 thank you okay good morning or good afternoon welcome to our 11 30 a.m. session of the August 23rd 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council and I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll thank you mayor council member Calentary Johnson president Boulder Cummings Brown Myers vice mayor Watkins mayor Bruno president thank you I have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our regular meeting thank you for your patience we just finished our closed session portion of today's meeting today is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website city of Santa Cruz comm our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left if you are joining us here in person it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside or outside our chambers for the consideration of our community please stay home if you have symptoms of a cold or flu or feeling unwell in any way thank you if you wish to comment on an agenda item today and our attending virtually 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 and please note there is a delay in streaming so that if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak when it's your time for public comment you will be able to raise your hand if you're joining us virtually by dialing star 9 on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature in the webinar controls on your computer please note that public comment is heard only on items that council is taking action on and not regular updates or reports the items that will be open for public comment during today's meetings are numbers 5 through 21 on our agenda I'd like to start off by asking the council members if there are any statements of disqualification today okay seeing none I'd like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions and deletions okay thank you I'd like to ask the city attorney to provide a report on our closed session good afternoon your runner members of the city council this morning the council met in closed session at 10 a.m. to discuss two items of business the first item was a conference with labor negotiators council received a report from and gave direction to its negotiators with respect to the bargaining units listed on your agenda which are essentially all bargaining units item two was a conference council concerning potential initiation of litigation and the council received a report from the city attorney's office on that matter there was no reportable action thank you the city council okay we'll review the meeting calendar attached to the agenda and I'll call on the city clerk to provide any updates to the calendar there are no updates thank you thank you this is the time now for council members to report out on actions at external boards committees and joint powers authority meetings for future meetings please come prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that occurred since the last council meeting so that the council and public can be informed and I'll start with councilmember Kellan Terry Johnson I'm gonna ask my colleague vice mayor Watkins to report out on the children's fund meeting and our Metro meeting will be coming up Friday so I don't have any reports haven't been to other meetings this thank you thank you okay council member Brown thank you mayor I will report on the Santa Cruz County regional transportation committee meeting I just wanted to that we had a number of items on our agenda including some items related to moving forward on the highway but the big item was discussion about electric passenger rail and coastal rail trail project between Pajaro Junction and Santa Cruz along the Santa Cruz branch rail line and the commission at that meeting did vote unanimously to move ahead with environmental review and some other work that needs to be done in order to begin to move forward with our rail trail and I also attended and some others were there as well other members of this body as well as many members of the public groundbreaking sponsored by the city and the RTC for the groundbreaking over the second half of segment seven which runs through the city on the west side down to the boardwalk and so I'm just pleased to report that we're moving forward in that in that arena and I will also report on the area agency on aging meeting that our last meeting was somewhat difficult one our conversations many of our much of our conversation and multiple agenda items connected back to the challenges that current senior programs are facing as a result of the core investment cuts and in particular so I and and we've talked about this and we have it on our agenda later today and I'm not gonna go through all that again but I I did just want to highlight two programs that we got extensive reports for which both of which were defunded and not given any bridge funding for well one of which was given bridge funding and one of which was not given bridge funding but both of which were essentially defunded the first one is project scout and I just want to I'm talking about these because they're really important programs for our community and I think people should know about them and understand what the challenges are and be prepared to step up to help support them because what they do in our community extends not well beyond just you know the direct immediate support that's provided but really you know across for families and you know in the broader community so the first one's project scout which you've heard about it does you know tax assistance for low-income seniors and I just want to give you a couple of stats in the past year as of July of this year so the for the previous year they helped prepare 1334 tax returns which brought 1.5 plus million dollars back into our community to low-income people through the income tax credit and other deductions on their returns that's money that is it will be the project scout will be challenged to provide support for because they do not have the resources to ensure ongoing staffing for that program so I just wanted to give them a shout out and for folks out in the community who are interested in supporting them you can you can find them online and may hear more from me on that in the future some things are in the works also for this one I want to just highlight again advocacy ombudsman program if they're responsible for seven skilled nursing facilities and 26 residential care facilities for the elderly some of which are in the city of Santa Cruz and a total bed count of 1800 approximately people that's 1800 seniors who are in long-term care facilities and skilled nursing facilities who rely on the two point for people who are responsible for monitoring those programs and so as a result of this defunding what the executive director of the organization reported to the AAA would be likely happening if they cannot find a way to backfill that money is a loss of 624 advocacy hours for those long-term care residents a reduced ability to hold facilities accountable to quality of care which we know is is critical increasing workload that you know the kinds of things that we just know happen when we're when staff get squeezed we're experiencing it here but I also want to highlight again a loss of essential funding locally then reduces the ability of that organization to draw down federal dollars to do that work and so they're looking at you know potentially closing their doors and that's that's where they're at and it's a federally mandated program there is no other alternative program in the in the county that provides that service county adult protective services we talked about that you know as a space for kind of complimentary and collaborative work but those funds do not because of their you know funding restrictions do not can't be used for this purpose so there really is a funding gap there and I think it's can't remember how much the city's portion of it was but you know there's probably a hundred thousand dollars that could be lost and much more than that as a result of the federal loss of funding so I just think we all should be thinking about that and for those who are out there highly highly recommend supporting advocacy at this time I'm gonna leave it there I guess I'll say that there's conversations about the Live Oak Senior Center ongoing and we're still you know trying to figure out an alternative site there so I'll just keep saying that if people have a thoughts on they can you know refer Meals on Wheels to think about other other locations they're trying really hard and they're in conversation with the Live Oak School District but it's been a rocky road and I think I'll leave it there I'll say under to end on a positive note things do look good with the state budget and so there there is some additional funding coming in again because those those funding streams are so compartmentalized it's very it can't be used for some of the places where the funding is being lost and but we do have overall the picture looks pretty good for money coming into our county for senior services this year in particular areas specific in particular around nutrition but some others as well and I'll keep you updated as we move forward thanks thank you councilmember Brown councilmember Cummings thank you mayor I guess the first group I'll report out on is and bag I think of significance at that meeting as many of us are aware there's the regional housing needs assessment planning that's going through and the finalization of the plan for this next cycle the cities of San City and Greenfield both appealed their allocations to and bag a part of what San City's concern was is the ability to build on the current land that they're there that they have they're given the size of San City and how much land that is there is actually preserved for environmental protection that appeal was denied by and bag and then the city of Greenfield during its last rain a cycle actually exceeded met or exceeded all the housing that needed to be produced under its arena goals however there's nothing built into the arena process for cities that exceed the housing that they built for that those new units to be incorporated into the next cycles arena goals target and so that was a major concern that came up and I know that for some of the housing that the state of Santa Cruz has produced we've exceeded our requirements and those numbers won't be incorporated into the next cycle so there's a lot of concerns about the arena process and it was brought to our attention that there's actually a group or there's a law firm and there's a number of cities that have been interested in suing the state over the arena process given that the state is mandating that cities produce these different levels of housing but they don't take into account the amount of space that cities have to build the housing nor are they providing any resources to actually support especially production the production of very low and low income housing and so hopefully we can explore that and mentioned that to the city manager city attorney and hoping we can maybe have a follow-up discussion and maybe introduction of what's happening across the state around that the next just let my mind and I don't have my list and run me yeah yeah maybe come back to me come back to me in a second okay council member Myers see definitely was summer break so not a lot of my committees and commissions that during that period for the central coast community energy policy board did not have a meeting this past quarter but we are having the annual both policy board and our annual meeting that's going to be in Monterey Wednesday September 21st through Thursday September 22nd and that will be both the policy board and the operations board and so there will be some interesting updates both for investment back into communities as well as securing the various energy portfolios that have been underway all summer the other metro was also did not meet in July so we have not had a meeting and I did attend the Santa Cruz mid-county groundwater agency meeting just last week and there were two items that were voted through one is compliance with the governor's executive order for the GSA to review well well permits prior to them be approved by the county and with a specific evaluation of consistency with the groundwater management plan and there also have accepted their large grant of 7.6 million that each groundwater agency has received this year so they'll be doing projects with that and then last but not least I did the cows working group did have a meeting this past month and for the third year in a row now cows beach has been off the beach bummer list which is great so this is three years in a row they're going to be starting an epidemiological study I believe working with the EPA and Stanford University to continue to explore the sources of bacteria and then continue to work on maintaining and keeping off the list we did talk about doing some outreach to visit Santa Cruz so that folks maybe promote that we have a clean beach and talk about the investments that the city has done to keep that beach clean and make it sure that our our tourism folks know that Alice is off the list third year down so that's good and so that was the main two main things that we're working on in that group and I believe that is all of my groups this time thank you mayor thank you council member Myers council member coming yeah so the the one group that that also met was the criminal justice council and to date kind of building off of some work that initiated last year the criminal justice council has been taking on different items regionally last year was looking at policies around use of forced accountability transparency this year we've been looking at mental and behavioral health and kind of what calls are coming in and what what the response is by law enforcement agencies and then comparing between those agencies that have mental health liaisons with law enforcement versus those that do not have mental health liaisons to date all the the public safety agencies for the entire region have filled out that survey and the mental health liaisons have as well and we're hoping that by the end of by our last meeting in November we will have that report and again it seems like we're one of the few regions in the entire country that's actually doing this work so I really want to thank chair person Zach friend and all of our police agencies for participating in this I think we're as we start moving towards these types of systems of shifting behavioral crisis response away from law enforcement that this will be a very informative thank you when do you meet next do you know thank you okay vice mayor Watkins I too don't have as much to report since it was the summer break but I was gonna just briefly report that we had our health and all policies some committee meeting and just really impressed by the work that's happening with that initiative in Tiffany wise West and is always very impressive with what she produces we looked at a dashboard mock-up so really thinking about fleshing at that out and thinking how to integrate also our proxy measures with what we're trying to accomplish with core and with the cap and really being mindful of what to capture there a lot of work happening within the equity best practices and engagement for staff great things happening a lot also along the lines of having really accurate and meaningful Spanish translation and interpretation and guidance for our staff around how to do that exploring diversity and commissions and then more to come I think there will be a presentation council soon and as councilor Calentari Johnson mentioned we had our health our children's fund meeting but it was really kind of the next iteration of where we've where it's existed and resided which it's been a part of our city schools committee meeting and a point of conversation at that meeting and given now that the measure a had passed really looking at how to thoughtfully capture what's worked and then capture what's written in the ordinance for measure a and then really thinking about holistically how to propose moving forward so really exciting stuff happening there and I will let you mayor report on visit Santa Cruz County because I was late to that meeting thank you okay so let's see visit Santa Cruz County meeting we received a presentation on a metric software system that would connect all property management systems vacation rentals hotel years etc and would be able I think right now there's about 45 different metrics that report to key data dashboards and they look at things like average daily rate booking windows track cancellations etc in our lodging industry there were some other reports around the key data and connecting with Airbnb and VRBO and short-term vacation rentals we also spoke a little bit about some potential California legislation around lodging industry that's being researched don't know enough yet to report on that but it was something to look into and lodging task force was created to explore recommendations for group marketing strategies we I also sit on the revenue budget committee and we last met and we had a very short timeline but did as some of you know from our last meeting made the recommendation to put a transient occupancy tax the TOT tax on the November ballot and that information is on the county elections page website and so all the information is there we also had a two-by-two meeting and that is in connection with City of Santa Cruz County of Santa Cruz collaboration on various aspects of homelessness and housing countywide and city working together some of the topics we talked about were project home key updates the county has applied for a couple of home key projects that are in process and we also talked about some funding opportunities and the county has a couple of funding opportunities home key round three and ARP winter funds etc there's a couple of other items that I we didn't go to into detail we discussed the 14 million investment updates property acquisitions and changes pre-development funding we had a one-time 14 million money from the state and that was County City collaboration on spending that money towards homelessness and housing and workforce hiring challenges and housing for workforce also started discussing move-in and sustaining support for those that need help with moving truck storage unpacking and how the county has been helping with a lot of that aspect and how we can get more support for that and identifying starting the discussion for November as we have new county supervisors and new City Council members mayor coming in after the November elections and really kind of identifying and preparing for new folks onboarding and the city and county roles and protocols it was very overview so do you have a question council member Calentari Johnson I forgot about a subcommittee that did meet so okay and you mentioned health and all policies so that concludes my report out council member Calentari Johnson hearing all your reports remember made me remember that I did as part of the safe parking subcommittee member of that subcommittee met with members of AFC as we are starting to roll out two or three of safe parking and I know we'll hear more about that later this afternoon thank you thank you so much okay we are now at the point in the agenda for consent agenda these are items numbers 5 through 17 on our agenda for members of the public who are streaming this meeting virtually now is the time to call in if you would like to comment on any consent agenda item 5 through 17 the instructions should be on your screen please remember to mute your streaming device and you can raise your hand either by dialing star 9 on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature on the webinar controls on your computer if you're joining us here in person and would like to comment on any consent agenda items 5 through 17 you can sign in at the front podium to the right and line up on the right side all items in our consent agenda will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion so at this time I will ask if there are any council members who wish to comment on or pull any consent agenda items council member Myers I just have a question for staff on items 13 and 16 okay you have a question on 13 citywide vegetation management award contract and 16 annual San Lorenzo River flood control maintenance award contract okay anybody else council member Calentary Johnson comment on 12 the award contract for playground equipment at Garfield Park playground okay so at this time then I will go to item number 12 for council member Calentary Johnson's comment so council member Cummings also had his finger up yeah I have a question on at number 15 okay item 15 cost of construction fee revision public works okay oh you know actually I'm sorry it's on a different item okay so I will cancel that question on item 15 and I will return to council member Calentary Johnson for a comment on item 12 I just wanted to comment that I'm really thrilled to see investment going into this tiny little park that gets a lot of use including my kids when they were growing up and a lot of community members over on the west side I think these these are the investments that we need as a community to make it make it healthy for everyone so I'm just really happy to see that and wanted to pull it out and highlight that excited thank you thank you okay council member Myers you had a question on item number 13 yeah I just had a just a question for staff we got a letter in our pocket from Jane Mio who's who's a long-time person who cares a lot about the river she had some she had a question just and I just wanted to reiterate the staff which I think I know the answer to but both of these awards and the folks who are doing the work will be doing the work according to the streambed alteration permits under both cases is that correct and following all those those criteria hello Filipina and I think I know the answer but I just thought I would just ask that question and reconfirm sure hi good afternoon mayor and council members my name is Filipina Warren public works operations manager and to answer your question yes they will be abiding by our permit regulations we'll also have our biologists who will walk through with the crews beforehand on the stipulations for vegetation management and this I mean your question really was for for 16 for the annual right for the for the contract along the river yeah on the river yeah flood management yeah and then I know that the veg management I think she sent another another email to just regarding that and I believe that is that's a citywide streambed alteration permit correct so that that kind of work could take place in other is but has similar protections in terms of the biological correct and then for 13 and 16 for both items we do have our biologists who will go through all the projects that are needed I mean whether it's working you know along the tributaries for San Lorenzo River just making sure that we abide by our permit regulations thank you I just wanted to clarify that just because of the letters that we receive I understand thank you thank you very much for that clarification okay that concludes comments and questions at this time I will go out to public comment if there are members of the public that would like to speak if you're joining us here in person you can line up on the right and I will also look out to our virtual attendees if you are attending virtually please raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature on your webinar controls and I have two hands raised the first name is I am watching you go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself welcome yes I haven't watched your processes your priorities are clear first hire lots more city employees grant employees an extra paid holiday pass out one time money you don't really have to benefit very few people and the backlog infrastructure spending is expendable I see the bad landlord is at it again the night of number 10 I see an item number six you want to extend the COVID emergency to October 22nd based on the fear that COVID case counts can be variable and various government bodies have also done so in truth the seven-day average of COVID deaths in Santa Cruz County about average zero rounded to zero for almost every single week except for reading one or two in a few weeks since March of 2021 more homeless people alone died in the streets than from COVID no emergency there there will be a seasonal case count spikes in December as usual you can count on it but that doesn't make it an emergency it's the normal seasonal illness and at this point the new normal there is no zero COVID possible it is here to stay and hopefully it will evolve as it has to the usual more contagious less deadly brands like Omicron which joins 200 or so viruses humans deal with every year I dare you to name one thing this extension will do that will prevent the very few COVID deaths that might occur the fact that 95% of children under 5 and 70% between 5 and 11 have not received vaccination shots tells me parents have lost confidence in the public health system and its rhetoric and understand children take more risk of harm from side effect laden shots than benefit this emergency is more such fearmonger rhetoric we see the CDC backtracking on its previous guidance as if the awful response failures based on no real science ever happened as the truth now comes out COVID infection protection is brief as the vaccines wear off quickly plenty of evidence exists that in less than six to nine months after the last backs people's now damaged systems make them more likely to have health problems than the unvaccinated you can expect a much more sick population with the vaccination effectiveness wearing off and the immune systems and other vaccine induced damage taking its toll Fauci is retiring obviously around the midterms to avoid its science if i say so mr science himself being thrown out or i wish hauled out in chains is probably when congress changes stripes in november note you state your emergency declarations will continue quote until it has been determined the conditions giving rise the emergency have been abated that is never going to happen anytime soon thank you for your comment our next hand raised is phone number ending in 4844 go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi there hi there are you able to unmute yourself there we go welcome can you hear me now yes thank you thank you um i'd request initially first of all that you schedule specifically item 19 at a time certain today so people can know when to attend that's often done with convenient at the convenience of other housed folks but regarding the consent agenda item 6 7 12 and 16 i would request that uh council member pull them from the agenda for brief comment for the public it's nice that the city council gets to make brief comment but it'll also be nice if the public did as well so i know that council member sandy brown has made a commitment to that effect and i'm i pause briefly to ask if she will do this so i can then we can proceed to those items individually the item i don't hear her thanks sorry i'm just hearing this request um the items that you're asking six seven 12 and 16 six and seven for brief comments 12 and 16 perhaps for a little more but not a lot um well i'm willing to pull them that would give you two minutes to speak on them but we don't have dialogue during our public meeting i understand yeah you're talking about two minutes per item correct yeah you and you said for two and six or six six sorry just just clarify for which items that you want to talk about item uh 12 and 16 and six and seven for brief comment okay why don't you try to make your six and seven comments here during your time and i will pull um well then 16 that's that's acceptable thank you six and seven of course have to do with the emergency declaration which was discussed in some detail by the prior speaker who i may not entirely agree with and all his points but there is a question as to whether what are the criteria when the emergency will end specifically what are the particular criteria for the ending of the emergency around the fire and the ending of the emergency around the issue of the covid crisis so i'm sure the staff can answer that because they must have criteria that's the reason i wanted to pull it so you could ask the staff to do it perhaps the council member will after this that's that's my only questions about six and seven okay so the reason i'm positive is because i'm assuming 12 and 16 is going to be pulled individually and i can talk about them when that comes up yes i've requested that they be pulled and we'll we'll move the rest of the consent agenda before we vote on those so you will have a chance to speak all right if that concludes your public comment and there is no one here in person i will go to item number 12 oh go ahead yes yes um so i will just go to a council member brown who has pulled item 12 and 16 and so that means that we will now i'm looking for a motion on our consent agenda items five through 17 with the exception of 12 and 16 and council member coming i'm happy to move those items and then i just like to see if i'd like to ask the questions of that the member of the public just asked around when we would anticipate the the that we will no longer extend the emergency declaration connected to covid and then also the fires the season fires i'll second that with the same question and city attorney would you like to comment on that waiting to see if my associate is in attendance otherwise i'll be happy to well i'll just i'll just get started the resolution extending the emergency declaration is a mechanism by which certain executive orders and council emergency orders are able to be implemented and so when the council concludes that uh that those measures that have been taken in response to the covid crisis are no longer necessary to implement then it's really a council decision to to to discontinue renewing the emergency declaration item seven concerns a resolution that authorizes the city council continue to continue to use teleconference meetings in lieu of in-person meetings and that's pursuant to a state statute that has been implemented and i believe expires in the beginning of 2024 but again that's a city council policy decision um judging by the attendance of lay in recent council meetings i'm i'm guessing that members of the public appreciate the ability to attend virtually and and so again that's really just a council policy decision thank you for that answer does that great uh okay so we have a motion by council member coming for a second for the consent agenda items five through seventeen with the exceptions of 12 and 16 and seconded by brown may we have a roll call vote please council member is calentary johnson aye folder um Cummings aye brown aye ayers aye vice mayor Watkins aye mayor brunner aye that motion passes unanimously with council member colder absent okay and now we will proceed to item number 12 item 12 is an award contract for playground equipment at garfield park playground um and we had this item pulled uh and if there are any questions we can answer any questions and then go to public comment and then vote on this item i'll just say since i pulled the item i did that upon request by member of the public i don't have any comments on it aside from i was glad to see it on our agenda thank you council member brown are there any other questions okay so we'll go to public comment for this item if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting raise hand feature in the webinar controls of your computer if you're joining us here in person please line up to the right of the dais the timer will then be set to two minutes and okay we have one hand raised virtually and it is phone number ending in 4844 go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi welcome thank you uh first of all i apologize to the council and to sandy i met items five and six but the issue is i'm happy with telecommunication access to the council it does extend the reason council divided combined with actual in-person stuff but the yeah the issue of the criteria is not being established it's just when you whenever you say it's going to go away it's going to go away but you give no criteria for it so that's unfortunate but getting to the item 12 the only really big comment i have here this is about a quarter million dollars for playground equipment and that's who's going to want to deny playground equipment to kids certainly not me but that's also the same amount that's going to deal with the demolition of the and relocation of people in the encampment area for 200 to 300 maybe more people this seems rather disproportionate and i i would mention it at another time but you're be you're going to be passing this resolution now and this is i think a serious situation where the public is being informed that there is going to be a presumably is only a limited amount of money and this significant amount of this money is going to something that can be postponed until such time as emergency situations i e living conditions for three or a hundred or more people can be addressed and this affects the entire community's health of course that's my only comment on this item okay thank you for your comment are there any other members of the public who wish to comment on consent agenda item 12 okay i will bring it back to council for action i'll move the item okay council member mires is there a second a second council vice mayor Watkins any comments okay may we have a roll call vote please council member calentary johnson i boulder absent Cummings brown mires i vice mayor Watkins i and mayor brunner i that motion passes unanimously with the council member boulder absent our next consent agenda item that was pulled is consent agenda item number 16 the annual san lorenzo river flood control maintenance award contract um this is a motion to award a contract for the annual san lorenzo river flood control maintenance are there any council member comments before going out to public comment okay i will uh look to our in-person audience and there's nobody in person for public comment so i will now look to our virtual attendees if you'd like to comment on consent agenda item number 16 now is the time to call in using instructions on your screen there should be instructions on your screen you can press star nine to raise your hand and um and then press star six to unmute yourself and i see one hand raised phone number ending in 4844 go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hello council members again i'm concerned with this the same kind of question as i had for item 12 but i guess what i'm asking here is this quarter of a million dollars going to the san lorenzo river flood control can it be postponed because obviously we have fences going up in the benchlands we have an immediate situation that is going to require some action or at least that's what we're going to hear later in this agenda but here you have another quarter million dollars being pressed forward and i guess the question which no council member wanted to respond to around item 12 is similar to item 16 is there a way of postponing this so that it can be dealt instead can this money instead be used for dealing with the kind of problems that are immediate rather than maybe at a distance now this i i would have to you know i would um accede to the opinion of the city uh city attorney on this to some extent i suppose uh or to someone who has specific information but again when we get vague comments such as oh it's up to the city council to decide this we have no criteria for for example extending the emergency i wonder about anything that has said on this this matter but initially but again the question is essentially basically are you prepared to dump a quarter million dollars into a project if it can be postponed and instead in essence deny that to assist a far more vulnerable group of people who need help now admittedly the benchlands is always faces a danger of flooding and that's a matter for the entire community but it's going to be an immediate matter of uh assistance to people when this comes up and it will be discussed further in 19 19.1.2 thank you for listening and i hope the community turns out on these issues because i don't know if my lone voice is going to be enough to persuade the council. Thank you for your comment i don't see any hands raised um i will ask the question i know that in our agenda packet this uh item number 16 the annual san lorenzo river flood control maintenance award contract the funding for this item comes from the stormwater overlay enterprise fund and there is no impact to the general fund i would like to maybe see if there is staff that can comment on the question as well and while i appreciate the the thought i think it would be more appropriately directed to the public works director who's in the audience today yes thank you good afternoon mark deadall director of public works um yeah this is an annual contract that we do we have to prepare the river for flood control it's per our requirements of the core of engineers these funds are restricted there are stormwater related funds and they have to be used for that type of purpose thank you very much uh let's see councilmember brown i i just i'll make a quick comment um just kind of summarizing the um and responding to the comment that we received from mr. Norse um and while i agree that um you know i have i'd like to be thinking about our budget priorities and all of that um and i want to have that conversation and we will and we do um in these two cases that they are come the the money for these is coming from funds that are outside of the general fund so restricted funds and then external grant funding um so we couldn't really really at all make that kind of transfer um however much i wish we had more flexibility um it's just not the case so um i did want to say that as a response because i agreed to pull the item and i recognize that mr. Norse has some you know some good questions