comments is that okay so it should say to complete a letter from the task force regarding the draft EIR and draft 2021 long-range development plan to be completed before March 8th does that work yeah let's um check the seven items brought forward to complete a letter from the task force regarding the draft EIR and draft 2021 LRDP to be completed and submitted before March 8th yeah and Bonnie you might want to put in the measure you task force just so it's clear what task force because that's the task force we're assigned to yeah I was I did fast we have a workable and then this is accepted by both council member coming and bro thank you for the conversation uh Bonnie will we do a roll call vote do you want me to you've got the motion right I did uh-huh talentary Johnson motion passes unanimously we will be back in about 40 minutes thank you everyone hey Donna or Renee can you guys hear me yep does it sound robotic or weird Justin and Martine if you guys are back if you could turn on your cameras and be great hey Donna I need permission to turn my video back on Bonnie can you help with that good evening everyone um welcome to our 530 session of the February 23rd 2021 21 meeting of the city council today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website at cityofsantries.com all council members are participating in this meeting remotely and I want to thank the public for staying home to view tonight today's city council meeting and I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll thank you mayor council members Watkins here Helen Roy Johnson holders here vice mayor Brunner president and mayor Myers I'm here thank you we'll open the oral communications item now this is for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you want to comment during oral communications now is the time to call in instructions are on your screen oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not listed on today's agenda if you're interested in addressing the council please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand you will have two minutes to speak but it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted we request that you clearly and slowly state your name before making your comment so that we can accurately capture it in the meeting minutes however it is not required that you state your name please remember that this is the time for council to hear from the public we are not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public but when we are able we will address the questions raised after oral communications has been completed and again I just want to make sure everyone's clear because I know we have a lot of a lot of interest in in our next agenda item number 25 but this is oral communication so this is for items not on the agenda for this evening and I will open it up I see I've got a number of hands raised if you've raised your hand and you intend to speak for item number 25 please wait until we finish with oral communication so then you can get to back up oral communications I believe is ending in 4844 is it your intention to speak on oral communications tonight or are you here for item 25 so Robert Norris of Hof Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom the broader context of the situation is an unprecedented pandemic with mutating viruses still spreading a federal court decision criminalizing the city council sleeping band a local court decision slapping down city manager Bernal's assault on the vulnerable homeless in San Lorenzo and then recently at the house meeting we received a report that the city if it's not colluding with it's not doing anything about the presence of what's called a noise disrupting device placed at Wells Fargo bank and directed across the river at the San Lorenzo camper sleeper residence there it's called a mosquito device they were originally put in by Scott Collins assistant city manager about half a decade ago yesterday food not bombs was directed to relocated storage locker from lot 22 to lot 27 you know to make way for the council's luxury downtown development today the group was threatened again by the city to remove that same locker again from its new location in lot 27 somewhere else by Friday reports of regular harassment by chief mills rouse the RVs unit continue to reach us at Huff at a time when those in vehicles need help registering and repairing what are not just vehicles but if they're housing their their vehicular homes city council has shown itself hostile to this vehicular community overturning your own public works commission support of homeless vehicle dweller alisha cool president of the san jacuzzi homeless union up to the community you and i those of us listening who must do what house neighbors did on riverside street about a month and a half ago show up physically in numbers to challenge police bullying justice when city council allows a city manager and his staff to run while thank you mr north uh excuse me next person up is with the telephone number 1810 and again this is for items not on tonight's agenda people need want and are willing to pay for i suspect our people either don't agree with that or don't understand that economic wealth creation like no other system and not to be part of that will involve poverty and greater suffering there are things not many people could ever afford themselves such as libraries roads utilities police and fire so the people support a government to provide the land use authority of public property by government assures these public assets are available without discrimination and for the purposes as intended by the people for all the people some public assets are always free but if so cost the same without discrimination available for all to use a public golf course is a golf course a parking space is a parking space a road is a road a sidewalk is a sidewalk a park is a park and a beach is a beach in america most of us believe in god-given rights to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness but those rights must come with equal respect for those rights and others again the government attempts to preserve those individual rights and prevent others from interfering with others rights and public land use authority is part of that enforced by police in compliance with land use purpose the woke generation the woke generation's obsession with victimology the assignment of blame for all suffering has some people continuously believing they are victims which does not lead to prosperity but dependence resentment a false sense of entitlement and a willingness to try violence to fly law or embraced effective authoritarian political systems and can sacrifice everyone rights freedom and prosperity but we all suffer it's a human condition i'm having audio trouble here oh man naming oh okay the pursuit of net less suffering is one of life's more meaningful activities and that starts with one's self then others around you and finally the greater community but in the context of capitalism and respect for individual liberty and the rights of all welfare is the responsibility of the federal government by constitutional section eight declaration the purpose and authority of cities is limited more to providing the public services all the people need want and are willing to pay for similarly to what individuals do as well as enforcing that mutual respect of individual rights between people there you have sissy worthington this is again just for oral communications not on item number 25 go ahead please can i just ask is i am i am 25 it has to do with the overnight sleeping uh say i i don't want to speak out of turn is going to make sure that i'm not okay so i'm i want to speak on that so i'll i'll wait till it's appropriate yeah just stay on the line but you can raise your hand when that item comes up and wait but i'll i'll be taking public comment during that time thanks so much and kb foster is next again this is just for item number 20 uh oral communication thank you for info my name is brice foster i'm an advocate for anyone who wants one and i see an unusual opportunity here for people to take a walk and someone else's shoes to see eye to eye with someone you never thought you could i'm talking about my body my choice your body your choice yes this is about math and yes let's protect our at-risk loved ones but not at the expense of our frontline workers as seen in the video of what happened at trader joe santa cruise on youtube it's not right to leave them out there as pawns in a battle that's between citizens and the city and state officials these trader joe's workers and others i'm sure are being abused and emotionally slaughtered by frustrated people i won't stand for it and you shouldn't either regardless of what side you're on it's time for a middle pass because it takes all kinds for this world to go around let's move on from our linear thinking that favors one extreme versus the next let's go up like a tree with branches that come together in the middle question to wear a math or not to wear a math happy hour systemism in relation to public um this is not for item number 25 but uh items not on tonight's agenda and i just see a galaxy a 11 phone go ahead please if you're not i'll move on to um phone number ending in 2279 if you are here to speak on oral communications i think we may have reached the end of to speak for item uh 25 okay well we're gonna be getting to that next um yep yep i'll wait hang on great thank you i think we have reached the end of oral communication am i unmuted you are unmuted yeah are you thank you i i am not it this is not about item 25 i i live in harvey west and i'm hoping there's some way that we can just slow down the traffic in here that's all i'd like to offer and and i'll end it there okay thanks so much thank you um if you're here to just do oral communications but not uh item 25 you're welcome to speak um i'm gonna wait for item number 25 communications or item 25 excuse me okay go ahead yeah i want to talk about the uh action that took place at uh trader jones and i think it should be considered a terrorist act that is a dozen people or so uh went into the store and knowingly infected uh all of the patrons and the workers there i'm a shopper there and i now do not feel safe in my own grocery store now i'm told that there is some action going on on the 28th everywhere this is what happens when you allow terrorists unfettered or punished and i'm asking the city council to consider some sort of ordinance maybe called santa cruz a plague-free zone it can be done in a life-hearted manner it doesn't have to be done seriously but there definitely needs to be some action and trader jones workers are also suffering they're getting calls of harassment of people threatening them they've had to unplug the phones from that particular store so please you know do we all have to stay inside on the 28th because a dozen people in santa cruz and they're all known they're not unknown they all make themselves fully known so i'm urging the city council to take action on this thank you very much thank you mr make and one more uh and again this is oral communication it's not item 25 we're on yes i spoke with you earlier i just wanted to fill in i know i came i kind of strong uh two minutes isn't much time but uh uh first i wanted to make sure you're aware the the fact that the coastal commission has recently uh indicated a 3.5 slr rise by the year 2050 in the next 30 years for their planning purposes this is uh i don't know if you have been reported to that by your different water agencies that's an astounding amount but i'd like you also to do uh please uh i left some websites i'd also please like you to review the 12-minute advice video from 2015 that let's go real before we jump in and i know when things are brought up during oral communications we can't necessarily take action on those um as they haven't been agendized but i'm wondering if either our city attorney or city manager could return with some sort of update on uh this group who uh storms trader joes and what we as the city could do to uh police department on this and we can certainly send the council nothing okay thank you very much we will go ahead and move on to coming did you have a question or yeah i just wanted to follow up with that to see if uh city might be able to take in terms of the implementation whether it's an ordinance or different laws um around that kind of behavior i know that that was one of a number of events there was another instance that happened uh at the farmers market where uh a member of the public who i personally know was someone tried to rip their face mask off and it's happened multiple times on west cliff where people have tried ripping off the masks of individuals who are walking and i know that that in and of itself is assault but given the circumstances that we're under with there being a pandemic and the potential for exposure um if there are um laws or penalties that we can put in place that would not only discourage that kind of behavior but um you know there will be consequences for people who engage in those actions that think will be uh beneficial for our community as a whole so thank you thank you um and i don't know chief mills is here he is here i know he did some discussions um um with our da following the trader joe's incident we have been exploring our options and we are um assessing uh actual action by council um i'm sorry council member colder i missed your hand up so um if you have a comment and then i i'd love to have chief mills uh speak a little bit to the community as well on this in addition to the the incidents um with the no masks out and about there's this other group and i don't know if it's the same group that have been giving out free hugs and a number of people have reported that they're super aggressive with the hugs and um even outside of a pandemic that makes a lot of people really uncomfortable and it seems really inappropriate so i don't know if that's the same group or different but if not they maybe could tie them in together chief mills if you wouldn't mind maybe just give a very brief update as long as this is appropriate um mr kandadi uh the incident just for the public's knowledge the uh the incident did occur after our ability to agendize anything from this meeting so um just to let everybody know but chief mills please make any comments to you we can we can briefly respond to questions or comments from council members that arise um during the oral communication good evening mayor and council members this is andy mills your police chief and uh we are very we also are very concerned and upset about the events that have taken place in our community we have reached out and talked with the management at trader joes both at troll level and i went in there as well and talked with the management we also sent them correspondence via email when questions arose over what to do and how they can best protect themselves for the trespassing part the corporation needs to get permission to the local store and so we've asked for them to get that clarification ahead ahead of time so that when we go in there we can make those arrests and we absolutely will make those arrests our officers have been instructed that this is zero tolerance for this type of behavior and then uh there also is the possibility that the we also can cite under the executive order given by the emergency manager which is the city manager to be able to cite people for not wearing a mask for events such as the free hubs and so forth which are not really free there's a cost to them in terms of public health and this is this is unacceptable behavior in our in our community the 28th allegedly there's supposed to be a event that's nationwide concerning giving out protesting wearing masks and we are actually staffing up for that to make sure we have adequate resources in place and again our position is this is zero tolerance and we will make the necessary law enforcement contacts and arrests as needed thank you chief mill okay we will move on to our next item tonight which is item number 25 and for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order of this item tonight well we will we receive a presentation by staff and then following we will have questions from council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action we have a lot of interest in this agenda item tonight we've had hundreds of email communications on the item and I do want to allow the council to have time and the energy frankly to make our way through a very complicated ordinance that is obviously of great interest to our community and is of great importance to get right is to the extent that we can so I just want to let everybody know there's going to be a few things a few changes I have received requests from 12 individuals for extra time I have granted those those folks are going to be going first and they will be getting three minutes after that this is when we open the public comment after that I will take public comment at one and a half minutes each until 9 p.m. at which time I will close public comment and to provide time for council deliberation this is an attempt so that we can deliberate and get through this tonight without working into the wee hours of the morning so I appreciate I'm seeing the numbers climb on the number of attendees here tonight it is not my intent to try to cut people short on communicating with us we are still receiving emails you can still communicate with us we do all see our emails live but in the interest of trying to get through and deliberate on this I am going to restrict public comment after the extended time to a minute and a half and I will be stopping public comment at 9 p.m. tonight now turn it over to Lee Butler the director of planning and community development to start the presentation tonight for city council and again we will have questions from the council following the presentation and then I would like to go to public comment after that so thank you Lee thank you mayor Myers and vice mayor and council members I'm Lee Butler I'm the director of planning and community development and the homeless response director for the city and I'm going to share my screen here are you seeing the note pages or the full screen we see the we see the full screen thank you all right thank you all right um with me this evening and participating in the presentation will also be Tony Elliott our parks and recreation director as well as Andy Mills our police chief and we also have Cassie Bronson and Tony Condati from our city attorney's office who are also here to assist I just want to let you know what we're going to cover I'm going to start with some local statistics and Tony and Tony Elliot and I will speak to recent issues that the city team and the community have had to address I'm going to talk about how we got to the ordinance with community feedback through the community advisory committee on homelessness as well as council direction and we'll also provide some background related to the Martin versus Boise case and then I'll go through the specifics of the ordinance with chief Mills providing information on the enforcement and I will also let you know that we've had hundreds of pages of comments as mayor Myers mentioned and we have a number of potential changes that the council may want to consider that have resulted or are potential results of the community comments so before jumping into the presentation I'll just start by saying that we are not alone up and down the west coast in particular but across the nation cities are struggling with how to help unhoused individuals it's really the most challenging issue that many cities are facing and it's a multifaceted problem with roots in economic factors mental health issues substance abuse and addiction affordable housing individuals loss of connections with others and inadequate federal and state resources to name just a few I want to acknowledge the complaints that we receive literally on a daily basis about quality of life impacts and environmental concerns related to our unhoused population these are real and legitimate concerns and and we hear those I also want to acknowledge the voices calling for additional homeless support and resources we have systemic funding and resource gaps at the federal state and local levels and we're actively lobbying our state and federal representatives for additional financial assistance the city is not going to solve this issue on its own nor is it equipped to many of the factors are outside of the city's control and purview I'll speak briefly to some of the distinctions between the cities and the county's role later and I'll also talk about many of the things that we as a city are doing to support unhoused individuals in our community to really address the problem systemic changes are needed in the way we as a nation and as a state view and treat the unhoused and I'll note here that Santa Cruz County is taking significant steps in setting goals and its six months and three years strategic plan for addressing homelessness and that'll be going to the board of supervisors early next month so I encourage you to review those materials while we are working closely with the county on many issues related to helping the unhoused population our community experiences impact from the impacts from the unhoused on a daily basis and in response to that the council has directed staff to update the counting the the camping ordinance and so I'll jump into the rest of the presentation here 1200 homeless individuals in a cruise with about 865 of those being unsheltered as a city represent about 24 percent of the county's population but we have about 55 percent of the county's homeless population and so many ask why is there a concentration here and there are really many factors that contribute to this as the county seat we have the county's jails we have the county's courts and many of the county's services like their health services within the city's limits and we're relatively compact so if you don't have a vehicle it is easier to get to goods and services in the city as compared to areas of the county where goods and services are more spread out given this challenge that everyone's aware of what are we doing well we're doing quite a bit as a city to help homeless individuals here this year we'll be spending about four million dollars for services homeless prevention and cleanup not to mention a substantial percentage of police and fire calls that address the issue of homelessness and that's in a year when we have slash budgets and mandatory furloughs so a few of those things that the four million dollars goes to two mental health liaisons from the county behavioral health services team are out in the field with our city police officers we contribute to the county's hopes program the downtown outreach worker program and the county sheltering programs we support mobile showers and fund a variety of nonprofits providing services for people experiencing homelessness such as downtown streets housing matters encompass community services and the community action board of Santa Cruz county among others we dedicate a significant percentage of our community development block grants our cdbg funding towards addressing homelessness approximately one point two million dollars in 2021 and typically hundreds of thousands of dollars each year we got additional funding this year due to covid the funds the cdbg funds go to homeless prevention activities like security deposit assistance and rental payments they also go to infrastructure investments like nearly five hundred thousand dollars that we're spending to support a new hygiene bay at housing matters so that unsheltered individuals have a place where they can shower and use the restroom we also have significant costs related to cleanup efforts before the most recent storms in late january our teams walked through flood-grown areas along san lorenzo river they asked campers to move to higher ground and they after those individuals moved they removed four and a half tons of trash and debris from the area preventing it from washing into the Monterey Bay we had another cleanup and restoration effort earlier last year that had a 200 000 dollar price tag just on its own and i'll share some photos that depict some of those cleanups in just a bit in addition to the four million dollars the city offers rents at well below market rate to housing matters to encompass and to the homeless garden project as a means to support the great work that these service providers do each and every day and of course to address homelessness we need housing just since november of last year the city has approved or authorized construction of up to 425 affordable units and 184 of those are expected to be supportive housing units that homeless individuals would qualify for the five separate projects that the city has approved so we really are trying to step up and do our part there are affordable housing projects that have recently been completed and others that are recently that are under construction right now and we're looking forward very much looking forward to getting these additional units online as well we've also increased the number of beds that we have for the homeless and we work closely with the county on this and these are estimations but we had approximately 155 beds pre-covid between the poly loft the armory and the laurel street shelters and we now have a little over 400 beds and that includes the vets hall the armory poly loft and 144 rooms and four motels across the city and this excuse me the county has worked to expand shelter facilities in other parts of the county as well and we have more beds now both in the city and within the county than ever before but of course we still have a great need while i'm mentioning the county i want to remind the viewers here some of the varying roles between the city and the county one of the things we regularly hear as the city is that we need to provide mental and physical health services as well as addiction and substance abuse treatment and those are absolutely needed and the county is the one that provides those services the city does not have a public health department those services are provided by the county and i'll note here that the city and county are working collaboratively on a wide range of issues such as temporary shelter long-term supportive housing options outreach to people on the streets and hygiene services for those individuals and the city and county are actively lobbying state and federal officials for additional resources and despite all of these efforts and despite the highest number of beds we've ever had in the county the situation remains increasingly challenging i'm going to share with you some slides of recent situations that our teams here in the city and us our community have been dealing with you can see here some of the the grading that's occurred and some of the issues associated with restrooms that occur in our open spaces and you can see in these photos some of the trash accumulation that occurs that our teams need to come in and pick up here's some more photos of that you know really significant costs that we bear to haul all of these things out oftentimes in areas where it's really challenging to get mechanical equipment and in the midst of this of course you know we hear often from the community not only about the the trash and debris but also very real and very significant concerns about needles you can see here some of the effects or the outcomes after some of the cleanups have occurred where people have either city and employees or volunteers have collected needles and we appreciate the work of people who are out there and helping with all the cleanup efforts that we have and then you know there are quality of life issues associated as well and there are instances of bicycle tests where bicycles and it's it's the quality of life that it affects people's ability to have you know a kid ride their bike over to someone's house and leave the bike in the front yard I don't think many people would advise of that here because you know we do have challenging situations related to bike chop shops and this and you can see a large number of bicycles and and also went out and helped clear from people about and an inability to use that we hear we also hear that the people can still occupy parks and people can still go to parks and that ability there are also challenges though depending on the users you know if if someone is planning to throw a frisbee or kick a soccer ball you know the presence of a large number of tents does impact people's abilities to use all the ways that they they could potentially be used and so we we do hear those complaints on a regular basis with that I'm going to turn it over to our parks director Tony Elliott to speak a little bit more about the parks system and thank you mayor and city council for the chance to share some perspective from the parks and rec department so I just want to briefly share with the council the context to which this ordinance outdoor living ordinance applies to the parks master plan and also some recent work done by the city's parks and recreation commission so to start and just to be really clear parks are just not good places for people to live they prevent present harsh environmental conditions for an individual experiencing homelessness and ultimately the effects of people living in parks has negative consequences on our habitat protected species public safety and it creates increased risks for wildfire and contamination to our drinking water and as you can see from the photographs that Lee shared and as many have experienced firsthand across the park system unregulated camping our city parks and open spaces poses significant impacts and threats to our national environment and to our community's ability to safely access and enjoy public spaces the parks and recreation department hears concerns similar to what Lee was alluding to we hear concerns on a near daily basis from park users about safety cleanliness and accessibility of parks as a result of widespread camping and we'll go into great detail just in the spirit of time here but I wanted to share an example a recent example from mountain bikers of Santa Cruz County that recently conducted a survey to gain feedback on whether or not homelessness has affected trail riding in Santa Cruz and based on the survey 52% of respondents said it has affected how they use the parks yeah thankfully on the on the graph there uh so 52% said it affects how they use the parks 15% of all of the respondents to the survey specifically called out the Emma McCrary trail and Pogona as one they simply won't use uh and female riders in particular expressed significant concerns about being fearful not being able to ride alone and not willing to take their young families to certain trails and want to acknowledge that 15% well that seems like a small number to to many to me that's alarming if if uh if 1% of our community says that they're not willing to go to a city park or a trail because of fear that that's alarming to me so that 15% to me uh feels like a big a big number and a significant issue talking about the parks master plan here a little bit the 2030 parks master plan it states the heritage of the park system reflects a community that deeply cares about providing and preserving the quality and diversity of the recreational natural and urban environments and among the master plans for overarching goals two that are especially relevant um as it relates to the outdoor living ordinance are uh one to provide ample accessible safe and well-maintained parks open space and active recreation facilities and the second is to provide well-managed clean and convenient public access to open space lands and coastline the current conditions as you saw from some of the photographs across many of our parks open spaces in our city park system are in conflict with these goals set by the parks master plan so I want to shift gears and talk about uh sort of an operational viewpoint and so what it says the city departments including parks recreation are subject to wide-ranging regulatory mandates sequa we had to go through a long sequel process with our parks rec master plan the city parks rec department in particular as a regulatory body to some degree requires a variety of permits excuse me and agreements for things like special events use agreement and leases and from my perspective the outdoor living ordinance will provide clarity on the city's rules and the city's conditions under which camping may occur and ideally it will help us to avoid costly remediation of large camps in the future as lee mentioned a little bit ago cleanup um and pogunov last year cost the city around 200 000 to clean up and the eventual cleanup of samarindo park will also be very expensive so this proposed ordinance is before the council today is in my opinion an important step to clarify the rules and use conditions across the park system and ultimately help preserve our natural environment and finally I just would like to briefly summarize an important body of work that the city parks recreation commission completed in 2020 related to parks and staff safety in january 2020 the parks rec commission initiated an ad hoc subcommittee to address concerns about the health and safety of parks and recreation staff and park users over the course of six meetings stretching from February to September of 2020 a commission subcommittee met with employees of police department and other staff to hear about challenges as well as methods involved in addressing negative experiences of staff and parks users parks and rec staff have experienced cases of assault vandalism to vehicles staffs of supplies break-ins destruction of park grounds and facilities and frequent aggressive behavior from individuals living in the park system the parks and recreation commission voted unanimously to provide a four pronged recommendation to the city council and what is most relevant as it relates to the outdoor living ordinance is recommendation number two that came from the parks and rec commission and that is that the city needs to address regulatory and operational uncertainty regarding its camping ordinances and interpretation of court decisions related to encampments these inconsistencies are driving the lack of enforcement against behaviors that threaten staff and system users as well as leading to facility damage and environmental degradation and open spaces and natural habitat areas and so from my perspective the proposed outdoor living ordinance night is an effective mechanism in response to the work and recommendations put forth by the city's parks and recreation commission and the last thing i'll say here is just from the parks and recreation department viewpoint we understand that this proposed ordinance won't solve homelessness however what it does is establish clarity for the community and for park users and for individuals residing throughout the park system it gives us an opportunity to match our operations with the goal set for us by our master plan and the parks and recreation commission's recommendations so i really appreciate the opportunity here to share a bit of perspective from parks and rec and with that i'll send it back over to we thanks tony um to our unhoused who are camping in our community that um are doing so in a manner that um are not creating um many of those challenges that we saw in those photos there are individuals in our community that are um you know cleaning up after themselves that are that are employed that are productive members of our um of our society and there are also individuals that um have uh that can create some of these challenges in the photos that we saw and that can particularly become exacerbated when there are large groups when there are large encampments um and when those become entrenched when you start to see the environmental degradation and you see the um large amounts of debris and trash um that is typically not always but it's typically associated with larger encampments and so um that was part of the focus of um the work that was done and um that's a little bit of background and a little bit of the situation that our teams have experienced and i'm going to jump back uh a couple of years going from recent to a couple of years ago when um the camping ordinance that we have on our books right now was suspended and so um we do right now we have a a ban a camping ban um and um that camping ban on our books we have direction from the council to not uh implement that and that is because it is inconsistent with the martin v. Boise case and what the martin v. Boise case says is that if there that essentially you cannot criminalize the act of sleeping if there aren't adequate shelter beds available for the unhoused individuals in the community so sleeping in and of itself cannot be criminalized now cities can can regulate the time place and manner of where sleeping can be allowed but it cannot be banned outright as is the case with our current ordinance and i'll just say you know the current ordinance um on the books also um you know has been on the books for quite some time and you know there were unhoused individuals in our community that were camping before that and so um as tony mentioned you know an ordinance in and of itself is not going to solve homelessness that is a much bigger issue and it involves many of the social supports that i talked about earlier so following the martin v. Boise case and the camping ordinance suspension the council put together a committee a community advisory committee on homelessness the cash and the cash met 16 times between 2019 and 2020 it came up with a whole series of recommendations and those recommendations many of them were presented to the city council back in february of 2020 and those became the basis for that that was became the foundation of the ordinance um that um is before you this evening and the agenda report you can take a look it it evaluates each of the recommendations and says um you know why things were included or if they weren't included why they weren't and and if other things were why that was the case and so um again a lot of that focused on these large encampments and how to address the large encampments and entrenchment um we also have related to equity public health and sustainability as the pillars of our health and all policies consideration and that's another lens that we use in considering policy the ordinance that is under consideration by the council this evening includes a number of things that address the health and all policies pillars includes things like a daytime storage program for the unhoused so that they can safely store their belongings while going to jobs or medical appointments so it contains behavioral expectations and locational criteria that protect the environment thereby contributing sustainability provisions that enforcement until covid vaccines are available to the unhoused and on an ongoing basis includes provisions that uh preclude enforcement during inclement weather and it provides additional allowances for disabled individuals and as you'll hear in just a little bit um we're also recommending um some changes for families and also uh disabled individuals caretakers um that came about as a result of some of the public comments that we received and it has provisions that help ensure that all Santa Cruzans will have access to park resources that contribute to their health and well-being so with all that background i'm going to jump into the ordinance here so i'm going to talk to you about private property prohibited areas acceptable areas behavioral requirements and then i'll invite chief mills up to talk about the