and i want to try to get the public's questions answered so thank you to staff too for um sharing that information and with that i think we're done with public comments so i'll go ahead and move this item great we have a motion by councilmember brown is there a second all second okay vice mayor Watkins may we have a roll call vote councilmember calentary johnson i boulder um Cummings i brown i liars i vice mayor Watkins i mayor brunner i that motion passes unanimously with councilmember golder absent thank you at this time now we will move on into the agenda i will pull up my notes thank you for joining us today next up on our agenda is item number 18 this is the independent police auditor report for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from council we will then take public comment and then return to council for deliberation and action in addition to public comment that we will be hearing today there was one email sent to our city council email address at this time i would like to welcome michael jenako independent police auditor thank you thank you mayor thank you city council it's good to be with you this afternoon i see some familiar faces but again for those who may not recognize me my name is michael jenako and for the past two and a half years i have been your independent police auditor we're here today to present our report which includes the cases that we looked at in 2021 there was an initial presentation of this report to your public safety committee but that was done in closed sessions so this is the first time that the report has been publicly released and we're certainly here to provide a brief overview on what we found and the conclusions we drew from our year of review upper and perhaps next steps we did have a brief power point that i just we created just for purposes of context and we'll go through this rather quickly and obviously be able to answer any questions i know you have a busy agenda before i get too far into the weeds i lost a part of point i'm sure it'll come back we go to the next slide when you can i wanted to introduce my colleague samra marian who's been with me for approximately a year and a half now and we'll be addressing you all in a minute the benefit of having samra as part of our team is that unlike me samra lives in your fair city of santa cruz and so it makes it easier with regard to complaint contact having the opportunity to actually meet in person although we've been challenged with the pandemic with doing that but once restrictions and people feel more comfortable meeting in person by samra's presence here it makes it a lot easier for individuals in your community have that contact with your independent police auditor team of course in addition by her proximity she's able to pick up cases on a more regular basis as they become due i think she can walk to the station from her house so all that is good in any event just to remind you all about our role as independent police auditor we are essentially to review complaint investigations by that we mean if any complaint comes in by a matter of the public that that then triggers a requirement on behalf of the police department to conduct an investigation and as that investigation is moving forward we're in contact with your police department your professional standard sergeant to gauge and to sort of keep up on the progress as cases move forward we also have a responsibility review critical incidents that is major incidents such as officer involved shootings and fortunately there hasn't been one of those recently but as indicated in this report itself there was an incusity death that we reviewed as part of our last report along with the review of the actual cases and what we are looking at is we are reviewing the cases to see whether or not it was a robust objective and fair investigation with regard to the allegations and whether the outcome was evidence-based by that i mean whether the evidence supported the decision that was reached by eventually the chief of police and then for the cases in which there is a violation of policy we also review the case to determine whether or not the intervention the discipline the accountability was consistent with industry standards in addition another role we have is to provide input on Santa Cruz's police department policies and just as an example two weeks ago we were provided by the chief of police a draft policy on complaint investigations personnel investigations and we provided feedback on what we thought could be done to improve the the draft policy and that give and take happens regularly throughout the year we all get to see you once a year and this is our annual visit to the whole council as indicated our protocols also allow for a prior meeting with your public safety committee which we had earlier this year and finally we have an opportunity and we have although have been challenged by the pandemic but pre-pandemic we were able to meet with your Santa Cruz community members any any groups such as the NWCP the UC Santa Cruz NWCP chapter the ACLU chapter we have met either in person or virtually with all of those individuals over the past year and hope to meet and engage with them again perhaps in response to this report so while this report isn't intended to be a presentation to council and your larger community who have tuned in we realize that people may be busy during the day so we always make ourselves available to meet with any group and we've already had some invites on follow-up with regard to this report from some of those groups and we'll be meeting with them but we felt that our primacy was important to meet with you all first we go to the next slide please so that just sort of sums up what I just said on another slide the quantity of work here was 13 investigations that we reviewed and talked about in our report there were two administrative investigations and there were two other matters involving policing performance that didn't come in as a formal complaint but that we did review as well and that's the sum of our work we're going to just spend a few more minutes talking about some of the high-level observations we made with regard to this report um if we could go to the next slide and I'm going to turn this over to my colleague Mary good afternoon mayor council members and members of the public I might like to share with you a few observations we had as we reviewed the complaint investigations and also worked with the police department last year the department's been cooperative and receptive to our role as auditors and there's lots of other jurisdictions where we don't have that type of report so that was absolutely a positive they provided us prompt access to their files and their investigations have been thorough and their conclusions have been sound they also had an internal review process that was thoughtful and a process by which they were making their own internal recommendations again these are our positives that sometimes we don't see in other jurisdictions our review process also enabled us to make recommendations to improve the process and we made 26 recommendations and they largely were about the complaint process we made several recommendations to address the timeliness of complaint investigations you know we suggest a system that accurately logs in the complaints and that there's a process by which they can be reviewed and monitored and then there's a timely completion and we observed through our recommendation process that the department now is taking significant steps to address some problems in the past and this progress on older cases and incoming complaints we're seeing some positive progress we also made some recommendations to enhance the the rapport with complainants and such as a prompt interview of complainants and that complainants be notified in a timely manner not only about the conclusions but about when there are reforms or a learning that's occurred that complainants are aware of that positive process that's that has come out of of the complaint process we also identified some aspects of the department's investigation and review of critical incidents that could be enhanced for example prompt interviews of involved officers during critical incidents and the other aspect with doing this complaint review is we're able to make policy and training recommendations when there's on particular topics so in one of our cases that really involved proxy by bias we were able to look at that case and see ways in which the department could enhance their training and their procedures and when we talk about bias by proxy we're talking about times when community members call in and in a requesting service sometimes those complaints or the the request for service is ill informed sometimes sadly it's by explicit bias and there is a call for a better training a better response and so part of our recommendations was for the police department to have an actual policy and some training on this particular topic throughout the year as we've met with the department again we found them receptive to our recommendations and then either in the process of actively reviewing and addressing some of the other additional recommendations so thank you for this opportunity to provide you an overview of our annual report and of course we're interested in any questions that you may have thank you does that conclude your presentation there are the high level recommendations there on the next to last slide and that sums up what Marion just told you can you push the microphone closer to your mouth please of course thank you mayor a judge just told me that this morning so it's the second time I've been reprimanded for that but I wanted everyone to hear me so I appreciate that but that does sum up we are obviously here to answer any questions you might have I would just emphasize that if we had to sum up the biggest challenge that the police department had it had to do with getting investigations done on time and we the great bulk of our recommendations were intended to ensure that investigations don't lay follow because if under state law if investigations aren't completed within a year even if there is a violation of policy there can be no discipline against the officers if it's not completed within a one year period and we have found cases that have fallen out of that one year statute it was mostly a performance issue of one individual within the police department and I have the chief comment you can obviously comment differently than me on that but that has been resolved the new sergeant has begun to catch up on the backlog which was considerable was considerable but that has been rectified and there have been new controls placed in the system to make sure that doesn't happen again just as an example I understand that the sergeant and the chief meet biweekly where the chief is apprised of the status of every investigation so that this this doesn't happen again recur real occur mayor that's all we have thank you so much I will bring it out to my colleagues for questions and any comments before we go to public comment council member brown mayor thank you for the report I really appreciate hearing from you and the report was very thorough and and and does reflect some of the things you said about the positive experience of working with the Santa Cruz police department I was pleased to see it and hear it I'm not surprised and I so I think guess I wanted to ask and this is kind of a question I want because I'd like to get your perspective but I also maybe would ask this of the chief so the report itself is is very clear and provide some really helpful information and there are recommendations and in some ways it reads like a grand jury report with no responses right so we're we're looking at the recommendations that are being made I'm hearing you say you have a good working relationship that you're in conversation about policy and about the complaints but in terms of how we on the council and members of the public understand to understand that you know how that's going so we know that we know what you know we know what we've been told today but we know that things are that you're working on stuff right that the and the scpd is taking this seriously and so I guess I'm just wondering from your perspective how we might better do that and I'd love to also just hear from chief escalante if you have a moment any thoughts you might have on how it is that we and use this information to say well we got the report and we just heard that it's things are being worked on something more detailed or or direct through the mayor council member brown thank you for that question what I can tell you is I can tell you what other how other jurisdictions respond to the questions that you've raised so in some jurisdictions for example in the city of Palo Alto where we have been the auditor for decade and a half they have recently come up with a system whereby once we issue recommendations there is an expectation that the police department will respond in a way to tell you all elected body or the elected body of Palo Alto whether they agree with the recommendations and whether they intend to implement them or not and that's one way in which you can have more information about you know to the degree that the recommendations have been accepted will they be implemented some of them may not reoccur as regularly so we'll not know you know we'll not know until another similar incident happens god forbid before some of the recommendations ever end up becoming real but some are more things that can be done now if in fact the police department is agreeable the other thing that we will do in our next report to the degree that our earlier recommendations are relevant we'll be commenting on them ourselves in the next report uh thank you to invite chief ascalante thank you good afternoon mayor bruner and council um one thought that comes to mind is a report back to the public safety committee potentially um i think the the challenge here was the timing of the public safety committee getting or we discussed the report you know six months ago or more um and then we're just now getting an opportunity to present it publicly and to all of you and to comment on the recommendations before all of council got the opportunity to see the report seemed a little out of line so i think just this particular year with covid challenges and stuff timing has been off and i think uh an opportunity for us to report back to the public safety committee if that's sufficient on on the recommendations thank you that's that's very helpful can since can i also bring up just for members of the public i believe if there is um the process to file a complaint is on the transparency portal of the city website is that correct yes there's a few different avenues there's a written form at the police department in the lobby there's also online with the uh transparency portal okay and there's more information there i think um i know i received a couple questions about who the auditor is and um kind of that role so i would encourage anyone to get that information from the lobby or the transparency portal online on the city website on the police department's website police yeah city of santa cruz police department website thank you councilmember meyers i'm sorry chief can i ask you one more question there was um 26 recommendations and you know looking through the report it seemed like some may you know require some initial or immediate more immediate kind of addressing addressing those versus others and i'm just wondering if you know you have a sense of priorities for example the bias based you know policing policy um it it showed up i think in one particular incident and there was a recommendation to um to really look at that um trying to reevaluate and develop additional training on to prevent bias by proxy so i'm looking at one of those and saying you know that seems like a fairly important update to training but i'm just curious how do you look at these 26 recommendations and prioritize them in terms of training information management all of those and just curious if you have a idea on how you do that would do that um i think probably the highest priority for me would be policy that requires an immediate change at the at the staff level that's happening every day every night those are the most immediate priorities for me the training one is always a priority we always try to put together a long list of quality training for our staff um this report i think came out in march um we're actually just hoping to go into our first training season this fall so that would be the opportunity our first opportunity unfortunately we weren't doing training um like we normally do in the spring because of covid and bringing staff together in one room so that would be our earliest opportunity to address that um honestly there were some recommendations in there that were um i was disappointed to hear that weren't already happening and should be happening and should have been occurring um and sometimes it's just we've always done it that way and it wasn't necessarily in policy on paper uh but it was always understood to to happen uh such as you know interviewing people as quickly and promptly as possible so um there are some recommendations that i think we fixed the moment we saw them okay thank you and thank you for the report very thorough thank you uh councilmember calentary johnson chief i wonder if with any of these recommendations in particular around training if we if there's opportunity to um work across jurisdictions in our county and leverage resources i know that you have a chief's uh meeting or committee that meets regularly so how much are other communities doing this and how much is our opportunity to kind of join forces to respond to the recommendations yeah that's that's a great question and we do collaborate with other training managers in the county uh when possible especially when we bring in outside resources uh instructors that are going to cost us a lot of money we kind of share that that responsibility so we always do look to try to come together when when it works out sometimes it's just it's hard to line up our calendars councilmember comings thank you mayor and i just want to one um thank the city staff and uh the public safety committee because i believe this is the first time that the auditor's report has been presented publicly in the past it's been in closed session and a lot of members of the public were saying why isn't this being presented publicly so we can have another sense of you know what's happening with our police department and i think it's just a really good opportunity for us to see um you know what's going well where there are areas for improvement and then allows us and members of the public to just you know support the recommendations or see where we can where there's areas for improvement so i just want to express my appreciation um for the transparency of this department and um and the willingness for that transparency um i just wanted because i had a similar question related to um councilmember brown's suggestions and questions around providing feedback on the recommendations because i did find that with the the one case that came up around um the biased call um you know one thing that that we passed back in 2020 was the discriminatory reports to law enforcement ordinance and this seems like a really good opportunity for us to see you know how we can make that ordinance more effective because and this is just for the members of the public but one of the whereas is uh discriminatory law enforcement reports against people of color for racially motivated reasons are common enough that many people of color have experienced one or more incident of being contacted by law enforcement when engaging in normal day-to-day activities these incidents cost serious harm to the person falsely accused of a crime causing anxiety and distrust among people of color and put an unnecessary strain on our law enforcement officers responding to frivolous calls were frivolous and false calls and you know the fact that this was an instance where there were two african-americans one white person at a storage unit that were unloading um property from the storage unit into a van that's you know a normal day-to-day activity and it's you know the result of the call coming in and then officers responding to it is kind of the situation that we have before us um and then to councilmember colin third johnson's point i know that the sheriff's department passed something recently to around prohibiting discriminatory calls and so it seems like you know this could be an opportunity where if the recommendation is to come up with the policy we already have a policy in place now we have to just kind of figure out how we can get that policy communicated you know with dispatch to the officers and then the officers being able to respond so i just thought it was really great that you know we can have this before us and and kind of see that you know by us coming together there's there's that we're actually working on a lot of these um issues um so that's that's just a comment i wanted to make on this um and so i guess i really didn't have any questions aside from you know whether or not providing some direction on bringing back responses if that would be appropriate um it sounds like it could go to public safety committee one thought i had was whether or not we could bring this the recommendations the responses to the recommendations back at the beginning of january or middle january that way when the new council sits it's an opportunity for them to learn about this process and hear about what the police are doing to respond to the recommendations yeah and i was going to mention that um to your point about the bias by proxy incident and i think that was one of a few incidents that uh motivated the the new ordinance i think if i'm not mistaken the timing keep in mind here this report uh because of the pandemic and other issues includes cases i think all the way back to 2019 if i'm not mistaken so um i'd have to look back to be 100 certain but i think this particular call and a couple others is really what motivated that sort of conversation and ultimate ordinance that that all of you i believe pass so um yeah and then uh you know we we could certainly add that to the the agenda for the public safety committee early in in the year of 2023 and then um i guess the one other question i had was around the investigations being done in a timely manner is that largely related to the fact that we've had such we've had a lot of issues with staffing in the police department and a lot of vacancies and because of that you know people are being stretched pretty thin so i'm just wondering kind of what might be driving that yeah you know i i think there was a lot of factors behind it and so you know ultimately um it it falls on me and and it's my responsibility to make sure that that it doesn't happen so um you know again we can get into a lot of the reasons and who why and point fingers but um at this point it's my responsibility so it needs to change and i think you'll see the next report will be much more robust because uh we're sending cases almost on a daily basis to the group and they're already trying to figure out how to incorporate it into a report because we've really done um sergeant hoppy specifically has really done a lot of work we also made efforts to uh we brought in two independent contractors that we assigned cases to to help us get caught up which we're not doing at this point we don't feel like we need to continue it but that was one of the many measures we put in place um i also want to touch real quickly we also as an organization i think it's every year or every other year we have required implicit bias training that is required to all of our staff and some of that you know part of that training includes some of this uh bias by proxy sort of situations that we try to avoid great thank you thank you council member Cummings are there any other questions from council members okay seeing none i will at this time now take it out for public comment um if you are joining us here in person please line up here at the at the front of the dais and if you are joining us uh virtually please raise your hand by dialing star nine on your phone or choosing the raise hand webinar feature on your computer all right we have one person in person here welcome um my name is lee broca um i'm uh on the board of the aclu locally i'm chairman of the police accountability and transparency committee and i'm not allowed to speak for the aclu so i'll be speaking for myself um i would like to welcome both mike and samara i know both of them um martin Bernal asks peter and i to meet with mike to talk about uh hiring a full-time um auditor when mike was uh was our intro monitor and i think after you left the room we said you've got one you don't need to go hire another one um i've read this report and um i initially wrote myself a question of the date that andy left but then i realized that even though this report is coming to us in august it was in march so everything that was in here is is i understand is on andy's watch um and i wanted um the chief to know that anything i say i'm not saying about um the time that he's responsible um i would like to ask um oir if they would put in the complaints the date of the complaint and the date of the resolution of the complaint it's a little hard for a civilian to tell um if all these complaints occurred one right after another or over a period of time and from a civilian understanding i i think that would um really help um i see a recommendation to convene uh use of force board and i also see that the parameters of who sits on that board are not uh at least not in this report and i would like to ask council i if there is a position for a civilian on the use of force board i volunteer please um there's one complaint in here that i find very troubling um i speak to police departments as citizen when i see officers breaking the law and i call it to their attention because they're not watching that officer when i am and it's just like when people call me up and say my crew is acting up on a job and i'm not there i'm thankful to have somebody tell me about misbehavior and my response to the police is always if you will lead the people will follow we have an officer who drove against traffic on highway 17 your that is your time and that is unconscionable feel free to email us or contact us for further comment okay is there anyone else in person that would like to comment on this item i will look to our virtual attendees i see a few hands raised and the first name i see is reggie meisler go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself can you hear me yes welcome thank you um i mean in my personal view and i'm sure uh you're not surprised knowing who i am um i feel that our current form of police and prisons are so rooted in exploitation and oppression at this point that they should just be abolished and sort of reimagined the concept of public safety from the ground up um i mean there's some sort of like fundamental issues that as mayor coming sorry councilmember Cummings has cited police response to people of color in the unhoused i mean we already have training for implicit bias and people we've had training for that three years everywhere and it just doesn't do anything so i think it's just a little bit of reflection would be nice there but sort of getting back to where we are today i think i have several questions if investigations aren't completed within a year we are told that police can avoid accountability for complaints made against them um given the well-known issue of the blue wall of silence how are we supposed to take seriously that the checks and balances of just like the sheriff or chief escalante uh getting through these for instance what will happen to chief escalante if he does not get through these complaints that's my question um and then uh i had some problem with the police auditor didn't really give as much transparency as i would expect he didn't provide the name and badge number of police officers who received complaints against them and uh and it felt like a lot of the data was very flat aggregated and obscured so i'm not sure the benefit of this being told to the public if we don't have all the details i think at this point i mean if we want to do something and you guys don't want to abolish stuff like fair enough but i mean it seems like you at least need the ability the ability to elect and recall individual police officers i mean you need some amount of democratic accountability it just doesn't like make sense that you could give these people the power to kill you and you don't think we should be able to recall them like a city council member can't kill you but you can recall them so i just don't i mean this person can restrain you they can jail you they can take your rights away and they can take your life away it's just insane to me that we think that writing a complaint that can just disappear in a year is good enough thank you for your comment our next member of the public is the name sarge cognow go ahead and raise your uh i'm sorry go ahead and press star six to unmute good afternoon mayor and city council my name's sarge cognow and as the co-chair of the county's mental health advisory board i'd like to thank council member Cummings report on the criminal justice council their upcoming report and the compilation of some data points on behavioral health calls for service from our county's law enforcement departments yet there's more specific data which the city could collect regarding the police auditor report i thank mr genocco and miss marion's work i truly appreciate that we have an independent auditor not all cities in our county do in fact at this time the county has not yet implemented theirs with 988 recent implementation to make getting support for behavioral health crisis more accessible and timely and 988 state and federal recommendations for more mental health mobile crisis services to respond to those calls i would make the request of the city council consider having our police auditor add a section in the yearly report regarding city specific information on behavioral health responses and outcomes of calls for service for 988 calls routed to 911 for non-emergency calls and for mental health liaison outcomes for callbacks and field responses data could include number numbers of calls in each of those three sections responder type and numbers call type and outcomes of referrals made regarding bias by proxy i appreciate mr genocco's recommendation to implement bias by proxy trainings i would also suggest the inclusion of data in future police auditor reports of types of bias by proxy including gender race lgbt qi homelessness and disabilities including mental health and substance use disorders i would ask for explanation of the discrepancy between the racial bias ordinances financial consequences on a caller which city council Cummings referred to and the recommendation in the report for a restorative justice approach to following up with the caller i thank the city council for their focus on compassionate and effective trauma and form services and oversight thank you for your comment our next member of the public is the name i am watching you you can press star six yes hello yeah i wasn't going to speak to this but since you brought it up this uh law about the uh i don't know raises 911 calls or or something you know we went through that and you never did justify that that ordinance because it's very clear that the supreme court case of brandon bird versus ohio defined what isn't free speech and it is creating an eminent incitement of violence and harm otherwise offensive speech is protected speech okay period and i don't see how you can cause a police officer to arrive somewhere without using speech unless i don't know what sign language i don't know so it's a it's a an end around uh the our constitution you know and uh i'm curious uh and false police reports of course are already covered by other laws and uh i i just wonder uh do you have any convictions for this yet has it done anything that's my question then anyway um thanks for taking my call thank you for your comment our next caller is phone number ending in 4844 you can press star six to unmute yourself ready hello can you hear me yes okay um this is interesting to me because i remember when the we actually had a week but more effective than uh an auditor citizen's police review board from in the 90s and this was this was eliminated by a conservative council but it had far more power than the the current uh ipa it had and and what you have here i mean i would echo the concerns of lee brockow reggie misler uh regarding the fact that uh you know you should be sure dotting your eyes and crossing your teeth instead of dealing with basic stuff which has to do with accountability and transparency by the police department and without the information there can't be that this is the first year as uh one of the ipa people have said that this report has been made public well i'd like to see uh how the how the money was spent from 2003 to 2021 when you had a so-called independent police auditor who gave the city council secret reports and the public didn't get to view them so that i think is something that needs to be made public as it reveals really the extent of ongoing abuses that have been ignored how likely the police department is to respond to concerns i mean once you get people being shot dead in national publicity and it being clearly a racial situation then you get uh temporarily action people hustle to do a little whitewashing and cover things up and that's santa cruz's police department is is really no exception please folks the blue folks to defend their own understandably sort of a guild defense anyway uh the ipa has not met with any homeless civil rights organizations and they're often the people homeless folks who get the most flak and i would invite the two of them to get in touch with the union of the homeless food and our bombs and with huff homeless united for friendship and freedom but again what power does the ipa have other than to make suggestions a lot of these suggestions are good suggestions but they have no force and by the way that horrible bell that you ring with is very offensive mayor brunner it is rude to people who are on the phone it discourages them i know you want to shut us up you know and the time limit even though there's plenty of time for people to finish their sentences even their paragraphs so i will leave it at that i will say that unless you've got the power it is a pointless exercise it is a pantomime it is the appearance of action rather than action and it's not good thank you for your comment our next member of the public is the name io go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself uh can everyone hear me yes welcome hi welcome y'all um yes my name is io banjo um and i'm the california hawaii and a cp uh vice president uh speaking on behalf of myself today um i just wanted to call in about this uh auditor report now uh michael ganako uh let's get to see you as well um we all had a conversation uh a few years ago about the police auditor's role and the fact that we felt like the role was very toothless um that they had very little power that they were really just there to um make suggestions and i do want to see a more comprehensive conversation that goes on between um the auditor's role um as well as uh chief escalante around ways to expand the uh power and authority of the uh police auditor's role um i just feel that if we gave them more investigatory powers and we're able to give them and equip them with more resources um and a little bit more authority um that these recommendations can really be stipulations and um i think it's kind of weird that the police that we expect the police to police themselves when they're the ones that make those mistakes and expect for those investigations to like you know somehow come out on time um new week we cannot continue the same system um and expecting the people who you know you know a lot of times have fraternities called the brotherhood fraternity of police um how we expect them to also you know hold hold each other accountable it's a little bit difficult for me to to understand that so um i do think that we need to have a much more stronger police auditor's role um i do um respect um michael donaco's leadership um and i think that he is doing a good job and i think that we should continue to equip his office with the resources that they need um to really tackle these issues i also believe um that uh chief escalante um really does need to sit down with other um groups and organizations across the community um to understand how to reduce the um the violence that we see done to low poverty folks um we know that police don't even want a police homeless folks and we know that we need to have another separate system um i think it was mentioned a 988 system um to address mental health issues um i'd love to see the status update about those conversations um with um around trying to bring in more behavioral health liaisons um and basically create a whole new um emergency response um agency within the department of health and human services to be able to respond to those issues um instead of it being a partnership between them and police um so i would love to see that kind of idea built out and ultimately honestly i just want to see more research and data driven approaches to understanding how to really um lower crime um i just feel like we feel we continue the same traditions of trying to address criminality and we don't really we see that it fails a lot of times and i don't feel like we're data driven around the outcomes so those are the things i want us to consider um and thank you for the time uh thank you uh councilmember Cummings for your comments um i do hope to see a more comprehensive report very very soon thank you so much for your comment our next member of the public is the name Sabina Holber go ahead and unmute um thank you for bringing this up to council i think it's really really important to make sure that we are auditing the police and we are looking at these things i want to encourage anyone listening to go read the full report it's really worth your time but um you know it's 35 pages it's not as dense as it looks um but i wanted to read one paragraph straight from the report because it really struck me as honestly just like very sad and something that we we should be looking at our police to be helping our community um so this is the case in which the detainee did end up dying um so just quote another topic for department consideration involves the officer's initial view that the detainee was faking his medical distress when the officers pulled the non-responsive detainee out of the patrol vehicle they attempted to have him stand upright and he collapsed onto his niece they continue to assume the detainee was fading in symptoms report repeatedly ordering him to stand up one officer told him stop you were fine five minutes ago stand up to their credit they summoned medical assistance however when the jail nurse arrived they told her he's pretending to be unresponsive and explained that he had been screaming the whole way to the jail until they opened the door to remove him from the patrol car the IPA recommends that the department debrief with the involved officers about this case including their incorrect assumption that the detainee was fainting his medical distress as well as the other issues raised by the departments and IPA's review um honestly if you read that paragraph and you don't get sad about it i i just don't know what to say it's truly depressing that this officer would not take the medical situation seriously in this case again they died shortly after this um and i really just hope that there's more empathy from the police about the community members that they're interacting with that they stop making assumptions that people aren't in medical distress or don't have problems to be taken seriously um and again i would recommend that everybody read this report in its full length thank you thank you for your comment i'm not seeing any other hands raised for agenda item number 18 this is a report on the independent from the independent police auditor so seeing no further public comment i will bring it back to council for action and deliberation council member Cummings thank you mayor and i just want to thank everyone who's called in and again thank our police chief and our city police officers and staff and our independent auditor um for increasing transparency around this topic um it's obviously something that's very important and again this is the first time we've had this report um presented in public and i think um a lot of folks have been able to acknowledge some really good work that's been done and then opportunities for improvement um so and given the that there's been some concerns coming up around um responses to the recommendations um i've prepared a motion um and i've sent it over to bonnie um motion would be to accept the report and direct staff to bring back a response to the recommendations provided by the police auditor by no later than the first meeting in february 2023 um i think like this kind of forum and having these responses presented at the city council meeting just provides our full council with an opportunity to see what's going on and be able to make some decisions and work with um law enforcement in case there's an opportunity for us to create a subcommittee to further investigate some of these items and so um just thought that this would be you know provide an adequate timeline as well given that um it's august and this will be almost six months before this would come back and then after the motion i have a couple comments i wanted to make as well okay we have a motion is there a second and then we can go to discussion uh yeah i will second that and if i could just say um i i want to thank the um the police chief for suggesting uh taking this through the public safety committee and i i do think that's a space to have those conversations and and really kind of work through how to um how to make this process effective more effective than um you know and just continuous improvement in that spirit um but i do think that the it would be great given where we're at for the for the council to have an update as well and have that on our public agenda but in general i do think the public safety committee can be a space for for that ongoing conversation so that's why i'm supporting this motion now thanks thank you council member brown so we have a first by council member a motion by council member coming seconded by council member brown and um i will uh open it up for any further questions or comments um but i did have a question there were a couple of uh uh comments brought up from the members of the public um and and that kind of revolved around adding additional responses and i'd like to invite the independent auditor to speak to how that process uh works on your end um for adding additional data to the reports thank you for the question mayor um there are some restrictions um as a result of state law confidentiality provisions that limit what we can talk about and i think it's important to educate your public on those um 832.7 of the penal code which has been around for 50 years does not allow auditors or anyone else quite frankly to disclose the names of individuals who are the subjects of internal investigations as part of the peace officer bill of rights confidentiality provisions um so that information uh is intentionally not included otherwise the city would be in violation of state law we do a legal review we send our confidential draft to the city attorney to make sure we're not violating any confidentiality provisions but it is a balance between uh an interest and transparency and then the state law privacy protections that currently at least um police officers have and so that's the challenge and the tension that we're continually trying to maneuver and and navigate but we you know we appreciate um the opportunity to at least tell the story um this is what was you know a community member was complaining about this is how uh the department handled it and this is uh the outcome so that for the first time in ever probably your community at least has an opportunity to see these are the kinds of things that came in over this one year period and this is how the department handled it good bad or ugly thank you appreciate that clarification and information um and there was another question um um well i i also am in agreement with council member brown and and chief escalante brought up the public safety committee as a a location that would continue and um hear the report and the recommendations when does that do you know off hand when that next meets and i'll invite chief escalante to the podium i actually was just trying to look it up on my calendar and i can't seem to find they're scheduled out every month for emergency reasons so but typically we meet quarterly so i was trying to figure out which one was set in stone so i apologize i don't have that yeah yes i believe we meet in january and then in february but i apologize but don't quote me on that i can find out though great and so with the motion that's on the table um would it be helpful to kind of arrange it that our council hears um a report back after the public safety committee has had a chance to review yeah i mean we'll we'll do what what you would prefer but in my mind as much as i understand process for all of you if we can uh do the first step with the public safety committee and maybe there's additional questions or clarifying issues that they want to answer before it comes to to all of you okay might be um this is farce process but great i appreciate that thank you um let's see are there uh other council members with any questions or comments this is um okay so we you have a comment yeah council member coming thank you yeah i just wanted to get through making the motion before i made my comments um one thing i did want to add one of the members of the public uh was asking about kind of tracking calls like non-emergency calls and how those are handled and one thing i will point out is that this year through the work that's being done with the criminal justice council and trying to assess how many calls are being made their mental behavioral health and the outcomes of those calls um some of those police codes have been changed with the um the dispatch office and so this november will get a sense of how uh we're able to track those calls and i think that um if there's interest in members of the public to have us continually tracking that data it could be an opportunity for us to have that discussion get some feedback from the different law enforcement agencies on how tracking those calls have gone and maybe that's something that we can continue doing to continue to do moving forward and if it's in the interest of it being kind of a county level um maybe what we can do is have that conversation with the criminal justice council get a sense of how much that would cost and maybe that could be a body that could do that ongoing work um so just something that came to mind regarding that call and then um i will also acknowledge there was um some interest that's come up especially around this individual that was in medical distress but there was also interest in policies around medication and transportation policies so if somebody is being arrested and let's say they have medication in their vehicle ensuring that that medication can can um go with the individual individual as they're being um booked with something that's come up as well and so i think there's a lot of opportunities for us to continue to improve um and happy to to work with members of the public on that thank you council member comings and just for clarification for the public the uh criminal justice council is a countywide uh organization that meets and the public safety committee that was mentioned is a city committee um and so we're happy to provide more information on those bodies as well okay thank you for your comments thank you for the information uh we have a motion uh from council member Cummings seconded by council member brown and may we have a roll call vote please council member it's calentary johnson i boulder is absent Cummings i brown i liars i vice mayor whatkin i mayor bird hi that motion passes unanimously with council member golder absent thank you so at this time we will take a short bio break and um we will return at 225 to council to continue with item number 19 item number 19 will be the quarterly homelessness response update thank you all right thank you we are now resuming our august 23rd 2002 santa cru city council meeting next up on our agenda is item number 19 homelessness response update for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen please note that public comment period for the below will be both for 19.1 and 19.2 public comment will be limited to no more than total of 30 minutes and each speaker will have two minutes the order will be a presentation of items 19.1 and 19.2 by staff followed by questions from council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action at this time we have our presenters of this item larry and walle our city homelessness response manager is here with us in person and we will receive an update regarding council directed homelessness response programs and services including the homelessness response action plan and implementation details objectives and outcomes welcome larry good afternoon thank you mayor and members of the council can you hear me all right good afternoon larry and walle homelessness response manager as mentioned we have a two-part staff report this afternoon the first being an update on homelessness response services and our homelessness response action plan and then the second item a report on the vanshlands restoration project which i'll turn over to deputy city manager lisa murphy so within the quarterly updates there's four broad topic areas that we'll cover the first being progress reports on the implementation of our homelessness response action plan updates on regional collaboration related to homelessness then safe sleeping one moment while we get screen sharing activated here there we go thank you thank you for that so as i was saying there's four parts to our agenda for the update the quarterly updates updates on the homeless response action plan updates on the regional collaboration homelessness then updates on our safe sleeping and shelter programs and the camping services and standards ordinance and then the fourth section is safe parking and the size vehicle ordinance update so in the first section implementation of the homelessness response action plan just you know for context again back on march eighth council adopted our three-year homelessness response action plan that articulated five broad areas building capacity and partnerships permanent affordable and supportive housing basic support services including hygiene sheltering and storage here in stewardship and the fifth area community safety so through in the most two most recent quarterly updates on march and in may as we rolled out the three-year homelessness response action plan began implementation one of the key areas was building internal capacity to be able to do this work at the main meeting we outlined a number of positions to build that infrastructure since that time we have completed recruitment and have hired and onboarded team members within this the homeless response team for the city including a homeless services coordinator and three outreach and shelter specialists that equate their all-part time equate two full-time equivalents and we also hired a community relations specialist dedicated to homelessness response in that time also the community service officers the two positions that were part of this plan have been dedicated to work on homelessness topics presently in the hiring process detailed and orange on your screen are the positions related to the homelessness response field division within public works a number of these positions were new so we've created new job descriptions that process has been completed and now those positions are open for recruitment presently and hope to have that team on board soon another key part of building internal capacity to do the city's homelessness response work is about building capacity around information systems two key areas first data systems to be able to track information on participants that we're providing services to either through the city's direct programs or through contracts with partner agencies and so in the last quarter city staff and our contractor providers have gotten access to the homeless management information system h i m h m i s that is administered by the county so those programs are now in that system and we're collecting client data and that will allow us to be able to as a system track contact connections to other service providers and outcomes so that's been a key accomplishment and next step in this process in the last three months another piece of that is a new county wide h m a s outreach module that's being piloted and again this is a tool to use for persons collecting information on persons who may be experiencing homeless who are not yet connected to a service provider this is sort of the opportunity to begin to gather that information get do some initial assessment to be able to connect to services and other providers and this is being piloted as part of the bench lands focused rehousing efforts that is underway in collaboration with the county and community partners and so this is the first time it's been used city outreach staff have been integral into this implementation they're responsible for right now there's about a hundred and fifty five persons who've been entered into the module we're also named h m i s now and that works really good done by the city outreach staff at this point and just from that seeing who's already in h m s what service connections they have and that's really enabling our partners both in county programs and nonprofits to begin to identify where there's connections already where for instance somebody may have a voucher but doesn't have a housing navigator so can really inform practice and work with our homeless community the other key area where we're building internal capacities around budget and financial systems first time the city now has a new homelessness response budget division that was created for this fiscal year that's really going to allow us to have an integrated budget cross departments so that we can understand where our resources are going in a very holistic way um and be able to through reporting structure that's being developed to really monitor costs understand where our budget is and be able to make those analyses about where to best dedicate our resources some updates on with respect to regional collaboration on the homelessness friends one broad area is on the coral street master planning process uh the first part is uh we've had a we have planned a design charrette around the coral street that we identified at the last quarterly updates at the rfp was released uh and a vendor has been selected that contract is nearing completion it's with the dollon group and they process for that work uh but the consulting firm to lead this master planning design charret will involve doing a number of stakeholder interviews in the community developing some alternative design and development scenarios and then have facilitating a community input process around those to develop so that work is about to get started with the consulting firm it's projected to be about a seven month process so we'd expect that to be can you just clarify the definition of the word charrette for members of the public um i will do my best maybe somebody has a better definition but um it's um it's a facilitated process where you get input around in this context different designs and development scenarios so people can provide input and feedback um they take different forms some are done in a single session some play out over multiple days where that you know you have that feedback and then new designs are developed and represented and it's sort of an iterative process but fundamentally it's facilitating a process of engaging and getting input from stakeholders on a design process hope that's sufficient thank you so that would be getting underway uh soon and should be complete in february according to a seven month plan the other key piece around the master planning process was the acquisition of property at 125 coral street this is the property immediately adjacent to the housing matters campus on coral street and it abuts the building that's actually has the hygiene bay that is a city property and what this property acquisition does is it gives another piece to be included in that design process to think about what the potential uses are and what can be billed out at scale at that campus through this process so that was a key acquisition the other element at coral street that's currently underway is the hygiene bay remodel that provides you know shower services and hygiene services for all the users at the housing matters campus if you recall that that's been in much need of repair they've been relying on portable shower trailers quite some time an rfp went out for that and a contract was awarded in june for that work and construction project is underway and that too is expected to be completed in february so that will be a significant upgrade and expand services on the housing matters campus there coral street other aspects of regional collaboration to give you some quick updates on first being the housing for health partnership and this is the regional continuum of care organization it launched under this new name and this new government structure back in april the group meets the policy board which is responsible for high level planning and decision-making meets quarterly so there was a june meeting and then we just met on august 17th last week some key actions that can informational updates that came out of those meetings on june 8th the housing for health partnership board approved submission of a joint application for the housing homeless assistance and prevention local homelessness action plan to the cal california agency council on homelessness that was a six million dollar grants proposal roughly they also discussed updates that are being made to the coordinated entry system that are in process so there was no action that came out of that there's an operational committee that is working on modifying and updating the policies and procedures for coordinated entry and then they also share the news the successful home key application the grant award for the veterans village that took place this summer and at last week's quarterly meeting the policy board ratified the submission of four california emergency solution grant applications and also established and authorized a application review committee for the hud's continuum of care notice of funding opportunity or nofo applications that are due in september 30th most of that the renewal annual renewal grants of the existing hud grant funding but there's also a new notice of funding opportunity related to unsheltered rural homelessness for that will award up to about three hundred thousand dollars a year locally eviction prevention again back in april collaboration with the county looking at looking at efforts to be able to support and prevent prevent eviction the city committed a hundred and fifty thousand dollars to support eviction prevention efforts and amended a contract with the community action board to implement that work that contract's been completed the work is underway and do not have an update at this point in terms of how much has been spent and how many families have been supported so far but we'll bring an update on the use of that hundred and fifty thousand dollars at the next quarterly update we also released an rfp for pre-development grant funding to support the development of permanent supportive housing shelters or transitional housing projects we allocated up to five hundred thousand dollars for this fund expecting individual awards to be in the range of fifty to one hundred and twenty five thousand dollars the application deadline was extended to september ninth um and through this process the staff has worked collaboratively with county on developing the application criteria the rubric and they'll be partners in the review process so the deadline is september ninth we'll be revealing those applications that come in on a quick timeline and hoping to be able to make grant awards in october and i mentioned a little bit briefly in the context to h im s h m i s and the new outreach module but we also have an effort going around um bench land service coordination particularly with a rehousing focus related to the closure of the camp and the restoration of the park so we're collaborating city county and nonprofit agencies to engage uh everyone that is residing in the bench lands to do that outreach engagement to see what service connections be made work with them to develop their individualized rehousing plans so the first step is city staff is working and conducting a census of the persons in the bench lands that data is getting into the h m s outreach module we're having weekly service coordination meetings with partner agencies to talk through this process setting up a schedule where other providers in the community in the county programs will be operating and working down in the bench lands there is a mobile office that's been placed on the county property but right behind the county building above the bench lands that'll be a base of operations for service providers to work and meet persons to provide services and do those connections and as i mentioned the the key piece about the data sort of systems integration here is identifying who's already um in h m s has been connected to service providers in the past what information we have to be able to really work and develop some individualized plans as well as identify some strategies um insurance and service needs so like what i mentioned is uh there's a number of people that already have vouchers housing vouchers and so there's housing navigation resources and so how do we make sure that we make those connections and people are paired off so they can get that support to utilize their voucher if ever possible um the other uh piece of information and this was presented at the county board of supervisors meeting on august 9th with the housing for health divisions semi-annual update it was also presented at the housing for health partnership meeting last week but the initial results from the point in time count that took place on february 28th of this year this is the HUD mandated census that's required and this is the first point in time count that's been completed since uh 2019 as a result of the pandemic more detailed results will be available the final report is going to be published in one to two months according to the county but um some initial sort of broad or high level results were shared at that meeting so first it shows the census showed an overall increase of homelessness in the county of six percent between 2019 and 2022 that's an increase from 21 2167 to 2299 people in santa cruz county that's the overall population of persons experiencing homeless among those who are unsheltered the increase was four percent between 2019 and 2022 from 1700 to 1774 and then diving down a little bit into some of the findings there are some positive trends based off the the early data there was a 59 decrease in homelessness among families with children under the age of 18 there was also a 94 decrease in unsheltered homelessness among families overall and then homelessness among youth aged 18 to 24 declined by 61 percent overall and among those unsheltered but these positive trends and findings were tempered by some notable increases in other areas specifically homelessness among veterans and people with disabilities that have experienced multiple or long episodes of homelessness the data also indicated the number of chronically homeless people increased by 129 percent over the last three years from 403 to 921 and the data also shows significant increases in the number of people with self-reported behavioral health and health problems that are experiencing homelessness so more data will be available when the full report is released in a month or two as I mentioned and we'll bring that information as part of our next quarterly report updates on safe sleeping shelter and the CSSO first with transitional community camps specifically it's 1220 river street and it's been maintaining near full capacity as soon as we have openings available we've been able to identify people to fill those positions so we've had good enrollment and capacity since we've opened this program back in January all participants have been participating in case management meetings with city staff as required as I mentioned we have this program enrolled participants enrolled in HMIS there's access to on-site county benefit specialists that come to the 1220 river camp and we also have weekly on-site behavioral health support so those services are coming on site for program participants and just a few notable outcomes since the last quarterly update two people have obtained housing just a week and a half ago one reunited with family and moved out of the county in addition to that overall we have 10 people at 1220 river who have vouchers and are seeking housing and I think one of the upsides of the service coordination that we're partnering with the county and other nonprofit providers through the bench lands rehousing but having these conversations and data sharing through that conversation we identified that we have a number that number of persons with vouchers and so the county is going to work specifically to see how to connect 1220 participants with housing navigation so that's been a really positive development to try to get people in position to be able to utilize those vouchers in addition we've had one of the participants obtained full-time employment and two are actively seeking employment and related to that part of that is the outcome of a lot of work in sort of getting people to have their vital documents in order and be able to make it through the employment process the other the other element of our safe sleeping and shelter programming is our programming up at the National Guard Armory partnering with the Salvation Army all that the initial city overlook program was open in mid-may that's a program that has space for 75 persons there's 24 seven program for 65 people in 10 spaces for overnight and the program includes meals transportation showers and we reached full enrollment up at that program back in June and it's been maintaining full enrollment since that time if you recall from the June 28th council meeting authorized an expanded contract with Salvation Army to operate inside the Armory building the county had been operating their program inside the building until June 30th and when they closed that down the city started working on plans to open a program in that place so the contract was approved we've been working with Salvation Army to get the contract signed and to get the program up and running and operational you're getting close we have weekly status check-in meetings with Salvation Army while we're waiting for the contract to be signed by corporate but we've they have opened recruitment for their positions so that they can expand this program so that is moving forward um like is the case in a lot of areas in the local employment sector they're encountering labor supply challenges and finding sufficient qualified people for these positions so that is delayed the process a little bit as well but they're also working with the temp agency to be able to fill positions and continue to move forward so again we hope to have that open in um month of September in the next two to three weeks some other updates on some of the safe sleeping and shelter expansion that we have discussed previous in previous quarterly updates we're continuing to work um at a shelter expansion at housing matters at Coral Street we're now looking at using the River Street shelter property what has been the River Street shelter the condition of the building really does not make it cost effective to be able to rehabilitate it remodel it so the decision has been made to demo that building so that it could be utilized in other ways to support shelter expansion so we're moving forward with that the process is underway and then once that is completed the plan is to have housing matters operate a program at that site that the city will purchase the shelter structures whether they be pallets or similar type sleeping structures the county will purchase those and then the the city will purchase those and the county will fund the program and operations at housing matters and so that will serve up to 30 people the specific number will really depend on the specific shelter product and the configuration of that property again we continue to the city continues to support the county and looking at uh motel or hotel use through master lease options that can expand capacity and specifically the county is looking at being able to expand capacity by 80 to 100 working with funding for from the healthcare system to be able to support that program and operation at a local hotel so that's in the works again we continue to look at and discuss opportunities that other properties to be able to expand shelter in the city and again as we'll report back later times when there's something specific the final area for updates in our quarterly update is safe parking in the oversized vehicle ordinance and tier one is operational that is an overnight program there are three spaces available at the Santa Cruz police department lots in operation PD has really been making referrals to tier two because we have capacity there and tier two is a 30 day program so we still have that capacity while we have tier two space available trying to directly for repeat refer people to a tier two where they can stay for at least 30 days on an overnight basis makes operational sense so tier two is currently operating at lot four there's six spaces at that location we do have expansion plans for other lots to be able to reach the 30 spaces that have been directed for a tier two program by council and the locations that have been identified has the potential up to 48 spaces some in the coastal zone many outside of the coastal zone and so the final plans will depend on how the ordinance moves through the coastal commission to see what locations are available but irrespective of the ability to expand to the council director again presently enrollment is three persons in the tier two parking state parking program the tier three is a full-time 24 seven program that has case management wrap around support services we entered into a contract with the association of faith communities and afc in the free guide that contract was approved by council in june we've been working with them to get that program operational that will be operating at the armory building as well in the front area between the parking lot and the building that's where the county's pavilion program was previously so we've made infrastructure modifications to bring electricity out to the front of the building get a mobile office placed to get that ready afc and free guide has hired their staff and has conducted their training and they've already done outreach to identify a first group of program participants there's capacity in terms of their services for up to 24 vehicles the actual number is going to be dictated by the size of the vehicles and what can fit on that space at any given time but they're ready to go and actually project it to start at the end of this week and then an update on the oversized vehicle ordinance coastal development and design permitting process and the council reviewed and approved the coastal development and design permit back on april 12th there was an appeal to the coastal commission that was submitted most recently the coastal commission had an initial hearing on july 14th of this year and they found that substantial issue exists with the coastal permit and that they will take action at a de novo hearing at a future date that's not yet been set and that concludes our quarterly update and i'll turn it over to Lisa murphy for the second report thank you so this is uh lisa murphy deputy city manager and this will be an update budget adjustment and refuse disposal abatement and landscape remediation contract information good afternoon mayor council members the report i have before you is a benches closure and restoration update and i'm also requesting a budget amendment the current situation in the benches presents a significant threat to the environment the public safety the health welfare we have an environmental crisis occurring in the camp the degradation is along the river bed has been immense uh there's significant threat to public safety health and welfare of the folks inside the camp as well as in the surrounding despite uh rp's best efforts we've had rampant drug use stolen property throughout the camp it's widespread we've had many neighbors concerned for their safety and our employees no longer feel safe entering into the bench lands to do their work unless we have a police escort for them currently the cost to maintain the the bench lands is approximately 66 000 a month and that doesn't include any of the staff time that's associated with that and currently our city outreach workers estimate approximately 225 campers bench lands the closure process process key to the closure it's contingent upon the salvation army opening up the shelter at the armory to create those bed spaces for those campers originally the closure was targeted in july however the delay of has been caused by the opening of the armory this is the additional the inside side additional spaces okay sorry for interrupting no thank you for the clarification there's two locations up at the armory i should have clarified one's the the overlook and then the inside and the inside as you recall was formerly operated by the county and it closed at the end of june and so the another city has entered into a contract you approved the contract in june of this year and as larry stated we're still waiting for them to execute the contract but they are staffing up and that's what we expect to open in september again the closure cannot begin until we have the the armory open and as you have probably seen and the members of the public have seen we have begun some of the process of the closure we began with fencing of the upper portion of the park that began last week and it's expected actually to be concluded today or or possibly tomorrow the upper portion of the park will stay closed for the duration of the project when the armory is open there will be limited fencing will be installed in the lower bench lands creating segments based on population the closure will be a phased approach with each of the segments closing contingent upon the offer of the alternative shelter options if we do not have a shelter space available we will hit the pause button and we will stop until we have identified available spaces ongoing within the closure process the city in the county as you heard earlier will still continue to work together to provide the services and create rehousing plans for individuals in the in the bench lands during the closure process we will provide transportation services to the shelters and will provide assistance to those that may need the additional assistance if somebody needs ADA services we will work to provide that for them we will also provide storage facilities in the bench lands for those that might have left behind property and will