enforcement so starting off on the private property right now um there are opportunities for religious institutions to host uh recreational vehicles up to three recreational vehicles and we're proposing that this um goes to and for businesses that is proposed to go from sorry i didn't fill in that number there but from up to three um that's that's what the proposed ordinance is in front of you uh this evening there also there's a minor change that came in as a result of public comment and i'll get to that um and in just a little bit when we get to the um prohibited areas should not be able to block first responders or access to city equipment they also um would be prohibited from um areas that are dangerous to oxpens or first responders or to special status species so first responders that includes fire or flood prone areas during seasons when those issues could create hazards and then special status species we depicted those um as um are mapped sensitive habitat areas however not all of those areas may be off-limits at all times um so um we would uh if the council chooses to um support this provision of the ordinance then staff would come back and identify here are the areas of the sensitive habitat where camping is off limits and here's where they could still occur continuing with prohibited areas inside path between either side of the uh river there um in the water department director's source water protection zone we do get a lot of our drinking water from san lorenzo river and there's a map that identifies areas that um where we're camping would be prohibited and enclosed areas and there are um a number of areas that the uh city could or a number of reasons why the city could deem an area closed such as um repetitive cleanups being necessary or um significant issues with the police as it relates to um one change here we we cited the neighborhood and community parks as a prohibited area and um for clarification we wanted to make sure that we were also including um the regional parks and the single amenity parks as part of that and so um those are considered as as parks but uh we're we're just making a language clarification so that um all of the parks are included that does not include the open spaces we'll get to that when we're talking about areas where camping could be allowed um and we'll show you the text of of those changes uh and just a little bit here as well and then city owned beaches and identified oceanfront areas we talked about the uh the various parks here and then um continuance of prohibited prohibited areas um downtown there uh would be a prohibition in downtown um there would also be a prohibition on city-owned parking lots inside open spaces so neary lagoon jesse street marsh and a royal seco canyon would be prohibited and then within 75 feet of trails in other open spaces and so um any areas um spaces and that are not in the three identified camping would be prohibited those would be areas that that could uh where camping could occur so what areas are those you can see here um more creek could potentially um have individuals in pogoninth um dale viega wilderness area and arana gulch so um we talked about the prohibited areas so the potential encampment areas side of the prohibited areas so the city manager or the parks director concerns about sidewalks in residential areas in particular and a key issue here is that we are individuals can sleep that was one of the key considerations in um including sidewalks throughout the city as areas um and um we'll talk about the options related to that in just a little bit um i want to go back to the specifically designated areas and clarify and we have some additional texts that would clarify additional areas may be authorized on all like or private properties and any zoning districts and in areas that would otherwise prohibit such uses so a downtown parking lot for example downtown has a prohibition and parking lots have a prohibition however specifically identified areas or outdoor living encampments um if they are designated as such and only you can see here is a map of the prohibited areas so you can see the 75 feet of either side of trails as shown in these sort of linear paths that go through our open spaces and then downtown some of the identified prohibited open spaces and um then some of the other prohibited areas like the wharf and the beach areas and so forth um we also have a map of potentially prohibited areas and yes this looks like a a large portion of the city and it is a large portion of the city um what this includes is um the wildland urban interface in the yellow hatch that area would not be closed it's not anticipated that that would be closed year around um only during um fire hazards and um that would be up to the discretion of the and those areas could be on a seasonal basis or in advance of storms subject to the public works directors discretion the sensitive species areas that we talked about again um we would be doing an evaluation of those areas and uh determining whether or not um camping in the manner authorized by the ordinance could be done um in in a way that would not harm sensitive species and then here are those two maps overlaid and you can see that there is um you know quite a bit of overlap between the prohibited areas and some of the um potentially prohibited areas as well so moving on to the behavioral requirements um one of the um big issues again is the number of visuals in an area and the um entrenchment associated with that that can create environmental uh challenges and so the ordinance before you would prohibit tents between the hours of 8 a.m and 8 p.m except there are a number of exceptions there are exceptions for disabled individuals for inclement weather and um we've added as you'll see in a little bit some exceptions for families and also for a caregiver for an individual who may be disabled um and these would only be enforced after a daytime storage program is in effect and only after COVID-19 vaccines are available to the on-house community so we did hear a lot of concerns about um you know the the daytime prohibition and the effects that that could have during a talk to address many of those concerns through the fact that these provisions would not be enforced until vaccines are available and then the daytime storage program would provide an opportunity for individuals to store their belongings so that they can go to their job so they can go to their medical appointment so that they can um go and uh get the services that they need and not have to worry about whether or not their belongings are going to be there when they get back here um that we're proposing to change and that is um a deletion of the reference to vehicles in the outdoor living facilities definition and that is because that this ordinance is not specifically intended to address uh the uh individuals who are residing in vehicles um that would be addressed through um uh different uh regulations and so we wanted to clarify that here and when we go on through these and some additional um uh text changes in just a bit. Continuing with um sorry no fires um I skipped over that one fires would not be allowed trash and litter standards this is another one that we heard some um good suggestions from the community and so we'll have um some additional updates related to that in a moment and these include things like um staying clear of um not having improperly disposed of needles um and then we have a uh 12 foot by 12 foot per person on uh not uh creating environmental damage we are on to the enforcement section here and I will to speak to this. Well thank you Director Butler for that uh thorough briefing on on what the ordinance looks like I think the main thing to understand is that uh Santa Cruz Police Department is fully prepared to enforce uh the ordinance as you implement it should you choose to do so and uh the goal certainly is not to criminalize the homeless but to gain voluntary compliance when possible and so there's three tiers that have been set up in the ordinance to gain that compliance uh the first tier is to warn and uh this is what we have been doing for some time is warning people try to talk with them helping them move trying to prevent some of the problems that come with a significant size encampment the second uh level up would be to cite people and it would be a maximum of a $20 fine and as you are aware if they get cited multiple times uh it can go to collections and that's the most that we could possibly do however it could be diverted to community service should that person decide to do that instead and then the third level up would be a misdemeanor charge if a person refuses to leave or we have to warn the person and cite the person multiple times within a 30 day period this would be the leverage that we would need to actually gain some level of compliance and we felt that that was uh important from the standpoint of going forward there are a certain percentage of the community who just doesn't want to go with uh the norms and standards uh that this community is studying forward and so there has to be some kind of consequence uh for that we have to remember that a vast majority of the citations are they don't appear on and so if there's no consequence to it that becomes difficult to manage the population one things I'd like for you to know is that this is about addressing the harms associated with unlawful camping and and because it allows us to prevent a build-up of large encampments by making sure that people are taking down their tents at during the daytime and and and not getting entrenched and collecting all sorts of other items that sometimes these encampments collect and then the third thing is we want to make sure that we're activating the space for the entire community to use uh because right now certain spaces in our community because of camping people are prohibited from going there and and our focus initially would be on the beach the downtown area and the city parks as our enforcement and and then move on to the other areas of the city as we get the opportunity this will take some cost and some time and some effort we have to put people out there and probably in overtime a couple times a week to just get out there and educate first warn and then start the enforcement process when we can leave you get an answer the property removal and storage is obviously as an important piece this would give us a 24 hour notice unless it's exigent and some of the camps that we come across are pretty exigent I mean they're large they're environmental hazard they're a public health hazard and those those could be abated fairly quickly and then the second piece would be a misdemeanor so if there's personal property available in those tents that might be stolen and we're going to arrest somebody then we would collect that those personal items and store those personal items for the individual to come back and get later rather than having them be having them stolen or wind up missing we also have and we'll continue to post encampments and then that will allow us to go in and abate those encampments after a week without get people are not having to have it moved by that time and it also give us a little bit more flexibility in the storage rather than going to an encampment where there's an enormous amount of things to be impounded we could impound it and store it all in a locked facility and allow them to come and get their stuff without having to itemize every detail would be it would be an enormous effort when some of these encampments have so many different pieces the bottom line for us is we want to make sure that we're using interpersonal skills citations and then arrests to gain compliance for our community that's the direction that you should choose to go and we'll stand by for questions a little bit later thank you chief mills mentioned and as our parks director mentioned as well this is not a ordinance that is going to end homelessness but it does provide some tools to address some of the problems particularly those problems that arise with large groups and entrenchment moving on to the last section thanks for hanging in there we've got a big last section here because we had many many public comments hundreds of pages of public comments as you all know and some of the things that we heard were residential sidewalks should not allow camping and one thing that we would recommend is that if the council is considering taking residential sidewalks off of the table for a place where unhoused individuals can go we would recommend that the council simultaneously provide recommendations on alternative identified locations so whether that's parks or parking lots or closed portions of the right away and we've got some draft language in case you are interested in doing any of that you can consider that draft language hours of camping we heard some people say more some people say less and we started building in all the changes and we could not actually get them all into the PowerPoint so I'm going to shift for a moment and go to a google doc here can you all see this document great I'm going to just see if I can make it larger here maybe it's a little too big okay so we have a series of potential changes for the council to consider based on a wide range of comments that came in I'm going to try to go through them quickly and we can go back at the end if we can go back after the presentation if anyone has questions we'll have opportunities so we talked about removing the vehicles in vehicular camping here it's a clarification that if items do remain in this is part of the outdoor living encampment definition if items do remain in the same location for 12 hours and it's considered and outdoor living encampment other comments this is part of the this is the only change other than that the numbers going from three to six and from two to three in private property there were some suggestions that the private property should also not be used for trafficking and illegal drugs or in a manner that creates a public or private nuisance and those seems like reasonable items for the council to consider and then this is the change related to eliminating neighborhood and community parks just all parks but not including open spaces and then we still have the no outdoor living allowed in the identified open spaces I've just highlighted these we don't have anything to speak about unless the council wants to make unique edits related to that this is where I talked with you about the the additional allowances for families with one or more children under the age of 18 years old and for a single caregiver for a person with a qualifying disability so this section speaks to both of those allowing for members of a family unit or for a caregiver to remain in a location you recall down here that this would allow for individuals to occupy space for 96 hours instead of all of the the daily 8 a.m to 8 p.m prohibitions and then there is one additional addition here which is just that a physician's verification is evidence but isn't necessarily binding evidence in all instances as it relates to a qualifying disability this section right here this is if the council wanted to eliminate residential sidewalks this could be some language that could be used so right here this is the section that allows for camping on sidewalks and the the ordinance could be modified to eliminate these residential sections limiting the incidence or frequency of the sale of unlawful drugs limited control in crime limiting domestic violence or other violence accumulation of debris and syringe waste amount duration and effect of urination or defecation on public and private property and limiting adverse effects on surrounding area so some additional clarification for why the city manager could close public or private properties in any zoning district and in areas that would otherwise prohibit such uses and then if the council wanted to eliminate the residential sidewalks this is a piece that the council could include to expand allowances so if you're saying no residential sidewalk the council should also consider alternative areas and this would say all of a city-owned parking lot closed portion of a public right away on private property or in an alternative space or area designated by the city manager for safe sleeping and this says that the city manager or his or her designee shall establish a program for overnight use of no fewer than 150 safe sleeping spaces in such areas subject to all the criteria contained in the section I'm sure if the council is interested in the residential portion we'll be back at this and we'll have opportunities to discuss it at length the council can provide direction to be very specific or very general you could say you know keep this language but focus on areas so it's up to the council's discretion on how they might want to treat this but we wanted to have a starting point for some language in case the council did want to make modifications to that section as we heard from many of the people who were writing in this one was some clarification language that we received that I thought was good so electrical connections we had we had previously just said electrical taps and so that clarifies electrical connections or taps and then there's some clarification about fires that they may be allowed in a lawfully created fire pit or other permanent receptacle provided for by the city and then I mentioned some of the litter and debris there were some suggestions from the community so the encampments shall be maintained reasonably safe tidy and healthy free from various debris and with food with the debris contained in a bag or container and then this just states that it will be contained and it shall be cleared of personal belongings as the occupants continuing on to the item with relation to the person with a qualifying disability is allowed to occupy a 12 foot by 12 foot space and this said that that if you've got 20 people at a camp with a qualifying disability that you know if you don't you don't get the 20 people having a 12 by 12 area we actually got a comment we got some comments with some confusion about that and so we thought we thought to clarify that here and we also wanted to say that your caretaker can also have their own 12 by 12 area and so that's the language that's included right here and we're happy to I'm happy to spend more time on the language here if if you all have questions about it and I believe that is the last yes that is the last so I'm going to go back to the PowerPoint here thank you for hanging in there with me I know this was a long presentation and we are on the last slide so we are available for questions there will be public comment and then following that there will be council deliberation including the edits and options and these are a few of those but we're happy to answer any questions that you may have and we look forward to hearing the direction from the council and Mayor Myers you're muted okay yeah what I'd like to do if we are amenable to it because I have the feeling that our questions might go into wanting to start to work on the language but I'm happy to have council members if you have specific questions of clarity maybe we could at least limit that now and then we can allow the public to weigh in and then we can come back for for additional questions and comments because I have a feeling with this language all the language we've looked at and then Lee I guess I would request that as we start to get closer if you could maybe put that language up just so that we can look at it live pretty hard to see in the PowerPoint so I will go with council questions council member I believe councillor Johnson was first but I'm not sure because I have been managing different things coming my way so I'll call council member callantary Johnson council member Cummings council member Golder council member Watkins and then vice mayor Bruder and again if you just hate the questions sort of two specifics and try to so please go ahead thank you thank you I have a number of them so I'm trying to organize them in my shed but the first one is if you can clarify around Lee this is a question for Lee the piece around adding allowing for members of the family unit or caregivers to remain during daytime hours and then there was a piece around 96 hours I just it was moving really fast so I wanted to understand where that fits and what that exactly means sure thanks for that and sorry I was moving fast there the provision and I'll pull this back up here so that you all can see it um that's what we're called that we had included a with a qualifying disability to remain in a location for 96 hours and and let me just first ask can you all see the screen okay here do should I enlarge it I can I can see it better what we did is we added so that was already in there and it said that individuals with a qualifying disability can remain in a location for 96 hours and they between the 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. and we subsequently heard from individuals who who said um you know what about families you know that could be really challenging for a family with young children um who is having to move and so we said hey that should be uh as a fair comment that should be something we'll put out there for consideration I just want to be very clear that you know all of these things are for the council's consideration and um you know we we kind of picked things many comments that were received to say hey council may want to weigh in on this um so this adds to both the families with one or more children under 18 as well as the single caregiver um so you know before if there were two people a person with a qualifying disability what we heard from uh a comment or was it many times people with disabilities actually have someone who um is caring for them that lives with them and we said okay well let's put that out there for the council to consider maybe that individual will also be exempted okay thank you um my my next question is also for you Lee around the um uh storage program um has has staff considered where the locations of storage program would be and how um individuals would access the storage program and sort of connected to that if we would be um if the transportation piece um has been considered we have had some very initial brainstorming sessions surrounding this um we um have not identified specific locations we we brainstormed potential locations but we haven't said yes who would be here we've said you know where is it going to be convenient and where is it going to be most likely to be utilized and I think what we would be looking to do is maximize the utilization and if we're um we're finding that uh specific um location isn't being utilized asking individuals why it's not being utilized and seeing you know all right well where can we move this such that it is um more readily utilized so um you know I think we still have a lot of work to do in that respect we um want to make sure that um that is in place um before we are um enforcing any other daytime camping um restrictions and so that was one of the reasons why the ordinance came to you as it was just um we would we would not necessarily have that storage program up and running right away how about the transportation piece so that would be dependent on where that actually occurs you know we've talked about you know should it be multiple places in close proximity to the locations where campers are um ideally that would be the case um if um if that can't happen then we may need to um uh organize some uh transportation but um I will say you know our initial brainstorming session was you know where is this going to be conveniently located such that people can access it without needing transportation but that's it'll be determined thank you my next question for clarity is for um she smells and um Mayor Meyer this is more than a question for clarity we can hold it off until the deliberations um but it's around the um uh enforcement piece and the warning piece um and if there is consideration of integrating outreach and engagement as part of that that warning effort but we certainly would welcome the county or any other NGO or social service agency to assist with reaching out to people who are challenged and outside to enable them to access services and resources so that would be a positive step that we could certainly utilize we currently do not have that resource other than our mental health liaisons who do a fabulous job that they're mostly focused on just mental health um even though there's a significant overlap but uh we would certainly welcome that if the county decided to give us extra people or we find a grant or something else that we could hire those those bodies with thank you and then the my last piece is um you know you I think you were saying that this this piece around the 8am 8pm I don't know if it was you or Lee um is really to um in some ways manage the the large the the growing encampments and the large number of tents um I wonder if you could just expand on that a little bit um as as that being a tool from uh keeping large encampments from popping up yeah so I view it as a way to manage the entrenchment and once people get entrenched they tend to grow in numbers we have seen that in multiple places around the city so if people can't get entrenched because they have to pick up their property every day it's harder to collect more and more pieces of property for instance when people leave stuff out on the curves that winds up oftentimes in our homeless camps and so building that collection of of things and in entrenching themselves in those locations that's what becomes difficult that's what becomes costly and that becomes very difficult to undo for us so by having them lower their tents every day packing it up storing it and then going out to whether it's appointments for medical or or jobs that would be the opportunity for them to store that that property and then avoid any conflict with the rest of the city staff okay thank you those are my questions for now not any muted councilmember coming to snick please thank you thank you um and thank you staff for the presentation I have um a bunch of questions and so I'm going to try to be we're going to try to not repeat the same ones for now um and I just want to you know make sure it's clear to the public that you know I think there's a lot of areas of alignment and I totally understand why this is important because you know we really need to try to keep people from camping in some of our very environmentally very sensitive areas um also the fact that we need to mitigate some of the behaviors that are negatively impacting neighborhoods um and to the point of you know trying to keep these large encampments from getting entrenched um I think that that is something that it's really important that we try to focus on um and at the same time figure out you know what are some compassionate solutions to homelessness and to providing opportunities for people who are experiencing homelessness but you know overall what I the sense that I get is a big part of this is trying to mitigate some of the negative environmental impacts and the negative interactions between community members and people who are experiencing homelessness or housed in unhoused I should say um but at the same time there's a lot of concerns and um I out of curiosity I'm just wanting to understand really how this came forward because this item last year came before us as part of a quality of life ordinance package where there were seven um ordinances that were being proposed for the council to consider we because of the pandemic and because of COVID-19 work was stopped on these ordinances in part because the CDC was saying you know we don't need to disturb encampments um if there aren't people who are experiencing homelessness they need to stay where they are to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19 and not have these people get impacted and so you know given that even although there is the light at the end of the tunnel um we're not out of the pandemic yet and so I'm just wanting to understand you know why this is coming to us now um because it also seems like there's a lot of factors that are going to inhibit us from enforcing this and for this to actually be implemented and I don't think we should be providing this false sense of you know security to the public that you know if this gets passed that we're going to start putting something through it and enforcing anytime soon because there's a lot of restrictions um that will prevent us from doing this so I don't know if it's council members or staff who may want to comment on um this is coming forward but I think it would be good to get some clarity around you know why now for those ordinance Martin Bernal I don't know if you would like to take a shot at that yes I'd be happy to try to answer that I think it's a combination of factors one was there was previous direction about a year ago when the when the council considered the cash recommendations and one of those was to amend our ordinance to comply with Martin versus Boise another another was the fact that we have the multitude of as you saw in the presentation of complaints and just the need to respond to the ongoing situation and then I think others were interested on the part of council members to try to bring something forward so I think there's a variety of reasons again both the combination of council direction the need to try to address situations and conditions on the ground and interests of council members to bring something forward just during the time because we have a we have you know 150 people waiting I'd like to make a question very clarifying in nature right now I think we will be degrading for quite some time on some of these other but if there's maybe clarifying questions on the ordinance that would be helpful just in this point in time helpful for just kind of the under for me to understand you know how this came about given that there was seven quality of life ordinances ordinance recommendations so that was helpful I would say that you know one if we're going to talk about the ordinance in and of itself I would like to understand you know we're not out of the pandemic and we just we just found ourselves in a lawsuit because there was an attempt to try to clear the homeless encampment at San Lorenzo and so I'm just wondering if this ordinance were to move forward it seems like um we might find ourselves in additional legal you know troubles with telling people that they can't set their tents during the daytime and so I'm just trying to understand under the current laws how this ordinance um whether or not this ordinance would put us into legal trouble not I'm not clear I was hoping to get questions on the ordinance right now the contents of the ordinance um I'll look to Mr. Kundati to I'm just trying to trying to get questions on the on the ordinance contents but and I understand there's a lot of deliberation types of comments that and questions people have but I'll look to Mr. Kundati I don't I'm not sure well I think the answer to the reality of something we haven't even adopted yet or I'm not quite clear on how we manage this particular question I think the answer to councilmember Cummings questions yes but in the context of uh there's a significant deal of uncertainty in uh these issues the martin versus boy the decision was not a model of clarity it did suggest some reasonable time place and manner restrictions that would be permissible in lieu of a citywide ban on camping and that's what has been prepared for the council's consideration tonight um did we hit the mark uh perfectly probably not um but but this is a good faith effort to draft an ordinance that uh that tries to strike a balance between a lot of competing and compelling interests in a way that um though that we believe uh is intended to be consistent with the the decision in martin versus boy and and other cases that have interpreted it uh since thank you Mr. Kundati and I guess along those lines um you know we're I saw within the ordinance that under 6.36.040 D that it says that this wouldn't be enforced until homelessness and sheltered have access to vaccines however we're being sued currently because we tried to remove an encampment and the CDC has outlined that we are not to disrupt encampments during the pandemic so I'm concerned with that language that's in the ordinance as to you know whether or not that will stand up in court because if we get sued because we're trying to move people who are camping and our excuse for doing so is that well there's enough vaccines but yet that does not that's still in violation of the CDC I'm wondering you know how we'll we'll reconcile that because I do feel that um I I have a lot of concerns with what's before us all the changes that have been made that we haven't had a chance to look at and some of the provisions within this that I think and I believe that people in our community will sue us over and we are in a financial deficit we try to avoid lawsuits under certain circumstances and I think this is one of the ones where we absolutely need to be trying to avoid this since we're already being sued for trying to disrupt homeless encampments so it'd be good to understand um the situation as well since it's written into the ordinance yeah so you're right that the the CDC guidance is um uh is is to not dismantle encampments to avoid the risk of the spread of COVID-19 but we're not operating per se under the CDC guidance we are operating under a federal district court judge's order that among other reasons concluded that a preliminary injunction should be granted to uh to bar the city from dismantling the Seminole Park encampment um at this time and I don't think there's any intention of moving forward uh in contravention of the district court judge's order and so that is an ongoing discussion that will be had in court and um and unless and until the judge provides the city with a viable uh mechanism for dismantling uh these encampments uh we cannot do so so I'm not concerned about um the city being in violation of the district court judge's order in this case because we intend to comply with it I'm gonna I'm gonna I'll hold off on the rest of my comments until later councilmember boulder councilmember Watkins for my questions for later okay thank you um vice mayor bruner okay my clarifying ordinance questions are uh the first one being on private property 6.36.030 a1 um would that be uh tony kandadi with consent of owner or occupant shouldn't it be both or uh I how does that work it could be both um this is um reflective of existing text the council certainly has the ability to modify that as part of this we we made very few changes to that section but it's within the council's purview to um make that modification should you see fit okay uh my next question was on that same section a3 um can you speak to the number of vehicles and um where that context comes from in terms of not being site specific for example some sites may be larger to uh maybe accommodate four vehicles another site might be smaller to accommodate less vehicles where does that number come from sure so um this is where um and four members of the public who are listening this is um related to um going for RVs inside uh so allowing for camping inside a licensed and registered motor vehicle in the parking lot on the site of a business institution in a non-residential district with a written consent of both the business institution and property owner um with some various other provisions so currently that's allowed at two um we um included it increases that to three now the council certainly can increase that uh to a greater number um and that uh or you could you could provide some direction and tell us you know come up with an idea of of how that relates to you know no you could say for example no fewer than uh three but um it could be one fifth of the parking spaces up to a maximum of eight you know so it's certainly within your purview this evening to um make some modifications related to that should you see fit and uh Vice Mayor Bruner I might just for the public in case so we're we're uh discussing section through 6.36.030 private property just so that everyone's clear is that that's the section right correct thank you thank you see my next uh I'm moving to the next section I'll try and be don't worry at all no okay 6.36.0403 was one of the questions I'm pulling that up if it helps to read it yeah I've got it right here in front of me um in fact if it's if it's helpful I could share my screen so members of the public can see maybe that would be helpful thank you at risk areas you prohibited was asking about subsection three here and whether or not the sleep foreseeable danger to occupants and first responders and special status species um have been identified and uh you got it Liz we yeah larger uh prohibited areas have been identified the hashed areas here this is all the wildland urban interface and our our fire chief would actually determine which areas and specific portions of those areas um would be off limits during certain times of the year you know an area might be fine to camp in right now but um come late August the fire chief could say hey you know it's really dry and the fire risk is too high similarly um there are flood areas again um during the winter maybe that uh those some of those areas are off limits um and then um the sensitive species areas are sensitive habitat areas um we would need to do a further analysis of those areas and um identify um whether or not throughout the year you know so if there's a migratory species for example um perhaps um camping is allowed there when that migratory species is not there but when it is expected to be present um the uh the camping could be prohibited so um I don't have a clear yes and no answer for you it is um but what we would do at this point yeah yeah so so right now all we've got is is the maps that are there um now the the ordinance actually requires us to maintain a website and keep that current with respect to the areas that are prohibited so if the fire chief comes in and says hey this wooey area is um off limits right now um then we would update that map our fire chief has said this is off limits and the same thing would happen with um the sensitive species we would we would need to specifically identify those areas um in advance of the ordinance um uh being enforced okay uh my next question is uh the same section side and the in the word side and would there be signage is that so that is um essentially between so this is uh the San Lorenzo river and maybe I'll um all right I think I can explain this one without pulling that out that's the San Lorenzo river path and it's in between the two on either side of the river so the inward side of that there are a number of signs out there we can we can look at that again we want to make sure that it's clear for um everyone for um those who are looking for a place to sleep that they have a good understanding um as well as the community members um who are um wondering where folks may or may not be allowed just from a five to a seven sorry typo okay we've gone through we've gone through a lot of versions I bet okay uh where is there a list of city-owned beaches the parks and master plan actually identifies the city-owned beaches and I can pull that up here um beaches include Mitchell's Cove dog beach okay it does not include uh or sea bright those are state-owned beaches and for state-owned as we as we identified in the agenda report for state-owned properties if they're conducting state-owned businesses business the city has limited land use authority over them and so um we have uh explicitly limited this to the