create a process for the folks to retrieve that and in while this process is going on we will continue to maintain the existing services that are occurring in the park now that includes trash pick up the showers the toilets running water the wash station electricity those all will still continue what i'm looking for today is a budget amendment in the amount of one million the funding is from the california 14 the details of where that funding will be spent is contained on the screen above you there i have it broken into two columns we have one time funding and then we have the ongoing identified funding and you can see for the one time funding includes fencing of the parks transportation uh the cleanup and the Bateman which was specifically looking for a contract approval today there is funds set aside for the restoration project to begin but that will not be enough and i expect that we'll be back later to request additional funding for a restoration project in partnership with the parks and rec department the second column is the ongoing costs including trash the porta potties electrical um the water all of this which tolls 952 000 i've asked for one million simply because we don't know what some of the unknowns might occur during this process and uh we want to allow ourselves some room there with this closure the shift will be visible homelessness with the effect will be across the community while the city will continue its efforts to prevent establishment of large encampments uh we need more shelter more shelter is needed and given the staffing levels and the resources our efforts for enforcement will be stretched then the staff is working we are working to stand up additional temporary shelter locations in the city that concludes my presentation and again the action i'm looking for today is the transfer of the one million dollars and the authority for the city manager to execute a contract with the refuse company that's identified in the staff report and that concludes my presentation thank you so much for that update at this time i will bring it to council members for uh any further clarifying questions before going out to public comment council member mires i just have a couple quick questions um thank you for the update um so one question i had um lisa you mentioned you know this will become visible as we as people move out of the encampments so kind of a two-part question maybe larry for both of you um is it is there a way so i'm getting a lot of communications um mostly from neighborhoods that are adjacent to the wildlands areas to the open space areas where as we know a lot of folks do end up going up into those areas to reset up camps um is there any way to prioritize certain areas that may be more vulnerable to um for example wildfire or other things and is that part of your assessment as you go into a session area that maybe i has been identified as you know having campers come in and start to reestablish areas just trying to get a sense for the public versus maybe someone who's on the river levy again but you know essentially is is there not really a major neighborhood issue except for access etc visual just wondering how do you guys look at those kinds of things um thank you for the question we have a homeless encampment assessment team and that team is composed of members from the fire department police department public works the homeless response team and we meet weekly and as those complaints come in we assess the team assesses where those encampments are and a priority is a fire danger and that's why we have a fire representative on our commitment the encampment team so they will be looking at those when they look to clear encampments if they the staffing availability the location is it a high fire danger um the the beach the river so trying to prioritize but public health and safety is number one okay and when people are contacted past you know maybe they are in these areas they would be contacted sort of in the same manner as before 72 hours you know belongings would be stored for a period of time available that kind of same protocol that we've followed for several years now correct that's correct and we will also have at but the armory some space available for temporary shelter for those one night offs to have offer them shelter right and then in the homeless management information system and congratulations by the way to actually have staff here at the city able to actually access and manage and do that data collection because I know in the county reports that led up to the counties through your plan you know this information system is a critical piece of the puzzle that was really not functional for for many years so now we have a sense of where folks are what issues they're facing their needs um their current locations and the way they're potentially moving you know around other shelters etc so that's amazing news that that's up and running um a part of that though I'm curious as we make contact with people are we are we also so I'm assuming the county and the HMIS being kind of grown out of you know the federal government or state government there's probably certain things that go in there and then other other things we would want to collect for example you know we have three three outreach workers now so I know I went two weeks ago and we have the most amazing staff the three people are doing that work um are really really critical pieces to what's happening right now and I encourage my fellow colleagues to go out and experience me what Jeremy and and Chris and Monica really do in the field because it's really impressive um but I would assume that we are also gathering you know sort of in a tangential way just for relationships why someone may or may not want to go to a shelter or they refuse shelter or whatever other types of things that they may express as we're especially trying to move people out of an unsafe situation into the variety of shelter opportunities that you guys just leave out you know just rolled out there um do we keep track of that kind of also just tangentially for folks or how are we tracking I guess you know people's ability to accept services people's ability to because I know some people you know legitimately are fearful of going into you know more organized or more populated um situation so I'm just curious how we manage that information because that's definitely part of the plan to help individuals get past the severity of the situation they're in for example down in the Benchlands is for us but also um really understanding really what people can do or not do emotionally and physically so I'm just curious how do we are we tracking um if we are long question yeah but um I think the short answer is all of your context is correct so first first of all I just want to echo that the work that our outreach team does is phenomenal on a daily basis and we're really fortunate to have them out there doing that work um in terms of the data collection you're also right that you know a system like hMIS that's developed for a specific purpose has limits and rules and policies in terms of what gets entered and it's not wasn't developed specifically for the kind of work that the city is doing so there is some additional data collection that's underway and I think that too getting back to this theme of developing our internal capacity some of that even more recently has shifted from a lot of relationship-based sort of handwritten notes knowing people um that our outreach team does down there and making those connections to other community partners who are providing the services where their role has really been playing that facilitator connector role and then getting them with programs then that are probably or at least you know in that network that's already hMIS uh but they are collecting case notes I think that's certainly started for definitely for the folks that are now that we are running programs like 1220 River so we've got our own developing data systems to be able to maintain that client case notes etc you know what services they're connected with what their needs are their efforts to connect in the other services and as well through their outreach down in the bench lands and other encampments specifically whether encountering folks trying to do that kind of initial assessment about where they're at what services they might need what actions might be useful and specifically around particularly when we opened the overlook to the first wave of additional shelter capacity they made contact with virtually every single person who was residing the bench lands same virtually because it's there's some variability persons residing down there over a course of many weeks did that outreach to see who was interested making those offices shelter when that space was opening up and facilitating that so we're collecting those and so I think that's in development too so we're making that transition what information is appropriate for agents and what we're still collecting that assistance my last question is do you feel like things have changed in the last 18 months I know Larry you're new here Lisa you've been here but not touched this quite as much until recently but and maybe Matt's it's better I feel like in talking with county staff and county leadership that I feel like we're hitting our stride somewhat the resources I just want to clarify for the public the resources that were provided for the state really are one time very much focused on facilities getting programs up and running certainly is it seems to be you know stretching into the areas that we needed purchasing properties getting you know staff together putting folks into the HMIS really kind of very practical collaborative ways to really join the city which has an extreme problem as we all know in with a functional now revamped and much more feels like functional overall county approach to homelessness I'm just curious if I'm imagining this and I know there's probably areas of frustration especially with the county's focus mostly on trying to get people into housing which we know is going to be very difficult and maybe not as much on emergency shelter but overall are we seeing some pretty good collaboration as as this is getting built out whoever wants to answer it well I'll I'll take an initial effort at responding again I've been here I think it's 10 months now so not quite your 18 month time horizon but I certainly feel in my time where I feel at this point we are really beginning feels like there's some inertia and momentum obviously a lot of that's connected to we we've been able to actually get additional shelter capacity and similarly we've gotten our safe parking program set up so it's always it's it's good when you're building capacity to meet people's needs and so I feel like we've gotten that momentum there you're absolutely right to point out that we're accomplishing a lot of this with one-time funds and so I think the question is sustaining these programs so that we have alternatives but certainly I think we've made progress there moving from our plan into actually setting up and establishing programs and I think as well I've noticed you know ability to work and collaborate with the county as I felt momentum there in my time as well and I think again this effort around the housing focused service coordination in the bench lands where that's a table we're bringing a variety of partner city county agencies and really working on seeing how we can put these together where they can identify gaps in services or those lack of connections and problem solve so I think that's been a real and a very operational impactful way it's just starting but seeing how working together collaboratively can get some results so that's and if I may council member Myers I appreciate the question it's hard to believe that eight months have gone by as fast as they have but I would just emphasize I think that the most important shift has been moving from focused on the impacts associated with homelessness and really investing in what will be long-term solutions to helping those in need get on a path towards permanent supportive housing and I want to really applaud the work of Larry our homelessness response team all of our city departments this has been an all hands on deck effort and I really feel that they are steps in the right direction that will bear out fruit over time we don't like it to move faster than it is but it's complex challenging work so more to come and absolutely encouraged by the momentum that we're building with lots more work to do thank you thank you council member Calentari Johnson thank you for the presentation I sent a number of questions in advance I want to thank you for responding to those and integrating them into the presentation I do want to just draw out one of my questions I'd like you to comment here and that is so we know the county is focused on permanent supportive housing and you've articulated in the presentation in the report that they are helping with operations of some of these transitional shelters can you speak more on um what else do we see in the horizon and our partnership with the county in terms of standing up transitional shelters throughout the county outside the city um as is articulated in their three-year strategic plan yes thank you council member for that question um there's you know a few a couple of the specific ways we're in the report I think you know looking at the collaborating around housing matters campus I think the work that they're doing looking at master lease opportunities that are also transitional shelters I think you know recently too you know entering or sort of having conversations discussions about what potential properties they may have that could be utilized this and how we might be able to work together so that's been part of our collaborative discussions and so I think we're open to that and receptive and trying to facilitate you know what roles each of us can play but in terms of other specific immediate opportunities nothing at this point okay thank you I have other comments that I'll wait till after public comment council member brown and then vice mayor Watkins I think I was after but go for it okay thanks I think you mayor thank you Larry and Lisa for the update I'm gonna try to just and and I really appreciate the all the work that's going into this and and I know that it's a lot and I know that it's a it's a protracted challenge that we're experiencing and it you know immediate results aren't necessarily something that is even possible no matter how much you know good will and effort and real commitment is going into it so I don't want anything I'm saying right now to suggest I'm not cognizant of that and appreciated of that so I wanted to most of my questions are really particular to the benchmarks the costs on the budget adjustment and but also just the plan in general and so and the and the first one is kind of a big picture question actually maybe I'll ask the detailed ones first I'll go with the budget first and just try to keep it straightforward so we do have in the agenda report a table that lists what these costs you know kind of allocations to the best of your ability for what the additional cost might be and I am and I don't want to pick apart that table but I am interested in just getting a better understanding of you know what some of these costs are where you know wow there's a lot of money 280 thousand dollars for a cleanup which is I didn't wasn't able to look up the costs on the highway one nine encampment cleanup but I it's I got a little sticker shock when I looked at it and I recognize that these things are costly and longer that we have you know something in in place and it becomes entrenched without a lot of services it you know I get it that there's additional cost but that's a very high number just wondering if we could get a little bit of a sense of what you know almost 300 thousand dollars for one cleanup what is that like what's a part of that cleanup for that so that's one question and then another and then there's others are relatively straightforward but I did see that for ongoing four months for porta potties and wash stations is a hundred thousand dollars which works out to about a thousand a day is that really what the cost yes it is in fact what we just experienced was that the company has quadrupled their costs and so we are and that's not just for the conventions it's actually for the all the city and so we're actively working with the finance department to get an rfp together quickly to try to look for other bidders to provide that service thank you I yeah it really was an open question like yeah wow okay so it's good to know you know I think for our general city operations that that's a challenge that we're increasing cost and then just the cleanup and abatement item certainly so the cleanup it's a very very extensive cleanup and it will occur afterwards well actually as segments but you can imagine if you've been down there how huge and large that the work is in just one day alone when we had to clean up the water street took all day we approximately 20 some odd staff members down there to do the cleanup and law enforcement president for assistance and the trucks the loaders and the actual dumping fees at our landfill it's an incredible process we only had one bidder who was interested in actually doing this type of work and has done this work before has done the work over in the hell's trail so we they've had experience in in in this so the the costs are based on their experiences it's huge it it's much larger than I expected that's for sure and so related to I have a couple of these I'll try to make them quick related to that I did get a maybe other council members it would seem to be directed to the entire council a message about kind of the ongoing trash pickup there which you know may only play a very small role in what the costs are of a bigger post you know post encampment cleanup but that it was becoming more challenging for people in the onsite to manage and remove their trash and so I'm just wondering if like how does that factor in here because I feel like sometimes the big costs come because we're not managing it on a as well as we could or what if we had more resources and there's all kinds of reasons why but I'm just trying to get a sense of how we can omit to helping you know giving support to people who want to be part of that cleanup who are in that's in that space why is it getting harder for them and what's that what's that about well that's great question so the ongoing trash issue is another very large large issue we had daily pickup there's there's the totes if you think of your your totes there was 20 to 30 totes down there getting pulled up five days a week sometimes seven days a week and then our trash service coming through picking it up getting people to do that our staff was not comfortable any longer doing that we had a private contractor who was doing that the cost became unsustainable and to the tune of a request of over almost eight thousand dollars a week and so our staff we modified and we're still going through some growing pains of the modifications of trying to meet the trash demands quite frankly down there we still have a weekly cleanup that we do every thursday which is now we're actually going through the middle of the bench lands and then having folks throw in trash into the the trucks we also have folks that live down there who have contacted who will bring the totes up to the road for to be serviced in exchange they are giving gift certificates to do that so i would say yeah we are limping along right now trying to keep up with the the amount it's it's a lot but with the the upcoming closure we think that we can continue to try to at least somewhat meet the the needs of the campers in the in the in the trash but it's not it's not it's not perfect that's for sure thanks and then one other question related to the budget adjustment as i read it the funds would come through the the california 14 million allocation and the hygiene bay will then the money that was going to go for the hygiene bay will then be come out of the arpa funds and i guess i'm just i feel a little this may be a really silly question but i feel a little confused because when we talk about those arpa funds we're we're told they are all spent you know we don't we know when for example when we were some of us were talking about it in relation to other jurisdictions having used arpa funds for you know covid pay for workers and we are told it's that's money spent but now we're now we have it again so i guess i i'd love to understand that a little bit better in the shifting of funding within the very constrained narrow funding streams that were what we're able to use the money for how is that happening and what are we not it's not getting funded from arpa as a result of that uh yes it did until the end but let me explain and i think maybe it'll have a clarification so so initially uh the appropriation for the hygiene bay was part of the request that came to council on December 14th of 2021 it was included in there uh at that time it was part of a timing issue because we wanted to release the request for proposals to be able to move the work and we were still in collaborative conversations with the county to come up with an allocation plan for the california 14 million initially it was included the hygiene bay was also included in the california 14 million but through that process and looking at the array of needs and the flexibility of funding the hygiene bay could be paid for out of arpa the california 14 is much more flexible so the decision was made to continue with the appropriation through the arpa funds and then making available the appropriation out of the california 14 million for other uses related to homelessness right so so that's clear to me um but what's not clear is um how how we found and it feels like the way this is presented we found one million more dollars in arpa funds because we again have been told there's no the arpa money is already spent so is that am i is this not making sense am i the only one who's confused by this we appreciate appreciate the question councilmember brown and um i'll i'll try to maybe rephrase Larry's response so because of the timing and the fact that we were in the process of building out the the detailed budget for the 14 million we didn't want that to hold up the hygiene bay remodel so there was that funding for the project was programmed so to your point you know the the comment around your understanding around the the um the arpa funding already being spoken for this project was built in as part of that budget so we are we are trading the funding that was programmed into um programmed for that purpose and utilizing it for these additional needs we have in the benchlands thank you i hopefully that is more clear it's yeah it's still kind of a big jumble but that i get now the point about uh thank you councilmember brown one other question i'm sorry i totally forgot the big one um so hiding back here and i'm in this ever-sinking chair also um oh that's still here after two years i know we can trade if we can hit him around so you don't always have to um so um that you know this is a question that i'm i'm gonna ask we you know somebody at the dais usually or in the public asset every time but i i feel the need um since you mentioned that uh in terms of the phase approach that's being taken where um where we are not able to offer alternative shelter um and i the we i know that's a muddy area in terms of what whether or not people are willing to take it and whether versus whether or not they're able to take it and all of that but that aside um the we're likely to have given the our capacity which is great that we've been able to you know build this out and in some ways or taking on something that we've had for a long time as a county's responsibility and i appreciate the collaboration and i'm glad that the city is taking a more proactive role but at the same time i feel like um where kind of you know we're grasping at straws a little bit here because we with even with all of this cost we have um a significantly higher number of people who will need shelter in order to move if if the plan as you've described it lays out in that way so i guess i'm just asking again where people gonna go um just to kind of um keep it simple and i know it's not an easy answer and i'm not expecting you to be able to answer that but i just feel like it's a it's something that we have to keep acknowledging and talking about as we move forward i think you framed that very well we have to acknowledge that there is not enough shelter uh in this community and standing up the shelters that we have have made a difference and they will help with the closure of the bench lands we will try to augment with vouchers where we can uh we're asking to see if there's other spaces and other shelters and other communities as well but there probably won't be enough and we'll have to pause our closure until something else comes online thank you um um some of my questions are uh getting addressed by smear Watkins and then i'll cue myself in great thank you yeah a lot of my questions have already been asked and answered and i appreciate the presentation and more importantly the work that you and your team have been up to um i think the only remaining question that i have or maybe you know if you can just sort of fill me in and where we're at with it is the and i'm excited to hear about the information system and being able to access that and be a part of that and i know we have figures but then also we have the complexity of the individual right in the cases and you larry mentioned mental health and on that on the rise um you know there's so many diversity of needs in terms of domestic violence or somebody losing their job or you know co-occurring mental health and substance misuse and certainly we know there's a deficit in terms of bed space and facility treatment um but i think having access to that information is really helpful for us to know how to design the supports to meet the needs and i think also helps us to understand what i think could be um counter to different narratives out there in the community about assumptions around individuals for example i think when i think of homeless too i think of all of the and the non-visible phases of homelessness that we know exist in our community particularly families and students that we see um who are struggling um for housing and they're not there but we know they're there right and so i guess my question is is um as we move forward with our access to the information system as we have the the point in time count you know how is there a qualitative overlay to that to understand sort of both like the story behind the numbers i guess is the question and or is there a conversation around that so that we can kind of get to some of the more complex needs of the individuals that are experiencing homelessness yeah thank you for that question um i think the data begins and having a system to be able to collect this allows us to begin to cultivate that narrative and to understand and then inform our conversations for sure um i think the point in time count will be helpful seeing some of those train trends it's going to sort of question our assumptions um provide new information similarly as we begin to do this work um and i think about the the surfaces coordination around the bench lands is we're collecting this information seeing what connections already exist or do not exist what the needs are and can do that problem solving so one we can have new information on you know what percentage of the persons that we're encountering experiencing homeless already have vouchers whether they're in a shelter whether they're in the campment and sort of what's what's the solution around that well having that information and having the right resources around the table allows us to begin to problem solve around that so we're starting to see that so it's like ah we have a number of persons vouchers how do we we've got housing navigators that have capacity to work with new people so how do we make those connections so i think all of the data systems and beginning to have that foundational allow us to be able to be more effective in terms of the work collaboratively city county and our nonprofit and community partners but also identify where our gaps are and then inform what additional services are needed and and potentially dictate where resources need to be deployed to make that happen um that the next is maybe more of a comment than a question but i think you know we're not alone as we understand in the state of california and beyond in terms of trying to address the you know the the impacts of of homelessness and just the complexity of the issue but i think um over the years that i've been here there's also been advocacy and connection to state lobbying around supports and i guess i just say that to really just express my support to continue to advocate for resources from the state um and i think you know even if looking at a different type of model in terms of a reimbursement model i mean we have the medical like i mean some something to help sustain this type of work because um you know it's expensive as you know and it's something you can't turn your back to and you need to work on so how do we how do we kind of have a both land and i think the state really has to play a critical role in that and there's strength in numbers with us working with other communities and kind of the california league of cities et cetera so um i know we're part of those conversations i'm not sure if that was something elizabeth was doing but as we move forward with potentially um looking at filling that position i think that kind of connection to the state advocacy is important thank you um i i'll cue myself in and welcome council member golder thank you for joining us um so let's see i'll start maybe where you left off you kind of touched on um my question i think so homelessness response action plan and i think one thing that i'm uh kind of realizing is this is not a cure homelessness in our city plan this is um a response plan and i think that um you know we have a lot of community members that are joining and hopefully watching today that um our have written us i know that my email my inbox was full of a ton of questions and kind of a perception that what are we doing to solve this uh this entire issue of homelessness and and people being unhoused and so i think what might be helpful at these quarterly updates for the next one is really identifying um i always visualize things in columns and um having columns you know first of all the big picture what are the why why are people unhoused and it's a myriad of reasons right and listing out those reasons cost of living housing lost job domestic violence as that was brought up um substance use behavioral health mental health um systems of care failing and so listing out whatever obstacles people face we even had city employees this morning speaking to living paycheck to paycheck and on the verge of of feeling like they're losing their housing so taking that big picture approach and then kind of narrowing down to the city's role and capacity in this in terms of land use housing um all of the ways that we can um um contribute to the overall reasons why and where the county comes in and i think i think that's um where a lot of people are trying to understand as we for the first time are stepping out into efforts around this and not waiting for county health and human services department not waiting for the state not waiting for the federal government to build housing and facilities and funding the operations of those facilities it's now become uh the responsibility of local jurisdictions and um you know we have to kind of see that overall and that narrowed down of where we can um work towards uh response how we can help our our residents right and um um showing um i think in in in this response plan and updates a couple of things have come up from members of the public showing um funding anytime where that's coming from there were comments this morning from uh city employees around labor negotiations um uh thinking that funding for homelessness response is come is not allowing the city to give to workers and understanding there's different funding sources for example so really identifying where those funding sources are coming from when we talk about hygiene bays and and refuse and and all of that so that i think is really helpful and and and where the services from the county come in what is that collaboration kind of just getting a little more specific what what what does the word services mean i think we use that word a lot and i know i sit through meetings where then i after the meeting have a better understanding um but our people in the community really want to make sure that people that are unhoused are cared for our environments cared for our neighborhoods are cared for our parks are cared for and we're managing funding to care for that in a responsible way so really showing that in this homelessness response plan update i think would be um helpful and i'm just realizing that as we're having these discussions and as emails i we're even getting emails during the meeting um so i really want to be responsive to um kind of the community and where they're finding um you know the gaps and under in understanding how to design the support that meets the needs of our community members right like here's what we've done great update here's what still needs to be done here are the obstacles and here's what we're working on or where each one is stopped or in progress or pending and you know beyond our scope referred to county or referred to state or you know those kinds of just simple um updates i think would be helpful in the future um permanent supportive housing is a big one that um i'd love to uh i think there was a question brought up and i know there was an email i believe or somebody contacted what happens when people refuse the uh offer for shelter opportunity and you know while we say we need more shelter that's really the temporary in the minute solution to uh you know and especially as we're talking about going into winter going into benchlands flooding um so ultimately the goal is not more shelter ultimately the goal is more housing and with housing we need all those levels of housing right and that permanent supportive housing so it might be great to have just a glimpse of we have 65 units or 64 units of permanent supportive housing coming at this location and housing matters has 120 coming at this look like just kind of laying out the picture and you know what we're based on outreach contacts and and work with the him is system and the data we're estimating we need about this much more how can council then create policies that support and reach out and work with community partners that support you know specific types of housing i think that data would be very helpful and um supporting our our outreach team um there was a question about and it ties in with where do people go if they refuse service so you know our outreach team has done a phenomenal job out there like council member myers um i've been through the bench lines many times and um the work that they give has been just all in committed and and when they play that facilitator role and really try to get folks connected to whatever their needs are and um they're not accepting the offer or the help that's where i find we have this gray area um of what how do we see what that is what are those updates and where are those folks going and then we get into the issue of if they're not accepting a bed or shelter or options and they're in the pogo nap and maybe it's a restricted fire area now police are there because they're refusing so then we get into the issue of you know police being involved with unhoused folks and um so just trying to understand how what what challenges and how many people are do you have data on on people refusing services and at our last council meeting there was a comment about salvation army staff not being nice uh to folks and not wanting to go there because of that i don't know if that's true but those types of things that come up from the public or from um unhoused folks that we speak to um it would be nice to understand what's happening to those yes right and that's a great question because i think at the end of the day none of us want a police interaction like we'd all like to prevent that from happening um and where will people go if they refuse shelter we i don't have an answer for you it depends on what happens in that moment right and will they go to another place and camp out probably i think you're going to see those who refuse to go um go to another location and that that's that's the reality right that we all need to accept that we're going to see that there will those who will flat out not want to go to one of the shelters or hotel voucher or accept services there's some that just absolutely don't want to just don't want the services at all they don't want a government interaction that that's another piece to it right um so i don't have that answer but how many people refuse services i don't know if we're cutting that type of data okay but you will see that i think um when we all do not want a police interaction but what happens in that moment and where people go it's it's individual based it it really is and it can you speak to some of the county programs they know have been mentioned through different funding sources they have like this new healing the streets program and how that my understanding is a mobile team that will be out and about is that another resource that can be tapped into and yes healing the streets is one they're part of the group that meets with us weekly or around the the services coordination and their focus is is behavioral health supports um they work both the county wide but i mean specifically the city of santa cruz and the city of watsonville so they've got their team connected and so that's part of part of the work that's happening in terms of when we identify persons who have behavioral health needs uh through the work down there to be able to connect them to the healing the streets a case manager or being a behavioral health worker so they're they're involved there we brought in dvd so there's a variety of services there at that table um that particular program healing the streets as well i mean there is a open referral mechanism it's not necessarily focused to to people living in encampments so there's an ability to do that but um yes certainly trying to find the right services and that's part of the conversation we already have some of those service providers around the table but as we hear other needs and other needs are identified it becomes an opportunity to see what other resources in the community need to be brought to the conversation to support great can i just add to that i wanted to bring it up as part of my comments but it's relevant to your question and your comments um there are other grants that the county has gotten that are just getting started the cafes program which is a partnership with probation public defender da and the courts they're going to have folks who are roaming and doing outreach for individuals who have mental health substance use um challenges and are um unhoused so that's we just got word from bscc that we awarded six million dollars that's going to be in our community um i know that um health services agency and their behavioral health department has brought in over 10 million um a lot of different programs are part of it is crisis response with people who are having mental health challenges and then as vice mayor watt kins um just noted there's a lot happening at the state level and one of them is calaim and um the shift in how folks will get served and have health benefits through the calaim program all of this is going to roll out in the next six months and it's a real opportunity for us to leverage what's coming down the pipes from the state and with the county so that we can augment me to councilmember brown's point um health and human services isn't within the purview of the county and we can no longer do this it's your responsibility it's your responsibility we have to all pitch in invest and partner so that we can leverage the resources that we have so i was going to say that for my comments but it's relevant to the question that you brought up so thank you yeah and i guess that falls in line with just you know in our future update having that overview of your state here's county here's what's happening and now here's city here's what we've done here's what we're still doing and need to work on so um thank you that's good to hear um i had one more question and now i i oh the funding for the four new positions in public works can you remind me where that's coming from that's coming out of california 14 million okay thank you i think those are my questions thank you and just i wanted to say thank you for the feedback on the report it gives us information on how you know this is the i think the second report we've come back since we've started doing this on a routine basis so getting feedback on the kinds of information and the structure that is really helpful so we'll work to integrate that into future reports thank you so much councilmember comings thank you and thank you for that report um i have a few questions i'll try to keep it short i think a lot some of what i've interested in has been answered um but one question in particular that i've been getting from folks since i've been on the council the benches has been used on a number of different occasions as a homeless encampment and people have been moved and then they go to lock it off and then it gets ends up being used again and here we are you know allocating a million dollars towards restoration of the site which has like i said historically been used and i think one of the big concerns people are having is are we just throwing our money away by investing a million dollars into this only to see it be reverted back into a homeless encampment in the future and so i'm just wanting to get some sense of clarity around you know what the future of the benchlands is going to look like i'll speak to that if you don't mind and larry and lisa may have some follow-up thoughts uh council member comings i appreciate the question um our goal is for this to be a permanent shift away from using the benchlands for purposes of temporary shelter and move through a full restoration so that the park can be available to our community members again for its intended purpose um that requires that we continue making progress on standing up alternative shelter as we've uh emphasized and continue to speak to this afternoon and that work will be ongoing we know it's a major investment to move into a restoration that's our goal that's our goal okay thanks um another question that's come up um i believe this came before us maybe last year but there was a 121 units of i believe is transitional housing over at the housing matters campus there's been some discussion that there's some funding issues with that with that project moving forward um that or i mean we haven't really heard any kind of update on what's happening with that project as it relates to providing more beds for homelessness and so i'm wondering if you all have heard any information so that we can you know give the community a clear sense of where that project is going so we can have because that's 121 new beds um that could help us address this issue correct thank you for the question council member um the project is still moving forward in terms of recent funding um they are still waiting to hear responses back on a um no play no place like home grant i'm trying i think that's the right name um so that's out for consideration as well as a project home key grant application as well so they're waiting responses on that and then recently um they received an eight million dollar earmark to be able to support that project as well so my understanding they're still targeting to be breaking ground on that project um in spring in march um and that's the latest update i have but we can continue to bring updates on that um to future council meetings yeah that'd be great since it really goes hand in hand with kind of our ability to get more beds online and i think people just interested in hearing about these different projects what's happening because once we stop hearing then all the hearsay starts coming up around it's not moving forward they lost all their money the city could have put funds in that they didn't you know so i think for us to just kind of have a sense of where those kinds of projects are moving and getting updates will be helpful for us to communicate that to the public um the next question i had um was when i when i first got on council and i believe back between 2019 2020 um initially um there wasn't an interest of the state allowing us access to the army because they had planned renovations for the armory now it seems like we're moving into that you know a longer term use of that facility i'm just kind of wondering you know what's the timeline on us being able to use that or is the the us army are they going to plan on doing the renovations and eventually kind of taking that facility back over my understanding is that they aren't interested in renovating that property i think one of as again my my limited understanding is they um they need to have another property in another place to have the the operations at some point before they relinquish a property but in terms of making additional investments in use of that property that seems that the that building doesn't meet the purposes for what they're trying to use that have this detachment detachment's mission accomplished so in terms of our conversations they've been open to having a longer term lease so that is still in process trying to work through the details with the california military department um but uh it does not seem that they have a long-term interest in operationalizing that property thank you um i'll leave my questions there and um i have a few comments when we come back after public comment thank you council member coming has everyone had an opportunity to ask questions council member golder i just have one question um has there been any thought about using kind of that sp35 lens and doing any redevelopment having the city build housing either permanent supportive housing or housing they'll accept vouchers um and or even looking at existing multifamily residential properties that are for sale in the city or those kinds of things and i don't know if there'd be grant or funding for this but just like i know santa christ city schools is working on trying to build some employee housing in the future and so just thinking along those lines if there was a way for us to build or redevelop some housing um you know spread it throughout the city so it's not so dense right at housing matters as anybody thought about that as a potential opportunity maybe for the next update we can have if it's like that's a terrible idea with that too i just was curious not a terrible idea and i see we have lee butler jumping on i'll let i'll let him take a first crack at it um but appreciate the question thanks for the question council member golder lee butler director of planning and community development and um as the council is aware this is one of things that our economic development housing team in collaboration with many of our city departments is working on carefully um with for example the pacific station north and south where we have approximately 200 units of affordable housing in the works um with the pacific station south having broken ground and that's providing 70 units with 25 percent of permanent supportive housing that caters specifically to individuals who are um either homeless or um recently homeless or at risk of becoming homeless same thing with pacific station north um of those hundred and uh 20 30 units close to 130 units 25 percent of those are permanent supportive housing units and um i think as we proceed with i know you were talking about other areas outside of just the coral street but i'll i'll mention that um you know that'll be one of the things that we uh take into consideration as we're looking at the coral streets master plan design charrette and working with the community and the various stakeholders to understand what are those needs we've been um talking about from the uh council and the community the need for a navigation center out in that area expanded services because housing matters does offer those types of services at their their current campus there but also um how can we expand that and potentially go up with um additional permanent supportive housing as as folks have mentioned as other council members have mentioned that permanent supportive housing is really critical to having people transition from homelessness into uh more permanent housing situation so we are looking at those opportunities and um we will continue to explore those both with additional property acquisitions um and um with working with the resources we have and i would just add i think uh lee framed it well but we also have a couple other very specific exciting opportunities in front of us one of those is uh moving forward with the downtown library and affordable housing project that'll move forward 125 desperately needed housing units in our downtown area as well as redevelopment of the central home supply property at highway one and nine so uh both lee and our economic development team really have been pulling out all the stops to look for those opportunities and more to come thank you this was exactly the kind of overview i think would be great for our next update just to give the full picture uh thanks for that question i one more came up quickly running water at the benchlands has that been resolved um that is an ongoing um uh issue that requires attention and city staff is there every day to make sure that that's not running um from the spigot into towards the river i mean access to so there is access i'm sorry to water for uh people there um the the sinks the pump sinks to wash your hands and um so i guess that's not running water but the what i'm not sure what what you call those the washers are hand washing stations yes we were down there yeah i was there last week and they were all dry they were all right so they get serviced every day but what we found out is that um the campers will open up the underneath and take the water jugs the water containers or others will just use it and bathe in it rather than go use the shower so they're using it up but we are servicing them they are getting filled okay they're they're empty before very early okay that's seven days a week service okay thank you i'm going to at this time take it out to public comment if you are um a member of the public and you'd like to comment on agenda item number 19 homelessness response update uh now is the time to call in using instructions on your screen uh you can raise your hand by dialing star nine and um if you're joining us here in the public please line up to the right of the dais and you can sign in at the front and i will call on you when we reach that point we also have approved for extra time serge kagno with stepping up santa cruise reggie meisler with santa cruise cares and robert norse homelessness homeless united for friendship and freedom huff they requested extra time today so when they speak they will be granted extra time okay i am not seeing any members in in person here so i will take it out to our virtual attendees and um our first hand raised is leslie wooding go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself i hope you can hear me now yes welcome hi i'm leslie wooding i live on dakota avenue two blocks away from san lorenzo park um my life for the last two and a half years has been continuously impacted by the encampment in san lorenzo park i have spent many hours listening reading writing letters and organizing for change uh san lorenzo river and park should be the most natural and pure river in a city anywhere on this earth it's our common jewel that everyone should have access to with a safe and clean environment by now i think everyone knows about the conditions of the people living in san lorenzo park and the conditions of the riverbank i have been impacted almost daily checking to see if someone has overdosed or picking up trash or reporting waste needles theft i've found illicit drugs several times and um unfortunately watched bodies being taken from the bench land not not because i'm looking for it but because i'm walking through the park i've also seen tents burned down um san lorenzo park was designed by the army corps of engineers as a blood plane and so there was and there will be flooding there it is not suitable for an encampment i have talked with neighbors businesses and homeless advocates and i've started to get to know some people who live in the park i've organized to keep the park clean last night i attended the meeting where several people who live in the bench land speak it was mind-opening and i empathize with them the meeting was also very strongly biased toward resistance and defending the encampment to stay in the bench lands and there's also criminal activity that negatively affects the people in the bench lands and certainly the neighborhoods as well the um criminal activities need to be removed from the bench lands meanwhile i've listened to the city plan and i am strongly in favor of the park restoration plan thank you very much thank you for your comment our next uh hand raised is reggie meister go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself and this is uh extra time hi can you hear me yes welcome all right thanks uh we as santa cruz cares have a number of questions about the city's homelessness response as well as the coming eviction of hundreds of people from the bench lands we request that you please address these during the council members discussion while we know that the council members questions are limited per the rules of mayor bruner we believe that the public has a right to know these answers we've also emailed these questions directly to city council and staff first we see that the public response for these two items is limited to 30 minutes we'd like to know why a topic of such significant consequences for those affected is only afforded half an hour we hope you'll reconsider and give these issues the time they deserve so a few questions we have from the report what exactly is the plan to be able to provide an alternative sheltering option to anyone in the park who wants it what wraparound services will be provided to people do people need to explicitly request shelter in order to have options provided has the city consulted with people on the ground about what they actually need where in the city and or county will there be shelter for 300 to 400 people um can the city provide photos of what the shelters or beds actually look like to the public will the city commit to providing um to publicizing the options of where people can relocate to what transparency will be provided after this eviction regarding how many people were sheltered as part of the city's efforts the city continues to close programs and evict residents at the armory only to announce new shelter also opening at the armory this feels like a shell game by the city even with a phased approach to increasing shelter capacity it is hard to see how there will be enough shelter beds for those who need them we also must ask what is the plan for people for whom the shelter options do not work such as those with physical disabilities history of trauma and people who have pets when people are displaced and threatened with arrest or citation if they don't accept limited shelter offerings that may not work for them people will seek more isolated locations in order to hide and survive which will directly increase the risk of fire some of our proposed suggestions and solutions are money toward mobile services showers bathrooms black and gray water pickup fighting space for agreement camps programming decisions that involve heavy input from people who live outside to ensure the program are what people actually need and will use coordination with local organizations and volunteers in the community that want to help a more impactful harm reduction strategy putting more money towards building public housing and rehabbing old motels which it sounds like you might be doing expanding housing programs that directly provide shelter we are very excited that the parking program's opening about the parking program's opening we applaud the city for signing a contract with a fc and the free guide um more of this please thank you for listening to our comment we look forward to your response thank you for your comment our next hand raised is also extra time serge cagno good afternoon again mayor and city council my name's serge cagno stepping up santa cruz relating to advocacy and resource referral i'm the co-chair of mental health advisory board was a contractor with the county for setting up the vets hall shelters in the ongoing training of staff my thanks for larry and his team's report and their work for our community's residents who live on the streets and in our shelters i'd also like to thank his team in their efforts to support an overlook resident with mobility issues for whom i advocate today i have four requests which incorporate both advocacy and service delivery the first regards data collection in some ways it relates to councilmember watkins question about relevant data and mayor bruner's comments now that the city has its own services at 12 20 the scpd parking lot and i believe lot four and has a voice in shelter contracts at the armory in the overlook as a member of the mental health advisory board i would ask that to ensure diversity inclusion in our services that data be collected in each of our programs which help fund which we help fund regarding two types of exit demographic data or behavioral demographic data which is not collected in hms for any of the programs in our county the first is a program residents told to leave a city run or city funded program which suggested data points could measure diversity for protected classes including race disabilities including mental health and substance use disorder diagnosis or from behaviors resulting from such second data point relates to incident data which does not result in the resident being exited to include demographics as well and the third data topic would relate to grievances including number of complaints in each of our programs the demographics and how they were resolved none of these data points are collected in hms my second request regards training and in some ways relates to councilmember browns were comments regarding making our programs more welcoming to those living on the streets and relates to councilmember mires and mayor bruners question of why do people choose or not choose to go into our shelters because participants often have significant trauma histories and may be more affected by staff skills and experience for the sake of transparency and ensuring quality service delivery i'd ask the city council to direct staff to report on the training given to those working in the shelters and the city's safe parking programs i would also ask the city council to please consider creating a shared training program between the city funded programs including the downtown streets team afc salvation army in the free grad such a program would have a shared calendar or monthly email to include any of these programs to invite city staff and the other city funded programs to invite us and city staff to participate in the training the cost would be minimal but the trainings the improved services the improved collaboration and referrals between programs and the outcomes for participants most likely would be significant a future report of training thank you for your time thank you for your comment our next hand raised is the name abbey samuels you can press star six can you hear me hi yes welcome thank you um i am calling um basically to talk about i probably could spend about three hours with facts that were said or supposed alternative facts that were said that are not true for instance i'll just give you a couple as mentioned um at 1220 river street the people miss meet with their case workers once a week that's not true it was mentioned um that people um let's see sorry i'm not feeling well people at 1220 were um are finding transitional housing and are being transitioned out um i've spoke to probably around 15 people there and no one knows of anyone who's received housing from there um uh someone just made a comment that someone's taking out the water out of the wash bins and instead of using the showers what showers i know there used to be some shower once a week on fridays or something like that so what showers are you speaking about but more than that i'd like to talk to you about um the trash this is uh something that has been going on for a while they take away the trash that the city's been picking up they did it highway one they did it at um many places at um can't can't think right now they did it at the at ross camp they did it at the upper san lorenzo park they did it at pogan up they did it sycamore grove and then you call it an emergency environmental hazard this is something that you have created and i've spoken to the contractors they are not the ones who have stopped going there or the staff ron peregano who used to do it over at highway one your time like you told them that you no longer want him to pick things up that was at highway one thank you thank you for your comments um our next it looks like it's a phone number our next member of the public it's phone number ending in 3599 and you can go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi can you hear me yes hi this is grant dentremont i am the general manager with hotel paradox i am here speaking as a private citizen uh you just muted uh it's press star six to unmute yourself all right how about that there we go okay um so again i'm grant dentremont i'm the general manager with the hotel paradox but i'm here as a private citizen um i work in a business that is largely affected by the benchlands encampment um you know second some of the thoughts that have been put out before council today there are multiple impacts to our area regarding criminal activity drug use um impacts to patrons of local businesses um and in particular our tourist community we are a tourist-based economy we thrive off of the tax dollars that are provided to us by the tourists who visit our local economy and one of our largest impacted areas in our downtown area due to the benchlands encampment um all that being said i want to applaud this council and i want to applaud larry and his team for what they have done uh i think it's incredible to see the work that has been going on over there and incredible to see the progress that has been made uh too often you guys are subjected to people calling in to complain about criminal activity complain about drug use complain about trash or services or lack of fairness to the homeless run house but uh what this city council has done and what the city has done in response to homelessness has been a monumental undertaking under very challenging circumstances as a business leader uh we want you to know that we support you um as a local employer we want you to know that we support you um as a private citizen we want you to know that we support you and we appreciate all that you're doing and we know it's not easy we recognize that um it's a very complicated issue and it requires a lot of thought and a lot of data uh but you guys have gone above thank you for your comment our next hand raised is mark wentzler go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself can you hear me yes welcome oh thank you so much um i'm glad i was able to make it i had to take a break from my training i'm uh i live and i own a condo and the vnwava condos on 180 dakota avenue and um i have been impacted by the encampment in the benchlands quite a bit over the last two years um i've lived there for over nine years and actually lived there for a few years in the past and in the last two years um you know there's just been a lot of people walking right inside of like my backyard and frequently we've had things stolen and um it's just been difficult i have a 10-year-old son and he's afraid to go to the park a lot of the time i have two adult sons with autism and frequently uh my we we bought the condo so that they would be able to walk because they aren't able to drive and so it's just difficult they uh frankly they don't even want to go in the park that being said i am really supportive of the city's plan i think they're being very thoughtful and strategic and trying to provide services for the people there as they close the encampment in the benchlands um my wife and i and some other members of our community have actually worked with parks and rec to do um sub park cleanups and support in whatever way we can and i just really want to get out there that it's been difficult but you know i really hope that that this plan is going to be effective and it's going to both help our park but also help the people living there over the last few months the encampment has clearly taken a term for the worst when it first started there was like clear you know tent spaces and whatnot and it wasn't too bad actually at our events we've had several of the people living there come and help us do cleanups with the tools provided by parks and rec so i definitely you know wish them well but i'm really ready for there to be a change and supportive of the city so i think that's all i got to say thank you so much thank you for your comment it looks like that uh concludes the public comment for item number 19 homelessness response update and so at this time i will bring it back to council for action and deliberation and council member calentari johnson you had your hand raised i wanted to clarify is the motion um separate for 19.1 and 19.2 or is it one motion i don't think there's a motion in 19.1 oh okay so i see just 19.2 so um i'll move 19.2 oh i mean to read them okay i'll read i'll move 19.2 benchlands closure and restoration budget adjustment and refuse disposal abatement and landscape remediation contract approval motion to adopt a resolution amending the fiscal year 2023 budget to transfer a million from safe sleeping hygiene bay project c 10 2205 to the benchlands restoration project c 10 2304 and authorize the city manager to execute an emergency procurement agreement in a form to be approved by the city attorney between the city of santa cruise and clean team associates in the amount of 280 000 to remove encampment debris in the san lorenzo park benchlands and then i have some comments okay we have a first by council member calentari johnson i'll go ahead and second and a second by vice mayor wattkins and um are there any other questions uh comments okay so go ahead with your comments and then council member meyers great um i want to thank um larry and lisa for your presentation today the whole entire homeless response team and all of city staff because i know it's it's not just one department not just a few staff it's across the board and it's been a very very heavy lift so thank you all for the hard work that you do every day to get us to where we are um i want to pull out one data that was brought up today and that's the 61 percent decrease in homelessness in transition age youth um in 2019 this age group made up a third of our unhoused population 30 percent in 2019 and we've seen a significant change in three years um let's move backwards in time 2017 our county was one in 10 across the nation to secure a very competitive um HUD grant we spent a year doing strategic planning to outline very specific strategies for this population 2019 we launched the implementation of these seven strategies that were outlined we were you know sidetracked by covid and fire but we kept working and here we are in 2022 with a 61 decrease this is young people under the age of 24 unaccompanied so that's a success in our community and that wasn't just the county it wasn't just the city it wasn't just nonprofits it was all of us together and I think it's important as we look towards all the work there is left to do because we did see a six percent increase and we did see 129 percent increase in chronic homelessness those are significant numbers and um we're not going to be able to solve a loan we don't have the capacity we don't have the resources we don't have the expertise as a city but we can look to some of the successes that we've seen um and I in that particular example there's investment there's collaboration there's partnership and then there's outcomes so and and it takes time I mean actually I think three years is pretty incredible not that much time but it takes time so I think I'll I mean I could keep talking about this for a long time um I've been really invested in the transition age group myself with my the work that I do um but I think as we continue to this work and it continues to be hard and we continue to question what we're doing and what our role is like let's look to some of these positive outcomes that we've seen in the community as a source of inspiration for us to um chip away do our piece continue to bring in county other jurisdictions this tape proposal the HUD grant that we got it brought in two other federal grants and two other state grants all within a year's time frame and we partnered with San Jose and we partnered with San Francisco so that's what it's going to take it's going to take regional state all of us together I'll just I'll just stop there but I'm I'm really really grateful for the work that's being done and I understand there's a lot more work to do to be done and and I'm here to support it thank you councilmember Callentary Johnson councilmember Myers just a quick couple of quick um final comments um the county did an assessment through a group called Focus Strategies which is a nationally recognized group and I wrote down this one sentence out of that report and it was published in 2019 and that sentence was funding functioning and the size of the homeless crisis response system are not at all are not at the scale or level of alignment and coordination needed to begin to reverse current trends so that was in 2019 and we look at what we have now which is a one-time um allocation from the state which is also I'm assuming helped really elevate Santa Cruz because we finally have told our story that per capita we have them one of the highest populations of homeless individuals in the state of California if not in the nation all of this is part of telling this story and reversing really reversing the current trends and that's really what we're focused on now adding to that over time we hope that those success models will begin to show themselves in the other populations of homeless individuals who unfortunately are here finding themselves here but also on the other side of it is really building out a system that has accountability for the individuals also who are becoming part of our investment right and I look at the 1220 River Street shelter I did go and visit that and you know it's it's a functional system where we're getting contact with folks folks are able to go to work they feel safe they're able to participate within that camp environment for positive outcomes there on the property they have their kids there they have their pets there they have their belongings there and so little by little we're gonna have to build out these various options for people because frankly our population is something that most cities would be struggling with and probably would have given up on and we were sort of giving up we were just moving people around hoping that maybe they would eventually leave town they don't but I also will say along with that accountability is that we build this trust and we build this network of care and we build this network of of really getting people access to the things that they need and hopefully we'll take advantage of I really appreciated the commentators about the compliments of our staff and the recognition of what we're doing for those businesses and homeowners right in that immediate area in the benchlands we were failing tremendously in 2020 there was we were we were not managing another camp got started the county pulled out there was really no activity going on and on on there and then we called a meeting with state leaders and we we told our story and we continue to work with the state and we brought resources to Santa Cruz now I think the public would all like for us to be spending our limited resources in a lot of different ways right now but right now this is an acute issue that needs attention and it needs purposeful and well-designed systems change and that's what our staff is working on so we should be proud of that and not doubt ourselves but of course these investments will go on for a while hopefully we'll gain investment mostly from state and federal sources and not have to use our own resources but if we don't turn back and and sort of address this issue it will continue to grow here in Santa Cruz and we will not really be able to succeed but it will take probably close to a decade for all of this to sort its way out and this is a disinvestment in society that we did not create this are disinvestments that are now coming to light here and in unfortunately in individuals and their success in life or non-success and their struggles with behavioral health and mental health and addiction everything else that's rolled in as well as domestic violence so it's a super complicated issue I am very very pleased with the report today there's more work to do and I agree with the callers and some of the letters we've got today the Benchlands is a place that belongs to our community it doesn't belong to what's going on down there now it's not acceptable to me that it's an open-air drug market that in my visit there people basically were short of just sort of you know I won't say it but really disinterested in committing or contributing to anything to our community down there really very much so looking at that as a place that they had to take a stand so if you want to pitch in you want to do good by us you want to help share our resources then we can we can lend a hand but when you're treating a piece of property that is a public park in the some of the lowest income neighborhoods in sienna cruise next to seniors and people who need to transit through that area we need that park back for our community anyone's welcome to spend the day there and use it reasonably but right now that is not what is happening so I agree let's get that park closed I know it's going to take some time but let's keep moving let's not kind of divulge back into debating about what's happening we're housing people we're feeding people we're keep taking care of some of the most needed people in the community right now let's keep doing that but also let's always remember that there is a level of accountability that is perfectly reasonable for a small city like us to ask of anyone who is who is participating in our programs and I just never want to lose track of that particular piece of what we're trying to do as well so thank you to the staff thanks ma'am thank you before I move on to the next council member was brought to my attention that we do have a hand came up that was one of the groups so they came up a little late but I'm going to let them speak they were allowed extra time uh phone number ending in 4844 um go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself can you hear me yes welcome thank you for taking the time sonia um okay well we've heard suggestions of augmented vouchers we've heard suggestions of tandem elsewhere there can be secret discussions but not with the real clients