city on beaches but I think it's important to note Lee that the California State Parks does not allow camping on any of those sites thank you it's within the boundary of the city's downtown plan can you talk about that boundary in relation to the bid the BID district to the business improvement district off the top of my head but um I think probably the easiest way all this out is to just pull up the map and it is it's going to be um and I guess that's my question are where is are there differences so there are differences um and some of those we captured as part of the language here in that you know the uh the downtown plan actually covers a little bit east of the river and a little bit north of water and um in some of those areas we excluded as part of this text let me open up I'm going to open up um here I'll just councilmember our vice mayor brewner how many more questions do you have I'm just curious I have four more questions okay here and that will give you an idea from the downtown uh perspective and I'll zoom in on that so this will give you an idea again it's at a fairly large scale but zooming in you can get an idea so water on the north side um capturing um down to basically over to city hall and then down around the um center and then looping over to and then including parks so you've got um you know san lorenzo park over here as a park that would be excluded okay thank you um point three six point zero six zero and that is the water dumping sites currently the closest one that off the northeast corner of highway one and hospital on the side where choice are used to be that gas station right there I believe is the closest one I will also say that the city has been um working on um looking into whether or not an additional one can be provided locally as as a resource for um individuals who are living in RVs and so um we're hopeful that we'll be able to to bring something else online that's um more convenient because we recognize that is you know it's not super far away but um it is also a burden to drive all the way across town particularly if you've got a limited amount of funds okay um and then in that same section what is the definition of unreasonable amount of litter so that was um that was one of the areas where we had um community comments come in and we're actually recommending removing the unreasonable amount of litter and just saying free from we're putting this out as a recommendation for the council to consider we thought that that was a good language but you know this is this is all as to the council's uh her view needs me to mention that we currently have and address the the destructive and criminal behavior and activity already and um so in terms of the litter and and debris and all of that we have that currently we have um possession of stolen property we currently have um you know legal drives intoxicated in public open container urinating in public um uh sidewalk obstruction laws I I'm um I'm trying to understand why it would need to be additional in addition to when I was just wondering if if maybe that might fall into the deliberation section because I I think maybe many council members might and I'm just trying to um is that a deliberation type of question Tony that we could get into with much more discussion versus just sort of answering questions specific questions at this time I can take a brief crack at it go for it sorry I mean to interrupt maybe okay um and uh and the chief has uh chief mill has discussed this on multiple occasions that in order to cite someone for littering you either have to observe them throwing a piece of litter on the ground or have a witness to that sign a citizen's arrest complaint and this this ordinance specifically addresses maintaining an encampment with those conditions present so there's a distinction um you're right we have some tools to deal with these types of sort of nuisance behaviors but in the context of an encampment they're difficult to enforce unless you actually observe the person um you know discarding needles uh littering relieving themselves at a location so that's what this is intended to address thank you that's it for now okay thank you council members um and I'm sorry to to be the uh time police but I just want to make sure we can get as much public comment in as we can um so I will go ahead and uh start the public comment period as I mentioned um there were 12 groups that requested these are organizations that requested additional time which I was able to provide each of you with three minutes if you don't need that three minutes um then please feel free to give back your time to anyone behind you so I'm going to ask J.M. Brown um with the parks and recreation committee ad hoc safety committee to please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand up um J.M. Brown uh Bonnie are you ready with the timer uh you'll have three minutes Mr. Brown for nine to unmute can you hear me yes we can thank you the council I'm J.M. Brown and I've served for the past two years as chair of your parks and recreation commission I sincerely appreciate the opportunity to address you this evening on behalf of commissioners who served on the safety committee mentioned by Mr. Elliott earlier those members are vice chair Jane Mio commissioner Gillian greensight and myself let me begin by saying how appreciative we are for the parks and recreation employees who shared stories with us about the impacts of dangerous and threatening behaviors they experience while working in our parks open spaces and facilities because some of that behavior has been exhibited by people living in encampments within our city parks and because one of our key recommendations that was passed unanimously by the full commission called for greater clarity about rules pertaining to people living outside we felt it was important to provide input this evening on the ordinance under consideration members of the committee support the purpose and intent of this ordinance is outlined in the resolution and specifically the ordinance's efforts to prohibit camping in our neighborhood and community parks we believe it is a good first step as Mr. Elliott said toward providing more access for all users of our parks improving the safety of our employees and providing more protection for our natural resources we believe more work can and should be done in the future to support those goals outlined in our parks master's plan namely to better protect our environment including vital waterways and sensitive habitat areas from destruction as we have seen happen over and over again in places where folks have camped should the council be interested in expanding areas within our park system more camping would be regulated including more of our open spaces that would be prohibited for camping the commission could certainly be a good venue for exploring recommendations to bring back to you in the future lastly we recognize that any successful effort to address healthy outdoor living will include securing more low barrier sheltering options in our community as is being addressed in the city's collaboration with the county we appreciate that this ordinance tries to achieve a balance of providing places for people to sleep safely outside with places that remain accessible for all members of the community thank you for your time tonight and for your service to our city thank you mr. brown next up i have carol polhamas with the west side neighbors and then following carol uh reggie mysler with the santa cruz democratic socialists of america will be uh right after carol so if you guys can chew up and um mayor if we could just have everyone not i'm lowering everyone's hand if they could just not raise their hand at all okay their name is bald please don't raise your hand until your name is called carol polhamas there she is okay carol just star nine and then you can unmute please uh put your hand down if you're not the person speaking right now can you hear me yes we can go ahead okay great i was on the phone and him because i wasn't sure i'm sorry so i shut the phone off mayor and city council members and staff my name is carol polhamas i'm a retired educator and 40 year resident of the lower west side thank you for letting me speak on behalf of the west side neighbors west side neighbors was established three years ago in response to a proposal for rb camping in the delaware neighborhood our thousand-plus members live primarily on the lower west side our membership is fairly evenly split between young parents of school age children and seniors with businesses students and others rounding out our group parents are very concerned about safety issues in our city parks and wants their kids to be able to walk or buy to school safely the ends of seniors boys concerns about not feeling safe to walk in their neighborhood our neighborhood is plagued with bike thefts break-ins drug dealing a recent shooting at garfield park a recent meth busts of someone living at the end of delaware to name a few neighborhood safety is definitely a priority parents want parks and rec programs for their kids and are concerned about recreation budget cuts and seniors are concerned about budget cuts to city services the lower west side has been significantly impacted by people living outside resulting in environmental degradation of our open spaces and parks negative impacts include garbage human waste discarded drug paraphernalia etc a recent example was this weekend cleanup of a chop shop in the shaper road area which yielded many stolen bikes and parks this past summer there were four camping related fires which caused serious concern Santa Cruz has a greater per capita homeless population than san francisco or la we know that many of our homeless suffer from chronic mental illness or drug addiction or both our governor describes our mental health system as a massive failure what we have been trying to do clearly isn't working we know the city has neither the legal mandate nor the funding for homeless services mental health or addiction treatment all are the responsibility of the county which receives the funding to provide them we're really happy to hear progress is being made in working with the county and asking for help from the state we encourage the city council to insist that the county provide managed shelter and safe RV parking on county property with much needed services particularly for those with chronic mental illness we don't want tent or vehicle camping allowed in residential neighborhoods we want our parks open for everyone's use we can't spend our limited budget on the repeated cleanup of unsanctioned homeless encampments we want an equitable approach so that the needs of the 2000 homeless are balanced fairly against the needs of the 63 000 other residents in our city we support this ordinance as a step forward toward restoring that balance thank you all for listening and for all the work you and the staff have done on this challenging issue thank you harrell next up is reggie mysler and again just please press star nine to raise your hand and then we will you'll you'll be ready to speak anyone else please keep your hands down i'm just going to call the people who are scheduled to speak now go ahead reggie thank you for being here hi uh this is reggie mysler i'm speaking on behalf of the santa cruz chapter of the democratic socialist of america we vociferously opposed this ordinance and let's really be real and re sort of frame how this is going just two months ago while city council was on break city manager bernal with the support of city staff tried forcing through an executive order to sweep hundreds of people from san lorenzo park despite knowing the conditions of frigid wind and rains uh that they were throwing people into despite knowing that there was no alternative shelter available despite knowing that we were in a coded lockdown and despite knowing that the icus were full make no mistake city staff knowingly delivered a death sentence to the campers at san lorenzo park and it was only thanks to a coalition of activists throughout the county known as stop the sweeps with the intervention of a district court judge susan van cuen that city staff was finally forced to abandon their plan this city staff who so callously and recklessly worked to displace houseless people this past holiday season are the same city staff who are now trying to draft this set of policies to reinforce their ability to do that same thing again and while this ordinance claims to be informed by the more thoughtful work of the community advisory committee on homelessness cash we have spoken to former members of cash who do not approve of city staff using their name as though it were some sort of endorsement while cash often focused largely on meeting the needs of the houseless community the temporary outdoor living ordinance is far more interested in where household folks cannot be what they cannot do how best to legally allow police to continue displacing them destroying their survival gear and impounding the vehicles they use for shelter than it is in helping them survive it shouldn't have to be said but if a houseless person is in living in a public park that does not mean that house members of the community are now unable to use the park many residents continue to use san lorenzo park with children in spite of the large encampment that resides there bigotry is not an accessibility issue and the city should not treat it as such one would hope that black history month might provide some much needed perspective on the notion of developing apartheid like policies based solely on the bigoted fear of wealthier wider house persons but once again here we are instead of city staff serving the needs of santa cruz's most vulnerable working class residents they are instead asking the police to subvert our rights to soothe the nerves of some of the most privileged individuals in our community in this ordinance city staff argue that public plans have essentially been privatized through their use by the public we instead argue that police have been privatized by santa cruz's wealthiest residents to target the houseless the presentation by parks and rec was particularly nauseating pure bigotry laced with false appeals to foul and violent mentalism we're trying to come again thank you fund police fund support danie drivesdale with the harm reduction coalition of santa cruz county please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand go ahead go ahead mr drivesdale makes the unmute and you will be ready to go yes we can thank you okay that's uh mr drivesdale thanks uh good evening council members my name is danie drivesdale i use she her pronouns i am the certain services program coordinator for the harm reduction coalition of santa cruz county speaking on behalf of our organization as a public health centered service provider that works closely with our unhoused community members in the city um we are very invested in the outcome of this discussion tonight hrc scc opposes this proposed ordinance wholeheartedly we do not believe that giving the city police department more tools to criminalize people sleeping outside is going to positively impact any part of our community in fact we think it will lead to more negative outcomes including more syringe litter more fatal overdoses and more infectious disease being spread the broad strategy of making whole areas off limits for sleeping and living is unethical and unworkable and the specific regulations proposed around camping that is quote unquote allowed in certain areas would be a disaster i specifically want to point out that reference to quote improperly discarded hypodermic needles is extremely vague it would allow police officers to write citations based on their own interpretation of what quote improper disposal means and we've seen firsthand how police officers and other city employees have claimed that used syringes stored in a proper and sealed sharks disposal container are somehow improperly disposed or stored or even considered later furthermore under the new state law ab 2077 any citation issued as a result of a syringe possessed for personal use would be invalid and could be challenged into that state law syringe possession is now fully decriminalized in the state and attempting to include syringe possession in this campaigning ordinance opens it up to legal challenges separate from the ones about covid disability rights and martin v. Boise there's been research done on syringe litter and the reasons that it occurs and it's extremely clear that this ordinance would create more syringe litter santa cruz county's health services agency 2019 report on syringe access and litter showed that the two biggest factors that contribute to syringe litter are fear of police and lack of access to programs like ours this ordinance would substantially increase the stakes for people to keep their syringes on their person in a sharps container thereby incentivizing them to litter syringes elsewhere allowing people to remain where they are allow service providers like ourselves to consistently provide sharps disposal containers and collect those containers moving people from place to place makes it that much more difficult to find and provide disposal services for those people and evidence shows that will increase syringe litter besides that if you can't reach people of our services they will not receive clean syringes or naloxone leading to a strong chance of an increase in the spread of infectious diseases and fatal overdoses other service providers such as a homeless person's health project also struggle to reach those people the negative health outcomes will be even greater in short it is our opinion of this ordinance is unethical and immoral probably illegal in multiple ways and would lead to worse health outcomes for the entire community including an increase in syringe litter fatal overdoses and infectious disease thank you for your time thank you next we have Brent Adams with the warming center program footbridge homeless services please press nine on your phone to raise your hand but are you on you could press star six unmute I can't tell Brent are you what was that I can't tell either KB foster keep freezing our hand Brent Adams are you able to get on tonight please press there he is hi Brent press star six please and we all ready to go sorry for that hi it's Brent can you hear me yeah Brent go ahead all right firstly we encourage the council persons to vote no on this proposal but if one must vote yes let it be a yes and admittedly an 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. 10 camping is vastly different than we had been enduring for many decades under that previous camping ban but we're wondering what has become of the city plans to establish the heat funded jumpstart of a navigation center let alone the interim shelter there were several million dollars spent right where are the day service programs where even is the well-funded rhetoric of housing the chronically homeless it all seems to have evaporated and all we're left now with is a tent that must be broken down in the morning with nothing much else offered meanwhile warming center program established footbridge services center serving more than 800 discrete individuals with storage a thousand more with laundry showers donation materials and device charging we've transformed homelessness to something vastly more dignifying you may know we've done this largely with our own on our own without city or county health certainly the city has worked with us to remove a third of the trash of material from the Felco street camps that existed for more than a year without complaint we're only that were only removed for fear of river water rise we've established the agreement camp in harvey west that's been there in place for four months the city has honored it with garbage porta potties and afc weekly showers noting the amount of materials and the establishment of large encampments we do understand the need for constraints though there have been new ideas implemented including agreement camps and the possibility of non-profit permitted transitional campments yet where here we are tonight with this proposal that would establish the ability to set up tents between eight and eight and bring those items into storage if there are specific areas where people may set up camp given our success with the harvey west agreement camp our non-profit would like to discuss what shape that can take today supervisor konig and i visited the agreement camp we witnessed many people enjoying the park playing ball hiking etc relating to storage we become highly trusted for the integrity of our work it can be difficult to build trust within that population of those people who sleep outside it's been our goal to vastly reduce the amount of materials people carry throughout the day and keep the longing safe at night we'd like to work to help provide the best opportunity to provide such storage tonight we see the proposal as a legal exercise that a municipal corporation thinks it needs to engage in what but what a creative inventive thinking clearly what's missing here is the opportunity of local churches and non-profits to operate managed camps that both the city and the county have obliged themselves to stage the city clearly has been failing at serving this population and that it plays host to this is the perfect time now to make a permit process for non-profits and churches to share the load of this our shared challenge please tonight consider adding a permit prop process for non-profits to operate such encampments uh thanks for this time thank you very much next up is greg pepping with the coastal watershed council and just press star six and you can start great can you hear me yes um mayor meyer and vice mayor bruner council and staff getting my name is greg pepping executive director of the coastal watershed council thank you for the opportunity to speak on this topic and thanks for the leadership you're demonstrating and bringing this topic up thanks for going straight at this the coastal watershed council is in support of the ordinance in this community like in many river towns in addition to people experiencing homelessness the poorest housed people live right next to the river and you won't hear many of their voices tonight they're at their second job their third job they're exhausted from those jobs and making dinner deal and kids etc the coastal watershed council is hearing from those families who used to use the sannikers riverwalk that longest city park surrounding the sannikers river we hear that they don't feel safe they don't feel comfortable they do not demonize people experiencing homelessness they just don't feel safe and they don't use that park that's a park's equity issue to consider that's not often included in this conversation they don't matter more than people experiencing homelessness they also do not matter less separate from seeing this through a park's equity lens that have just three suggested clarifications or edits the first one is in order for this to be successful we need regulatory and operational clarity which is what you heard as a reminder a request from the parks director and the parks and rec commission again today now you know if you pass this after a second reading i think you have regulatory clarity what i mean by operational clarity is what's really going to happen on the ground we have a chief of police it was always been very direct with the u.s council even when it's what you might not want to hear we're fortunate and i think you need to hear the community needs to hear from the chief more details on what this is going to look like out in sannikers it doesn't fix everything so what does it do really do we have the officers who will enforce this the overall resources the will are we truly going to see a shift into a proactive and reasoned enforcement of the new ordinance the second piece is about the outboard side of the levy you have the onboard side of the levy but not the outboard so from the past into the river but not outside and you're going to have tents right by the path and if you have tents by the path you're going to have tents and stuff in the past i continue to be amazed that we can't even keep the path clear i think it's a very basic low bar a test of our enforcement ability and will i'd like to include the outboard side of levy and then the third one is very specific the red map of prohibited areas has a gap that all not all of the sand and under river is included some of it is but not all of it again regulatory and operational clarity number one the second is outboard side of levy and the third is having all the river in the prohibited areas the coast water should council supports the ordinance i think we can be pro river and pro human thank you for really for your leadership it really matters thank you great next up is josh peterson with the ghost writers waterman's club please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand star six and you'll be yeah thank you mayor and city council for your energy and attention on this very important issue my name is josh peterson president of the ghost writer waterman's club a local 501 c3 nonprofit organization that has worked for the last decade to raise awareness of ocean safety in our community now we as a group strongly support this ordinance in order to protect our community and environment now whether you surf swim paddle or walk on the beach many of us in the community would agree that our beaches and ocean waters together are the true heart of santa cruz however today through the uncertainty of camping ordinances the city of santa cruz is actively contributing to the pollution of our beaches and ocean by allowing homeless encampments to entrench the city is unintentionally facilitating the buildup and concentration of trash hazardous materials and human waste that will eventually run into our ocean there's no way around it i don't think there's a single person on this call tonight who would as an individual knowingly pollute not at all we all love clean beaches and ocean waters but by enabling homeless encampments to entrench our city leaders enable gross pollution of our beaches 11 000 pounds of trash collected along the center in the river a couple weekends ago dumped by those living in homeless camps by letting these homeless camps persist the city is complicit in that massive level of dumping and pollution now on a summer day in july when a nine-year-old junior last-guard kid running on the beach with friends gets stuck by washed up hypodermic needle the city will also unfortunately be complicit in that horrific event and it sickens all of us that this has actually happened in the past it will persist with these encampments now none of our civic leaders here wish this pollution on our environment notion there's no way but mayor and council this is up to you down in a world of increasing pollution you can actually do something you can act to mitigate our problem locally by prohibiting homeless encampments and preventing their massive buildup and concentration of waste you guys can keep our beaches and ocean beautiful and clean so on behalf of the ocean community and ghost writers of sanctuary's all families in the event of who rely on clean beaches and ocean waters for physical mental health i urge you to ban homeless encampments pass this ordinance and protect the heart of sanctuary's thank you thank you next up is denise pan with the sanctuary's people's kitchen please press star dying on your phone to raise your hand hi can you hear me i'm denise pan and i'm speaking on today on behalf of the sanctuary's people's kitchen we are a loosely organized group of about 15 to 30 volunteer community members who provide meals supplies and other essential services to our houses neighbors and we are completely funded by donation our position on the ordinance the outdoor living ordinance is an is absolutely against it um outside of its questionable legality um we'd we've determined that this ordinance undermines the humanity of our unhoused neighbors one of the main points brought forth by e butlers and tony elia and their presentation is um surrounding the issue of quality of life bringing up show writing parking and issues of safety however this ordinance doesn't actually solve any of these issues and not to mention that it undermines the quality of life of the individuals who are forced to live outdoors uh they're going to be forced to face harassment imprisonment and increase indebted indebtedness and be put in a cycle of um an increased cycle of poverty addiction and homelessness um and i've also also wanted to mention a note on the disability provision not only does this not really do anything to help the people the person who is disabled or people who are disabled um it doesn't provide them with any resources but simply gives them an extra 96 hours to move um but it also doesn't change any rules around uh the conditions of their movement another thing i would like to mention around that is that encampments actually provide safety and community particularly for health system men who depend on each other and who aren't forced to be alone at any part during any point of day i think that there are a couple of things that give us insight into what this ordinance is really about and that is the criminalization of homelessness uh the first reason is that there are no attributes being provided um instead homeless people are expected to be shoved around like herd animals and um the other thing is that provisions such as camping on private pop properties so long as they are out of sight really shows us that this is more about houses people being an eyesore than it is about their humanity or any kind of actual equity or um change in resources or in the way that we handle things it's really about more policing um i also wanted to note that um one of the um main people who helped write this ordinance and who is in staunch support of it is um city manager bernard and in a personal email that i got from him he um described that many of the individuals at the encampment in risk is messaged to centers of park are not actually homeless but are there to access and use drugs and to party uh clearly homelessness is an issue that is a struggle that is traumatic that nobody would ever want to be there voluntarily it that would nobody would ever want to be voluntarily in um but our own city manager doesn't seem to have a grip on this idea and um in addition in addition the criminalization of homelessness has shown over and over again that it really doesn't do anything but makes things worse um it increases uh people's indebtedness and um systems of uh typical typical um and to into into the the prison system and for these reasons scbk um urges me to vote against agenda item 25 thank you thank you very much um mr norse you're up robert norse are you there i believe pro star norse please put your hand down yes we can thank you all right it's not just commanders mistakes it's wrong to harass sleeping at night where they must yet that is the underlying message still of the new temporary outdoor living regulation ordinance no sleep is worse than the prior sleeping ban in many ways it does not actually provide for specific safe places for homeless people to sleep outside or inside simply restrictions and punishments that could be imposed largely at will unaccountable to the city council for 30 days not that the council has ever shown any interest in protecting the poor from police sweeps it's the community that has mobilized to do that food not bombs outside in santa cruz cop watch stop the sweep santa cruz union of the homeless huff and a variety of other organizations who've spoken here tonight the law and the council provide no expansion of shelter nor clear promise that the current covet expanded shelter will be maintained the so-called 20 dollar fines for violations are actually 190 so-called engaging in improper temporary outdoor living has been increased to a misdemeanor for the second offense we thought removed at the recommendation of the city's own homeless issues task force 20 years ago the law criminalizes possession of sleeping bags and so-called at-risk areas you know the areas city gentrification masters want homeless people gone from like downtown the beaches the parks the law ignores the catch committee's recommendations as have been pointed out any law or set of police practices that criminalizes the poor in our community for necessary survival behavior is wrong abusive futile decisions over the last three decades have recognized this in the taube icorn pottinger jones and martin versus boysy cases unfortunately the only way this law will be dumped is if the community actively dumps it through direct actions scornful publicity mutual aid and legal challenges after your council rubber stamps it will that happen and city bosses issue orders but it's up to us to decide whether the community will allow these actions to go unchallenged and thank you to the community for hearing me next up is joy shindalak decker from the sanitation for the people please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand and then you want to press star six on you go ahead please hello hi there hi i'm speaking on behalf of the the mutual aid working group mutual aid group sanitation for the people sanitation for the people is a mutual aid group working for sanitation and waste management services for all we clean up and we work on system change so so that people living without houses get basic services we work from a non-judgmental harm reduction ethos we oppose the proposed temporary outdoor living ordinance because it proposes very little to improve life for people living on house and Santa Cruz while increasing the burden on those residents exponentially and essentially further criminalizes homelessness in addition the exceptions for disabilities are shamefully inadequate they put undue burdens on disabled people to get doctor's letters and are cruel and demanding that people move every 96 hours i hope the letter of opposition from disability rights california is taken very seriously by the city and council members what we have found working with the community living at highway one and nine helping residents with waste management weekly and on dumpster days is that the reasons for garbage buildup are many first after months of no garbage collection at all the buildup is overwhelming most people do try to keep things clean some people are not physically able to clean some garbage is the result of storm damage where tents and possessions end up abandoned and neighbors don't want to be accused of stealing when cleaning up there's also a lot of well-meaning help from sympathetic community members that ends up as garbage that is no one's responsibility people don't have access to laundry which creates an enormous amount of clothing and bedding that ends up ruined and ultimately landfill if the goal is to prevent entrenchment in order to protect the environment there are much better ways to do so first and foremost provide increased and adequate sanitation services including toilets hand washing stations laundry and shower trailers and garbage collection the city and county county have a responsibility to cooperate on funding these services why should the poorest people suffer because of this dysfunctional bureaucracy preventing entrenchment also prevents stability and we know that people benefit from stability on so many levels they have continuity of care without reach workers they can be found for second doses of the covid vaccine they can build community with each other and those who support them they can be found by friends and family they can rest and recover from physical and mental illness they can access services where they are rather than having to expend enormous energy seeking out those services lack of stability increases physical and mental health issues increased hunger and malnutrition increases the likelihood of substance use disorders to cope with destabilization increases loss of survival gear personal possessions and essential documents okay i will end there i have more to say but thank you very much thank you for hearing me thank you very much next up we have top of you and so he lay with stop the sweets please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand are you with stop yes mean are you with uh stop the sweets i think so yes i'm reading the statement on behalf of stop the sweeps got it great go ahead please um the grassroots movement stop the sweeps stands with our unhoused neighbors and against the temporary outdoor living ordinance while the idea sounds positive for the city to supply a facility for unhoused people to store their belongings during the day the issues of accommodations and accessibility arise the ordinance refers to a reasonable quantity of daytime storage and the program being reasonably available in the city of santa cruz the language is too vague and what is considered reasonable needs to be explicitly addressed for feasibility like convenience of location also while people with disabilities are exempt from moving their tents and belongings during the day they still would have to move every four days breaking up encampments would make people lose contact with or have difficulty getting to their service providers nurses and social workers regularly visit encampments and would struggle to connect with even completely lose touch with the people for whom they provide care many unhoused people would be forced out of their current static spaces where they are more easily found during the day they would also lose access to resources like community members and mutual aid groups to bring donations to encampments this would cause irreparable harm to those who rely on those visits and supplies those who seek out services and resources would face a major boondoggle as they would have to prioritize packing up their space every day and setting it up every night and dropping off everything and picking it up every day furthermore when people are scattered about it becomes harder for the city to clean up because people aren't concentrated or allowed to stay and set places where sanitation resources dumpsters and regular trash pick up can be provided without giving people a consistent space during the day that has access to toilets hand washing stations and dumpsters the issues would increase become more dispersed and therefore more difficult to deal with there would also be an increased risk of harassment violence and even death when people who look out for each other in small communities are forced out of their spaces in those communities there's not only an increased prevention of harm there's also a higher likelihood for intervention in case something does happen people who choose to stick together in groups to look out for each other would have much greater difficulty continuing that practice when they can't stay put together this disproportionately would have adversely impact women lgbtq plus and people of color who are unhoused and have security with their camp neighbors finally anyone who violates the ordinance twice in 30 days would be guilty of a misdemeanor this would go against martin v boysy because it would make sleeping during the day in a tent illegal in addition people who prevent delay resist obstruct or otherwise interfere with any removal of personal property could get misdemeanors which would be a violation of the first amendment to freedom of speech and peaceful assembly instead of further criminalizing unhoused people the city and county should stop neglecting their duties towards their own community members the ordinance itself acknowledges the need to expand shelter capacity and