we can have a council member wander through the council through the uh the bench lands an attempt to uh have any attempt really been made to talk to the people who live there about what's going on I haven't heard much of that in this discussion the council has shown its real colors this is about enforcement of ordinances so you can first of course declare the bench lands but then to enforce ordinances and doing so in ways that you will not be held accountable legally for essentially disrupting people's lives um by the way please don't ding me until it's three minutes I've noticed you've been a little premature in that all right that can happen I guess I tend to agree with Reggie's questions which I haven't heard anyone answer really I'm glad that neighbors did show up at this meeting uh the meeting that's again going to be happening at the resource center for non-violence on successive Mondays the next one is the 29th at six o'clock I think the community needs to come and talk about real solutions because the council is not the council is relying upon simply uh sort of these claims about what's going to be done with no clarity about where the places are that people are going to go how many people need to go there those basic questions are not being asked so it's nicely phrased and phased that's part of the rhetoric that's being used the real problem here is a false narrative the the false narrative that you have is somehow the belief that you're dealing with people who aren't people that these are uh these are skunks punks and drunks these are uh crazies and bums and what you have are people who are desperately living together in a situation where they have created their own community as best they can you are now about to disperse it and you're not providing any real alternatives for the entire group much less homeless people in the in the broader community until you have that power and you have the power actually until you have that determination and you're willing to devote that kind of funding even for alternate camps then you can't do this legally and fairly but I would encourage people interested in finding real solutions to come on monday night 612 ocean street resource center for non-violence that includes critics that includes people who who don't uh who don't agree with me or with the other speakers who feel there should be basic rights allowed folks and basic services allowed before you destroy the services that they exist and thank you for giving me time thank you for your comment that concludes public comment and I will bring it back to council I think there were several questions brought up by some of the callers and I hope that we can have staff go back and listen to the video and try and get some of those questions answered and available on the homelessness website or accessible somehow for folks to get their questions answered to have that available there was questions about showing what the shelters look like maybe a couple photos if that's possible I took notes about are we accommodating people with disabilities and their pets and from the last meeting my understanding is yes so really kind of calling that out and I think in any future updates that would be helpful uh money towards mobile services and showers gray water dumping which I understand is happening up at the national guard armory location where the tier three safe parking is and anywhere else that that service those types of services are offered building more housing and rehabbing hotels that was also brought up and briefly mentioned through our planning and community development director and our economic development team working on that aspect of housing and having housing updates and future updates as part of these updates there was also recommendations on data collection and incident data grievance and data I think all of those are great points to consider so I hope that as we step into these efforts that we continue to work on improving and doing what we can thank you for all the work every day thus far I know it's been a tremendous tremendous load and it's been a huge team effort and I hope we can continue working with our partners and county staff to continue making progress and really addressing the successes there were there was a caller who said that they didn't they spoke to 15 folks at 1220 river street and nobody knew of anybody who transitioned out of housing so how can we do a better job really um talking about those successes because my understanding is there are people who have transitioned and have received employment and those obstacles removed whatever someone's barrier is is definitely a success to even if it's one person that's one person last so um I will hand it over to council member brown I know you've had your hand up and then council member Cummings thank you thank you mayor um I am I find myself in a pretty cynical place right now um with respect to this item and I could make a big speech about um the concerns I have and why support other ways of um approaching this but I'm not going to do that I just want to really paraphrase where my concerns continue to lie as I explain that I'm I'm afraid this is not going to be a unanimous vote in support of this today I'm just at a point where I feel like we are we are it it's not clear to me that we aren't repeating what we have already done and I and I say that with all due respect and and recognition of the tremendous amount of effort you all are putting in I do not mean to say that I don't have confidence in you um but I I have very very significant concerns about the overall approach that this body has taken um and I have concerns about the um what I see is you know for me and it's a matter of perspective so you can disagree but this is my perspective and I share it with I think a lot of people in the community who have spoken with me over the years on all sides of this issue whether or not they um you know or believe that enforcement is important and the way to deal with this or compassionate approaches and resistance all the way to resistance it's across the board that people feel like for all of our efforts we're not making progress and um and so I'm just going to talk about the the areas that I see here and just a very high level and I'm sorry if this offends people um but I have to say it um one I what I see and and again lots of work going on but what I see is that the city has been thus far successful in building out a bureaucracy around um how to address this issue um and not actually providing services um I know that's coming um or you know and it kind of fits and starts and there's a lot of challenges associated with that I'm not placing blame any on anyone or any group at all here I'm just saying this is where we're at um we have or we're building out a bureaucracy where that's gonna cost a significant amount of money um and um I would like for that to be an effective and efficacious out of costs data I feel um I recognize everybody loves data I'm a social scientist who you know got a degree based on you know having to do really rigorous data collection and analysis I understand the significance and importance of it um but I feel like in in some ways at least based upon my own experience the conversations I'm having um it sort of feels like data is the end goal in itself and not what we're gonna do with the data so some of the things that I heard surge uh talking about earlier um to me that's data that can be really useful um you know a lot of people are are terrified of ending up in you know on the radar and that's not just because they're um you know uh it's not because they don't want to comply with some norms that everybody you know that that we all are able to comply with it's because they have legitimate challenges um that aren't getting and their needs are not getting met um I worry about um the risk of dispersing you know dispersing people we know we've been through that many a time we know what happens right and I don't want to see that happen I don't want people I mean I I get it that we need to do something and that there is an impact on that um San Lorenzo Park and the benchlands and people are struggling and quality of life for people in the neighborhood is a concern of mine and we're gonna have um people we're just gonna hear it from all sides you know you've done this before how is it different I want to see it be different and I don't see that in what we're getting in terms of updates and then the last thing I'll say is I believe what I would really like to see and I'm not even going to attempt to make a motion about it because I just know way this is going anywhere but we talk a lot we talk about accountability and you know measurement and metrics we gotta we gotta surveil the individuals in these programs um we are not applying the same standards of accountability to ourselves and until we do that I'm gonna remain pretty skeptical um and so that was a little longer than I intended I'm sorry but I just wanted to lay out the my rationale and I'm I'm not doing this to be combative I'm not suggesting um you know we need to um blow it all up and and do something different but I just feel like there's a lot more that needs to be done um internally and in our conversations with the community that's all I got for now thank you council member Brown council member Cummings and then vice mayor Watkins thank you and I want to thank the staff for their work on this I have a couple things to say but then I want to get to I have a couple more kind of questions and some some um questions I want to get to um you know since my time on the council there's been a number of different ways that we've tried to approach this issue some of what is being implemented now as even mentioned back in 2019 around um having less managed and low barrier barrier um transitional encampments um we did a lot of work during 2020 up standing up um hand washing stations port of potties we stood up multiple um you know vfw hall locations multiple encampments the armory there's been a lot of work over the years 12 20 river street and we and I want to appreciate everything that's been done because I think we've been able to see different types of models how they work with their limitations and now we're moving forward with um you know hopefully some longer term services will be offered by the city um I do want to share that some of what I've heard over the years um like because we see these large encampments that pop up and we do hear about some of the negatives but one of the positives I will say is that I had people who were saying you know when the Ross camp was open although it had impacts throughout other parts of the city we didn't see those impacts we didn't feel them and right now it's similar I know that there's the neighborhoods that are adjacent to the benchlands are feeling impacts I know that it's having impacts on our river but one thing that people are saying is that but we're not seeing as much camping being distributed throughout the entire city and um you know there's the high likelihood that we're going to see that when the benchlands is closed and so my hope is that we can just continue working on finding places where people can go and in addition to that you know really starting address these issues around the cost of living I mean we are the second most expensive county in the United States and in 2017 we were labeled as the fourth most expensive city in the world when you looked at median home price to median income and um you know we have staff that are ready to go on strike and um you know we don't see any relief in terms of the cost of housing we're doing a lot to address affordable housing and that's going to come up later today but you know the fact that we have 129 increase 29 percent increase and chronically homeless um since 2019 that's something that's very concerning because although we're making big steps we're also saying people who are on the streets for longer periods of time um so that's kind of what I wanted to state around like the situation of homelessness and my hope that we can try to address some of these issues um but I did want to get to something that's a little bit more substantive substantive about um the the um the proposal that's here before us so I do want to just express my uh similarly my concerns that Mayor Brunner brought up I think that when these um reports come forward it would be really good for us to have tables on if we're going to shift allocations of funding where that money goes because just sitting here today I was very confused about the hygiene bay I actually thought that we were reducing our funding towards that project but like after really hearing from staff and having this conversation it it makes sense to me now that you know there was the um there was the ARPA funds 1.9 million was allocated towards a hygiene bay from that source of funding but then there's also 1.7 million from the state of california funds and now we've reached a contract at 1 up 1,359,860 that's going to go towards that project and in the report it listed that that you know this is 540,140 under the projected cost for that work and then from that source of funding um which was the ARPA funds another 76,935 um dollars has been allocated towards um the infrastructure costs associated with public works homeless response field division what that means is that there's 463,205 dollars from that pool that isn't allocated additionally um since there were two pools of funding for that 1.7 million from the california state funds has now been freed up and today the decision we're making is taking a million dollars of that and shifting it to the park's restoration but what that means is that there's another 700,000 dollars that is completely unaccounted for and so um so that means between the two sources of funding there's about 1,163,205 dollars it's kind of sitting out there that's not being accounted for and so um so that's why it would help if we had these these tables because then you know when we're in these situations where there's more money available we can start having those conversations around how we're going to spend that money and it can be clear to the community that there is now actually more money available for us to use on this and so um I wanted to make um a friendly amendment um or it could be an amendment but that you know given that there's over a million dollars left toward that that could be allocated to which other things that we bring back an item to consider the reallocation of the remaining arpa and california state funds initially allocated for the hygiene bay for service that include but are not limited to a vehicle for downtown outreach workers, ADA accessible transport van, winter warming center, ongoing parks cleanup, cost study for the implementation of a 24-7 non-law enforcement response, non-law enforcement alternative emergency crisis response, pilot program I know later than the second meeting in october and again these are these are items that have come up before us um we've spoken with our downtown outreach workers and they've said we're more than happy to transport someone downtown to one of these facilities but I'm not going to use my personal vehicle um we've heard from surge and other people called in saying that the Salvation Army doesn't have an ADA accessible van to transport people from the downtown or anywhere in the community up to the armory um we've heard recently I've heard a communication that Brent Adams is potentially not going to continue his services with the storage program in the winter warming and I don't know if anybody is going to step up to do that work but that's something um that we really need to have when the temperature gets below 35 degrees um the park's cleanup is going to be an issue because as we know if we're going to displace some people from the Benchlands they're going to be going to other places likely into the Poganup and funding to help with that cleanup is going to be something that we might want to consider. There's been discussion about 24-7 non-law enforcement crisis response and if we want to move forward with that we should it was recommended back in 2020 we do some kind of pilot study to understand what those costs would be and I know there's other um you know considerations by city staff on how that one point one point one roughly million dollars could be spent and so you know since it's unclear in these proposals where that um additional money is going to go I think that'd be good that we have something come back so we can direct where that money can be spent on these types of services. Second yeah uh I just wanted you threw a lot of numbers out and without looking at it on on um in front of me does staff have have any without going too deep into this right now do you have any comment on those figures and has this been a discussion with the funding already on the staff level is there an additional one point one million um um I'll take a first crack at that I'll take a first crack at that if I if I can I'm air burner and I appreciate the comments uh councilmember Cummings um first and foremost uh both the ARPA funding as well as the 14 million has been iterative as we respond to shifting needs and opportunities and project cost comes into focus we've had savings in some areas um and we've had some areas as we've seen today that have uh exceeded our original estimates and so I understand and appreciate the request for us to bring some clear tables that would allow us to illustrate that and full transparency for the council in the community and we will certainly do that going forward I am in the process of working with Elizabeth Cabell our new finance director to update all the ARPA numbers as well as our long-term forecast and so the council can have a good understanding of where that's all pacing including these ongoing updates that I anticipate we will continue to make to the 14 million as we as we move through this process and we of course want to strive to do that in as clear and transparent a way as possible um with regards to the motion there's a lot to unpack there so there's there's several moving parts some of which I'm sure Larry and Lisa can speak to um as far as the vehicles is concerned we actually have two vans that are already on order and in the pipeline for purposes of assisting with outreach and transportation uh Larry and the homelessness response team have been working through creative solutions to providing for ADA transportation um as based on the current needs of the population we're serving that that work is also already underway um this week or excuse me last week we had a meeting with a consultant that has worked with another number of other communities to stand up 24 7 mobile crisis response units um Petaluma Santa Rosa has been a couple of successful examples and we do plan on engaging him to help us with a feasibility study to bring a pilot forward we think Santa Cruz is an ideal fit for the model that they've successfully rolled out in other communities and that is something we're currently working on we won't have that ready by October that's something we would likely bring forward after the new year um as the team has mentioned today the bench lens restoration and standing up shelter are our most immediate urgent priorities and that's that's why we've brought forward the budget recommendations you have in front of in front of you today so those are just my initial thoughts sorry that's so long winded but Larry and Lisa may have some additional well I was just gonna say we have our eyes on trying to provide additional shelters uh that we don't have identified in the budget additional transitional shelters similar to 12 20 that we don't have identified funding so those those needs as the city manager identified are emerging and we're seeing where we need them and that's I think I've spent the money 10 times over but having said that do you have anything else to add to the the shelter piece no I mean I think Matt and Lisa spoke to really the dynamic nature and some of the other plans and sort of what's in place but certainly we can we can come back with the detailed information about what those moving pieces are so that you can see it in future updates I think it's the other one thing I would add is I think just I think Matt addressed it a little bit but specifically around you know an additional cost was the contract for Salvation Army we utilized 1.3 that was for housing matters expansion because the county is going to fund operations uh the cost differential for that program was a little bit more I think it was detailed in the roots of the staff report for that contract so I want to say there was about a potential $400,000 difference depending on whether they fully expanded that contract so that's another little bit of a dynamic piece that where these services are over budgeted for what was originally in the plan so accounting for all those pieces is important but we can report back one just last comment on the RFI because you specifically asked about additional availability and programming of those funds those decisions will come back to you all and we we intend to do so in a way that also gives you an update on fun funding spent to date and so that's those are conversations of both Laura our assistant city manager as well as our finance director are currently working on so again as Larry pointed out this is a been somewhat dynamic I understand that the need to want to get a firm understanding as to where those numbers are and we will be bringing those back as there's opportunities to reprogram funding that may that may come available and I really just bring this up because you know in the absence of having that table where we can see what money is still available and if there is money that's still available and there's an explanation to the council that you know we do want to acknowledge that there's this leftover money and we're considering you know putting it towards x y and z that's helpful because in the absence of that you know I'm looking at what's what's on you know what's in our report and it's like well there's over a million dollars just floating out there and we have no idea how it's being being used and so I think you know personally for the purposes of transparency that's really what this is trying to get at especially since there's been concerns raised over these types of items and there's been interest expressed by city staff and wanting to you know explore these kinds of options around you know vans and and vehicles for outreach workers but then you know unless like this is the first time I've heard that oh that's being worked on and this is our opportunity to hear about homelessness response of what's happening around that today and so for me it's if I'm not hearing this information then it makes me want to say oh if there's money left over and we've heard that there's interest in these items you know let's bring back an opportunity for us to discuss this so that's that's the intention of the motion and I don't you know if we want to I mean that's why I also said including but not limited to because if a report comes back and it's like we're working on this we're working on this we have these other funds we need to set aside some buffer that's something we can make a decision on but in the absence of having that this report I think many people would be concerned with there's a million dollars out there and we don't know what's happening with it yeah I agree I think in the next update that we need to give you a full financial update on on all the various projects the fundings the sources and you may recall back when you did program those funds and it was this really comprehensive table and it said where it was funding and what year the funding ran out and it's really time to bring that back to really make sure that we all acknowledge that these are limited funds and this is when these fundings for some of these things that we would like to be ongoing but there isn't the funding for it so I think a full amount of report back with a lot of time spent on it I think is really important it might be also good to include funding applied for as as another column I'm visualizing columns I see it too I like tables um does that does anything change with your motion I guess when is this coming like when is the schedule to come back to council in terms of the next quarterly next quarterly would be on track either for late November early December it comes back with that that'd be amenable because I think that these are questions that we all want to have answered and if we're going to get an update on kind of where we are financially we've also heard that you know there might be new options for transportation there's obviously some discussion about 24-7 crisis response and if we can just get an update on like if we're going to do a pilot study not even the pilot program like just the study itself how much does that cost and because these funds can go towards these types of things that we've been hearing for years the community is interested in and so and if there's other things like let's let's hear about it but so council member Cummings we could certainly cover all of that in the next quarterly update I would caution about some of the specifics that are being that must be included because many of these have been budgeted for and included in the budget already but I hear I hear the request for getting a fuller understanding around where those opportunities may be what funding's been spent to date what changes have been made along the way and we could certainly bring a more comprehensive discussion around that at the next quarterly update did you have a question I just wanted to add the county is doing a pilot crisis response so let's talk to them coordinate with them see what they're doing get information from them as we're exploring this as well so okay sorry I just have one comment too is that it was a community member came up to council member Watkins and Cummings and I after a safety event at the Civic and he had mentioned that the city of Petaluma and Ronard Park had set up a system like this that was separate from the county and so out of curiosity I met with partners up in Petaluma during the break and so did chief Escalante and then the two of us met with Matt and gave the information that we got from them on how they were able to stand it up in about six months without the county and so we have different situations here but the first step was talking to this consultant and so right away I just want to acknowledge like Matt was on it Matt was already ready to start that work and so this was I don't know a couple weeks ago so I'm just super excited I know the full council would probably be on board with something like that but so I just want to say thanks to Matt for you know getting that ball rolling on our behalf in the community all right well we have would you still have a motion on the floor I'll just change the the date to coincide with the next quarterly update sorry yeah well yeah there's there's a friendly amendment is the friendly amendment yes yeah maybe available is the point to get an updated budget table or is it to basically say that we're going to pay for all these things I'm confused now it is not it's not to say that we're going to pay for these things okay it's really to put me back with that updated table and right okay and if they had like for example if there's already you know alternatives for ADA transportation if that's already in the works then we can see what that costs and okay that's great you know but um yeah this is just to get information on you know costs for these services or anything else um where this remaining kind of 1.1 million dollars could go so that we're being you know transparent up front with where this money is going to get spent and if it doesn't go to these things that's fine but if I think it's good that we're understanding where it's going to go and and just just for clarification the 1.1 million we don't even have that definite amount I'm understanding there have been shifts so if I'm if I may the um so we just heard today that the the 1.7 million that was allocated towards the hygiene bay from the california state funds we're not going to use for that and so we just shifted um 1 million of that to the parks cleanup which leaves 700 thousand dollars unaccounted for and then similarly for the arpa funds we had 1.9 million from the american rescue plan allocated towards the hygiene bay we're spending roughly 1.3 on that on the hygiene bay which is the final contract and then of the remaining roughly 500,000 540,000 we took roughly 77,000 and allocated that towards the public works homeless response field division and so what's remaining there is about 463,000 so that's that's where these numbers are coming from Mary if I may yes um in in terms of the language in the motion bonnie do you mind putting it back up for a second because I think it reads a little bit confusing if you were to potentially um instead of direct staff to bring back an item I think direct staff to um to at the next quarterly update to bring back considerations for their reallocation I think that reads more accurately yeah in which case I'm happy to as the seconder to agree and then just one note um yeah I think that that provides some clarity and then maybe we can add before you say that is that the change you made and bring it next and I don't even if it needs to be an item just consideration as part of the presentation I guess maybe a consideration delete an item yeah it's an item right delete that I think it's what she's saying I don't know if I think we're for all on the same page I guess it doesn't really matter but I wasn't thinking of it as a separate item I was thinking as an integrated component of the update for consideration and I'm sure we'll have more to include in there such as the restoration yeah I didn't even budget the you know the little a drop in the bucket for the actual restoration of the projects I don't have that information but my eyes are on what was remaining to just go towards that as well does that um still fit with your emotion and tension is not limited to okay yeah so um is the maker of the motion uh that was councilmember calentary johnson and seconded by vice mayor Watkins fine with this I do have a question about warming center um and just our rfp process we've had an rfp process for the spectrum of services that we'd like in our community um was the warming center part of that rfp process should it have been there was not a response submitted through that rfp process for that type of program okay so not as part of the motion but I think let's work with our community organizations that are doing these services to encourage them to go through the process that we've set up which is the rfp process so um but I'm good with emotion and the seconder as well I am too okay and I just have a few brief comments okay I know that we're over time so I'll keep them really short but I just I want to thank again the staff for the work and I want to thank the conversation and I think having been on the council now I've seen um with really well-intentioned reports and recommendations and summaries and ad hoc committees formed to really look at how we can continue to make progress with this really complex issue and um over the past year and a half or so I think we've really seen action and it's to councilmember calentary johnson's point it's not perfect but it's progress and we have to keep moving and it takes time and so I just I hold hope that moving forward we can continue to make progress not only for those who are unhoused in our community but for the surrounding area and I talk to parents who go to school with our kids that have kids that can't access that park and we heard from neighbors there too so it's more than just those living there it's all of the those impacted and then frankly I think having any um unmanaged encampment is is not the way to go one but two to have it right next to our river when we're seeing thousand-year floods all of a sudden occur because of climate change is a complete liability for so many lives so there it's not perfect but it's progress and I think we have to remember that as we make these decisions and we're we're seeing that and we're seeing the investment we're seeing people do the work so in the interest of time I'll keep my comments there and I'm happy to support motion and continue moving in this direction thank you mayor thank you vice mayor Watkins all right I think uh that concludes our comments and we're ready for a roll call vote this is on agenda item 19 homelessness response update member co-entry johnson aye boulder aye coming aye brown no liars aye vice mayor Watkins aye and mayor brood aye that motion passes with councilmember brown one no and six yes thank you we have one more item before uh oral communications and a break so our next item is item number 20 revised fiscal impact report for the empty home tax initiative petition for members of the community who would like to comment on this item now would be 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 and then we will take public comment and return to council for deliberation and action if you are joining us here in person if you'd like to comment on item number 20 revised fiscal impact report for the empty home tax initiative petition you can line up here on the right of the dais and sign in at the podium so at this time I would like to welcome presenter Marisol assistant director of finance thank you good afternoon mayor members of the council and members of the public it's my pleasure to be back here with you today to present the update to the empty homes tax fiscal analysis let me go ahead and share my screen you see the power point okay all right just want to make sure you guys can see the power yes we can thank you okay thank you so an agenda of the presentation would be just some background on empty homes tax the recap of council and public concerns and a revised fiscal impact report so what is the empty homes tax parcel tax on vacant homes vacant means less than 120 days per year in youth and revenue use is affordable affordable housing initiatives this is a citizen based initiative some of the concerns in the public comment from the previous meeting and also emails that we have that we have received and reviewed some of the concerns are start-up costs website costs legal costs committee costs use of the SMU utility data revenue estimation data collection so we'll try to address these concerns and recap here in the power point and we also have them addressed in the attached agenda report so starting off with it start-up and website costs I know there was a lot of comparison between what we have listed and what was listed in the Oakland fiscal impact for their measure in talking with consultants of the the city of Oakland the consultants that do the work for the city of Oakland for their vacant tax the estimate that was on their fiscal and impact for start-up cost was 100,000 and and talking with the consultants the actual costs were more like 800,000 50,000 what Oakland had to do was fill the custom a custom database and web portal for for their customers so those estimates and comparison were just underestimated as you know this was the new tax and that was the best estimate they had at that point in time and speaking with our IT team I know there was a lot of concerns about having costs in there for for you know start-up cost website costs related to if this measure was to pass related to the empty home tax initiative after talking with our IT department they for saying that the you know the estimates that we have seemed fair and that they would caution that if if this measure is passed and we do move forward with it that it just depends on what's available if we might require a new database or for this data set a skill license virtual server and of course additional staff time from them and that's in the attachments as well shows the the hours there you know in our RT team there we have a lot of professionals that work for us and our IT directors fabulous so they walked us through the process of you know anything new they have a system their process for implementing anything includes steps in the process and they work with all stakeholders to prepare design build test the point the same these changes for litigation costs I know there was some concern about having some litigation costs in the start-up section so litigation costs are difficult to predict and after reviewing with city staff we agreed to keep this estimate in um even with successful litigation with our legal counsel will incur cost by the city and there is other costs involved in and not just an issue over the ordinance but also about protest and expansion and small claims for tax collection and unpaid taxes for committee costs I did do some research and that with the SCRTC measure D tax payer oversight committee administrators and we did scale back some of the um some of the hours that we put towards meetings in the new estimate you'll see three to four regular committee meetings per year and estimating one to two community meetings per year and we did uh separate the cost for regular and community meetings out in our attachment um for the for the cost so that way you can see which one is allocated for which type of meeting um just just to note that the measure D oversight committee they have a five member committee and the empty home tax is staying up to nine members so also to note the measure D committee they they meet twice a year for a minimum of two hours and they're slated to meet three but they've normally met two so far since they they started so they have some fluctuation there as well which is why we've provided an estimate for three to four meetings and next slide we're just talking about the revenue estimates there was some concern about the revenue estimates we saw concerns on both sides either the estimates were high or the estimates were low I did speak with the county they had done some preliminary analysis for a similar tax measure