very low income long-term housing options etc yet there's no transparency on how federal funding to santa cruz county through the housing action partnership is spent and how it can be effectively used thank you thank you very much and the last speaker and the extra time speakers in surge cagno with stepping up santa cruz please press star nine on your phone and raise your hand go ahead search get yourself start it's a long evening and i'll try to keep my uh comments brief cagno uh stepping up santa cruz i have a resource directory i was also on the catch that you guys were given in the packet uh from the safe sleep committee i actually wrote those so i just want to clarify one thing um we did not support this um we said our first line of that uh if you go to the documents we do not support as written it was to be implemented we had some suggestions but we were not supporting the document so just to be clear on that one could you go to the next slide bunny peer gratitude peer gratitude and appreciation for lee butler the amazing amount of work that everyone's put in trying to address the society's most complicated problem there are a lot of good things that are trying to balance the life of people experiencing homelessness in this um and i can't list them all i can't list all of the inaccuracies either including how funding works or the relationship with the city and the hap uh the short version is the city manager is a voting member of the hap executive and general boards to decide how homeless funds get spent throughout the county so trying to blame the county for not doing more um is a misunderstanding of the city manager's office's authority with as a voting member for this um um ordinance like let's tweak it in a couple ways um it's true that there's a lot more no you can't and trying to just have a reasonable expectation for somebody who's trying to live within the ordinance um we want to have clean and safe streets and we want to get people housed uh can you switch to the next one bunny really quickly the issue is bathrooms so right now they can't go downtown they can't sleep downtown in the ordinance or in parks and that's where the bathrooms are so my comment would be figure out how where you're going to put them so that they're not um urinating defecating outside because a lot of them don't want to uh bunny next slide disability is vague um by legal definition that includes mental health diagnosis and substance use disorder so who is deciding which kind of disability is allowed uh that needs to be clarified and inclement whether uh raining or heat next slide bunny move the ordinance I would suggest uh creating a design work group setting up people for success who don't want to break the law clear outstanding tickets for those working with a case manager for volunteering working and receiving services and find a nonprofit that will find funding to met they can find funding themselves to manage this reliable managed encampment on city owned lot and that's it thank you very much thank you very much search we'll now move on to um comments from individuals it's 8 16 and I'll go till 9 10 tonight with this uh give a try to give ourselves a full hour I'm sorry 9 9 16 we'll go to um if you're interested in commenting on this item please press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you've been unmuted the timer will then be set to one and a half minutes and I will be um stopping folks from right at that one and a half minute period of time uh first up is kb foster unmute your phone and please go the homeless because more often than not not getting that is why they are asking out no on this ordinance particularly some people have spoken to it um I'm probably not going to be quite so articulate um but I mean really you're trying to strike a balance here that's the claim but as far as I can tell the thing that you're trying to strike a balance between our people need to live and to have a place to live and on the other hand people need to not be near poor people and that's not something that that's not balancing you know like you can't put people's need to live on the scale it's just ridiculous a little angry I'm very disgusted I think you guys need to like take a look in the mirror check in with God or whatever do some meditation because this is really pretty foul in my opinion and uh I'll yield my time thank you next up is phone number ending in 6278 hi this is Laura Lee Martin um I'm a 30 year resident of prospect heights and I've submitted a letter so I'll keep this very short um I support passage of the ordinance with a request for an amendment to designate they love the aga park off limits all of the park all year there is no fire season anymore and I suggest we also look at chogan if the same way this request for an amendment is based on three things fire safety I'm from paradise california and very aware of the risks that we have here I'm a co-founder of fire wise and prospect heights we've had numerous fire events over the years in this neighborhood and we worked with the fire department to help clear out the underbrush any camping in this park creates a tremendous liability on the city for potential firestorm that will easily endate adjacent neighborhoods it's the wildland urban interface concern we also another important one is armory we the neighbors really supported the armory use for the homeless we um worked with you when you wanted to extend the use and extend the time of that use and increase the um population and during that time the city explicitly assured us numerous times that no camping or homeless would be permitted outside of the camp the compound of the armory so this is um unless the entire park is off limits then that promise is being broken and last I would say that public safety I no longer feel safe on any of the trails up in the daylight the aga area or even on my street outside finally thank you all for taking this extremely complex issue on many layers and thank you for sending your letter to the governor thank you next up is Tiffany Worthington for this discussion um I'm just real quick I have you know three three requests um on behalf of Santa Cruz citizens whose homes border the levy my request is that the camping not be allowed on the I think it's called the outboard area behind our homes such as Riverside Avenue in my experience as a resident here along the levy the hours between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m. are not often used by campers for sleeping but more often for drug dealing screaming obscenities drumming loud music fighting and using our front and back yards for vomiting and defecating I mean this is like nightly it's serious and anybody who doesn't realize it clearly doesn't live next to it um so that's one request not allowed it allow camping in the outboard um or you know in the home side of the path uh the levy and then number two um you know to address the health hazard that is this uncontained human waste which is very serious for both homeless people and for anyone else I propose um there's these really cheap it's so it's so easy we could um there's cheap environmentally friendly um temporary mobile compost toilets they're easily easy to assemble um you know we've did it during the wildfire uh in areas like last chance and there's handlocked hand washing stations known as tippy taps really uh really really easy and we should definitely put them up and um people shouldn't have a place to go to the bathroom thank you so much thank you very much and I just want to remind people that if you do want to speak um you should raise your hand so that we can tell that you're part of the queue best parenthesis next please can you hear me yes we can hi uh thank you for having this open forum so um similar to the last caller yeah the people who are opposed to this seem to be very out of touch with how these encampments are being used I also live on riverside I have an encampment literally on the other side of my back fence and I'm not a wealthy landowner gentrifier I'm a social worker and educator I rent and I'm just trying to feel safe I don't feel safe walking around my neighborhood I heard one of the people opposed talking about people being like queer women I am a queer woman and I've been harassed walking with my partner with homophobic comments coming from people from the encampment I feel unsafe as a woman walking past groups of men who have also made comments to me and then there's just the garbage there's people defecating right behind my fence when there are bathrooms nearby and so there is shouting there's cussing there's a lot of music all day long people are not using the hours of 8am to 8pm for the most part to look for jobs in the encampment behind my house so these people who are opposed are talking about the exceptions that are actually proving a rule that what's going on is enabling drug use and crime and so I just ask that the city council stand up for community members who are trying to keep this community alive and contribute and stop enabling the drug use and I'll give up the rest of my time thank you and next is KB please press star six and you can speak I'm K can you guys hear me I just want I I've noticed that a lot of people have been like thinking and kind of like clearing and tapping that you guys have brought this ordinance to the table but honestly I guys like use like a single brain cell like in a ping pong video game to make this ordinance up like it doesn't as people said it's definitely punitive action that's like just going against folks that have been dealing with a very very difficult year so let's like summarize a little bit of what Santa Cruz has been going through in the last year and the news at least not even on homeless situation so we had earlier in the summer with Santa Cruz actually letting them be able to sell stuff and then we had again follow up and trying to get encampment out you follow up with it definitely put a lot of people out of housing what Santa Cruz actually sets up it actually did something and then all kind of went away when everything seemed to settle like I don't understand how we have folks who have been in these positions and these roles of power and you finally have the chance to do something and you're giving us a maybe we can accept it like yet again like you didn't think maybe we should work with the current homeless program and like see what we could do together like that in no thoughts head empty i'm very it just makes me like very upset that like people's money are going to your pocket like why are we paying you for this is sabina holberg please press star six six excuse me hi there can you hear me if we can great thank you i want to state something really obvious the solution for houses individuals is to actually house them and not criminalize them everybody in your presentation kept talking about how this won't solve homelessness or houselessness and we all agree on that issue so i want to know what the council is actually doing to solve these problems um for instance you said that there's 401 beds available now that is a laughably small number for the amount of houseless individuals that are here the fact that it was 155 beds pre-covid is ridiculous so i really want to see what the council is going to do to expand the beds the other thing is that you put up these photos of trash and debris to shame houseless people but i have a home and i have trash service and if we had trash service maybe we wouldn't have those many issues and just shaming people for not having a place to put their trash is really wrong the needle issue that was shown would be greatly helped by a fully funded needle exchange program i was looking into this issue and Renee Golder is personally pseudogram so i would like to ask that she recuse herself from this vote due to conflict of interest you guys know there are real problems and just banning houses people from public spaces is not solving it i also want to mention that i've lived on the west side for years and i've never heard of the west side neighbors group that spoke earlier or my neighbors thank you thank you very much next up is stacey paul okay go ahead please can't hear you please press star six and you should be unmuted are you there stacey go ahead you're unmuted bonnie is there anything i should be telling her to try to do differently no she's unmuted so there's something on her it is are you there stacey i'll come back to you i don't know why you're we can't hear you you're unmuted but i we can't hear you let me come back to you um next is marge what the half oh there you go we heard you okay can you hear me yes we can go ahead okay i mean we also hello yes we can hear you stacey hello yep we can hear you some of you can hear me because i i can't hear you so i'm not sure you can actually hear me yep great okay good peter can we both have time on this computer you have one and a half minutes i can't hear you but i'll just assume that was a yes okay one and a half minutes um one minute sandler on so encampment i'll just to know what the weather conditions are and then i have to consult with some like biological expert who can tell me if the aloni beetles are having a mating season right now measure with me to make sure i'm 75 feet away from martin v boy v to the people who are who live in the neighborhoods who are impacted by all of the negative impacts that were described in the presentation and it overwhelms our criminal justice system with you know just my husband can speak vote no please it's not good for the for the entire city okay next step is marge please press star six to unmute yourself hi can you hear me yes we can okay i'm here to read a letter from the aclu the aclu of northern california condemns the increased regulation targeting unhoused individuals in santa cruz and urges the city council to reject a proposal to establish ordinance number um 2021 unbending chapter 6.36 currently entitled camping and hereafter entitled regulations for temporary order living of the santa cruz municipal code numerous courts have iterated the rights of unhoused people seeking necessary shelter and in the middle of an unprecedented pandemic that has already devastated local economies and exasperated poor living conditions bearing individuals from sheltering is not only inhumane but will lead to catastrophic health risks and while the ordinance language suggests that it abides by martin versus city of voisey this is not true by criminalizing the act of sleeping through strict prohibitions the ordinance likely violates the eighth amendment of the u.s constitution under ninth circum precedent the city of santa cruz has historically and continues to target unhoused populations despite an expansion of shelter capacity limiting unhoused individuals ability to seek shelter will only further escalate the public health crisis especially when they are forced to move from location to location additionally it places an increased mental and physical burden on individuals who are already struggling to find a warm and safe place to sleep during the winter months a number of the hunt house population are families who have been displaced from the recent fires having lost any stability from one catastrophe to the next prior attempts by the city of santa cruz to manage unhoused unsheltered homelessness few ordinances targeting a ban on sleeping in public has been deemed unconstitutional and ineffective today's ordinance is similarly problematic in that it will fail to address and mitigate the environmental and social impact of encampments that city leaders are touting thank you next step is nancy there you go can you hear me now yeah yeah okay thanks i'm nancy cruz so i've been a lot of years volunteer for years in homelessness programs um i oppose this ordinance because it criminalizes homelessness denies stability and security and offers nothing beneficial i feel it's your job to represent all of us in this ordinance does not it's destabilizing individuals are to take down and set up a camp every day this city should not require that of anyone much less elderly and disabled people a large portion of our home of community we know it's stability that encourages health and healing and community building this ordinance is unreasonably complicated and will lead to increased encounters with a judicial system with a justice system yet we know encounters with law enforcement produce profoundly negative consequences for homeless individuals that's one of the primary reasons the public asked for and demonstrated to you the value of programs like to hoots however this proposal goes in the opposite direction will be more overtime for police create more trauma and more cost it contains so many caveats and exceptions that people will struggle to know where to be any day store and unstore their belongings and returns it thank you very much next up is call number ending in one two two nine my name is madison and i've been a resident of santa cruz for five years i'm calling to urge you all to oppose this ordinance it's honestly it's hard for me to believe i even have to make the case for this curtailing the right of the unhoused seek shelter at the height of a pandemic is breathtakingly cool and you all know that the problem is that most of you lack the courage and the political will to enact real solutions to homelessness in santa cruz mayor mires you wrote to the governor asking for assistance only to look like you were doing something the fact that you would bring forth these ordinance which further criminalizes homelessness and deepens the cycle of poverty among the unhoused shows that you don't really care what you care about is pushing the homeless out of sight and out of mind to plague it wealthy residents and businesses in a recent sentinal article ben shiro a man who is homeless in santa cruz for 15 years told his story about how he built up $15,000 in debt from homelessness related citations his story is not uncommon it is the norm in a city that ruthlessly criminalizes being unhoused so please explain to me how we'll increase incitations and find for seeking shelter with the unhoused out of a cycle of poverty and end the crisis in santa cruz if you can't answer that question i implore you to vote now on this ordinance thank you the next caller and in numbers 1657 there you go i changed my testimony after going through the public correspondence because of my disillusionment by many comments on both sides of the issue i saw no mention of what i perceive as the elephant in the room santa cruz needs a permanent homeless shelter but the santa cruz community doesn't want to put one anywhere the community says it wants to help the unsheltered but as far as i'm aware what's when specific locations are proposed the sentiment continues to be oh no don't put it there martin v boysy decision was nearly two years ago and the supreme court denied the hearing the case later that year people can say what they want the decision stands if shelter space isn't available preventing camping becomes highly problematic with a heavy heart and great hesitancy i support the ordinance but let me be clear why the santa cruz community has failed to come together and agree upon where to put a permanent shelter if enough camping occurs in residential areas perhaps residents will be compelled to advocate more productively for a location for a permanent shelter it will cause a great deal of pain for all especially our unhoused seems safer to me than places like pokinip and dela viega for more reasons than i have time to outline here thank you next step last four digits five seven five four please press star six dear mayor mires and city council members my name is debora elston i support this living outdoor living ordinance and i'm calling you to speak for the seniors who live on dakota across the street from the san lorenzo park they are essentially living next to a nuisance property here they are living in their enjoyable twilight years some actually chose to live in this location because of the quietness the convenience to downtown shopping and a senior community now they are lucky if they get to sleep through the night or even feel safe they are living across from a nuisance property if there was an ordinance like this this would have never happened one senior described that she couldn't even get her dinner delivered one night because the person delivering the meal didn't even feel safe delivering to that address the park and all it brings with it partying drug dealers a goat and a boat mental illness selling drugs noise all hours of the day and night and the safety of walking for groceries has been a daily challenge for these seniors they should not have to deal with all this activity it's exhausting for them you as a council can change the situation please pass the temporary outdoor living ordinance and let's support regulations that help our whole community thank you very much for your time next step we have phone number ending in 2885 allowed to go forward whom reside the council hold let's begin hi this is kelsey hill i'm calling to urge that the leaders on this dais vote no on item 25 i of course understand calls for environmental protection and safety but this ordinance is drafted only serves the interest of people who have the privilege of being sheltered at this perilous time in our history and it does not solve the crises that it claims to we butler himself over and over again noted that this is not a solution this ordinance does nothing to mitigate the stressors on those who sleep outside and it only amplifies them could any of you on this dais breakdown and set up your possessions in such a routine and also work toward being rehoused and employed we're also in a pandemic that's killed half a million people across this country and 172 people in our county from a virus that disproportionately impacts vulnerable groups including unhoused people dispersal policies don't work and they threaten an individual's ability to distance sanitize and practice other methods of slowing the spread of COVID-19 moreover this ordinance only further pushes people experiencing houselessness to the margin and makes it more difficult for them to recover from cycles of trauma addiction or mental health issues human first approaches are more effective and more cost efficient in the long term and i know all of you know this on the dais meanwhile criminalization is expensive in colorado six cities spent over five point one million dollars in forcing camping vans for 2010 to 2014 and in 2021 denver can't even calculate what it has spent on sweeps and enforcement but even the conservative estimates are not pretty and that doesn't even touch on the spread of lawsuits that council member coming ventures i cannot for the life of me fadden help burn all in staffing this is a good idea thank you step is uh number 1810 press star six please to see further improvements to the ordinance and so far as the ordinance essentially seems to give permission for a near permanent outdoor nightmare excuse me nighttime camping on private property in a very high density number and on public street sidewalks and residential neighborhoods at night the era of people squatting wherever they like however they like for as long as they like and any numbers they like should come to a close in our small somewhat politically confused city it's a big country with a lot of opportunity and i see no positive purpose the sad cruise should be the county dump and caretaker for unlimited homeless individuals doing what some do now as to the details of the ordinance quote as expressly authorized in the art of a residence uh with the consent of the arachnid residents where the camping is in the rear yard etc is an acceptable camping area for one person seems to find is 12 by 12 feet does that mean in my 50 by 50 backyard like mine theoretically permits 16 to 17 people a camp at a willing backyard unless they violated other sections you should go further in defining what residential zoning districts might allow what density limits are to be for private property residential area backyard camping we should be far less than that there are the same these are the same types of homeless camping densities rejected by thousands of city residents when the city proposed camps and neighborhoods not long ago okay thank you bye next up is phone number ending in ending in 1018 10818 press star six press star six we can't hear you yet phone number ending in 1018 we can't hear can you hear me can you hear me hi my name is tj dimos and as a west side santa cruz homeowner i urge you to reject this anti homeless ordinance which clearly undermines and attempts to circumvent martin versus boise and cbc guidelines contra lee butler's presentation the confusing ordinance with its Byzantine maps of prohibition and preposterous demands for continual packing up of one's belongings especially harsh on disabled folks will only add to the worst of santa cruz's policies of intolerance fee and finding policing and criminality targeting and exploiting the most vulnerable also the most racially diverse of our community without of course including any of them in that discussion nimby ordinance which favors endless evictions over compassionate services comes from a place of cruelty and is only counterproductive in the spirit of health and all policies i urge you to reject the outdoor camping ban it's clear that santa cruz city and county are lacking an available shelter for people suffering houselessness the cold-hearted ordinances like this uh do nothing but harm the most exposed criminalizing them with citations when they have nowhere to go ticketing them when they have no money to pay and destroying their possessions when they have nothing else and weaponizing discriminatory environmentalism against them as in the highly biased images and info and fear mongering presented by lee butler and tony elliot the failed police approach of enforcing itinerancy to prevent so-called entrenchment it's not only heartless and mean it's illegal and unconstitutional thank you thank you appreciate it next up is gabriel cone please press star six camp event i i think criminalization is not solution it's not going to change the form of all realities that are causing people to live outdoors um i was thinking about this is being very similar to my job as a teacher right now we're dealing with kids who are dealing with a lot of crises and traumas of while dealing with uh schooling online and simply yelling at them or failing them doesn't accomplish the goal of helping for their education is to meet them where they're at and help them create a new and perhaps different path forward so that they can actually have likewise punishing someone further for their lack of resources is not going to magically help them find housing and i would instead urge the city to consider ways that we can redirect funding away from criminalization towards solutions to actually help those thank you very much next up is phone number indian 7343 as a working class resident of santa cruz who's experienced bike theft a car break in and an assault on the riverfront i encourage the city council to vote yes and adopt these ordinance ordinances immediately what i see in santa cruz does concern me when it comes to homelessness but by and large the behavior perpetrated by the homeless are not good for the community at large especially families and children we need to take them into account when we consider how we approach this very difficult issue i'd also like to draw the council members as well as the community's attention to a recent podcast youtube video by a homeless advocate named pio henderson called we the unhoused uh episode number 40 and it's focused on santa cruz in the video he interviews a number of residents of samlor aso park and other encampments none of these people are from santa cruz all of them have obvious mental health and drug dependency issues i think we need to stop encouraging more people to come to santa cruz with these type of issues so that we can focus on the people who want and need help our budget and resources are limited we need to focus them appropriately thank you for your time thank you very much next up is uh phone number ending in four six five six thank you very much my name is father joseph jacob's i'm the program manager for the association of faith communities safe parking program uh association of faith communities is a local nonprofit based here in santa cruz and we are a coalition of over 30 faith-based communities in santa cruz and santa cruz county i just want to take this opportunity to thank everyone who is working so hard to solve this illness and i do believe it is a social collective illness and i believe we cannot legislate our homeless away and they are our homeless despite the cynical views of some we must embrace nurture and heal our common illness called homelessness i have done my homework on statistics for people in the safe parking program over 60 percent of them are from santa cruz near the 80 percent are from santa cruz county this notion that we are attracting people from outside of santa cruz because it's fun to live on the street or or camp or something is specious and encouraging and asking everyone to be more compassionate not less thank you thank you very much the next speaker is ending in phone number 2279 you should be able to speak we can't hear you we're are you unmuted we you look unmuted right there you hear me now here you go yep great um thanks hello my name is graham edwards i live just a few blocks from sam lorenzo park and i would like to urge the council to vote no on item 25 earlier speakers have stated that this is not a criminalizing houseless folks uh but the outland ordinance would functionally criminalize and punish and terrorize homeless people i implore you to allow my homeless neighbors and community members to shelter and to actually invest in truly affordable housing rather than veiled luxury development also as a climate and earth scientist i would like to speak to some of these concerns of habitat destruction the landscape lawns of these green space parks are not natural ecosystems to the santa cruz area the argument appealing to natural habitat destruction are moot as the natural habitats are already destroyed these fabricated landscapes may as will be used for a common good providing a living space for community members also with respect to concerns for mountain bikers uh these are the greatest destroyers of natural landscapes these mountain bikes and it is a hobby for the extremely wealthy and the majority of santa cruz residents such as myself live much more financially close to losing our apartments and becoming homeless than to pleasure riding on our multi-thousand dollar mountain bikes uh i hope you will give as much attention to our hopes for our community as the wealthy class you seem so attuned to uh thank you thank you next up is gail mignolte please press star six okay thank you so much um white mother of three children um two of whom have had middle and high school in the city of santa cruz during non-physically distanced time i'm also an anti-racist climate advocate um as a bonny dune resident i was displaced for a month and a half this summer so i'm well aware of the complications of the urban wildlife interface um that said i oppose this ordinance in part because it continues a message that poverty is a crime and should be hidden when in fact poverty is an inexcusable repercussion of the same failing economic system that's destroying our ecosystems and our children's shared feature as a parent i believe it's time we start modeling for our children how to use creativity compassion and courage to solve this difficult problem and i'm afraid that this ordinance failed to do all of these things um i really do think that well i believe everybody in this discussion um has a desire to do the right thing the proposal being proposed here is completely failing to do that so we're this is the end game guys we are living we are witnessing the end of time as we know it and we need to reinvent the future we need to do it with much more creativity compassion encouraged than what's being proposed tonight so thank you so much thank you next up is uh phone number ending in four two five seven you press star six you should be able to unmute you should be able to unmute we can't hear you there you go for you but you have an echo i think the turn down your tv if you have your tv on a little bit hard to hear you but we can hear you better now with the echo are we should we tell her to turn off her tv or what's the best way to do this there we go a little bit i can't hear you uh maybe it just hurt yeah we can't hear you could you call back in well yeah we can't hear you unfortunately we can't hear anything right her number down mayor okay i'll call back in thank you next up is phone number eight eight eight three chris enreo and i've been living downtown san cruz for the past 25 years and i'm calling to support the ordinances that will regulate outdoor living in vagrancy in san cruz um i'm supporting this ordinance because it will help create a city that is safe and healthy for all of its citizens including the homeless population i want a city where the environment and our parks are protected and our resources are taken care of right now there are many areas in san cruz that are no longer accessible to the general public because they have been taken over by permanent campers this includes families of parks the levy harvey west park pogunas and many areas downtown because we live downtown we see on a daily basis the problems associated with these unmanaged encampments there are many incidents that occur in front of our houses um there are fights deaths overdoses and we're needing to call 911 three to four times a month just last week i had to call 911 because i was threatened while going on a run on moral streets by a homeless man under the influence who threatened to kill me my husband is a san cruz city parks worker and he and his co-workers have had incidents of being attacked when they're trying to clean up parks they have been stabbed by improper leisure started needles and verbally harassed and threatened to an asking hamper to move out of playgrounds and bathrooms please support the ordinance thank you thank you very much next up is phone number 9869 hello can you hear me yes we can hi my name is benet hawkins i've lived in san cruz for five years now and i pose this measure um just hearing about it i'd like to ask if you want people people to move where are they really supposed to go because looking at the map that was put up they basically just blocked off every area that you could realistically camp and still have access to a bathroom a convenience or grocery store i don't know any kind of facilities that you may need to live um these people aren't camping outside because they want to they are because they have to they've been forced out of their previous living situations uh all of the surveys referenced in the presentation uh also show that the majority of the homeless people in san cruz are from santa cruz they are and still are they are and we're our neighbors um i think we need to remember that and this ordinance is not doing is not really acknowledging that it's just a punitive it's just a punitive measure it really only seeks to make people's life outside harder than it already is um i really urge you to oppose it um i think that this is just incredibly wrong um that's all thank you thank you next up is it looks like just one tosh if we can all right thank you um thank you uh mayor meyers and council members i'm going to speak as fastly quickly as i can um so i'd like to echo uh council member commentings uh comments about potentially getting sued i think i think that it should be taken with a lot of weight that that sounds about right to me um i'd like to say to the general community that i feel like this ordinance coming up right now is to deal with um like nuisance and unsafe encampments which do exist they're not uh every homeless or houseless person but there are places where it's getting pretty bad and so i think this i'm assuming this is an attempt to deal with that and also um as we've seen in the past some of these encampments do just get bigger and bigger and get more out of control um all right however that said i'm not sure if this is the way to do it uh camping ban uh in the daytime you know it's it's just like what other causes that's going to move people around a little bit too much i i don't know if this is the right way to go about um getting those particular things done however um i also know that it's legally it's very limited in what tools there are for our local government to actually deal with some of the issues that are arising in and in terms of balancing everyone's needs people that are in houses people that are not in houses um and that's what we have to do as a community uh let's see also people that are just coming to these meetings now there's actually a lot being done oh my god okay i'm sorry we short just a short apologize for that um next person up is seven zero zero three really tired of hearing this narrative about the folks in Santa Cruz uh the homeless folks are all are from Santa Cruz and all are they used to be our neighbors or are still our neighbors and that they excuse me um couldn't possibly wouldn't possibly choose this lifestyle but don't believe don't believe me let's hear it from somebody that was interviewed by Robert Norris on his radio show hang on if you caught that he's now he's only he's a vagabond he ended up in Santa Cruz uh because he's a free spirit and he just decided to stay because he once undeclared the camp thank you thank you okay it looks like we've got um maybe eight more people to go and then we will be stopping um indian 4931 go ahead hey can you hear me that's the camp hey this is rachel chavez and i'm calling today as a nurse in the lower ocean resident to voice my vehement opposition to this ordinance in the city's health and all policies fact sheet we are reminded of the differences between equality and equity equity which the city now claims to prioritize acknowledges that not everyone starts from the same place and asks us to make structural change to ensure that people have access to similar opportunities and resources is passed this ordinance will further the already drastic inequity in our community by criminalizing some of our most vulnerable residents thus negatively impacting their social determinants of health which as the health and all policies reminds us is a harbinger of inequity if council members truly believe that health and equity should exist in all policies then they must understand that we only get there by centering and uplifting the most disadvantaged members of our community which in turn makes a better city for everyone either acknowledge that the content and spirit of this ordinance opposes the stated goal of health and all policies or admit that the intent was always just to punish people who have been judged as not worthy and to pacify those who find themselves loudly inconvenienced by having to witness people living in dire straits additionally i would just like to make it known that i hike regularly alone in pokinip and walk through downtown using campments that personally never felt threatened by any homeless person um anyone with an ounce of common sense can see that this ordinance will only make homelessness and it's a quality significantly worse for all Santa Cruz residents you don't want to see trash buildup set up regular trash pickup want to see less human waste both bathroom want to see less needles see conjection sites sharp containers everywhere nonsensical you don't know ashley wheel natural resource manager of a local public agency i'm a conservationist and i find it asinine and dehumanizing not to mention neoliberal and performative to even try to claim that this ordinance is remotely concerned with environmental degradation we all know that those who consume the most are those that destroy this planet additionally when i think of degradation of sensitive habitats my mind goes to clear cutting with the globe increased line of sight for police and the disturbance caused by police vehicle access acts on dpr employees but failed to mention vigilante and police assaults on our houseless neighbors and on that note why are we only presented with mountain bikers the report feeling unsafe recreating as opposed to houseless neighbors who feel unsafe while trying to survive again as a Santa Cruz resident i urge you to vote no west light since resident uh co-president soon as monterey county homeless union and i guess i was urging you to say no as well just like everyone else um also i'd try to point you in the direction of the continuum of care here in monterey and san bonito counties they're kind of leading the way in state for you know project room key and actually treating people like people have you taken a head count of how many people will you plan to display with no alternative to go are they just supposed to fall off the checkerboard you know did they lose the casino of life here so the enforcement is crazy off the top but you should work more in collaboration we've actually uh locked down swing is pretty good is a there the county seat here in monterey county and they're not conducting sweeps they're actually trying to be humanistic and you know so i'd point that out as well you know if you're gonna vote yes on this you may as well be you're voting against humanity and and you're turning any humanity as well so you should vote on this you should tell you revamp and just table it out honestly that way you don't have to embarrass yourself with the vote to even admit how little humanity you have this is about business you know we worry so much about separation of church and state now we get to worry about separation of business and state because this where it's at right now it's big money there's little so little people and there has to be a lot of losers for there to be a few winners and we just need to stop this game once again thank you better hi can you hear me yes we can you're a little bit light if you could speak a little louder cruise is a really beautiful place and it's disartening to see so many people supporting those who would spend their time justifying tactics that they've already been sued for while ignoring all the effective things that charities or housing plans could provide there's no housing for low income people either unhoused or housed um and I think this is just like a appetizer for the poor people who get sick or injured in Santa Cruz um they see exactly what's going to happen to them pro cultures want to keep shooting themselves in the foot while being as cruel as possible the ordinance will fail it's a paper single it's barely a change from the thing they've been doing for 10 years and it's just going to inevitably inevitably bloat the already over 30 million dollar police budget if you're okay paying jail time and court costs and a victor's salaries who keep people in a cycle of inescapable poverty to justify what they do then by all means vote yes i yield my time thank you thank you stuff we have phone number ending in eight nine two five phone number ending in eight nine two five please hi can you hear me yep hi my name is maria solis kennedy and i um live in santa cruz right near san lorenzo park i'm originally from boise idaho a city that has wasted millions of dollars already on an anti homeless lawsuit and it looks like the city of santa cruz wants to follow in its footsteps and fight um the spirit of uh the uh boise vs martin and i'm really surprised because when i moved from such a conservative place to a democratically controlled city i thought that i would encounter a different attitude towards the poor and the houseless and i'm really disappointed in the spirit of this ordinance and i urge city councils to vote no i also want to attest that as a young woman who lives very close to san lorenzo park and walks through frequently i've never felt threatened and i've never felt unsafe i continue to use the park regularly um if people are scared of the poor people that live in the park i don't think criminalization is the answer i think that will exacerbate the problem and i think we should act with compassion i would just like to add that if the city and the park system is short of money then i suggest that you look at defunding the police and cutting the police budget and not increasing it thank you thank you very much this will be our last caller tonight your number ends in five five excuse me five four four six city council members my name is amy leba chuck and i'm a nine-year city resident social worker i'm asking that you vote against this ordinance from mr butler and mr elliott's presentation it appears we can all agree that this ordinance will not alleviate homelessness in our community this ordinance as outlined is inhumane and seeks to undermine martin versus boise limiting a person's right to sleep to the hours of eight p.m to eight a.m this ordinance wastes santa cruz police officers time during a budget crisis giving warnings and 20 dollar citations to households residents thereby criminalizing homelessness this ordinance cites environmental degradation as the underlying issue so i propose that the city council instead focus their efforts on providing trash receptacles and bathroom facilities to homeless encampments to resolve this issue i also hope that the city and county can continue to partner to expand existing programs that do value the rights and lives of people experiencing homelessness including safe parking programs shelters and supportive permanent housing programs and hope to see transitional encampments added to the list thank you thank you that's our last public speaker i have council member walkins golder and council member Cummings in the queue i'd like to take a five to seven minute break and then come back and we'll deliberate there kind of a question yeah i know that there's some people they've been reaching out to me because they've been online for hours now waiting to speak and i was just wondering if there might be an opportunity whether we could cut public comment to 30 seconds but to allow some of these people an opportunity since they've been waiting so patiently to address this sorry i cut it off i've gone over the intended period so i'm sorry but i think we've gotten a really good we've gotten a number of people so i'm going to cut it off so we have time to deliberate thank you we'll take a five minute break vice mayor um and council member callantary johnson i i'm sorry but i i must have gotten up i did not see who was who was between the two of you who went up first uh vice mayor going before me i don't know thank you council members are back if they could turn on their uh turn on their camera so i know they're available and we will go ahead and get started i believe it's been five minutes and a few comments and then we'll get right into it i just want again wanted to thank folks from the public showing up tonight i'm very sorry that we couldn't accommodate everybody we're going to try to get into this and and get uh get into these decision-making aspects of this i do want to just um acknowledge that we did receive hundreds of emails on the item and we appreciate the engagement by our community on all sides of the issue and i want to recognize your letters were respectful informative and all correspondence has shown all of us here on the council that you care deeply about this community so we thank you um and i also just um want to kind of put this ordinance in the context of really acknowledging the scale of homelessness in the city of tana crews and its impacts to everyone in the community including those that are houseless and are struggling to be here um without the adequate amount of affordable housing and other services including mental health behavior health and substance abuse disorder facilities we we are lagging and very short on the things that we need to take care of of our community and we're not the only city in california or the nation that is suffering from these exact same issues um and this ordinance is really most importantly placed in the context of the bigger picture of where we as a city are heading with our partners at the county for both short and long-term actions to address homelessness and importantly in the larger context of a statewide crisis homelessness is acute is an acute and debilitating social and economic issue in tana crews and it is an environmental issue as well and it is continuing to get worse this is a difficult issue that shouldn't be happening anywhere in the united states or in california but it is and we are doing our best to manage something the city has no real way to manage for it is not the duty of city governments in california to provide services necessary to manage this crisis yet we do do our best with our resources and locations as much as possible and i think it's very important for and i hope that people really understand that our city does expand resources and and funds as much as possible to try to do really what many experts have said which is to try to prevent people from becoming homeless number one to try to look at diversion and rehousing as quickly as possible to look at case management and social services and then most importantly to try to provide that permanent support of and transitional housing needed to try to help these individuals i will have lee put the red line version up tonight but i will let you know that we've worked for many months on this and i would hope that one of my colleagues would entertain a motion to start the evening off with and we can begin deliberation at very soon i want to recognize in order councilmember walkins councilmember golder councilmember comings and uh vice mayor brooner at this time and then councilmember callantari johnson councilmember walkins your comments yes thank thank you mayor and i'm going to try to keep my my comments short because i think as we all recognize these are really complex issues before us i want to thank the community for your emails and input and those who are able to attend this evening as well as the staff and the mayor for your work on this as well i feel like having served on the council for now the past four years no matter when an item comes up in regards to those who are houseless in our community is always really challenging and although at times it feels bound wanting to connect people to better living standards and to see their success so i just want to honor that shared space as you mentioned mayor we've seen for decades now this trajectory continue in terms of increased poverty shrinking middle class housing costs lack of national investment in mental health substance abuse i mean you name it right so i don't think it's not by mistake that we've ended up here it's unfortunate and it's um unacceptable as a nation that we are in this place and this is not the kind of policies that we enjoy making but it's also our responsibility as policymakers to take ownership over some of these issues in our community serving as mayor i had um you know really witnessed firsthand the challenges associated with large encampments particularly around the rock camp and um the health and human safety uh associated with living in that environment for the individuals there the surrounding community sources are simply unexpected i think we know that large encampments are not good for individuals residing there nor for the community as a whole and i feel like that as policymakers we are um in these positions to make really difficult decisions at times and i feel like tonight and this topic in general is always really challenging and it's about as uh balancing being in action or deferring to inaction and status quo um trying to make policy to move forward without um continuing to kind of operate from this place of um really crisis response constant crisis response as opposed to trying to formulate policy that's going to drive um more clarity in the direction i think that you really touched on mayor a lot of what um i wanted to also recognize that this is all in the context of a broader a continuum of care a broader approach to those who are experiencing houselessness in our community rooted in an interest in wanting to prevent houselessness in the first place identifying the unique populations and needs of individuals and doing our best to advocate and leverage and draw down as many resources as we can to support those for unhousing our community um you know we've seen that with the interest in the county wanting to prioritize families and children uh veterans um and we have other uh subpopulations that also need addressing i know that you may or interest we're interested in um wanting to have additional uh questions answered at prior uh sort of prior to opening it up to public comment i do um feel like i could entertain a motion to get deliberations going but want to honor that so i'll hold my motion at this time and maybe start off with the question and then when the questions have concluded i'm prepared for a motion to begin our deliberations um for the purposes of discussion um my first SOPs that we had and this is more geared towards staff um you know when we closed the rock camp there was a lot of work that we did to formulate um now i'm spacing on exactly what the SOPs stand for i uh thank you stated operating procedures and and really trying to think about how we manage large encampments forming um and preventing them from forming and becoming entrenched and um and we had these policies outlined and i know that covid has complicated uh the situation um but i'm i'm curious as to why or if the staff could speak to why they haven't been operationalized um yes thank you um councilmember walkins i think for that i'd invite um sudie ohara up um she has um some more history on that issue hi good evening councilmember walkins and uh mayor and vice mayor and councilmembers happy to be here and provide a little bit of update on the standard operating procedures as you know during your term as mayor um councilmember walkins we we relied heavily on the standard operating procedures as we move forward with closing the ross camp um since that time those operating procedures have been utilized on several different occasions um most specifically around ensuring that um those are that are in encampments are given um adequate notice that 72 hours and that we are storing personal property that qualifies um under that those SOPs for um the experience around covid so say for the last um 13 months 12 months we have to the greatest extent possible use those standard operating procedures as well but given that the fact that there have been changing um orders around sheltering in place changing guidance around the cbc and allowing for folks to shelter in place as long as possible we've had to be really nimble and flexible with how we apply those but in in large part the spirit of those SOPs are always used we go out um and perform outreach we ensure that folks understand what their options are just um knowing that the options for additional shelter have diminished so significantly during the pandemic has created additional layers of complexity for us okay thank you you know I appreciate the clarification around that I will post I will sort of hold off on um any additional questions at this time but um just sort of showing that we can craft something that is informed by our community input and a way to move forward in addressing some of the concerns so that we can have um you know at least action and direction in some regard here and I am interested in looking at the red line version again I think opening up our parking spaces available in the city while simultaneously not including residential makes a lot of sense and I think that by location specifics that our community is looking for and that we're hoping to have answered I also um have concerns about the misdemeanor component of the language and potentially thinking about um potentially thinking about removing that knowing that there's so many other tools that could be employed and then also looking at where are we at as a region in terms of a navigation center and other types of efforts and social workers etc so that's sort of just a summary of my thoughts on this at this time and I look forward to the conversations that we'll see with my colleagues we'll go back to council member um walk-ins for motion but I do have and again just for additional comments questions I know many of you were waiting to get get those answered before we deliberated once we get those done um Lee we can maybe put up the red line and we can start to work through uh the motion as as made by uh started with council member walk-ins um council member colder do you have comments or questions that you want to make at this time I do thank you and um I want to thank all of the members of the community that took time to write a letter call in tonight you know it's obvious that everyone's really passionate about this issue and I think the bottom line is nobody wants to see people suffering they want you know um people to be living in conditions that are humane and safe and um I think there's reasons why we have in the city in the state um policies around like zoning regulations and things like you know smoke alarms and carbon monoxide alarms and occupancy limits and buildings and stop signs and building codes and they're there to keep people safe and so to the extent that um the ordinance not only the house residents feeling safe in their neighborhoods or their parks it's also in a way to keep um the people that are living outdoors safe and I think it's it's a way to kind of um you know move forward and help um regulate some of the situations that have cost a lot of money and um I want to say I just I applaud the association of faith-based communities and the safe parking programs and I and I encourage people with businesses or homes to allow people into your homes and yards I do have concerns about a couple of um aspects of the ordinance and I'll wait to discuss those but um I also agree that I I'm not sure about camping in the neighborhoods and I think that we should look at parking lots as alternatives um and as far as the misdemeanor goes it's complicated um um sometimes I think with without um any consequences people are reluctant to make changes and you can't always just keep giving like carrot carrot carrot um and I know that's not the case here but I would also you know like to see maybe not tonight because I don't know how much we'll get to but I would I mean I'd like to see ways that we can help people get their credit back on track and their criminal records erased and things like that if um if they were to start looking for housing and jobs and things like this so um anyway I feel like I'm rambling but um I'm also curious what everybody else has to say and thank you to everybody that called in thank you next up I have councilmember Cummings thank you mayor and thank you members of the public who all chimed in tonight um and um for the staff I have a number of comments um I'll probably hold my comments I'll ask a few more questions um and then at some point when we get into deliberations I'll probably express my feelings towards this ordinance this evening um I did have a couple questions regarding um the timeline so the 8 p.m to 8 a.m and a question I had around that is if we establish the that you can only have a tent up from 8 p.m to 8 a.m is that something that's static so for example if someone you know works um well I'm thinking about it within the context of you know where we are right now in the winter when the sun goes down in January by around 4 30 p.m it's cold and I'm just curious as to how we're going to adjust those times to and reflect when people need shelter because um yeah it gets dark three hours before 8 p.m during the winter so I'd just like to hear from staff how that's supposed to be accommodated if tents can't be up until 8 p.m and also along with that setting a tent up in the dark for anyone who's ever done that is pretty difficult so uh planning director if you can speak to that or anybody else can that'd be helpful thank you council member Cummings I would say that in the ordinances that we've looked at um there are different timelines some for example to address the issue that you raised um say um 30 minutes after um sunrise as the uh pack up time and then 30 minutes before sunset as um the uh time when you can start setting things up so that would address your concern in relation to um the the light um and uh the varying times throughout the year um I would say that um you know that was that was something that was considered it's certainly something that you can consider completely within your purview um the ease of implementation of knowing eight o'clock to eight o'clock um was a factor in um the deliberations but I appreciate you raising that question and certainly the council can modify that as you all see fit okay thank you um the next the next question I have is one that came up um I had and then also came within the community which is the determination and definition of disability um I think somebody had pointed out that you know um anxiety PTSD schizophrenia all these things are disabilities drug addiction could also be considered a disability if it also has impacts on your ability to your ability for you to mentally function so and then you know I think it's pretty safe to say that in our country unfortunately access to medical care is really limited so you know how do we expect someone who you know may not even be aware of their surroundings because of their mental health issue to be able to go to a doctor carry a note on them at all times which they're able to present to police officers that would then um you know justify them being able to keep their tent up all the time so I'm just wondering if someone could speak to you know the process behind you know how we're gonna expect people who may have mental difficulties or disabilities to be able to meet some of the requirements that are outlined um in this ordinance especially since they may be on their own and by themselves so I would say a couple of things um so one um with respect to medical access um there are um uh folks at the county HP HP it helps to provide uh free and low cost services um and um with respect to um and so those individuals you know could feasibly um provide if there is a medical uh doctor's note that's necessary um that was that was part of the thought process um and then um you also had another question um about the um the identification could you repeat that I think that was the second part uh was there a first part to that as well no I think most of it was along the lines of you know our expectations around people who have mental health disabilities right and one how they're going to be able to get you know a doctor's note and then you know our expectation around them keeping that on them all the time to present to police officers um in order to keep their housing yeah sure yeah and I would say a couple things um just in addition there so um you know one of the things that it the ordinance identifies is that um if that disability is not readily apparent um you know there may be um individuals who are known um to the um uh to the um policing community for example um and um so those police officers you know may even if they've lost the note uh say hey you know we know that this is the case um there are also um other resources I think um and whether it's through the continuum of care or um uh through you know visits at housing matters and HPHP staff there versus you know field staff there so there are some opportunities um and I would say if anyone on the team has additional uh things that they'd like to add chief mills or others yeah thanks director bellard we actually deal with us a lot with a lot of medical reasons um that people you know use different substances for instance when cannabis was um a medical excuse for under two prop 215 to use cannabis people you know you you work with them you try to figure it out the second piece of that is it can always be dismissed later at these city attorneys level when that takes place um yeah should they have their you have to re-obtain their medical clearance to have that level system and that we're fairly used to dealing with yeah in addition to that um director butler if you don't mind if I jump into as well for councilmember Cummings that our downtown outreach workers as well as um as chief mills knows our mental health um liaisons have access to those within the system of care especially those with mental health diagnoses um I know that our mental health um workers are um you know having hundreds of contacts um a year if not thousands with folks that are um in the city of Santa Cruz that do have um access to the system of care treatment and so I do think that there is while there is hipper considerations there is a recognizable group of folks that um we have contact with through both of those programs questions just one in particular I'm just curious about you know if we're going to put this in place like what is the strategy around increasing turnover in our current facilities because if we have I mean we can't assume that we're going to have all 400 plus beds once COVID is over and if we're back down to 155 beds which I hope we're not um you know just thinking about the proportion of people who are homeless in our community how are we going to are there any thoughts around how we're going to be able to transition people out of shelters and either into homes or back with families so that we can get people in because um if the strategy is going to be to break up these encampments and people are literally going to be you know randomly sleeping throughout the city of Santa Cruz how are we going to ensure that we're trying to get more people into um shelter and services and not kind of in this perpetual cycle of poverty so I would uh comment on that and I'd invite others up uh after that as well one of the things that I would say is you know I mentioned the um the county's um focus strategies plan and um one of the um the recommendations and and really part of the the conversation that we've been having with the county is directly related to these questions that you're asking and they're looking at a number of things um the the data is a big um thing that they're looking at is is uh looking at um reducing those timelines so they have set um uh goals they've they've looked at how long people have stayed in certain facilities in transitional housing and in shelters and um they've they've set uh goals that they are looking to attain within certain timelines and and they're substantially shorter than what has occurred um in the past um and so the county is well aware of that um concern um and um is is seeking to address that as part of their um upcoming six months and uh three-year strategy because you're absolutely right if if there is not that turnover um then um you know it's not opening up beds for that next person that that needs to access that resource it looks like Susie might want to add something as well yeah thanks director Butler um uh council member um Cummings I wanted to call you Justin I apologize um while you were on the two by two committee we spent uh months talking about this subject so I know that it's deeply ingrained in in your policy um consideration so one thing that we did talk about at the two by two level was um the assurance that um as we contemplate new sheltering models that that shurn um and the incentives to you know provided to folks to ensure that not only are they offered um diversion programs before they hit the shelter system but each step of the shelter system um provides opportunities for folks to find um pathways out of homelessness is critically important so I do think that stepped model um will continue to be a critical piece of the county and focus strategies work and I think the work on the half and the work that Lee and others are doing to help advocate um for focus strategies to really focus on kind of that stepped shelter program um and leading into long-term housing solutions will be really important so I appreciate you bringing that up thanks and I'll I only have a few more questions then I'll try to wrap it up I'll share my comments and then I'll probably quiet um next two questions one um and I just want to get this as a summary piece but it sounds like um and Lee maybe you can touch on this based on the report that we were given it doesn't appear to myself and I don't think it's clear in members of the public where people can sleep and so I'm just wondering if you can touch on that again um because we have outlined where people can't but we haven't said where people can and I think the other concern is you know there is this you know component which is having storage be accessible if the only places for people to camp are in the middle of open space is 75 feet away from uh trails for me that leads that what that tells me is that there's the there's a higher potential that people will be camping in these areas and having negative impacts on our environment because they won't have access to bathrooms um they'll have to you know and as a result have to make use of where they are they won't have easy access to refuse so they're going to be throwing their trash in a lot of these areas and you know if they're in open space it's not like you can drag a garbage can in and out right it's going to be teams of city workers going out and cleaning up after people because these people have no way to um access um garbage or you know when we think about black water and gray water they'll have nowhere to kind of dump there those um biohazardous waste so I think it would be really helpful for us to kind of have a better understanding of where people can go especially now that we're saying well now that it's coming up as well that people don't want these people in neighborhoods so I'm wondering if you could speak to that sure thank you councilmember coming so I'm happy to speak to that um so first off I I saw I heard three questions there or three things that I'll respond to there first off where um and I'll I'll respond um as the ordinance is currently drafted um so you know the council can modify this as they see fit but as are currently drafted um it's the open spaces aside from the three that were precluded so uh the four open spaces um meaning uh more creek Poganip um Arana Gulch and uh De La Viega so those four open spaces outside of 75 feet from either side of a trail and then there would be some sensitive habitat areas that are identified and we would publish those before we are enforcing the ordinance um so that is as uh oh excuse me and then sidewalks throughout the city sidewalks throughout the city so that's how the ordinance is currently drafted um I would just comment on that and say that you know um so long as adequate places are being provided I think you know we um would um just tell the council like if you want to modify the places look to ensure that there is adequate space um when we were when we were um you know uh working through all of this and looking at options and um considering the ordinance um you know there are there are reasons for and against everywhere and you know you've cited some valid reasons why there are concerns about open spaces and so what I would tell you is if the council wants to take open spaces off the table um then think about what what other places are going to be put on the table so that we do have adequate spaces I mean that's that's critical from a legal perspective um of having a sufficient number of spaces for people to go into sleep so that's one two you mentioned um storage and how would that work and you know with if it's open if people are camping in the open spaces you know I think that's something that we will clearly need to evaluate but certainly we would be looking at all right where can we place facilities that are convenient to where people are going to be um and um you know if if the council chooses to move those places around as far as where people can be then we would reevaluate where we want to put the storage that store the storage programs um and then finally you mentioned the cleanup um and you know the hauling of trash by city staff I'm not going to say that this ordinance is going to fix that issue but what I will say is I do appreciate the comments that we got from members of the public that spoke to the changes that were included in for the council's consideration which included things like you know hack your trash out um you know so it'll be the Canberra's responsibility to keep their their trash in a bin and a receptacle and you know is that going to happen all the time no but um from an expectation standpoint um hopefully that can address some of the challenges I will say I'm a bit well I'll hold my comment or since I know that there's other people who want to speak um but thank you for providing that um the answer last two questions one um there's been a lot of discussion popping up around not allowing camping in neighborhoods however at the same time there is a provision that's written into the ordinance that says that private property owners can have um campers people camping in their yards and so I just want to understand would there need to be some reconciliation if you say you cannot have it in residential neighborhoods and the fact that private citizens are allowed to actually allow people to camp on their properties no I think um when we went through the proposed um or potential edits for the council's consideration um it precluded the um residential districts and that is in a section pertaining to public property and then there is also the the separate section related to private property and I think the ordinance would be okay um and and just to remind the viewers I heard a number of uh uh commenters uh speak to allowances for uh you know proposed allowances for camping in on private properties and those those allowances are on the books that is that's currently law and so currently people can do that so just clarification for members of the public and I guess the final question is funding and so I'm just curious how you know we're talking about um we can't do anything until we have adequate storage which also means we're going to identify locations for the storage locations for the camping it sounds like we're probably going to need more staff because if we designate these camping areas someone's going to have to go through and check to ensure that people are throwing up their trash but there's not going to be um you know defecation in areas where they there shouldn't be obviously we're probably also going to have to provide porta potties hand washing stations in these areas that we designate as um outdoor sleeping areas so my question is what where's the funding supposed to come from to support that given especially given that we're in a very deep that's a great question you know we spend um a lot on um our homeless response now um you know sometimes dizzying amounts to when we're just um you know conducting cleanups um following um you know a camp that that moves from location and so um you know I think we'd be looking at whatever sources we can for um those resources you are correct there would need to be some type of um uh of program to operate the the storage you know in our initial brainstorming we've talked about you know whether that could be a nonprofit or whether that could support existing groups or if the downtown streets team or you know there's a combination of ideas that we've thrown out there but whether it's a general fund or looking to cdbg you know we would have to have to find those resources and um you know it's it's a cost one way or another you know we're spending money on these efforts now and it looks like City Manager Bernal has something he might want to add as well no I think you covered it Lee I think that Lee mentioned that we are already extending funds for portable bathroom hygiene facilities cleanups and the like and have received a cdbg funding that we've set aside and expect to use for this purpose it's supposed to be for this purpose and I think we also expect to receive additional funds through the state and some of the federal funds for some of these purposes as well so thank you um bag I'm going to end my questions I'll just raise my hand so I can come back later and make my comments thank you okay thank you um next up I have Vice Mayor Bruder yes uh thank you uh thank you so much to everybody that uh you know all our constituents and the public and community members that I've never had so many emails it was very um the engagement and the the response and uh I just want to say I really appreciated those that took the time to read through the draft we all I got it Thursday we all received the draft ordinance Thursday um and you know very little time to really comb through it so for those that combed through with very specific suggestions um and points that was appreciated um I do want to say there were a lot of um there was a lot of input and we heard some on the calls today um you know my understanding is this ordinance has potential to help manage a very difficult situation and I want to be clear I don't have any delusions that this ordinance attempts to address the humanitarian crisis that exists here on the streets in Santa Cruz that's my understanding of this ordinance does not replace the dire need for significantly increased health and human services and as I continue to work downtown in the uh you know downtown district and um also I'm now newly appointed on the uh two by two committee with mayor Myers and county supervisors and county staff and health and human services um I'm reminded regularly of the need for more mobile outreach workers and mobile social worker teams and vastly expanded mental health and substance use order treatment facilities and services um in Santa Cruz and understanding that the intention of this ordinance is not a replacement for that I had to really get to that point um and knowing that that work is happening simultaneously and um I think that's important to to note um in my notes you know there's so much work that has been done I'm really actually amazed at the homelessness recommendation report that was adopted in 2017 and I understand that went through a process and as well as the cash committee's final recommendations so there has been a lot of engagement and community support um and input and process and um identifying short term there's a list of uh you know 10 or so short term solutions and long term solutions and we've actually checked off it looks like some of these items so far and um you know if we keep these first and foremost there's templates to continue the work on really addressing the root cause that um is exists not just in Santa Cruz um but you know as in the county all the cities in the state you know the long term goals for more housing all types including subsidizing permanent supportive housing um these are necessary components of you know our public policy and in addressing the city's role in supporting this crisis the crisis of unhoused folks the crisis of mental health the crisis of substance use disorder um and it must I really feel it must be supplemented with short term measures that will help people in distress and reduce