they decided to not bring it forward this year but in talking with them and how they sort of broke down the analysis we saw that are a range that we use for the estimate and also the exemption range seemed in line with what what they had used for some of their calculations if it's not all the same but in meeting with them and getting an outside view on on how better to estimate this they felt like it was a fair estimate so for the thank yous municipal utilities data some of the concerns more that you know that we could utilize this data in order to provide a better a better idea of vacant property so right now as we had discussed before we know that consumption data is private and in speaking with our FEMU department you know they warned us that zero consumption does not indicate they can see there's a slew of things that could be happening you have stuff meters or meter that are not reading right you have closed and open meter because of closed and open accounts and also just to know that they have a meter project that will be finalized next year and so you know these are things in our estimate currently you know we use based on the information we have and then down the road if this measure does move forward there could be a possibility of utilizing some form but we don't know at this time so this is the declaration process that was also a concern from some of the public during the last meeting just saying that if we left it up to to property owners to property owners to declare their vacancy status but we just wanted to make it clear from how the ordinance how the proposed ordinance is written that this is what the declaration process was property owner must declare vacancy status fee for 15 also going back to fiscal year 24 25 would be the the first year this would be implemented for the for the full for the prior full calendar year owner exemptions would be verified by the city and the city may audit properties annually so as mentioned throughout the proposed measure the final process for for doing these items is up to the city so right now these are just estimates allocated in the fiscal impact report from what we have and then if this measure goes forward the city will address the best way to to satisfy all the processes of the ordinance so here we have the summary of changes of cost changes this first column here is the June 28th original estimate and then the revised estimate and also this is listed in the agenda report more descriptions on the section you can see that the total start-up cost we did reduce after looking at some of the sections there and then total ongoing committee as mentioned we did reduce by the number of by some of the the information there and by reducing the the number of committee meetings and what's tied to that some legal costs there were reduced the total ongoing administrative this did increase because we added in a key element of administrative cost that wasn't included prior and that was actually coming from the housing and economic development department of project management once these funds are assigned a purpose to manage that project going forward so that wasn't included previously and so we added that as well and so when we're looking at total first year what we did here is just clarify what what that should mean so start-up costs plus half of the ongoing half of the administrative as we know in any start-up year it's not going to be a full full ongoing cost there's we're ramping up in that first year so that's um that's the comparison there between this new estimate in the last and then total ongoing would be these two total going forward again the estimates in the fiscal impact reports are our just estimates put forward if the measure is passed the city will will address the actual processes and what's used for for addressing the vacant lots and then the processes of who would be working on what so I just wanted to add as well that we knew that within the measure administrative costs are capped at 15 percent of revenue and so for the range that we estimated 2.5 to 4 million in revenue that would be between 375 thousand and 500 thousand so our estimate estimate of ongoing administrative below the 15 percent at this point and that's the presentation so thank you for your time thank you okay thank you for the presentation and the updated estimate and analysis on those costs I would like to bring back questions to the council if anybody has any questions on those updates for a mighty soul council member brown I do have a couple of questions and I may have more depending on what I hear in response but I guess I um well I'll say I'm glad to have received the revised report and really appreciate the work that you all that staff has invested Marisol thank you for trying to get doing your best to get a handle on a an approach that has some some pretty significant unknowns but I guess I'm I'm I'm still feeling like the administrative cost projections make assumptions that it's not clear to me why those assumptions are being made so for example um what what when you decided four meetings to cost out um uh and at on admin what do you anticipate happening at those meetings I mean measured the measure decommissioning meets twice a year over a much more complex uh administrative you know well not the collection system per se but I'm certainly on how those funds are spent and a significantly higher um revenue stream and so I guess I'm and and they somehow managed to do it in one or two meetings and so I guess I'm just wondering what you anticipate would be happening and why we those so many meetings would have to happen um for one and then um another question I have is related it's it may be more of a question for Tony um but I'll I'll wait to hear uh a response on that thanks thank you so I know um as the proposed measure is written currently that the commission uh the committee could have some proposed changes to policy and ordinance and in regards to um land use and things of that nature and so in speaking with uh the planning department it felt that some of those changes if they were to come about may require additional follow-up meetings but that was one of the reasons the other reasons is because this is um a new tax measure uh we is we did make the assumption that we're going to be meeting um more often the first few years until we get this under our belt and and things sort of um have a normal um you know fluctuation to them or less of a fluctuation to what we need to need about originally so that's also something to take into account the the estimates and the fiscal impact are not um like overrifies your stand let's say we're just talking about the startup in the first year and um you know possibly these uh could be reduced um as we know exactly what we're getting into okay um so just as a follow-up then um I'm I'm not sure how much of a cost was allocated to the potential for the planning department being involved in some of this um and how much of the additional was would be attributed to economic development because I didn't see those breakdowns and I don't want to micro manage or scrutinize um but it it does seem like a lot of money um or something that may or may not happen and I guess that gets me to my um a clarifying question that I think um Cindy Dawson from the empty home tax campaign was trying to get resolved through your office Tony and I have um like threads of emails and I tried to pull out what I thought was relevant here um so so our understanding is that when we wrote this the scope of work for this oversight committee was defined as meeting once per year publishing an annual report and reviewing financial and operational reports produced by staff um and that some other things may occur um and um having had a conversation recently with a reporter who seemed bound and determined to envision and lay out uh the the you know a very aggressive scenario for this committee um where they're meeting all the time demanding staff time and you know I mean it there's there's nothing in this that says the staff has to over has to administer um meetings on demand for a committee um and there's nothing in here that so even if a committee was formed and wanted to talk about some of those things there's nothing that guarantees them staff support for that um and um and so I guess um and it's it just keeps you know it keeps sounding like well the language isn't clear or the language um I think the what the reporter told me was you've got a big giant loophole in here and um and so I know there was some additional communication about um the ability of the city to the city council making clarifying that and um and if that's the case is that something that we can do here because I just feel like it's a do that here this evening I mean not here this evening but can the city council do it can can we do that yes and then in I believe that you were copied on my correspondence with Ms Dawson there's a provision in the empty homes tax that allows the city council to amend the ordinance and I want to get it correct so I'm just gonna read it um says the ordinance may only be amended by a vote of the people if the amendment would result in the special tax being imposed extended increased uh decreased imposed extended decreased or increased in a manner not authorized by the ordinance but the city council is authorized to amend chapter 338 in a manner that that does not increase or decrease the tax rates or otherwise constitute a tax increase so as written there may be argument about the scope of the authority of the of the committee but the council could if it passes curb that by ordinance so and that would have to happen after it was yes adopted okay I just wanted to make sure and and that I didn't I wasn't totally clear about but I'll confess that occasionally ask a question for the benefit of the public when I already know the answer because I feel like this is a really important one so I wasn't aware and I just wanted to make sure it was a very clear for everybody I wasn't trying to put you on the spot about that but I understand I was just most happy to answer any other questions you might have okay um so I'll I think I'll leave it there for now um I do have a few comments that I'll save for later and mayor if I could um I could respond to one of the questions that council member Brown mentioned um you had asked the council member right about the specific time um that was allocated to the planning and housing community development or uh economic development staff and um we um there is a table at the back of the um report that has the specific number of hours that is that that are identified um and so um so the last it's the last page of the report and that has the the hours broken down and then um there was um in terms of the um need to support the committee um part of that was you know the need to dedicate staff hours towards that committee if they chose to pursue things like um policy options related to affordable housing there's a provision in the um the measure that says um this is let me get the section number for you 3.38.70 uh I it says the city manager or designate shall provide clerical assistance administrative support and technical assistance to the committee and shall be present at the committee meetings and so when we were having those conversations with finance about um would there be support provided to the committee um if there are um technical questions related to affordable housing and development issues we um uh look to that provision to say that both um the planning department and planning community development department and the economic development and housing department would both be providing that support and in some instances both be attending um those meetings and so that's where um I just wanted to to respond directly to some of those comments about um some of the assumptions that went in notwithstanding the issues that you mentioned about the council being and future councils being able to shift those just wanted to provide a little bit more context thank you I appreciate that um if I could just get um because I and I appreciate you mentioning that we do have access to that information it it passed me by and so I'm just wondering you said it's on the last page um and I'm scanning the line items there's 58 here do you have anything happen to know sorry I was just looking at the um it's the revised impact report so um it's it's what's posted with the packet here and that's one of page one of six or excuse me page six of six right there's a table that that's a big table on page six and so I'm just wondering which line item I'm just trying I can't find the planning cost versus economic development cost because now I do want to know now I'm curious yeah yeah sorry so um if you look it's actually um in line items 36 has the community meetings and then um 35 has the um attend the committee meetings three to four a year and so that that's planning that well that that actually if you if you look across the top it has finance planning and economic development it and city manager's office and then um there's additional breakdowns there with the specific hours and so that's where marisol reached out to myself and to buying lifts come in economic development and plugins and estimates for the time that we would spend if we were looking at three or four meetings per year and I can tell you from my perspective I just said all right well what kind of time estimates do we spend on an item that goes to the planning commission or you know a single planning commission meeting and a couple of those items thank thank you I and I don't want to cut you off but I I get it now what what you're where the I get it I'm I'm just going with the column and the row and so now I see that it was not about a specific set of tasks but related to you know if it were this many meetings what what it cost and I appreciate that thank you uh Lee Butler all right are there any other questions council member brown nope okay any other council members with questions before I take it out to public comment okay so at this time uh for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on this is agenda item number 20 revised fiscal impact report for the empty home tax initiative petition please uh raise your hand you can call in with instructions on your screen they should be coming up and then you can raise your hand by pressing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature in the webinar controls on your computer when it's your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted and the timer will be set to two minutes if you remember the public joining us here in chambers and want to comment on this item please line up to the right of the dais and you will have two minutes to speak as well I will look to see if there are any virtual attendees that would like to speak and if we can get the instructions up on the screen for those calling in please thank you I have four hands raised virtually so I'll go ahead and start and they'll alternate uh the first name is Cindy Dawson yes on measure in and go ahead and press star six to unmute hello uh good afternoon can you hear me yes okay uh good afternoon council members Cindy Dawson with the yes on measure in campaign I just want to thank staff for their additional work on the revised report I'm here representing thousands of residents that are supporting measure in who believe there still remains a few misrepresentations that should be fixed and and some costs that are unwarranted I submitted my written comments but I just want to call out a couple things really quickly first I want to just again point out and take a pause to say that the city's report says that this will raise 2.5 to four million dollars a year for affordable housing and this is a revenue positive program so that is important to emphasize and I think it should be highlighted better in the report I want to say that by design the empty home tax took great care to make sure that there weren't six administrative costs and that the meaning that the city can scale their administrative costs based on revenue again keeping this revenue positive um Sandy mentioned uh council member Brown mentioned a hundred thousand dollar line item for legal um that is unwarranted and unprecedented needs to be removed um the circle work of the tax committee is to meet one time a year unless the city a council approves meaning more than that um I encourage you I included some language that you could amend um if this passes so um that would be really clear again and those costs should be significantly scaled back to one meeting a year which would bring the costs around fifteen thousand dollars a year details are in my comments um and I also just want to say that you know if you make these appropriate adjustments um that you know we're talking about again a net positive program and I want to just mention what staff said which is there your current estimate not adjusted of three hundred and forty four thousand dollars of the admin year is under the low end revenue estimate again making this a net positive program so I think it's important for the the public and council to understand that we're bringing millions of dollars for affordable housing this is a straightforward fair approach um and we really hope that you will um make the adjustments to the report we will look forward to continuing to connect with Santa Cruz and um and add to the thousands of residents who are already supporting measure m and are ready to take action to create more affordable housing in our community thank you so much for your attention thank you for your comment I will invite the next public comment here in person thank you for waiting welcome um I'm gonna take down my mask which I don't like doing and I appreciate that um the mayor and um councilwoman Myers is wearing one I think everybody in here should because we have high spikes in our county it's not just about getting COVID it's about not spreading it to others so I'm apologize for this um I'm speaking really more to the community I think um council member Brown kind of pointed out some some biases and so did the last caller in the staff report but I have to say this is a comment I saw next door I've been monitoring this open empty house tax and one person said on their neighborhood street because of Airbnb and vacation homing or second you know a person who has money to have a beach house that he's the only one living in his house full time on his street which all these empty houses create um a potential for criminal action because if nobody's looking out for their neighbor there's going to be break-ins and other things like people working out of these houses so the criminal the criminal issue when I grew up in the suburbs of LA every house was occupied and I want to point out not only should we pass this empty tax because there's so many empty houses and there's so many people without a housing air that we should also make sure that every Airbnb person since they're running a business out of their house that they have to um have business licenses from the city and they have to report all income so the city can get the tax money from that including with all the vacation homes and I also want to point out when you talk about affordable housing you're not talking about real affordable almost all the housing that you've approved so far is not affordable I don't even think one homeless person will get a unit out of this if at most they'll be a dozen so it's not affordable it's affordable for a tech person like a young person just starting out in tech to get a lower rent AMI is not low income let's give an example I lived in a project big section eight and my rent on my income because my income was a thousand dollars was 350 dollars a month for me that was affordable even though it took up a fairly good chunk of my money but with the AMI if I was 30 percent of an AMI which my unit was owned by the city so it would go to the AMI it would have been 600 plus even 800 that was not affordable and it never will be I wish I could say more but that's it thank you for your comment our next member of the public I'll take virtually phone number ending in 0249 hi there welcome hi thank you for taking my comments and for all your work this is Carol pohamas and I would like to thank the staff for um re-examining the city costs um but I have to say I was very disappointed that the revenue estimates were not re-analyzed as well I've done my own calculations uh extensively and when I take the total homes and I take out the ones in the rental inspection program the homeowners exemption the vacation rentals which are exempt by the way those on the market those under construction and the general exemption rate um from other cities I found that in in my estimate the high is 150 homes and the low is 100 so why does this matter um I think it matters greatly for two reasons one you know I just heard that at the higher estimate of the city's um empty homes which is 705 the city costs do come under the 15 percent but at the city's lower estimate they do not it will cost the city money every year from the general fund to run this program because it will cost $450,000 a year to run it and at the lower end it will be 340 some uh brought in so the reason it matters is that the city voters need to understand an an accurate number because they need to know whether it's worth it to vote for this or not I think if people understand that it's going to cost money from the general fund every year and city services every year to bring in a diminishing amount of money for affordable housing which we do badly need they're not going to vote for it and I think we owe the voters an accurate description of that so even though the water information as I just heard is private there's no reason it has to be done individually it could be done on the aggregate to come up with an accurate number I think the voters need to know that this proposal even though it may sound great at first glance it's actually going to cost the city money every year thank you for listening thank you for your comment I'd like to invite the next person here in person hi there welcome hello good evening my name is Jack Ryan Rodriguez and good evening council I want to let you thank you guys for your dedication to this community I actually um I want to speak on this this last matter that just we just went through kind of nervous speaking to you guys um but I also want to include if I can um the one right before it but about the benchlands I think we're actually speaking on item 20 the fiscal impact report for the empty home tax initiative right now so I think all the reason why I brought that one up is because I feel like they they could go hand in hand in a sense of a solution from the bench land for some of the vacant homes um if there are vacant homes or properties that um like she said that there's a member of the community who is the only person on the street throughout the week um and she was a a certain concern by the risk of criminal activities um I know some of the people in this community might blame the benchlands for some of those community or criminal activities which can be be very well um accurate but I'm not sure I mean I don't know um but I know for a fact that um those homes that are vacant um there's people there in the bench land who are willing to work who lost their homes and stuff like that from the pandemic who are ready to work and so some of those houses I'm sure need maintenance or um maintaining or security or some of those houses are too big for uh someone to purchase so we can make them into boarding homes I used to run recovery homes um I was um was part of victory outreach for about 10 years and we went to uh communities all throughout the United States and throughout the world and we targeted you know gang infested drug infested and we planted recovery homes and training centers and vacant buildings or vacant homes like this would were ideal for you know a recovery home um I think this town really needs something like that where um we're not just fighting homeless against the community because we're all one we're all one um but coming up with a solution and so um I'm living there for the last two years um because of um the pandemic and um um the fire and stuff like that I kind of found myself you know right there in the middle and since um kind of having that not as an occupation but as a lifestyle of you know bringing recovery or bringing um hope back to people um that's kind of what I've been doing for the last two years and it's been you know slow but surely um um baby steps but uh people are picking up their own trash right now when last two years ago that they just were laying in their own filth um now that's not every individual but it's one out of 10 and when you know that's that's that's remarkable to for me to look at um so um I was just trying to address if there are some vacant homes that are you know about to be foreclosed or whatever maybe we can get them donated or or I mean there's there's I'm sure we all can come up with some solutions and I'm just going to let you guys know that I can be an applicant or an avenue um um because there are people um I can have at least 150 people backing me that um that are trustworthy um that can help you know bring this community back to where it's supposed to be we're a strong community we have a lot of tourists that come and and we're in the public eye so um we can we can show them that you know it can be as possible and there's lots of opportunity thank you so much our next member of the public is virtual phone number ending in one seven zero five go ahead and press star six hi can you hear me yes hi there great um well this is Eric robergen I appreciate staff's hard work and the fiscal impact before we also appreciate council member browns um desire to get more accurate cost estimate but I like um carol polemus I'm disappointed that staff didn't re-examine the revenue estimates I think we need accurate information on both costs and revenues and um there's some confusion confusion between what an exemption means and what a house is doesn't have to pay the tax if it's occupied or in use for at least 120 days exemptions are for houses that are not in use for 120 days but they still qualify for some sort of exemption so what staff is they started out with um all the homeowners exemptions they looked at the residential rental inspection program they looked at the short term regent short term rental registry and that they from that they got a number of potential of 1069 houses that were not in use for 120 days and from that they said well they estimated arbitrarily in my view 34 percent to 66 percent um would qualify for one of the exemptions even though they weren't in use for 120 days now the problem with that is 1069 homes there there are not by by their methodology there's going to be a lot more homes that are actually in use for 120 days that aren't captured they for one reason or another the homeowner didn't take the exemption they're rentals but they're not actually on the rental inspection program um whatever there's a whole bunch of different reasons in my limited time I can't go through them I did write you a pretty extensive letter so I hope you can look at that I think it's really important that the public and council understand numbers accurately and I I get that the proponents want to get they don't want excessive costs in the fiscal impact report and that's that's good that's appropriate but we also don't want to have we might have a realistic estimate of both costs and revenues and I really feel like you got maybe council got a little bit on staff case because some you know the proponents really wanted to lower that cost number down but I think it's really important that you look at both of them both the cost and revenues so um one point of comparison is Vancouver a city a major international city that has a population 10 times the size of Santa Cruz the last year their official report they had about 1600 homes that were paying their tax I think it's really unrealistic that you know we're going to have anywhere near the number I mean we're against the size of Vancouver and we don't have the international traffic that Vancouver does so just that as a benchmark if we were anything like Vancouver we'd have 160 empty homes so you know I really thank you the time the timer has gone to take a closer look at the revenue side as well thank you very much thank you so much for your comment are there any other members in person that would like to speak to the empty the revised fiscal impact report for the empty home tax initiative petition okay we have one more hand virtually uh I see the name I am watching you go ahead and press star hello but the ODS empty homes tax seeks to impose a so-called tax actually a huge fine by the approval of a majority of people who aren't affected by it imposed on a tiny minority that hasn't done anything wrong in a democratic republic minority rights should be protected against the unaffected majority but the backers of this aren't really democrats they seem like socialists and want to be communists we didn't get the message of the people when that other vicious attack on private property measure and miserably failed the sure sign of a bad government is that it is more concerned with politics than running a city delivering quality efficient service to the people that a city council member is involved is a stain on the city and a betrayal of american principles as I said in my letter to the sentinel oakland is regarded as the seventh worst-run city of america and this measure is more extreme read i want to be bullied totalitarian state than theirs whatever you write as a financial analysis be sure to make it crystal clear this can cost the city and perpetuity for sure if when revenue doesn't provide a five percent of the cost i suspect these few second home people aren't that dumb and will figure out ways to avoid paying an astronaut six thousand dollar fine even if the properties are rented out i suspect it won't be to a single proponent of this measure because i doubt any of them can afford the rent on these types of second homes and those who can have choices that are not exactly street walking any money generated will benefit the few probably subsidizing attracting poverty and increase the government dependence trap which is always a trade-off downside of a welfare state it's communist in nature a system that has always led to misery and more poverty it is also pure theft i don't take the homeowner exemption myself your revenue estimates for sure i suspect are off by one home anyway thanks thank you for your comment uh our next that there's a phone number ending in six nine five nine go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi there hi this is lin renshaw with santa cruise together dot com we are running the campaign to oppose measure n please go to our website to get a yard sign and learn more about this i want to talk broadly about this measure n it's intrusive extreme and punitive it creates new bureaucracy and cost it won't lower rents or reduce homelessness measure n will invade the privacy of every homeowner it requires every homeowner to register with a government agency measure n creates a public registry of every homeowner and enables random audits only by registering and proving that you live in your home can you avoid a six thousand per household tax even residents living at home will face penalties if they mistakenly register late or fail to comply with random audits by the new requirements every day you're late you're liable for misdemeanor and a thousand dollar fine these criminal penalties are extreme and wrong addressing affordable housing and santa cruise needs to be done and it isn't easy this device of measure won't build meaningful new housing and will settle us forever with something that won't work please everyone listening vote no on this poorly conceived household tax it creates more problems than it could ever solve thank you okay it looks like that concludes our public comment for this report i'm just making sure those are all the attendees with their hands raised yes okay um so at this time thank you in addition to the public comment we heard just now five emails were sent to city council at city of santa cruise dot com on this item and thank you to marisa gomez assistant director of finance um we received the revised fiscal impact report that was presented and uh are there any other comments uh from council go ahead the council member brown so i had a question are we at being asked to take action to receive this report there's no action there's no action okay um so i just wanted to clarify that because i i think that as i've said the um numbers on the costs could be reduced considerably and realistically um but i i i want to ask a question now because this keeps coming up and it's not actually um wasn't on the agenda but because a member of the public spoke to it and i've heard that argument made um in the next door universe and in the santa cruise together universe um about the um public registry the invasive public registry and so i wanted to try to get a sense um i know that wasn't really this was a fiscal report um but based upon your and maybe tony this is a question for you sorry to put you on the spot um nothing in this ordinance the way it was written um suggests the establishment of a registry and so i'm just wondering if you can help me understand where that that um concern that's being expressed or asserted as fact is coming from my understanding is that there's an annual report that homeowners are required to submit i'm not sure what the registry reference is to well a member of the public said this will create an invasive expensive um inappropriate i can't remember the short standard word she uses um registry um and there's no registry i mean i was involved in writing this um and i'm very proud to have done that because i tried to make it happen through the city council and if that had happened some of you all may have had more of a chance to be involved in the crafting of it um but that didn't happen and so we went out to the community um and sorry i just had to say that um but i want to get clear about this now with the i mean while we have an opportunity to speak about it on the public agenda because my understanding was a registry you know when when uh and i'm also i'm very much supportive of that but that's not what we're talking about here and when uh two council members current council members um previous councils were trying to work on a registry the costs were considerably higher than that so i guess i'm just really trying to understand um if we if you could if that is your interpretation or not i'm not familiar of with a with a registry component of the measure there's an annual declaration that will be maintained on file by the city and some database but um not not to my knowledge a publicly available registry and i think we would consider that um similar to the way we consider sales tax data and other data that thank you generally not be there thank you just wanted to make that clear i will just say it's six o'clock we have a time certain oral communications so um we can wrap up this item and okay thank you very much for that report again and i see marisol i don't know if you're still there thank you very much for the presentation thank you okay good evening and welcome to our six p.m. session of the august 23rd 2022 meeting of the santa cruz city council and i would like to ask the clerk to please call roll councilmember calentary johnson hi oh here here sorry hi i'm here golder here Cummings here brown here meyers here vice mayor watkins here and mayor brunner present thank you uh okay so at this time uh we will go into oral communications and then we will have a short break before our final item so oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on today's agenda for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you wish to comment during oral communications now is the time to call in an instruction should be coming up on your screen oral communication is an opportunity to speak to us on items not listed on today's agenda and you can raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature in the webinar controls on your computer you will then have two minutes to speak members of the public who are joining us here in person today please line up to the right side of the dais you will have two minutes to speak and we ask that you sign in to ensure correct spelling of your name at the front of the podium however it's not required please remember this is a 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 questions after oral communications at this time i will look to our virtual attendees if there are any hands raised and i'm not seeing any i see one okay i will go ahead and start with the name i am watching you okay the uh the statements council made justifying the proposed hire hotel and vacation rental taxes last meeting when reexamined are not just weak but they're lame like two broken legs you said the city's taxes have always followed the county taxes of course this is irrelevant as hotel taxes vary by city from three to fourteen percent around the state vary within the county and the rates in reality are paired with what the market can bear without burdening businesses pricing in a competitive landscape who takes the risk not you but our businesses do if it turns away any tourist customers whatsoever uh no to you saying it's only tourists that will pay also would you be lowering rates if the county did insert the lap track here you said it's needed to make a level playing field whose playing field our hotels could be enjoying a competitive advantage over the county with relatively lower rates and installing a permanent tax disadvantage to short term vacation rentals compared to hotels at the highest rate in the state is the opposite of a level playing field you said it's been 10 years since hotel taxes were raised taxes and fees based on price unlike many forms of revenue are 100 percent