the social disorder um and so we need it's our responsibility to balance the city's responsibility to maintain public health and safety with those that are unhoused and um um you know I'm looking forward to hearing council member Watkins motion and I hope that we can discuss complementary policy um to ensure that action on the ordinance is balanced with providing additional resources to our unhoused folks and um really at you know the broad concept I think we all you know is there and I think there's some discussion and need to really find to flesh out the details in some of the language um and some of these items in here and and it's nice to know that we have that flexibility so I look forward to that discussion I had I had one quick question too I'm looking I'm looking at my notes here um this is in reference to 6.36.060 which is the additional criteria section um where are sharps containers in stay located and how would one know where they are right now um we have three thank you guys mayor Burner that's a good question and I'll say that there are three um sharps containers that um the uh that are in the city that the county services that I'm aware of um there's one on coral street um there is um one on water street and there is another um that was newly installed at the um the San Lorenzo park to help address issues there and um there is one more that is in the works that is being coordinated right now with the county that would be at another location along the river thank you welcome next step um I have a council member call and Tari Johnson and then council member brown and then I'll cue after thank you um yeah I'd like to echo some other comments from my colleagues that made and thank um the staff who worked really hard on this um and all of the community members who joined tonight who spoke tonight who wrote letters um it this is a really complex and complicated issue um and and actually I want to go back to um council member Watkins uh starting statement around our shared vision and goal of community well-being and reaching success for everyone um I think I think it is that is an important space to start from um and I think what I heard over and over again from sort of both sides of the aisle if you will um compassion and dignity um those are important spaces to start from because I I know that that our community cares and and um we want to reach those spaces and we're not there yet and and this ordinance won't necessarily get us there um but we have to move in some kind of a direction um you know I just want to note that people spoke um very passionately from both sides and and and directions and uh and I hear all of it um this is an issue that that all of those experiences that were named are real they're real for those who are on house they're real for um neighbors they're real for the environment it's all real um it's it's not one side or the other as council member Watkins has said uh I so I have my background is in social work for members of public who don't know I have a master's in social work I've worked in the field of homelessness for over two decades in the Tenderloin in San Francisco doing direct services um doing policy work doing grant writing doing strategic planning so I've I've addressed this issue from many angles and I and I don't have a perfect answer and I think that we're not after a perfect answer tonight um to help us move forward to the beginning I find that there are some gaps in it uh that I'd like us to discuss and deliberate and um I can name some of them quickly here but I'll hold it for when we're in deliberation but um the storage program and accessibility as council member Cummings brought up um designated areas I think many of the council members have brought that up and and perhaps that's on the table having designated areas and then connecting that to staffing and supervision um hygiene stations um and and then uh oh the other piece is um you know the the enforcement piece um really starting out from an outreach and engagement approach first I think that was a specific recommendation from the catch uh safe sleeping subcommittee uh using that in conjunction with our the steps of warnings and citation having outreach workers so really integrating that piece of it um and and I hear what council member Golder said that it's it's complicated and tricky uh because those who will abide by the rules um if we provide support outreach engagement they'll abide by the rules and then there are those who frankly will um endanger some of our unhoused population who aren't following the laws and restrictions that are in place so it it is a complicated space so I think there's there's space in this ordinance that can be strengthened um I also think that we need to think holistically and in the full continuum of care um a phased approach where we work towards what Mr. Brent Adams brought up it's a yes and right we work towards safe sleeping model and we have it connected to resources and staffing we work with our faith community and nonprofits um and ultimately working through our 2x2 and with our county to get um to some kind of a transitional shelter space that is robust and that's connected to navigation centers so um Vice Mayor Brunner and I have been working together on some policy direction that would complement um the ordinance and some suggestions for strengthening the ordinance but we'll wait till there's a motion and we can present those thank you thank you very much council member coantara johnson um I have council member brown next thanks uh so I'm the first question I have I have three uh the first question I have is it can we get a sense of um those of you who are able to see uh how many people were waiting to speak who were not able to just a ballpark um I'm getting a lot of messages from people uh if I had been able to get the floor earlier I would have made a motion to extend our public comment period in response uh Mayor Myers to your uh statement that uh we we were going to the meeting was closed but I would like to know um you know if we could get a sense of how many people were not able to speak you could not count them all I'm sorry I was able to count the hands that were up there about 26 thank you thanks okay so my other question um I am you know I'm not going to ask uh a lot of questions about the ordinance language I'm looking forward to hearing the motion and the deliberations and um the possible uh amendments revisions additions etc um that council member coantara johnson mentioned um and I I just want to say that I I really um echo um a lot of the you know the interest that you expressed um council member coantara johnson in you know the both and that mr. Adams uh suggested suggested and I think many others have and I also share a lot of the concerns and questions that um council member Cummings has so I won't repeat them uh my questions are um one so I'm I'm not going to again ask questions about the the ordinance language I think it's just um it's just it's hard for me to see that any potential for clarity in in some of this because it is so um you know complicated and convoluted and necessarily so given the constraints um but I'm wondering if we could is it would it be possible to just pull up that uh those maps for um for a moment because um I think that you know it there is a big question that's just kind of lingering there um that um council member Cummings kind of asked you know um where people can't who who want who who legitimately genuinely want to follow the rules um that we are um the city is council is considering um how they could you know reasonably or effectively successfully do that and so and I don't suppose it's um I don't imagine it's possible to do an overlay of the the red zone and the yellow yeah well good great um and then so then so if we look at that um you know again I we can't um dive all the way into this map and spend hours on it but you know it looks to me like what's left is neighborhoods which I don't I don't believe was the you know or primarily neighborhoods I see maybe a little bit of area over on the west side industrial and you know harvey west area but aside from that it's neighborhoods and and I don't think that was the intention with uh developing this and so if we add the neighborhoods and then I I just I I'd really love to see what that looks like and if if somebody could just walk me walk us through um like to give us some idea about where you know people who do want to um try to navigate through whatever um you know parameters are placed upon the them um like where they could be so that's one question and then my second question which is related is how will people come to know um and and understand what spaces are on or off limits I think that that's been that question's been raised um but you know especially given the conditionality of some of the spaces um and then some of it being up to interpretation um you know I've heard you know in response to a lot of questions well if they have a doctor's note or you know oh if so it's like there's just so much that's not clear and that I I don't think can be clarified but what I would like to know is like where people can be and how they will come to know like get that um that understanding I don't think signage is going to do it I like the idea of some outreach uh and being getting built into this but I also um you know I'm not sure that that would really get us there so I think there's just going to be confusion kind of ongoing so again so two questions where like tell us where people can be and how they'll know aside from the website because I don't think that's a realistic way for people to access um that information or not for everybody at least so thanks those are those are valid questions um and I think the first thing that I would um say in response is you know this uh this map here is kind of the baseline um so right now this map would show you um where um you can camp there there may be some areas that are flood prone um you know that we uh would close right now and there are some areas that are signed and we would then need to also sign some um uh some sensitive habitat areas so you're absolutely right you know the the um the think the the response that I had before was somewhat um because we do need to still identify the uh the um sensitive habitat areas that would be off-limits um when we start looking at these additional maps this one for example showing the um the wildland urban interface as the largest area um you know certainly if that whole area was closed then we would we would have a big chunk of the areas that otherwise would be allowed in open spaces for example that would be off-limits and so you know that is um concerning um and something that we would need to work with our fire chief on on a regular basis to say all right you know what are the the key areas um you know I I may actually um ask the fire chief to to pop on for a second because I believe and I'm not positive about this but I believe when um the uh restrictions were called for recently that it was um related to the um the Hoganette area and not all of the wooey but I I would ask Kim to maybe weigh in on that and that could you know help inform the discussion as well I think there's Jason I may have said to council so the wildland urban interface is an overlay that um is not just for those who are unhoused it actually impacts uh housing and building standards uh that are adjacent to those large open spaces and this is past summer um prior to the CZU fire we've done a number of outreach uh for highest concentration of our large encampments within the sick work road Hoganette area and we experienced a number of fires there and so we targeted that just because of the frequency of fires and we cleared that area because of the fuel conditions and so um even though that you you see the entire wildland urban interface it's really dependent on the fuel conditions um how uh receptive something is the catching on fire and then the ignition source and so we we had people that were camped in other spaces in our wildland urban interface but we weren't having calls we weren't having the frequency of events there and so this is really dependent on the impacts and the behaviors in that area and the risk to the individuals there as well as the greater community so that wildland urban interface is very much dependent on the weather outside of our control and then the events that are happening in that area and we had a really big concentration uh within that area because we had an entrenched encampment um that was crowing water and we had actual incidents that we were trying to curtail so that we didn't have you know that catastrophic uh you know wild land fire like we saw earlier this summer and so uh councilmember brown I um I asked that because I wanted to confirm that you know it wouldn't necessarily be in across the board will we um elimination um and your your point is a valid one how will folks know and I know you know you you express concerns about you know the website um I think that it could very well be um and in fact as we have this set up it could change um over the course of the year you know flood prone areas might go areas where um you know we have a migratory species um might be off limits during one time during the year and might be okay during another and um uh wooey portions of it may be okay all year round and portions of it may be off limits for a part of the time so I do think that um you know it will be incumbent upon if if council chooses to take this approach with these limitations then it will be incumbent upon staff to make sure that we're updating that regularly and and I know um there's a concern about digital access um we did include in the ordinance a provision that says that a paper copy would be available um and I think you know we we want to make sure that it is clear um you know we we want to make sure that that where it's you know where it's okay that people know it's okay so that um you know they can they can go to those areas and and we want to hear from council where those okay areas are and we're happy to um adjust the ordinance accordingly all um I believe um we're starting in to get to details and I think I'll go to uh council member Watkins to your hand up um and I don't want to miss um but I'm just wondering if maybe the most productive thing would be to go ahead and um and get that red line up and so I'm hearing a couple of different council members who've expressed um potential changes the ordinance I think baby that's the best place to go next um so that we can uh deliberate and start those changes so Lee can you um so uh council member Watkins you mentioned you were ready to put a motion on the table you know we um to craft something that's going to work for our community I am interested in uh moving forward I'm trying to I'm going to try to differentiate my comments from the motion because I know Bonnie knows that I have a pattern of sort of blending in my thoughts as opposed to a really clear motion augmented by um my colleagues um I do like the idea of the red line version I be parking lots here's the residential portion um if you wanted to eliminate the residential it would entail this and then if you wanted to add information related to parking lots or private property or closed portions of public right away and so forth however you'd like to articulate that um could be done in this section here which just as a reminder is part of this uh outdoor living permitted section so far though okay so I would like to so I would like to move forward with that um direction I think it um it helps provide clarity of where as opposed to where you can't and I think also the residential language uh it could be problematic for uh several reasons and supportive of that modification in this red line version so I'll make that as part of my motion as a foundation with Bonnie and um I would also I will not include at this time the the misdemeanor provision being removed because I want to have that conversation with my colleagues but I do have concerns about them kind of criminalizing status versus criminal activity and you know um hearing from Tony Kandadi there are a number of things like illegal campfires or obstructing a city's ability to mitigate an illegal camp that could be used as tools if there's individuals who are unwilling to move but I want to really understand what the cost benefit of that is so I'm not going to include that in the motion at this time but I'm interested in that conversation um I would like to direct staff to return um with some sort of update on a navigation center on a day center where are we at with the county with this maybe that's a conversation that has um ensued with the two by two I know there's been discussions of this for uh several years now and um just really want to reinforce personally my interest in being something like that move forward that's critical I think in terms of also connecting the individuals who are experiencing houselessness in our community to um resources to get out of that that uh I'd like to direct staff to explore how we can partner with the county and expand a social worker or case managers to support contacting and connecting individuals to resources and supportive paths out of homelessness and houselessness as well as to the ongoing tracking of shelter options available I know we mentioned wanting to have clarity around where they could go we should also have clarity around what sheltering is available uh point in time right now this evening and I know that's something we discussed as well in the past the rest are just really comments I think I'll leave that I hope that was sort of somewhat um clear enough for you Bonnie to get us started as a motion you know look at community service as options as uh sort of this diversion type model for potential individuals who are not in compliance really look at waiving um the impacts for scores or other things that may impede their ability to find success they were to be cited I really this is about us this is one component of a broader picture around um how we're addressing houselessness in our community and I really believe that it's inhumane to allow these large encampments to remain and we've seen that time and time again and the amount of resources um it's not efficient nor it's not socially uh right to have us in this crisis response mode so however we can balance policy with the broader conversation of this continuum of care for services I think we really have to factor all of those things in um so I'm going to leave my comments at that knowing that uh it's getting late and we have other individuals who want to also have friendly amendments so I hope that was clear enough for the motion um happy to have um Bonnie either reread it what she was able to gather I'm happy to also just restate just the motion components of it but I wanted to find let me put it up yeah that'd be great thank you Bonnie thing that I think is missing is to also remove the residential allowing I don't uh Lee you had I can't remember exactly what I can pull the uh section and then I think you also mentioned something about um the sheltering oh yeah that's right it's on sheltering that I didn't see and I I just wanted clarification too you mentioned working from the red line version that was reviewed by staff correct yes which includes the um the modifications that you brought up in the beginning of my comment so the um bear with me for one second the residential portion is in 6.36.040 b b5 so that would be taken out it would not be taken out um that would have um the uh this would um add a prohibition so it would say so uh sleeping on sidewalks is still okay except downtown um you know you couldn't sleep on a sidewalk in the downtown and then also the residential zoning districts of r1 rl rm rh and rs would remain does not include our commercial which you know where mixed use would be allowed um but it includes the primarily the exclusively residential zoning districts okay and I'm gonna I'll go ahead and second that motion um okay off we go um I had in order um Lee you might be the better person to kind of this in a way to make it like motion me um from what I hear you're saying we're not removing 6.3604 b5 modify 6.06 this in the red line it is in the red line yes the motion we work from the red line I had a um an alternative suggestion that when I said I think I drafted the initial edit to um subsection b5 but I think it might make more sense to instead of modifying that to add a sub paragraph to 0408 make it um 0408 number 12 to uh to specify that camping is prohibited um in the on on public property in the in the residential zoning districts of r1 rl rm rh and rs b5 intact as is accomplishes the same thing and it's a little bit less convoluted probably a bit more clear because it's expressly called as it's prohibited can you go ahead and repeat that yes um a new b uh a new a 12 to 040 that states property in the residential zoning districts of r1 rl rm rh and rs and renumber existing uh paragraph sub paragraph 12 has 13 seeing paragraph 12 that in the draft now as well in the red line coming to your hand is just sort of uh for councilmember Cummings and then I saw councilmember calentary johnson councilmember golder before um if we could mayor uh one of the aspects was to have as part of the direction to work with the county to also identify what shelter capacity is available um so really trying to think about it holistically that way too technically you brought you brought that up as a missing kind of language but just didn't want to lose the sentiment behind it that's the councilmember who brought this forward I totally support the intent and purpose of why this ordinance is coming forward especially as it relates to environmental protection um but I do have some really strong concerns with how this has come forward and um kind of where we're at right now um a couple of examples I'll give one in particular I mean we had 140 people I think on the call we've received hundreds of emails and I think that for some of the people in the community what they've expressed to me is that they were a little bit blindsided by this coming forward last year um our police chief had mentioned that he had you know a number of quality of life ordinances that we're going to be coming forward this was one of them and part of the reason why that was put on hold was because there was a need to do more community outreach and really get input from the community before bringing those quality of life ordinances forward and um and a lot of people what I've been you know what what I've been hearing from people is that um you know there wasn't the sense that there was enough outreach done with this ordinance in particular to get feedback from the community and I feel like that's what we were able to accomplish tonight I think that we have been able to get a lot of feedback from folks throughout the community of where they should see camping where they don't want to see camping whether they're okay with this or not there's been a lot of questions from you know council members alike with regards to funding the storage program how this is going to be implemented and in addition to all this the staff has brought forward a red line version that none of us have seen and none of us have had a chance to read and that the public hasn't had a chance to weigh in on or read as well and you know the things that really concerned me the most about trying to move forward with this this evening is that you know we have an outdoor sleeping ordinance with no clearly identified outdoor sleeping spaces um we also have our proposing that to enforce this we need to have a storage program which doesn't exist we don't have identified funding one thing that hasn't come up in this conversation is day services so if we're to tell these people you cannot have your tent up during the day where do we expect them to go and I would imagine that many would likely flock to downtown our beaches these other areas because they don't have you know a place to reside we don't have any day services so if they don't have jobs where do we expect them to go so those are some of the concerns additionally you know it's come up in the conversation we are currently being sued for intent for attempting to break up the incantment that's at San Lorenzo that was not sanctioned and one of the things that concerns me the most is that if we implement this and we don't see any change within you know the time that it takes for this to be authorized and implemented is that we're going to be displacing smaller encampments and those people are going to go straight to San Lorenzo or to highway one and nine because those are the two places right now where if you have a tent that's established you will not be told to take your tent down and you will not be asked to leave so by implementing this I do I am concerned with the impacts that's going to have on those two large encampments and you know I think as policymakers it really is our obligation to hear from the community and to act on behalf of the community and to incorporate the community comments into our policy decisions as I mentioned before the public nor the council has had an opportunity to read this red line version I think what would be good is if the sponsoring council members and staff take the information that they've received tonight and work on this red line version because I would imagine we're probably going to be if we're going to go through this line by line we're going to be up for the next two hours or so trying to word Smith a red line version of this ordinance and if that's going to happen I'd also like to ask the staff send us all copies so we can look over it and read it but I just think that you know we are in a really difficult position and I and I feel for all of our neighborhoods that are being impacted by homelessness and I think that we do need to figure out solutions that will hold everyone accountable regardless of your house or unhoused for your behaviors but I would just caution with how quickly we're trying to move forward with this this evening and if there's an opportunity for the council members to work with staff on taking into account the concerns that were raised and bringing back another version of this that's been another red line version of this for us to look over I think it'll be a much better use of our time and I think it'll also demonstrate to the public that we're taking their comments into account because I think we do need to explain to them if we're not going to you know if we're going to say fine we'll kick everybody out of neighborhoods or if we say we're going to allow people in neighborhoods having some justification behind that so those are my comments if we're going to go through I'm happy to provide more insight into the red line version but I think that you know we're going on 13 and a half hours now for today and so you know if there is a way for us to have a group that could work on this outside of us trying to work with this right now I think that'd probably be better for all of us as decision makers and seeing as how it's getting light. Thank you I'll go to council member Golder, council member Contari Johnson and then council member Brown and I think I'll just I'll just jump in here and been trying to be respectful to have you guys have as much deliberation as possible. I understand the concerns and I think this is our first reading we're going to be going towards a second reading so I think to the extent that we get something in on the books that we can then continue to work from but I think continuing to put off sort of a decision to at least step forward with ideas I think based on the hundreds of emails that we've already gotten when this hits the books if we do pass it tonight I don't think that we're going to have a lack of community input moving towards the second reading and so I do think that there is some urgency I do think there is urgency with this I share comments that I've heard from various colleagues that you know you know dignity and the ability to really be in a place that may look like it is an option but where we could craft better dignity better availability better security is is something worth trying to achieve and I think some of the comments around sort of this this this concept of a social contract that we do share our public spaces and we do need to honor each other's needs for whatever those spaces may be and that that is a really important principle about putting something getting something on the ground tonight and looking at that from the perspective as from the perspective of a second reading so you know I would urge us to keep moving tonight and accept to the extent that we can some of the what I looked at are pretty minor edits but we can pull them up but I really think we should you know try to get something over the finish line tonight rather than continue to try not to you know try to continue to come up with the with additional items right now I'm losing it I've been up since five so I will let let me go to council member Golder and then call on Taryn Johnson and then council member Brown thank you mayor I agree with a lot of what my colleagues have said and I would I would just wonder if there's a way that we could if we did move forward tonight with the first reading revisit this in maybe nine months and see how things are going and come back with some data and and reevaluate things if we you know did pass anything tonight and I was curious and I don't expect this answer now but maybe at the second reading if we could if there is if it does go through how many beds emergency shelter beds there are in the county and how many has there been you know increasing over the last a few years or the last several months during the pandemic I also have questions for chief mills regarding if this did pass what would one of the callers I think said regulatory and operational clarity like what would this look like on the day-to-day for the officers or who would be out there enforcing this do we have the resources so the operational clarity is that we will enforce whatever you give us and we will do it consistently and we will do it and if needed with overtime we want to make sure that the the reality of council is carried out in the best way we can and it can do so again the ordinance is set up so that you warn first site second and arrest third and that is exactly how we will proceed with that and thank you I mean I think all of us really want to look at the root causes and prevention of homelessness first I mean you know as something that's really important to all of us we really care about the 5,000 kids that are going to be going back to school here in the next few weeks and I agree with Justin that it's probably hard to set up and take down tents in the dark but like the idea of kids biking past or walking past or over people trying to get to school I don't think that's a good mix I don't think it's safe and especially some of the things I've seen I wouldn't want kids to see that and so my suggestion would be to modify the hours to maybe sunrise to sunset or I know San Francisco has I think 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. something like that but those are some suggestions I don't know if they could be friendly amendments or if that's too soon and I've got councilmember colantara johnson and then councilmember brown and I think just for clarification I believe that we took residential right now councilmember golder the residential areas have been taken out as locations for sleeping so I'm not sure if the question was regarding kids living in those residential areas but okay councilmember colantara johnson um yeah you know I um just to to councilmember coming comments um it doesn't seem like we have been having this conversation as a community for a long time just looking back and looking at all the resources that we have the catch recommendations that was a year long process these are components it's not the whole set of recommendations these are components of those recommendations including an update to our current ordinance um and then dating back to I'm looking at my notes 2017 the homelessness coordinating committee there were recommendations and I'm gonna in a moment I'm gonna um propose some friendly amendments that that reference that committee um there were recommendations that were unanimously approved just a few years ago so I think um I hear your comments that that this seems to have been sprung on us but but we've been having this dialogue for a long time and and it's an imperfect solution but we won't I don't think we will have a perfect solution and in fact um I don't think anyone's going to walk away extremely happy tonight um none of us here and none of our community members uh so just with those comments I think if it's okay I am um I'm going to send Bonnie some proposed language is that is that the appropriate staff yes okay all right so I just need a second to download my document I'm sorry and Bonnie will add these to the existing motion and if if they're accepted but yeah okay all right Bonnie I gave you an outdated draft so let me um send you I've been we've I've been made oh these are in conjunction with um Vice Mayor Brenner and I've been working on them um so we've been making changes as we've been glad we've been hearing the conversation so I'm pulling it up now as well yeah and I'm going to send oh thanks I think I got it it's on my desktop now sorry this is taking a moment I know we're wanting to move so I just sent it to you as Bonnie's pulling it up um you know again just to reiterate that this is moving forward components of the catch recommendations not the full recommendations um it's helping to set clear standards and code for us to be able to address quality of life issues environmental and health and safety impacts um and then really move towards developing the yes and Mr. Brent Adams of implementing a roadblock homelessness program so um the first if you can scroll up thank you so the first friendly amendment is to the the original amendment that council member Watkins made around um the removing the neighborhoods and adding parking losses as potential safe sleeping sites so I would like to add to that make the amendment to that um and again this is in line with catch's recommendations that we look oh I'm sorry that's the second part if we can move down to B but council member Watkins had brought up that that in addition to that that we within 60 days look at launching a safe sleeping program that is um that has staff and supervision and this can be in conjunction with um afc and or nonprofits so that's that's under 2a that's sort of an amendment to what council member Watkins had put up around the parking lot sites we can does it okay if I just go through each one of these okay okay so then if we can scroll back up okay so we've talked a little bit about um this piece around enforcement um so one friendly amendment again per catch's recommendation is to include um an outreach and engagement portion and have that proceed or occur simultaneously to enforcement um of the prohibited outdoor living um regulations that are in the ordinance um and the outreach and engagement again can be done either through city county staff or nonprofits or faith community so we can scroll to the 1b this is around the storage programs you know it's been brought up that this seems like a difficult piece of breaking down the tents and um putting them back up um I know that we're offering a storage program but I think that in order to make the storage program work one piece of it is to provide transportation for those individuals who need it um and then council member Brown I believe brought this piece up is that how will we get this information out so I hear that we have it on the website and we'll have printed documents but for um law enforcement and outreach workers to uh have these these uh pamphlets or or and the maps at hand and to provide them in um I have Spanish translation to have them in English and Spanish so that's the third piece of specific amendments to the ordinance and then in terms of policy direction uh council member Watkins had brought some of this up um we already talked about 2a 2b is really that holistic approach of um looking at the mental health and intervention piece we have a lot of this in place um we have the hopes team we have the downtown streets team the downtown outreach worker um by sir Brenner brought up a lot of these programs but it's really looking at how we can tie um these programs and make the outcomes really specific city-centric and specific to um our holistic approach to supporting those who are unhoused and again the little indents are kind of how they align with either catch recommendations and or the homelessness coordinating committee so these aren't coming out of nowhere they're not my brilliant ideas they've been talked about embedded by many people for a period of time so then moving down to to see um this was already brought up by council member Watkins I don't know if I need to repeat it but really looking at the navigation center and where we're at with that um and then I I did have some parameters around asking um uh that's further down but but really asking the um the staff to come back um in a certain time period to let us know where we at where we're at and and what are the next steps for us to move towards that navigation center uh so then the next piece is um really continuing our work with the with the city county two by two um and then there's several pieces to this as well if you can scroll up a little bit um wanting to really robustly look at our diversion um programs that we have in place and and look at how to expand these including the home or ground program behavioral health intervention uh and access to outreach and case management and job programming again council member Watkins brought this up I would add to this what um council member Watkins brought up around shelter bed capacities uh and then uh this piece of the longer term transitional shelter to ensure housing um pathways are created and create wraparound services uh you know this is I think what um council member Brown had brought up uh that that we know that there's interest in the county um I think several people had brought up supervisor conic is putting something forward it's uh going to be viewed in uh by the board of supervisors in a couple of weeks so this is sort of linking to the work that's potentially being done at the county but really explicitly naming it here um and the time parameter for this is um sorry this is incomplete because we were revising as we were going um but for the the policy directions above by April 2021 and then the policy directions around the two by two by May 2021 I can be flexible around um those timelines if if vice mayor Boehner and council member Watkins are um and then note at the end is again that this would be part of none of this is sufficient and we have to start somewhere this is a part of a larger approach a countywide approach for us to be able to support those around house as well as our um house community members so I know that was a lot and this is my first attempt at trying to weave in multiple parts of the motion so um I'll just pause there oh I think um I'm just going to jump in because I want I just want to make sure I'm I want to repeat for the public so I believe you had three language changes in the ordinance specifically and maybe um Bonnie maybe I don't know how to do it more sufficiently few but maybe those get a yellow highlighter I don't know if they get turned a certain color maybe um so I just want to make sure we've got those captured so you've got a b and c um she has one a b and c and the two a b and c now let me let me just clarify with you council member contrary Johnson the um the if you go down to two Bonnie are those policy it looks like they're more policy related correct right um so I would say one a dc are um recommended language change to the ordinance however two um two a may also now be part of the ordinance given the direction the amendment from council member Watkins the two a is um would be it looks like um it would be related to the remember the but Lee the section where you would be putting in the availability to establish um dedicated sites it is related to that section um two a would go there but I think um I'm I'm really pleased to see that we're moving in the direction of specifying sites and I think we will run into challenges um if we don't have some type of staffing and supervision connected to that you've grabbed that I think we've got maybe cut and paste a up into the actual ordinance changes yeah and I don't think we need aligned with the cat or okay aligned with cash recommendations um yeah we can take that out that was I was just trying to show that it's not coming out of nowhere and Lee can you can you reference the section that this would go in so that could go into the same section where we're talking about um affirmative um make it the I'm scrolling to the section right now can't is 6.36.050 camping slash outdoor living permitted um it could go at the bottom of that section okay can you say that again 6.36.050 and um that would be you know if you could put it in that would be a substitute for I'm gonna well I don't want to share my screen because you've got that up we had um the potential that council member Watkins is considering that said uh to set up the um uh in all or part of a city-owned parking lot closed portion of the public right away um and so forth a program for overnight use of no more than 150 safe sleeping spaces so it could go in that same section it could replace that or it could um be in combination with that I can share my screen if that's helpful for the council yeah why don't you go ahead and do that and then I'm sorry if I if I may just complete um I really I strongly believe that these components um are are necessary needed to have a more strengthen ordinance for us to move forward so um I would like to support this ordinance and I think these are the pieces that are missing um some of the other pieces council member Watkins has already has already brought it so I'll look the maker of the motion um I also I believe missed maybe a motion um or at least a change meant by council member Golder council member Golder you mentioned uh report back to council in nine months after the implementation yeah that would be my desire just because I would like to see if you know this is so complicated and it's getting really late and then not a night out and like council were coming said like we haven't had an opportunity to read all of the edits and so I guarantee we're not getting everything right and so I would like us to revisit it in like nine months and so we can have some data to look look back on and you're referring to if the count if the ordinance becomes if it is approved at the second reading or if we have to go through exactly exactly what we've said in nine months got it to reevaluate you get that in the motion Bonnie thank you and I'm for whether she'll have a second on the council member Watkins motion do we have a second that was me oh are you ready for me yeah go ahead I'll just start my comments by saying um I think there is definitely alignment in the direction we want to go and I want to thank um Vice Mayor Brunner and Councilman Calentari Johnson for your thoughtful work in providing these additional amendments and I definitely feel they're in the spirit of a lot of my thoughts as well so with that I'm pleased to accept those friendly amendments if the seconder is also willing to do so as well as including that uh report back that was referenced by council member Golder in the nine month time paint time period yeah and I accept those as well thank you for that work okay um anything else council member Calentari Johnson I know that um there's also the other part of your motion which is really policy direction for for staff follow-up um so I know others have their hands up but I would just want Vice Mayor Brunner to chime in because we worked on this together that's appropriate absolutely uh yeah so thank you so much for walking through that I wasn't sure how that would play out but hopefully that um you know these components really provide a policy direction to carry forward you know those components of the catch recommendation as what recommendations as well as the homeless coordinating committee recommendations we read through a lot of those documents and work and and really can help move us forward to addressing um and implementing the the overwhelming community input and and um you know develop get to a point of of developing the programming and the outdoor uh uh standards for everybody so thank you for for taking us through those amendments thank you I have council member brown and council member Cummings next and then uh I do want to capture I think one other amendment which was looking at the time but we can hold off on that and then I do have one one amendment myself so um okay uh council member Cummings and council member Brown a few comments I did have some other questions but I didn't get to ask them and I think at this point it's probably um not worth returning to that um but um so I just I first want to say you know I I really agree with uh council member Cummings comments I think they're spot on um you know and I won't repeat them but they really just spot on you know I word smithing um this kind of of ordinance from the dias going into pretty close to the 15th hour of our meeting is you know I don't believe it's um the most effective or productive way to make policy um and um and I also want to really appreciate council member Calentary Johnson and um vice mayor browner's proposals I absolutely support um the the staff direction and the the other pieces of that um that that you proposed and I'm hoping we can take those we can separate those from the ordinance motion the first the reading of the ordinance so that I can support those on the record um I um I guess in the you know because I've been thinking about this as I you know I saw the um what uh council member Calentary Johnson uh provided in writing and um you know and I think that I want and I get I get why um you're you want to talk about doing the both and and I agree um and uh but my concern is you know perhaps because I've just been through this so many times uh and watched it happen uh the city council I mean I cannot count the number of times that city council have said oh of course we want to do these things and um you know and I believe that I don't think it's disingenuous when people say council members say we want to do that um and then there's always obstacles and but we have to do this this enforcement piece now and then you know and then we'll get to the other stuff and of course it's it's critical and you know and so I I don't want to suggest that when I say this that I it's a lack of trust or you know I or you know lack of you know I that I don't think that um people really have good intentions here um and so I want to support those intentions and I want to work with you uh all to uh to to realize those um it's just that you know we I I just can't you know and I and I also believe that there are um legitimately there are places in our city that are not appropriate for um you know camp for congregate camping and and I um you know and so I don't want to suggest that by not being able to support this ordinance tonight um that I'm suggesting I you know that I think that what's happening right now is okay it certainly is not um I just think that there are other things that we need to tackle in order to actually achieve the goals that I think we all share so many people have written in and um it talks about the kind of social uh you know uh you know kind of you know the the behavioral issues the um disorderly conduct issues that um are you know leads to really legitimate and then obviously the litter and all of that that leads to really legitimate frustrations and fears about um you know what's happening in our community and you know around them and so I you know I I get that and um but I'm also really hard pressed to figure how um you know making it you know very difficult for people to have a place to stably be and and sleep and have their belongings is going to um rectify or really in meaningfully address those those social issues those disorderly conduct issues you know we're just you know we're it's a city we're a city we are we have you know land use and you know kind of and increasing levels of um you know citation and fractions and misdemeanor approaches are the tools that the city can think of to to address these major social problems and you know it's just it's frustrating all around I know others are frustrated too so I just think a more uh you know appropriate and effective approach would be to commit ourselves to do that hard work that we say we want to do um and to identify those alternatives before we start make creating new restrictions um and you know we've had multiple commissions and committees and recommendations come to us and you know and again uh councilmember calentary johnson has um integrated some of those into you know and identified where though we've seen those and you know and yet we and then the catch you know directed you know recommended that we do this but they said clearly I mean multiple times you need to do both and you need to do them simultaneously and that's not what we're talking about here right now um you know we we know that when people have um the the ability to to stabilize their lives when they have some sense of um you know of security of stability um that they can actually perform the basic life functions that most of us take for granted um that it it greatly improves the people's chances of getting out of um you know sometimes terrible situations that they're in improving their their lives and um you know and yeah and when people are you know I mean just I just think about being constantly worried about you know like losing all my stuff or being to get it or moved along and trying to actually um like you know figure out how to how to get through the day or you know much less make plans for the future it's just it's just really overwhelming to think about um and so I'm just going to end by saying you know we've received proposals there are people in our community who are thinking about this who want to work with us we've received proposals from community organizations from faith-based organizations the ASC um you know has has um consistently and and more recently I mean just in the last couple of days we've received messaging saying you know we want to work with you and here some of the things that you know we can bring to the table and you know well so first of all and those organizations work largely with you know volunteer the help of volunteers they have the ability to raise private funding you know donors want to step up and and support these efforts and you know and to create some kind of you know programmatic and you know perhaps permitting or you know locational parameters to have that conversation and actually step up and you know ASC is talking about a pilot you know I think we ought to be looking at that very seriously I think we ought to be trying to do that right now um it before we consider all the ways that we're gonna make it impossible for people to have you know someplace to be as it stands I just you know I I can't support an ordinance like that tonight I want to support all of the other recommendations that have been made um I just you know I just doesn't feel ethical and it doesn't feel efficacious um even if it you know seems to satisfy some you know with the optics so um I'll leave it there and um I look forward to um carrying you all to some words nothing I just I'm like I can't I can't I can't do it but um I appreciate your I think what we'll do um I know council member Cummings you have your hand up and I'll get you rolling here in a minute but just so people are tracking um member Calentary Johnson um I think it might be better to capture your policy or your your motions for staff follow-up and some of the items that you listed maybe in a separate motion so that council members potentially can look at that um is that amenable to you council member Watkins because those were more based I think in count in directing staff for additional items but I I'm happy to look at what you think in terms of bifurcating those or not and and Tony please weigh in here if that's not what should be appropriate at this time I think we'll all let Tony weigh in if that's needed but I think one of the other options could be that essentially what we would have is if council members are supportive of um certain aspects of the motion then they could indicate that they want for the record that their support of those aspects be you know it we could go through the kind of the complicated bifurcation but I don't know what's easiest or how you want to handle it I think if that's acceptable to council member Brown that would be fine if it's noted in the record that she supports those um otherwise those could be voted on as a separate action item after the council votes on the main motion and I just wanted clarification Lee as I'm reading the ordinance if if an organization such as AFC or any other organization wanted to come to this either the city on a public on a public property with a proposal or um if it was a on private property I I does the ordinance allow I believe the ordinance allows us to stand up these kinds of facilities that I think some folks are mentioning but can you clarify that for the council or thank you mayor Myers um so uh this is again in the um camping and outdoor living permitted section and we have this provision in here that said at events or in a manner that is authorized by the city council or city manager at temporary safe sleeping sites and or temporary encampments which may be managed by the city the county or an approved nonprofit we subsequently recommended um or I should say we subsequently added for the council's consideration oh the council's consideration the option allow those facilities to be our private properties in any that was the additional that was the additional commentary Johnson and then I think we're going to try to and I will call up a non-online version of that hacked into if the council has any other member coming yeah I mean I do because again I mentioned this when I commented earlier but you know we kind of went quickly through the yellow line version with the new staff recommendations during the presentation and personally I haven't seen a copy of that red line version and so for me it's rarely difficult to be able to provide the appropriate comments unless we're going to go through this kind of section by section because um it'd be really good to see and I think for members of the public to see what that new language is um I do have some issues with the warnings for example um and so you know wherever that section is I think that it's important that everyone receive a warning um you know if if somebody receives a warning and the police are like we will come back you know you have to be gone in 24 hours or what have you um you know that's an opportunity for people to pick up the things and move along and you know regardless if somebody tears up a ticket and throws it on the ground I think if you give them a warning and give them time to think about what they need to do to move on and then if you come back and they're still there there's a way to enforce um and then again around the misdemeanors um but then you know just filled yellow line language in general which tonight's the first time that we've actually seen that and that the public seen that and you know I get that there's a strong desire to address these issues um I'd say that's the same for many of the issues that are you know occurring in our community but I think that it's you know as elected officials it's our role to be transparent with the public and to take the time necessary to ensure that the public understands what we're voting on and what we're getting the public into and I don't think that we've done a good job with this ordinance to you tonight I mean just to provide some of the new council members and to talk to the public about you know some examples you know when we brought forward the removal of the mission bell which you know it's something that's largely symbolic what means a lot to the indigenous people of our community and from this land and other people in our community I mean we took that item we worked on it with stakeholders brought it to the council we sent it to historic preservation commission for more input we brought that back to council we were able to make a decision on that because we were able to gain the competence of the people in the community and to be transparent with what we were doing so that throughout that process there were multiple times for members of the public to comment on this I get that this is gone that the catch has provided us with recommendations and other groups have too but the specific of what we're implementing this is the first time this has come to the public's attention and we don't even have the full language in front of us this evening because of the fact that there's been edits that have been done by staff we've been introduced to those edits today but I personally don't feel like I've had enough time to even look over them to understand what we're getting ourselves into and so you know regardless of the direction that this goes in tonight I'm just going to say that I think that this process has not been transparent and and I think that we're going to miss out on a really good opportunity to build consensus within our community and I think we are dangerously running the line of tearing you know open a wound that has been healing over the course of a year and that you know by moving too hastily we're going to really start pitting people in our community against each other again as we've seen in previous years so again I don't feel like I've had enough time to because we just got it today have not seen the SAPs changes to the red line version I feel like the process that we've been going through has not been clear in terms of what's being changed I would very much appreciate this motion could be separated because there's a lot of stuff that's been brought forward by council members counter johnson and bruner that it'd be good to see that a little bit longer be able to read that on the screen I would like to make a motion at some point because I think there's some other things that we're not that we're neglecting as well related to homelessness that I think we should bring forward related to the quality of life ordinances but I do think that let's you know it'd be good to have these separated out and to have more transparency around what we're doing this evening and I feel like that's lacking council member callantary johnson and then I've got council member let's see vice mayor bruner I think council member brown was ahead brown was ahead of me brown was ahead of you okay can we can we get the the red line version because that is that the best place where people want to go it's 1130 now the red line version has been emailed to each of the council members so you have the version that it does not include council member calentary johnson's edits I wasn't able to capture all of those and bring them over into the document but it includes the other edits it includes council member walk-ins edits and the edits that Tony kandadi added and changing the residential where that residential allowance was located and that was just sent out right now right or was that yeah it was sent out maybe a half hour ago or something like that thank you and mr kandadi I might just have you jump in here for a moment I my understanding is live red line edits are kind of typical and working our way through language correct yeah the first reading is your opportunity to make tweaks to the ordinance and and you can do that so long as they're made before the ordinance is introduced otherwise they would have to be brought back for another first reading a future time so so these edits can all be approved by the council this evening if there is a majority of council members in favor of them okay thank you for the clarification um do council members have the ability to pull this up we can run through this my count I think there's about 10 10 length 10 10 changes in the language simultaneously maybe just run this run us through this because I'm not sure if everybody's got their tablets or what have you that I'm happy to do so and thanks I think Bonnie yeah Bonnie's got this up here so first edit at the top there is removing could you go Bonnie to the section above so just so we know these sections and we can track there we go perfectly so section under definitions would be great just so people understand it references in the outdoor living facilities item and that's because those are dealt with elsewhere noting in the outdoor living encampment definition that if things have been there for 12 hours then they're considered an outdoor living encampment I'll give you guys a second to read that if you want to make a comment yeah please go ahead the email that I received from Lee has the document without the color changes it has the changes but they're not in color yeah I think you have to open it in word on your tablet that's what I had to do you have to have exact changes on my belief yeah thank you yeah thank you much yeah Donna wanted to make note of the section so it's private property just additional private property uh things that could be restricted this is the clarification in number seven there that it's not just neighborhood and community parks it's all parks number 11 here this is the prohibition on camping in the residential zoning districts so r1, rl, rm, rn, rs the hours were discussed those were flagged in case anyone wanted to make changes to those but they're they're as 8 a.m to 8 p.m now if we want to make changes as we're going along through this do we just speak up or how would you like us to kind of chime in for those changes uh we could uh I was hoping we could go through these um what uh what did uh do we I guess we should do and certainly that is certainly one way that you could do it can be adopted sort of as a package in concept or I'm just trying to understand the most efficient way but if individual council members have specific changes on these language I think we will have to have to work through them that's right so if if council members would like to discuss us or make modifications to any of these provisions it might just be a good idea to flag them and come back to them so that we can sort of gauge whether there's a council consensus on um you know in general on the individual modifications and then I just want to call on council member calling Tari Johnson and council member uh Brunner next uh did you guys have clarifying questions or additions to I just didn't want to make sure you had that um no I think I had my hand up because there was a request to break up the motion and then council member Watkins asked if we could keep it together but have council members address which pieces they support and I would like to go in that direction before I have my hand up and just want to take knowledge um both council member Brown and Cummings comments and appreciate him here where they're coming from so great thank you okay um Lee we're sir I'll keep going here um so this is for families with children associated with individuals with a qualifying disability okay we'll move forward this next one is specifying that the physicians verification of qualifying disability shall be evidence but not necessarily binding evidence any comments from council members on this change I have a question on that uh stand what this is trying to get to is that positions verification um individual doesn't have to have positions verification in order for them to have a disability is that the intention of this I think that because the opposite that I read it is that um someone can have a physician's verification though that's not necessarily binding to protect them in all instances either that is how I read the um they change is that um there still there could be some discretion there so something the council is interested in then they can scratch that so I guess in this with that it's it's the idea is that even if it's determined that a physician has diagnosed me with a physical disability that can still be overlooked in terms of whether or not I need to take down my tent or move or what have you that is how I interpret this is that there would be opportunities to um consider cases alternatively Tony do you have anything to add on that what okay I guess I'll just say with that but this and then I think there's another one uh in here around the warnings that are like seriously subjective and leaves a lot of discretion for people to determine who should be giving a warning who shouldn't and it also gives discretion of whether someone wants to take a physician's zone seriously or not and that can be very problematic I think that there's that starts getting along the lines of discrimination in some cases I'll leave my comments there council member Watkins clarification behind or my question for clarification behind this is uh as you read it Lee is that the stance in which an individual may have a qualifying disability um but be living in an encampment at say a very dangerous location and even though their disability like I mean I'm just trying to discern where the circumstances might come in where that would be a real problem uh you know an encampment that's not the way I read this is that a physician's so a physician could say you know someone um has you know someone mobility challenges and a police officer could be there and to that they could then under this they could that is not the capability that that disability is not the thing that the council is interested in including is that subjectivity as council member Cummings puts it then you should remove this this uh suggestion suggestion or consideration council member contrary Johnson that is in fact how this piece reads um I guess I I want to know why it was added and and I um share council member Cummings concerns that um it could lead to discrimination the subjectivity of it council member Golder my colleagues I was confused by the vagueness of the definition originally but I'm not sure I this clears it up for me um the definition around disability because there's a lot of disabilities that you can't see and um so I'm just I don't know where to go with it but I just um I I just don't like the vague language of it either council member Watkins would you entertain a motion to edit this out or try to resolve yeah yeah no I think I appreciate the clarification because I wasn't reading it the same so yeah given that I think it's important that we just remove that at this point we're going okay um Bonnie you could just um remove it and because we've got the the red line that's it's being yeah so I think that works I'm not sure if you were going to reference that in the motion itself I was yeah I think just by deleting it here I think we're good next item uh so the next item is uh these are reasons why um things can be closed maintenance limiting the incidence or frequency of sale of the sale of unlawful drugs limiting or controlling the incidence of crime the incidents are infrequent or frequency of domestic violence or other violence limiting the accumulation of debris garbage and syringe waste limiting the amount duration and effect of urination and defecation on public and private property limiting the duration of adverse effects on the surrounding area neighborhoods and businesses and or addressing health and safety concerns so add in additional um clarifications on why uh the city manager could close an area the city will provide um parties or hand-washing stations but sanitation facilities where these outdoor living environments are going to be identified because I see where we're I see a lot of the prohibition but I don't see much of you know in the instances where we're going to designate uh safe camping or we're going to allow people to pitch tents is there any like I haven't seen it it didn't stand out to me that there's anything in the language that says that the city will provide um you know facilities for people to use for the purposes of using the bathroom and hygiene so there isn't anything specifically in the ordinance that calls out those facilities that uh that I can recall other than I mean the the allowance for them so you know in the uh provisions related to um the outdoor encampments and uh safe sleeping sites that um is approved by the city manager or by the city council and so you know that could inherently and would likely you know we would expect to include to include those but there isn't anything to your I think what you are getting at um which is like you know if if things are allowed in the open spaces if camping's allowed in the open space would restrooms be provided in the open space there's nothing specific to that in the code as it currently reads I guess for my colleagues um I just you know if on where we're prohibiting people to sleep and camp it sounds like this is going into the open space I think part of this was to protect protect the environment a lot of what we're trying to push forward is for the purposes of environmental protection and if people are going and if we're designating that it's okay for people to sleep out in our open spaces and we're not providing you know trash or bathrooms we're going to see a lot of environmental degradation happening so I'll just leave that for people to consider. Council Member Conter Johnson do you have a question? Just a comment I think I think we addressed it but that that would be part of the that amendment that was proposed that we look at a safe sleeping program that's part of that model is my understanding. The restrooms would be if we had a safe sleeping program we would include restrooms and hygiene station hand washing stations as well as looking to all the other provisions that would be expected elsewhere you know areas being kept free of litter and so forth. Any other comments and I I agree with Council Member Cummings assessment of that I think what we were trying to I think the intent of this was to balance the availability of places for people to go and I personally would feel better that our open space areas were actually not available and I'm not sure we can go there based on all the analysis that's been done again trying to strike the balance of providing clear places for people to be and not continuing to narrow that down but to the extent that we could potentially put based on assessment maybe look at you know the installation of some facilities at if open space areas do seem to be being used which they've already been being used for years you know there's there's been people you know using our open spaces in this manner unfortunately for many many years I don't know if there's a way we can we can look at that obviously after the assessment period but I agree if you know people are going to be ending up in those areas it would be be who goes to try to put some kind of sanitation pieces in there I'm not sure exactly what that looks like versus closing you know trying to narrow the availability of some of those areas yeah I'm not ready to make a change on this particular language is there a change on the language that anyone wants to do by motion council member cotton tarred johnson can we to the next section the permitted section camping and outdoor living permitted your seat this would add the city manager or city council can authorize temporary safe sleeping sites temporary encampments and we clarified here that that can happen on any public or private properties in any zoning district including in areas that would otherwise prohibit such uses so there were some questions pete they came in and from the public that said hey you know you can't do this in downtown don't you think you know you want to think about parking lots downtown and we so we said oh well that's unclear we let's clarify that let's make sure that we've got that information clear for us and the public and the next one is in all or part of a city on parking lot closed portion of a public right away on private property or in an alternate space or area designated by the city manager for safe sleeping and this specifies that city manager or their designate shall establish program for overnight use of no fewer than 150 safe sleeping spaces in such areas subject to all the criteria now this is where council member counter johnson had we were going to insert that provision that she had about safe sleeping the way that I understood it was that that was in addition to this but I'll leave that up to the council in terms of how they want to do that so so Bonnie you could actually drop the language from the ocean and right here as he if it is in fact in addition and I saw council member counter johnson shaking your head yes that's an addition mayor um with that last blue line um comment so you know i'm just thinking back to some of the safe you know like some of the sites where we've had people sleeping in the past few years and for example if I remember correctly and please if anybody out there if i'm wrong please correct me but if I remember correctly um 12 20 river street I think it was about 80 tents that we had allocated at that site and so you know give or take you know maybe 100 people plus and what I read in this in the blue what we see here in blue is that you know we can't set up an overnight sleeping program for fewer than 150 people so I'm just wondering if that is kind of the intention so what that means is that if we wanted to set up a smaller site you know especially during COVID where people have social distance if we wanted to set up a site for people that's less than 150 individuals and this actually prevents the city manager from doing that the intent here was to actually require the city manager to set up at least 150 spaces throughout a number of areas so you know it could be one large one of 150 um or it could be um you know 15 small ones of 10 but the intent here was to require that so if there's some misunderstanding we should probably look at um some quick words nothing um the program uh for overnight use um which cumulatively has instead of uh which cumulatively has no fewer than 150 safe sleeping spaces in such areas I I I think that the language as written um does not restrict the city to one program with 150 spaces but it can be that it just designates 150 um shall be made available but I don't I don't think a change is necessary to to be consistent with what is intended here if that that helped my understanding of that I was I just needed the clarification so thank you health member contrary johnson um yeah just two things I think for Bonnie I think just to add within 60 days of ordinance passage might complete my addition to it um and if we want to have you know in alignment with the cash recommendations or something like that I think that should that should complete that um but to the um so hopefully that is clear for Bonnie or you can just drop in what I sent you just copying and pasting what you sent or are you going to work Smith it right now um you could copy and paste what I sent but I think it's all here and it just needs to have within 60 days of ordinance passage added to it because the safe sleeping program is is listed here right so this is your language from what you sent me I'm just wondering if it's saying the same thing but it's specifying within 60 days but we can leave it in there just to make sure it's all there um and then I'm just wondering oh sorry go ahead sorry Lee um this is more directive because it has specific dates yeah sorry Johnson to combine these there's yes the intent is to combine them there may be just a couple pieces missing from item D from what I proposed so and so um I think that we can add the date in and 60 days you want the specific cash recommendations in the the ordinance language as well what I would recommend is that that direction be given as a separate um motion or as part of the motion that includes approval of the language of the ordinance because they have a number of things in there that um for instance the catch is not defined in the ordinance uh and the catch is recommendations aren't um referenced in the findings or anything of that nature and so um I think that would be that would be better included as a motion to accompany the ordinance uh otherwise we could spend a fair amount of time finessing that language to incorporate it into the language of the ordinance itself yeah I think I think that's fine if we want to um just add uh the safe sleeping program with cash recommendations in in the lump with the policy recommendations and just have this um launch a safe sleeping program within 60 days of ordinance passage and no later than June 30th 2021 maybe we just have that piece of it and the records to catch can be part of the policy recommendations if that makes sense I I think that works because the dates are the dates work if it's accessible it's like Susie might have something to add yeah go ahead yeah thank you thank you Lee and I just wanted to mention in contemplating the safety sleep of these for the last several months if not years that I think at this point if there is an attention to move forward with a program um with pretty significant haste I don't think the 150 number is realistic nor do I think that we will actually be able to meet that expectation so my my recommendation is to actually phase that in eventually but for the first part of this program to really not focus on any more than about 60 spaces um and I think we you know per um councilmember golder's recommendation this certainly can be reevaluated in nine months but I just don't think um I think we might be setting ourselves up with for failure with so many that was going to be the second part of my question is how feasible is 150 councilmember yeah go ahead councilmember golder I was just going to I said a quick question for Susie Susie how long do you think it would take to get up to 150 like realistically well I think what you want to do is is build a reasonably managed program um you know until winter shelter season um collect some data on how the programs are managing within the sites that have been selected and then also be able to evaluate demand I mean we're really not entirely certain what demand is going to look like for these programs and so I think um you know maybe the objective is to evaluate um sometime in early September for um the you know around a question of whether an expansion is required um but at this point I would not expect the need to look at that and I think it should be data driven um between now and fall for instance so are we comfortable with um maybe not putting timelines on all of this in the ordinance and looking at um future staff direction potentially even at the second reading so we can clarify all of that with um with staff direction in terms of some of these timelines I think the key with the ordinance maybe is to try to keep the languages all lived as possible to the extent that we can um councilmember colantari johnson um as a suggestion from Susie was the the keeping this to um move forward with the programming within 60 days but but limit that the safe sleeping spaces to 60 for now and then when we revisit in nine months or in september that um we could look at expanding that having having the parameter of standing this up within two months of the ordinance passing I think it's still important to have martine um here are you I I just have a question about the language where it said shall establish a program for overnight use of no fewer than 150 so if we sat if we sat up 60 we would still be in concert because otherwise we're gonna have to go back in and change that back to 150 in nine months so I'm just wondering is that rightly the way I'm reading it is you could go up to 150 right minimum right so that would be okay I guess the concern here is that we need to be able to demonstrate that there are places where people who um don't have a place to go can spend the night in the city and we will be able to demonstrate that to um you know judge van keel on that at some point or another judge in the event of a legal challenge one way to do that might be to tie the implementation of the daytime ban with uh the the provision of safe sleeping spaces to accommodate the number of people sleeping out of doors um in in the community that's that's the possibility 150 was a thumbnail uh estimate of that would be able to accommodate people that might avail themselves of this option as opposed to the option of trying to find a place in uh one of the open areas walkins um your thoughts on this as a motion maker yeah I think we could I mean I think we can keep it up you know up to 150 that makes sense to me for the reasons that have been uh specified um I guess my only additional input or question or comment depending on how we want to do it is um if there's additional locations that are available in terms of our sheltering options you know how does that play into the keeping locations that fall into this sort of legally for me please I guess my my question is I mean I'm fine with leaving it at the 150 but my question is is if there are additional this is safe sleeping spaces right but there are the sleeping sheltering options available and so when you mentioned the legal constraints how does that fall into that based on your opinion I wish I could um break it down to a precise number or a or a precise target that would that would get this right um but that's that's not what we have here it's really uh you know a series of measures that that we intend to provide a location where anyone who is finds themselves outdoors uh on a given night in the city can find a location where they can you know pitch a tent or curl up in a sleeping bag so this is just one component of it and I don't think there's any or at least we certainly have not um been able to just given all of the all of the different factors and uncertainties that we've been talking about we haven't been able to pin down a precise number uh or you know where where we get it just right sounds like we're okay on that language we've just got a couple more pages to go sorry was there a question on that language I was I was just going to make one comment it does seem I mean it it came up but it seems like this is saying since it says shall establish a program for overnight use of no fewer than 150 does that need to be changed to um two or greater than 150 if we want to have fewer than 150 because the way that it's stated right now is that it's 150 is the minimum and it sounded like there was a desire to have an opportunity to have less and build up to that 150 and above but the way that that's stated the way that I'm reading it is that if it says no fewer than 150 then that means the city manager is obligated to establish at a minimum 150 so I mean that's right and I think that's that's that's a good comment um the way I envision that being implemented and I certainly think that that's possible that we'll be coming back to the council with sixes to this ordinance but the way I anticipate that being implemented is as we do public outreach and we do establish storage facilities and as we do a lot of outreach to the homeless community this can be implemented as part of that but it doesn't require that on the 30th day following the second reading we go out and mark 150 spaces in parking lots in the city councilmember Watkins I mean I I appreciate the clarification and I think that where I was coming from is that if there are better sheltering options available we also want to direct individuals to better sheltering right so that factors into it and I guess what it speaks to really is what I think Susie brought up which is essentially how do we become eventually data driven in regards to what our provision of these options are right but starting with this I understand so I'm comfortable leaving it at okay next uh or next uh next comment change okay these are the additional criteria under which the camping has to happen and it just clarifies electrical connections or taps we just had taps before the next section e um is that um campfire it it calls out some additional types of fires and it specifies that um lawful campfires within designated fire pits are acceptable I'll give you a second maybe uh give everybody a sec to read that funny even the top part maybe we give a thumbs up when when folks are ready to go yes read these two okay the second one as well the f um that's keeping keeping trash in a box and actually picking it up um so removing it at the end of the day is anybody okay with that box or bag or similar okay so I was just thinking like logistically if it was me and I was packing up my camp then where must take the trash and so I'm wondering if we can have a place to put trash at the same place where people could store their belongings I don't know if that can be where we could put this at like a future direction or somewhere in here but it just like if we want people to clean it up where are they going to take it that's one of my thoughts thanks yes that I think is something that would um provide that opportunity to comply and encourage compliance it's pretty late for g uh to all read g and then um I can explain the intent of it based on the number of uh individuals with a qualifying disability as well as their caretaker but if you have one person and you have 20 people in one person that's disabled it's not each person gets uh I'm sorry you have 20 people in one person is disabled you don't have uh 12 by 12 for all 20 people just for that one if they have a caretaker it would be an extra 12 by 12 Dr. Member Watkins I just I'm wondering how does this factor into our conversation about what we determined was a qualifying disability and um and does that need to be defined then and given the previous conversation we had about that yeah I think that um the would just refer back to the prior um language regarding qualifying disability the council chose to remove the section that provided discretion so then it would revert back to the definition that says um and and Bonnie if you wanted to scroll up you can get to that if you scroll slowly I'll tell you when keep going keep going uh otherwise sorry it'll be um an indented portion um keep going this is almost it just above here so in a so here uh qualifying disability is uh person with a physical or mental disability that prevents that person from being able to on a daily basis construct deconstruct and put away and out there living in Canton and um then it's got the provisions if it's not apparent to city staff they may be asked to present a physician's verification okay thank you Holder did you have a question on this one yeah I guess mine was um along the lines of council member Watkins and then I was just wondering I'm not sure what they use at the DMV to define um handicap or physical handicap but I'm wondering if we could use something like that just it just it still feels like super vague to me like you could go to the chiropractor or I don't know my sister got a doctor's note so she could take her dog on a plane it seems like a bit of a loophole trust everybody that they do but I think also like it might create distrust between law enforcement and people that have other disabilities that they might not be able to see like the discussion topic you know should it should we just use a DMV um determination and we looked at the DMV determinations we actually thought that it could be easier to um get a physician's note than to actually have to go down to DMV but um you know I think it's a fair comment and perhaps um if it is amenable to the council it could be either or and that would allow some uh flexibility so that if they DMV criteria and they have say a driver's license that they have the physician's note to council member Cummings um concerns earlier about you know would someone be able to get access uh to the doctor that would just be you know one additional way to make it a little bit easier so just a suggestion if if that's something you'd be interested in. Council member Cummings, council member Collin Tari Johnson I believe was next and then Vice Mayor Bruner is that correct in order? 8 p.m and I'm wondering if the will be one hour before sunset to 8 a.m and that's just to really you know especially in the winter allow for if people need to set up their encampment during the while it's still light out you know an hour before dark in the winter is about four o'clock but then in the summer it's about 8 p.m so just trying to put in that buffer for when people are going to need to escape kind of the night time at Owens um because again if people can't set up a tent before 8 p.m in January that means that they're you know out and about for three plus hours in the dark and in the cold and then they have to set up their tent in the dark and if we're saying that people have to be in open space that means they have to go get their tent from the storage hike all the way out into wherever the open space is you know ensure there's 75 feet off of a path established camp and so I'm just curious how people feel about the proposal so proposal for the timing um and then we can maybe go back to the block path he came on but maybe she's she yeah she was she was just on so so let's let's finish if we don't mind let's finish where we were on the thread with the qualifying disability and before we move to the time uh if that's okay um I have council member calentary johnson and council member brunner uh mine was to just go back to that um shelter program but I can wait until we're finished going through the entire piece and then go back council member I mean excuse me vice mayor brunner hand down oh you're you're muted I'm sorry vice mayor I had uh noticed uh the language and maybe that's what council member calentary johnson wanted to bring up uh regarding the 60 days uh language so I don't know if you want to come back to that or uh keep going on this current thread why don't we why don't we finish this thread is there Lee you put out a bunch of options for us was there any interest in in any of those qualify future qualifying or people comfortable with the disability language I'm just looking for uh either Cassie would like to comment on the qualifying disability language go ahead Cassie thanks just really quick um so this is an extremely challenging issue how to deal with people with disabilities within the scope of this ordinance in a way that's reasonable and fair eviscerate the entire ordinance and the intent of the ordinance to have able-bodied individuals um uh been moving around every day um so that's been extremely challenging I do I do say in the draft language there is a provision that talks about these staff potentially drafting clarifications um to the extent um that um council deems that appropriate that's an option to sort of um kick that down and we did look at the DMV language I think it's a little bit different um somebody who can not walk all the way it's similar what we're looking for is people who really cannot um do what's required every day by the law which is um just every single day so I think some of the factors are similar to the DMV language but some of it's um a little bit different and I think um within the scope of the current language we should sort of leave it up to staff to figure out some regulations later um or you guys are free to uh do that clarification tonight thank you Cassie I think with not being an attorney and having the kinds of things that the eye to the the kinds of things I think um if it's the councils um and the motion makers that that that staff could could fine-tune some of these true legal definitions to to move keep moving tonight looks like everybody's got consensus on that okay so we will keep moving down the list then and then I I have not lost track of um the next proposal since we do have a question around the the timing uh proposal to change it from 8 a.m. to um an hour before sunset to 8 a.m. with the proposal correct council member coming and the motion uh the motion maker is that amenable to you was it an hour before sunset in an hour after sunrise or no I'm sorry it was an hour before sunset to 8 a.m. does that work for you uh mayor yeah I'm just wondering about whether if 7 a.m. might be better just in terms of um people kind of heading off and moving around in cars and things like that 8 a.m. is a little more of a of a active period of time so an hour before sunrise sunset to um 7 a.m. okay okay say that is referenced a number of times throughout the ordinance so um if council could include as part of their motion for us to um rectify those uh other areas where the time is cited we're almost there council member coming do you had a question you had a I believe you had um you had mentioned earlier that you wanted to talk about the warning language do you want to visit that that's not redline for tonight but if you have proposals we could I assume a week yeah let's go ahead and talk about that I think it's in it's in section 6.36.070 penalties for violations cities oh we see you get to it so in the third line um on the right it says city staff shall consider giving the person a verbal warning a verbal or written warning before an infraction citation is issued and I don't know I just personally feel like that again where the discretion that's provided can lead to you know people favoring certain to give certain people warnings over others and I feel like it might just be in order to be consistent just giving people warnings verbal or written um before issuing an infraction citation I think is will be appropriate and the way I think of this too is that if someone gets a warning on you know Monday and then they're encountered again on a Friday I don't know if that would necessarily constitute needing to give an additional warning again or if there's you know if we want to put timelines around when if somebody's issued a warning to say they're issued a warning and then a month from now they encounter that officer again you know do they get another warning or if they end up in another part of the town but they didn't know that they could camp do they get a warning because um removing that discretion of you know somebody coming across them and saying I'm not going to give you warning I'm just going to give you an infraction and they legally have the right to do that versus someone getting a warning and given that it's not really clear where people are supposed to go to figure out where they can and can't sleep if somebody gets up and moves and they are still in a no sleeping zone do they then get an infraction or do they get a warning again and I guess the efforts that will be made to ensure that once people are warned that they're clearly given the areas for sleeping have been clearly identified and communicated to the individual so that they can avoid you know getting an infraction or any further consequences so Tony do you want to take that one on I think the intent of this language was to deal with the situation where uh an officer or or staff member encounters someone who has clearly been warned or cited multiple times and so they know that that person is aware of the of the restrictions of the ordinance and are clearly um doing what they're doing with knowledge that they're in a location or they're they're set up in a manner that is prohibited by the ordinance that being said I think councilmember Cummings I have a little bit of discomfort with the language shall consider giving a warning myself we have not come up with a better way to address specifically the concerns that are behind that but the intent here is really just to to deal with the situation where the person is well aware of the requirements of the ordinance and where a warning would would just be you know something that is unnecessary because the person is already aware that they're in violation of the ordinance so we could try to change that and or the council could direct that a warning be given in each instance and that could be implemented as well yeah I I guess my thoughts would be the city staff shall give the person wherever we're in warning before an infraction citation is issued and then the warning scratch if given shall provide the person with information about legal indoor shelter indoor permissible night time sleeping operation options and then scratch the next sentence and then just have city staff also may but not but shall not be required to transport the person to available shelter or permissible sleeping van locations can you repeat that so city our citizens would disappear I would just want to make sure that we understand the intent of council on this in terms of how long of a time period this warning would last for logistically it could become very complex to try to get all the warnings given to a particular person and how we you don't necessarily have a record system in place for that so um you know just so I understand is that I'm giving you warning you're refusing to go and therefore I'm going to issue you a citation now or is that I warn you once every week you know or issue a citation on a regular basis and then we can make sure that it happens however the council wishes to do it awesome comments for the chief you know I even personally if I if I may you know I think even if you give someone a warning and I guess it'll be what we're gonna have the words with this somehow but you know even if you give somebody a warning and you know they tell you they're not gonna comply and probably more colorful words um then you know I think that that would be grounds for giving someone assuming someone a citation and so you know I don't think it has to be like we're gonna give you this warning we're going to come back in 24 hours you know it's here's your warning and you know I don't know if we need to set a time frame around when people have to move if we haven't said that already but um yeah I think just by you know giving someone the opportunity to to pack up their stuff and go seems appropriate yeah sorry go ahead that would be fine um just as long as because what we wouldn't want to do is is keep coming back you know four or five times the same person this is going to be a big enough push as it is for us let alone uh coming back multiple times uh which we do we give warnings almost every time anyway but uh yeah and then I have Vice Mayor Bruner and then uh Council Member Golder I'm not sure if you guys are on this part but go ahead Council Member Golder. Thank you um so the amendment that was that was proposed by myself and Vice Mayor Bruner around the um outreach and engagement proceeding um preceding um uh enforcement it goes in this section so I don't know what the language looks like but so the warning would be with outreach and engagement I wanted to just add that and clarify that um and I also just want to say that you know this maybe goes counter to my social worker hat but I do think that strong enforcement is necessary otherwise um the ordinance won't be effective so I hear Chief Mills' comments and and I think that we have to have both we have to have the prevention outreach engagement and we have to have the ability to enforce when um there's a problematic situation otherwise people will take advantage. On that note I think that at the end of this paragraph is is uh the place where the language suggested by Council Member Calantari Johnson could be inserted um with the modifications that were proposed if they're acceptable to the Council. And that's regarding the um the outreach yes and you suggest that at the end of the paragraph there Bonnie could you could you cut and paste that there and then I have Council Member Golder did you have further comments on I'm sorry actually I said and then I can't remember Golder. I was actually going if it helps Bonnie I can read it that's why I had my hand up um to just notate this section is um um in in the friendly amendment section that we put forth so um per the catch is recommendations ensure that outreach proceeds or occurs simultaneously to enforcement of prohibited outdoor living to the greatest extent possible for instance when public safe or except for when public safety life safety is not under immediate urgent or threat outreach could take the form of city county nonprofit or and or faith-based contact with identified individuals on a complaint basis or within a structured proactive program and it ties into with um the um third part of this being the that all outreach materials be created and disseminated to um in you know paper hard copies paper versions to remove all barriers to access of the information you know full of minor modifications to that yes please so I would recommend deleting per the catch is recommendations again um outreach and I think the word there is precedes rather than proceeds except wow bullet of I am sorry Tony would you remove the last the reference on the last bullet as well the bullet yeah I think that was a rationale for the language not not the text that council member talent sorry Johnson was suggesting uh council member Golder do you have questions on this um the warning so I'm just curious is the intent then you give me a warning I move along and then let's say two days later you give me a warning at a new spot you gave me the information I move along I just keep getting warning warning warning or if I comply then I won't then I won't ever reach the level of infraction even if I'm not following the rules or the citation whatever the next is that Tony or Andy do you have comment on that that is how I read the language as has currently been that might be what the council intends um I I think you know enforcement is intended to be um you know the last the last the last option when other good options have been exhausted so even if I'm not really complying with where I'm supposed to be if I just keep moving from place to place I'm not supposed to be yet well I still just keep getting warnings that's what I mean like if I do we need to have language if if we wanted to I think council member Golder and this was kind of part of what I was going to mention with the warning does it need to specify verbal warning written warning um what you know within the hour or 24 hours or some time frame um the manner and the time does does that need to be included the concern is that like maybe one or two individuals make make enforcement really hard for a couple you know for people by just you know manipulating the warnings a certain point this is tools that might have with law enforcement um as as written it kind of provides that one of course warning but see is when they would instigate it to go into a higher level of intervention that would be sort of discretionary cheap mills to weigh in here um I think we're trying to create something that works in the field kind of I think I rely on your expertise to try to see what this this language just trying to look at it from the implementation perspective yeah from implementation perspective we certainly can give a warning when we contact people um the more specificity you give us I think the better so we understand your intent of what you're trying to accomplish um but from an operational perspective we've got to give our officers enough authority to do their job and so if we warn somebody on Monday and then we warn them on Tuesday and then we warn them on Wednesday there we might also not issue any citations um you know that's I think that we've got we've got to give them the tool they need to to go out in and in good faith to cite people after the person has been warned adequately and the definition of adequate to me is if if we give them a flyer that is approved by the city manager uh in myself to define where they can go and they choose not to then I think that the only thing left to do is start citing them in until they comply so multiple contacts at different sites is not envisioned um I don't believe by I would not be envisioned as but I'm happy to hear uh additional council members and Lee I see you've had your hand up for a while and then I'll uh council member coming separate issue for me um thank you Mayor Myers I've related to the hours that I'd like to revisit when the time is right council member coming yeah I was just going to say to the chief's point you know and I've been thinking about how to articulate this but um you know I think it the intent is that um individuals who are contacted are going to be given a warning and that there is you know there's no gray area around whether or not someone who's initially contacted is going to receive a warning and then I think after that initial warning um you know whether it's subsequent warnings within a 30 day period I think it also depends on how often we're going to be switching around where these sleeping sites are because if we designate if we say one week you can go here and then you know whoops it's you know fire season or endangered species mating season we have to close on this area and we have to reopen another area then does that person then you know I think that anytime we reset that would you know also kick in a new kind of warning period um but I guess what I'm trying to get at is that I understand the um police chief's concerns and I think that to the extent that we can put in some language around adequate warning and noticing that would then allow for enforcement to occur makes a lot of sense I I might have some suggested language here in a second okay if we have that there is clear record of prior warning within a reasonable amount of time we can do that through our computerated dispatch system or written warnings we can we can figure that piece out of the field interview then I think that the officers could go ahead and uh and be confident that the person has been awarded given the proper information so do we need to change the language to say city staff shall give the person instead of a verbal change a to adequate and that set is there counting them colder does that get at your question okay so it's um it's that it says city staff keep going past that all the way to the give go up up up up up person a just make that adequate you're coming since you have another thank you Bonnie would you mind scrolling up to oh doing this is that we moved the hours to um if the council would like to see the hours at sun an hour before sunset to the uh evening time very well could conflict would say you know if we were doing a parking lot um and office workers in the winter time were there and so I would suggest including uh can we find uh 0 5 o d he is in dog at the end yes so uh shall be subject to all criteria set forth in 6.36 uh being provided except like 8 p.m. would be and you know depending on the lot that may not be an issue um but certainly you know if it's winter time and it's a sunsetting at five you know four o'clock if we're trying to get folks out I think you guys get the issue and councilmember commentary Johnson yeah I have the same question and concern around um the parking lots and and businesses so I think um hopefully this this works for councilmember Watkins who made the original I think amendment to this part but since we're here um can I go back to the to the point that I had raised my hand on before yes please it's it's just um this within 60 days time frame is missing from the language okay where should that go establish a program within the 60 within 60 days within 60 days of passage of the ordinance yeah exactly and I think no later than uh June 30th 2021 you've got to go back up I think yes it's still up it's uh 6.0 oh 5 o d oh yeah it's where we we're we're we're just at right there yeah back up right typed in hours of operation so that would be the last sentence is that where that's it just be part of the motion uh approving the ordinance but council could insert it in the text as well I suppose the motion was to remove the I thought the suggestion was to remove the catch recommendation piece and put that as the policy direction that was that was a different uh component but um does it complicate the ordinance Tony we put the within 60 days in here I just want to make sure that that piece gets captured I think it's really up to the up to the pleasure of the city council on that point oh I'm sorry that's my hand out um do you have a comment on this council member colder and council member Cummings okay council member colder I correct me if I'm wrong but I thought Susie said that it would be like setting ourselves up for failure to put 150 spaces within 60 days did I hear that wrong it would certainly be challenging yes could we modify would you be open to modifying that council member charlottary johnson so that we're set for success the document that we're in and maybe it works better to get out because what I would like to see is is a safe sleeping program started within 60 days not necessarily that we have it for 150 sites does that make sense so back when you guys were talking about it this is I moved this from the change to the ordinance just to council direction that would be the adopting direction they're just direction right or this is option and I think I think the reference to catch for us recommend these contexts um I'm hearing an echo starts uh makes sense as part of our oceans but not just to be able to get it going in 60 days but having that 150 in 60 days yeah my internal is not 150 in 60 days but just that we we make sure that we have something going within 60 days that's okay thank you justin do you have a comment on this one thing I was going to mention if we're going to put that exception in there for the hours could begin as late as 8 p.m and I would say maybe end as early as 7 a.m but no later than 8 a.m and the reason why is because um I was just looking at a sunset sunrise chart and in the winter sunrise uh certain times in january doesn't occur until almost 7 30 a.m but then also understanding that I know for some of the three-hour lots downtown and that and someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I think a lot of the parking enforcement downtown starts at 8 a.m so if we were going to do something in parking lots trying to you know find that balance between getting people out before people need to park there to go to work but then also understanding that it's really difficult for people to wake up when it's dark and cold outside so so it's just the intention there and then I did have a question um we're council member cal entire johnson around the safe sleeping sites and I was just curious um what what the what would be the goal of that and the reason why I ask is because um you know over the course prior to the pandemic and throughout the course of the pandemic when we stood up we started off with 1220 river street that moved up to the armory we had the armory and then we had a slave a managing camp and program at the benches that's now also up in the armory I think we have like 160 or so tents up in the armory all of which were independent kind of safe managing camp and programs that all got moved up there for you know river street had to be moved because of construction benches got moved because of you know the winter and the rains and so I'm just wanting to understand what the 60 with the the next iteration of sleeping programs kind of what the thought is I'm all for having as many programs as we can but I just wanted to know if you could speak to that a little bit sure yeah um and I'll invite my my fair runner as well since we worked on this together but the 60 the safe sleeping program um is a little bit what what uh association of faith communities currently does in their churches but it's in public spaces so that's the idea is that there would be some kind of monitoring and staffing and supervision um in connection to outreach and engagement staff and that would be one step towards um the encampments that you're speaking of the the the full managed encampments I don't think that our city um I know that our city doesn't have the resources and capacity to stand something like that up ourselves and I know that it's a challenge for the county as well but that would be a step towards that does that help clarify great thank you yeah we might be here um routine I think we've gotten Bonnie did you get everything these changes but in terms of them we're going to have to watch the video and piece everything together can you put the original motion up to your participant ID entered the meeting as a panelist attendees can now hear you speak thanks for the clarification Bonnie I'd be happy to agendize um you know work with the chief to get those agendas as they can be packaged but I think if we would be willing to kind of finalize this work tonight but I'm happy to work with you and the chief to look at to look at those quality of life ordinances and see how quickly they can be brought forward okay and that just for clarification I wasn't going to put a date on it but just put the intention of you know some of these really fitting within figuring out how we can move things forward um to start addressing especially the bike chop shop thing because that I know is people are very upset when they get the bike stolen in this town and we want a bike from the community and I think that that's a not only crime against an individual but a crime against our climate and so but yeah if it if uh if we can follow up on that I'd be happy to have that conversation with you yeah the chief and I had talked about that one in particular um I was in the impression that he might have thought that we had captured that in here but I think re re-looking at it and make sure we capture the intent of that ordinance as best as we can it's a better way to go much much better um I have so Bonnie do you want to why don't we take a five minute break Bonnie and you can massage the uh motion so we know for sure what we're voting on um I have council member I mean excuse me council member and vice mayor Bruner did you guys have questions or comments is that a mental I had a comment on the bike chop chop if you want to wait I can wait yeah we'll just power through then I think if we could um I think if we if you don't mind vice mayor Bruner we will bring that other those or other ordinances um back um as a you know as a package we'll do the analysis beforehand if that's appropriate so we don't um necessarily go into that discussion tonight because it's not agendized per se so is that amenable to you or did you just have a clarifying question I just wanted to understand uh the the intent of the um 6.36.060 uh D as in dog their public property shall not be used as storage for extra car tires and an ornament number of bike parts gasoline generators etc etc so is that a section that we could simply scroll in red lines um stronger language to incorporate the bike or does it need to that was that was my comment so rather than a separate cover the intent of that bike shop piece but I don't know enough about how you how you want to enforce against that chief mill so after what you and I had discussed earlier is that this may get us most of the way there uh I think the ordinance that we have looked at was a little bit stronger in terms of um just a few bikes and a location that are disassembled there's a little bit more clear language that don't happen in front of you right now but we could certainly start here and then ask if we need to and it might be that that getting and I think council member Cummings concern is is really those large-scale true chop shops that for example the photos we saw from so maybe there is that need to to provide additional an additional ordinance that clarifies is that that intent with the volume vice mayor Bruner that was all I had that's it thank you thank you okay um body can you flip back to the motion and I'll repeat the motion and we will go ahead and vote tonight council member walk-ins seconded by mayor Myers to introduce for publication ordinance number 20-2021-03 amending chapter three six point three six of the Santa Cruz municipal code related to regulations for temporary outdoor living with the following changes part D and a part or all of or all of a city own parking lot believe we might have changed this um language um is the most clear thing to do um Tony to make the motion as amended now that we've actually gone step-by-step through the ordinance is it better to say enter to that the motion would be to introduce the publication ordinance of the ordinance as stated in the first bullet there yes as amended um uh pursuant to the discussion that that the council has has just concluded so the motion um council member walk-ins if you're amenable to that would be to introduce um the motion would be introduced for publication ordinance number 20-21-03 amending chapter three six point three six of the Santa Cruz municipal code related to regulations for temporary outdoor living as amended um as amended and you had the other language there Tony as amended period uh as amended yes for the minutes are you wanting to change the part Tony I'm just looking for it we we just went line by line through the actual ordinance right but a lot of what's here is actually in the ordinance now that we've gone line by line yes we also plug it into the minutes because somebody reading the minutes doesn't have the ordinance so the body will be filling this in with all of the details of okay i think the motion will catch it but um uh also uh to delete per cash recommendations etc so I just want to make sure that we have that language in the notes that Bonnie took on the on the red line text and that we can clean up the motion uh to make it consistent with that okay make your emotion okay with that yeah amendments okay yeah I'm getting a little we're all exhausted yeah I think we'll we'll go ahead and uh go to a roll call vote then Bonnie fighting we'll make sure that things like you know the direction to staff regarding the navigation center is not a part of the ordinance but a part of separate directions and so play ordinance especially as it relates to environmental protection but I do have some concerns with buttons and just um community input and rollout with that I believe we are can I just ask really quick the next reading will be in two weeks can we just have that clarified for the public as well the next step to see if they can this will be ready in two weeks or it's what's called the action summary posted on our website um before the minutes are so I'd say no later than Monday it will be on um March night through the ordinance and hear from the public I want to thank our staff again this has been a haul and uh I want to thank all my colleagues um very very difficult policy to try to work through and decide um on and uh I just appreciate everyone's willingness to stick with it tonight and um I would love to say good night but I'm going to say good morning and um wish you all a special day today