inflation protected when sales or prices go up tax revenue goes up and it has a lot how nice for you meaning the city i ask how often do you think taxes should go up what like every couple years perhaps the socialist and communist would say yes because for them the governor's never big enough or expensive enough thanks thank you i will alternate here and invite the next person here in person to come to the podium thank you hi i'm pat colby um i got a legal from the senior lead attorney at the national law center on homelessness she's like one of the experts that gets quoted in big media name is tristia bellman i work closely with her and i've talked in fact my brother and i got her connected with lily graham of disability rights and the northern california aclu so i'm sure you're going to be hearing from them soon um the reading of martin versus boise which too bad the city attorney isn't here because he's giving you improper information says that it has to be legal indoor shelter to be exempt from being from violating martin versus boise it has to have proper facilities that does not include porta potties um and then the next word i'm going to say that i haven't well two words that i haven't heard anybody bring up because i don't play in the local arena here i go to the feds and i go to the big media and i go to agencies like tristia bellman's national law center on homelessness because they actually have the right data and they actually have the facts um civil rights those camps that you're proposing violate so many civil rights i can't even list them um locking people in and not allowing them the right to move freely is a major civil right i know that people that are in housing would never allow you to do that to them that's one civil right that's an example um also locking people there should be different camps for different levels of people unlike um miss mires said not every homeless person and i'm so tired of reading this is a drug addict or a mentally ill person those are the minority of the homeless population i was homeless from 2016 to um 2019 and i saw what the homeless population made up of and my facts and my observations go hand in hand with the national law center on homelessness thank you for your comment our next member of the public has phone number ending in 1705 go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi council this is eric roug begins i'm um i wanted to address the issue of the hilltop apartments i am a uh named party to the 2008 conference of settlement agreements which settled all litigation between the city of the county and private citizens against the ucsc regarding the long range the 2005 long range development program one of the provisions of that settlement agreement was that the university was required to notify the city and county before purchasing any in-town properties um and apparently with the regents purchase of the hilltop apartments they fail to do that so i believe they're likely in violation of the 2008 csa also it looks like they're violating the tenants rights in various ways such as um constructive evictions and uh which you could ask the city attorney what that means but they're not they're effectively forcing people out by you know making unreasonable demands on them um potentially violating the city's relocation ordinance violating the tenants right to um the quiet entitlement and various other things also i'd like to say the university as a whole all this controversy you know what kind of the infighting within the community um about the high cost of housing the high cost of rental housing nothing the city can do is going to actually move the needle significantly the only thing that can move the needle is getting ucsc to drastically lower its rental prices on campus and what they've effectively done is divide the city divert attention away from their own culpability for example if you look at the current housing prices on campus for apartments not dorms so this is housing only not food they're currently charging $1,256 per person per month for four students to share a room in an apartment that's $5,000 for a single room in an apartment that has more rooms outrageous i want you to i'd like the city council to actually take action so that um number one whatever hilltop uc has violated with hilltop get your legal department to look into that and also Eric thank you your timer is up our next member of the public is here in person go ahead and speak yeah my name is Keith McHenry and i just got done visiting with people waiting for the van to go up to the armory and to overlook or whatever the new name is and um they say there's virtually no room there already right now um that makes sense uh as pat had said the really martin versus poise makes it clear that it should be indoor space paul lee pointed out to me paul lee loved the paul lee loft in case you had heard of that place um the uh says it really all the 5,000 people living outside in santa criss county um would be required to be to not be in violation of martin versus poise to be placed inside shelter space adequate shelter space the other thing that i hear constantly is people um are kicked out of the shelters uh one friend paula she uh i was hoping she would make it here but she's not feeling well she lost all of her belongings when she went to help her mom she came back the uh shelter threw everything away we had to give her a new tent and everything to set her back up i just ran into a woman about two hours ago at new leaf who asked me where the women's shelter was she wanted to move and go inside to a shelter you call the number that you have provided uh in your letter to the community there were no shelter space there there never is any shelter space so i gave her another i gave her a pup tent and i sent her to the you know like to try to camp somewhere safely near the levy but as you know the police will remove her to the benchlands which is now it's it's incredibly beautiful community there but it is also at least 350 people maybe up to 500 and so they're uh um you know any plans to do any we've had two years to house everybody nothing has happened in those two years and we have millions and millions of dollars has just got pissed away into space thank you thank you for your comment our next uh member of the public is here in person welcome hello um my name is jack ronald rigas and i just wanted to address um uh in march of 2020 i was in austin texas um i had moved there two years prior to get away from a toxic relationship that kind of followed me and bit me in the butt because uh the person i was getting away from falsely accused me of something and because it was domestic um the charges were dropped but the case stayed and the domestic or um the department or uh the district attorney came and got me i guess pretty much they they they ramped the district attorney they went with it so i had a two-year-old warrant um that came on march of 2020 i guess there was a um upgrade anyways i got a knock on my door they showed me a warrant that was two years old they housed me in austin in travis county uh just to send me um for 14 days and the extra dotting me to santa clara just to release me homeless transient so they took me and they made me homeless and then that was a monday and that saturday it was shelter in place so for for a whole week i tried to comply and then then there was this pandemic and i was forced outside nowhere to go no one answering the phone and they told me to build a shelter so i came home i came to santa cruz and i built a shelter and then i got a bulldozed and and lost a little bit of remains of um of what i had that was brought with me to california but everything went out the door the other day um we were fortunate to have electricity down in the bench land um and sometimes we have to run extension courts which are very expensive i've seen um uh four members in uniform whether police or fire department i believe it was police but they uh they cut um our extension court saying it was a fire safety because it was in the fire um lane but then they left exposed wires um again i'm not trying to fight back and forth i'm trying to come up with a solution um those vacant houses um the the ucsc students um we can have um i mean the clubhouse itself in a place in capitol we can have hostels you know and still um um offer um other sources to the homeless to like work on board and stuff like that i mean there's lots i mean i have lots of ideas on what's going on it's been two years i've been sitting here at home and then making a home with this in this community and i mean i know you guys are eager and they're eager so i just thank you you thank you our next member of the public here in person hi welcome my name is elise casby i'm here today to speak about the really um sad and quite tragic consequences of um the extreme measures that the elites are imposing on our economy and our republic here in santa cruz the situation is really grave um we have almost nothing left of our democracy we have a situation where a sizable number of our long-term residents are being impoverished they're being hunted down by police they're being left to die outside um something just happened to my mic but this is this is a very serious time for those who are concerned about things like the slavery trade that happened this the um the eventual uh well the situation that happened for decades and years and years and years that led to the holocaust we are watching the same thing happen we have people who are very very poor without wages that can sustain any kind of rental housing really any kind of stability and we are watching the elites essentially dance on these people's bodies and graves i have been watching it at this city council for so long the shutdown of the democracy is not just things like the legal but illicit recall that took a fairly elected progressive majority and and eradicated it and supplanted it with a far right group but the use of big money the use of lies such as we're used against our fairly elected people and the vicious use of demonizing poor people is what is leading this country to ruin and you all are part of that problem thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person members of the community including the city council but most particularly the people who bothered to show up here today thank you for showing up and i'm thank you for being concerned about the folks who can't show up in the benchlands who are there um i'm i spoke earlier about the benchlands issue and hope other people will pick up from where i left off or just give your own feelings about well what do you think should be happening and what isn't happening and how the council can help this is a different item than an agenda item if you're looking for resources that people in the benchlands need what do they need what should this council be giving them that they aren't doing and that hasn't been passed this afternoon that's the question i have and i think that perhaps people might want to talk about it particularly people who live in the benchlands this is the body that can make those decisions if not today then in two weeks or they can authorize the city manager to take action or perhaps he's sitting right there he's the fellow next to the man in the business suit he can make those decisions he seems to be interested in essentially deporting the entire benchlands segment by segment without providing any specifics about where people are supposed to be able to go or how many people are actually there now we've heard estimates from keith but no estimates specifically clearly from any kind of census in the benchlands so that's a concern i have and i hope that people will talk about it because i'm pretty much talked out i've distributed a flyer which i'll give the city council which has to do with their policing or should we say they're unleashing the police which you're going to be finding happening in the benchlands soon if only in a very controlled way because i'm told by mark evilleth our our good bailiff here that the police department is understaffed if that helps to stop the benchlands removal i say that's a good thing thank you for listening everybody if you did and my apologies for subjecting this to you if you already know about it okay um hold on one second please our next member of the public for oral communications is virtual and i see phone number ending in six eight seven one go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself can you hear me yes welcome okay dairies most of me in here just a couple of quick things as a landlord strictly one that rents to a lot of section eight tenants i'm pretty concerned about the what i consider redundant or duplicitous excessive application fees that tenants have to pay to various property management companies or basically the same credit report for background uh report i i'm voicing you're concerned i don't have a crisp solution i just think that there should be some kind of clearinghouse we should look at perhaps with the county some type of means of for anybody that has had college uh fit that apply to college there's something called the common app for college i'd like to see something like a common app for a rental application to reduce these you know make these fees more manageable some of these folks are spending two hundred three hundred dollars in pursuit of an apartment and like again for lower income section eight folks that's just that's just um out of reach second unrelated uh to this is i just recently came aware of a program called cat c-a-t-t at the oakland community um assessment and transport team i think this is a very similar program to the cahoots in uti in oregon one of my tenants uh is took a job as the emt in oakland and she has relayed some of the successes of this program there's basically uh emt with a social worker uh crisis worker and they travel around the city in these nimble little suv to respond to um suicide crisis alcohol i mean a lot of this a lot of these various problems that we have in this town i'd love to see something like that to establish thank you thank you for your comment our next member here in person thank you for your patience hi my name is lee miers i'm a 45 year resident give or take a year or so um working poor most of the time i i want to speak because keep mchenry brought up the fact that he was uh speaking to people waiting for the bus to go up to dale aviega park in the shelter um i want to speak to that because i've been working poor i've done a lot of camping i've consistently and forever been able unable to use any of your shelters the idea of getting people to line up at three o'clock in the afternoon giving up their lives giving up what may be the only part-time job they have as obscene and in the original bell versus boy z case that became martin versus boy z the department of justice issued a friend of the court brief on behalf of the uh plaintiff homeless people part of the document basically reiterated what um the plaintiffs were saying that dude you don't have any place for us to sleep it's a human need we got to sleep sometime and the second part of the document which is what really trashed everybody's camping laws was they spelled out exactly what a shelter isn't and one of the specific things that they listed was special access is unacceptable i come from new york originally new york at least in the barry has real shelters you can walk in 24 7365 there's a bed waiting for you maybe a meal or something like that the idea of having to give up your life to go to a shelter panders to institutionalization and i resent it thank you for your next member of the public is here in person for oral communications welcome i'd like to say that i second the um the caller before that brought up the excessive fees for lease renewal personally paid $125 to renew my lease this year i paid $125 just to renew my lease this year which i thought was excessive i can't really see how they can justify that about my reason for being here today is i'd like to just support ksc a radio that's given me a lot of um as an older adult it's been like a second family to me having the the friendship of the hosts at the radio station the company of am radio their night and day including news and current events and shows that i can call in to and participate with um it's really meant a lot to me um i just don't know what i do with that to be honest uh living alone being being single person and um i know that they're up for consideration because they're having problems regarding this extended um patio concrete patio around their building that is impending impeding on the natural wildlife and that's up for consideration about being removed i just want to support i'm hoping the city council will perhaps make the right decision allow leniency in this their decision making and consider um the great service this radio station offers to us and hopefully won't terminate um our enjoyment of them in the future thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public um is here in person welcome um hello my name is angela flin and i um have been homeless over the years quite a few times i've been homeless for environmental reasons which um i am electro sensitive i have a very hard time if there's a lot of wireless radiation many people while it's estimated anywhere 3 to 30 percent of the population have this condition many of them are homeless because we cannot tolerate living in houses that have too much wireless shelters also are not an option for us because of this i've also been homeless because of dangerous living situations very nice neighborhoods nice homes but very unstable people on drugs i've had to flee those situations and been homeless because of that um i have not lived at the bench lens i do walk by there and it seems like a pretty calm safe location i have one homeless friend back in um venice beach and he calls the typical government response to homelessness whackable basically a homeless camp opens up it gets whacked down opens up over here gets whacked down opens up over here gets whacked down i mean having the bench lands is not an ideal situation but it has provided a lot of stability for a lot of homeless people and given them opportunities to have community and relationships i would love to see more services provided i mean showers they're at site is so crucial for people to be able to get clean every day you can't go to a job interview if you're not clean it's just you're not presentable there's so many blocks for being homeless and you know i've had to struggle through many of these um i'm not here to really offer the solution because i don't have it but there is one thing that i borrow this sign that i saw on the windowsill do you feel loved and i feel like the bench lands provides that feeling for many homeless people that is not something that thank you for your comment okay we are moving through oral communications and oral communications is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to us on any items that we're not on today's agenda hi welcome thank you good afternoon hey my name is amberlee and i've been living here for about six seven years now um i uh was born up north in mendicino and i've been homeless off and on for the last 15 years um i'm also a resident over at the benchlands and since i've been here in sanacruz i've had many many different homes that have been either full dosed i have to move constantly and it's really nice to have a stable place you know and i think for anybody a stable place to get up in the morning and have your things is i mean throughout the whole day it i'm sorry i'm having a hard time take your time it provides a means for the whole day to be productive if you don't have a stable spot you know you're not as productive and right now the bench lands every single day i'm worried that i'm going to get kicked out within a day or two i'm a gardener you know and so i like to plant things like this and i've done that in each of my homes and um and it's okay i just want to mention as well that you know no matter if the people you know the home use community are many there are drug addicts there are non drug addicts there are you know people that have mental illness i would just really appreciate you guys if you could maybe um have a place for us to stay you know and um thank you okay we have oh okay thank you hi there my name is Mike White side and i'm originally from Lodi i own four pieces of property in Lodi and i'm a landlord but here in Santa Cruz i don't think a police officer could afford a home in this this area i mean a new police officer comes to work in Santa Cruz you can't afford a home i don't know if all of you can afford a home i know i'm not able to but the reason i'm here is a horrible divorce the Vince lands gives me some type of uh security i mean i know there's bad people down here good but then probably every one of your guys's neighbor excuse me one of your every one of your guys's neighborhood there's a bad person around we i might have a few more neighbors than you know bad than you do but um it's really all we i have right now and i'm sure most of these people here too um you've got to open your eyes so nobody not too many in it and within 10 years i don't think they're going to be too many people from this maybe even country owning in Santa Cruz because of the price you guys's price is like i looked in the paper the other day and it was like 1.6 for a house at five where i'm at i mean it's outrageously priced how are we ever supposed to get ahead and then this go to a camp and you can't go you can't leave for more than three days a month how are we supposed to get a job a job when am i supposed to work two hours then get back to this camp because i can maybe get a hot dog or something you know that's just you're being unfair you're being unrealistic i mean if your own policemen can't afford a home in our area how are one of us going to that's all i have to say thank you thank you okay um so that concludes oral communications and um council members um we can respond to um or ask questions at this time um there were a couple comments brought up um that were related to an earlier report on the agenda um some of those questions were answered and um for the um the the person who spoke from Mendocino um hopefully there's connection we have outreach workers out we received report and their outreach workers out there connecting county has a mobile office out there connecting with everyone for an individualized rehousing plan so i hope that you're able to make those connections and feel free to contact our homelessness response team if those connections are not happening um but we do have shelter spaces that already people have been um offered and are occupying and um we have more that are coming um up at the armory in addition to what's already there so um are there any council members that were there any other items uh council member coming i did have a question um one i'm just curious for and i should have asked this earlier but um since we were more talking about financials i have been getting contacted by another person who's experiencing homelessness and they want to know like what's the best way for them to get connected to resources because they do have access to resources can you stop your outburst please you've had your time to speak excuse me it's not your time to speak you're silencing my voice and i don't appreciate that please leave it's time for you to leave i'm asking i'm asking you to leave can you please remove him thank you okay so can you rephrase your question please it's just one of what resources we can yeah thank you for that question council member comes okay thank you we will be taking a break but i'm trying to get this question answered and then we will we've been in city business since uh 10 a.m this morning i understand there are folks here for the next item so but we do need to take a 20 minute break um before the next item so that information is available on our city's website through the free guide as well as contacting uh larry and walley our homelessness response team and we also have an outreach team that's on the ground every day and available uh to to help connect folks with resources thank you for the question thank you without an answer and go ahead one more question go ahead and that's that's not related to that but a member of the public and tony were um stepped out at a moment mentioned that um in the 2008 comprehensive settlement agreement the ucsc was supposed to notify the city and county when purchasing any new properties in the city and i don't know if that happened or if there's any way we can kind of look into that as possible violation of the comprehensive settlement agreement i can look into that my gut reaction to that question is that the the comprehensive settlement agreement was superseded by the adoption of the 2021 lrdp and so it's no longer in effect but i can double check in on that and report back to the council thank you thank you okay at this time we will take a recess and we'll be back here at seven o'clock thank you okay is the city clerk ready thank you okay we are back from a short break thank you for your patience and waiting we are now on agenda item number 21 objective standards for members of the public for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you wish to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from council we will then take public comments and return to council for deliberation if you are here in person when public time for public comment is you can line up to the right of the dais in addition to the public comment we will hear on this item 149 emails were sent to city council at city of santa cruise dot com and at this time i would like to welcome to the podium lee butler director of planning and community development i have sarah noisy and matt van also listed who i believe will be joining us virtually that's correct thank you welcome thank you very much and good evening mayor and council members and lee butler director of planning and community development and i'm very pleased to provide an introduction tonight to our package of objective standards for multifamily development including changes from planning public works and parks and recreation along with rezoning consistent with the general plan and some additional miscellaneous zoning code updates such as fence and accessory building regulations the long-awaited objective standards represent the culmination of nearly three years of work council authorized staff to seek grant funding for this in october of 2019 we secured that grant funding through the state selected a consultant and kicked off the project itself two years ago we've done a significant community outreach for this project which increased the amount of time the project took but made for a more inclusive process and better outcomes in terms of modifications that we made to the standards along the way in response to that community the planning profession is changing rapidly right now and for good reason inequities created and exacerbated by historic zoning principles have been known for decades and changes at the local and state levels bolstered by recognition of the issues at the national level are attempting to address those issues and while the challenges associated with inadequate housing production have been acute in california for some time the rest of the country is unfortunately seeing many of the same problems that we've been experiencing across our state and here in the region looking at the planning profession you don't have to go far to see that the national focus has shifted here are some of the national headlines from the american planning association just in the last month housing under production impacts majority of the us planners can lead the zoning reform movement how state judiciaries battled exclusionary zoning and the list goes on tonight our team presents a step in the right direction for addressing these issues the zoning reforms respond to recent state law changes they help ensure that we can maintain a high quality urban form as we grow they provide more certainty for the community developers staff and decision makers they promote more housing production and more housing choice through that higher degree of certainty without increasing density above what is currently allowed and i'm going to dwell here on that and a couple of comments that we have heard from the community that were in the materials that the council received so first i want to repeat the statement i made a moment ago the proposed changes allow no more development intensity than what is currently allowed this was commonly misunderstood in many of the comments that we received i realize this is a really confusing point for the community and that's very understandable someone can easily look at our zoning ordinance and say the zoning ordinance says that only 40 feet are allowed here and these changes are saying for example 55 feet so how is that the case that we're not increasing density as part of these proposals the answer is that state law requires cities to allow development intensity that's called for in the general plan and our zoning standards don't allow for that intensity so developers right now can disregard those standards they can come in and propose a height limit that is substantially taller than that 40 feet even though the zoning ordinance says 40 feet is the max so right now developers actually have broad discretion to make standards fit their projects instead of the other way around the projects fitting our standards as an example a developer can propose a project at the maximum intensity allowed by the general plan and show that they need for example 65 feet in height to accomplish the project and the city could have a hard time denying that project or reducing its size and one thing that these objective standards do is it sets our standards to where the building heights and setbacks are consistent with what is allowed by the current general plan based on careful analyses of hypothetical development projects those are the test fits that the planning commission discussed multiple times starting back on january 7th of 2021 and that were discussed with the council at the november 30th 2021 study session adding zoning standards that match what is actually allowed for a project increases transparency for all stakeholders the standards also provide the city with the ability to require varied roof forms building recesses high quality materials and various other design improvements things that we only have limited abilities to do under our current codes and regulations the proposed standards also incentivize conformance with the rules through a more streamlined process for fully more conforming projects and i want to dwell on this for a moment as well because there is a lot of confusion in the community related to this notably multifamily residential projects of any size have this exact same permit process right now administrative approvals in the rl and rm multifamily zoning districts that process has been in place since at least 1985 the proposal would apply the same process to mixed use and multifamily projects in commercial districts nothing in these changes would allow for or suggest a ministerial process a ministerial process is one that does not require a discretionary permit one that only requires a building permit and one that does not have the california environmental quality act apply what we have suggested is a administrative approval which is very different from a ministerial approval so i wanted to make that point clear as well and a small subset of projects could potentially have that administrative discretionary approval if they are fully conforming with the standards and if they don't meet one of the many other triggers for a public hearing those public those public hearing triggers include density bonus requests which nearly every single large project is proposing a density bonus why because just by the fact of meeting our inclusionary affordable housing standards that they have to meet they already qualify for a density bonus so nearly every single large project already is going to trigger a public hearing just by virtue of that density bonus request but there are other triggers as well a map any four sale units would trigger a public hearing also public hearing triggers include coastal permits land development permits historic alteration permits variances slope development permits and various other permit triggers so while this is an important piece to our work the procedural change associated with the administrative process is not really a large change and i want to also point out that even in that process if someone does choose to pursue that administrative process the community meeting procedures remain in place and that is a better forum frankly for getting community feedback and having community dialogue than a public hearing process where you've got a limited ability to have some of those conversations i'll also note that appeal opportunities remain in place so any administrative approved project can still be appealed to the planning commission and their decision can be appealed to the city council just as is the case with our current process in the rl and rm multifamily zoning districts the council and some community members may recall that we had this exact scenario play out at um 418 pennsylvania where we had an administrative administratively approved project it was appealed to the planning commission and then those three units ultimately were appealed to the city council so taking a step back again these changes represent one of many steps that are needed and many more or are forthcoming we have zoning reforms called for as part of the climate action plan that the council will consider next month and we'll be doing a deeper dive into how we can affirmatively further fair housing as part of our housing element update process that will that's kicking off now and that will certainly call for many additional policy reforms i also want to point out that just about every recommendation we have in this package tonight was supported by the planning commission with all commissioners expressing support for almost the entire package of changes as was done in the staff report our team will detail in their presentation the few items where the staff recommendation differs from that of the planning commission so at this point i will turn it over to our team who will walk you through the process we went through and some of the key standards that were developed our senior planner sarah noisy was the project manager for the objective standards and she did an excellent job working with the community and our consultants on this i want to send out a special thanks to her and our consultants urban planning partners who will be represented tonight by alissa chung and linette deus and our consulting urban designer christin hall who all did really great work on this project they'll also be joined by travis beck from parks and recreation and nathan win from public works who will be represented who will be presenting objective standards related to their respective roles and senior planner catherine donovan will also present a series of minors on ordinance amendments that were incorporating into the same package our principal planner matt van wa is here as well as various other staff members who are available for questions we have a lot of information to cover there are 80 slides please get comfortable we have this this is going to be over an hour of presentation from this point so that we can cover all of the information that is included in this package so i will turn it over to sarah thank you thank you lee um can everyone hear me yes thank you wonderful okay i will go ahead and share my screen right over here so lee just did a great job introducing our team um that's going to be presenting we're all going to be sharing the presentation to some degree tonight so um i'll start off by going through this agenda of our 80-ish slides and we'll start off with some background talking about the state law the council direction that brought us here today existing condition with the city's general plan and zoning ordinance that lee already sort of introduced for you then we'll get into the design and development standards for multi family housing which really is the core and the heart of this project what really drove us to bring all of these things together um then we'll talk about the development review process amendments which lee's introduced as well and really go through the details of how what is changing and what is not changing as part of the recommended proposal then we'll run through the mixed-use zoning zoning districts and other zone district amendments that are included um as well to the to the districts themselves that sort of to incorporate the objective design standards we'll address the planning commission recommendation then you'll hear from Nathan in public works and then travis about street trees um then kathryn will talk about our other zoning ordinance selenia zoning ordinance updates um and address environmental review and then i'll come back to wrap up with a conclusion talk about next steps and um present our staff recommendation so starting off with background so just broadly speaking this project was initiated so that our zoning ordinance the city could comply with the state law for housing development review which has greatly curtailed um the subjective process that we've been accustomed to using with our design permit um so our design review process that we have in place now just really can't function under the current state law in the way that it was designed and intended to so um the goal of this project was to bring our ordinance in line with the way that we're allowed to review projects and make sure that we can still have design standards in place we also have direction from the council to reconcile this mismatch between the general plan and the zoning ordinance and i'll explain more about that in a little minute we also have direction to not alter the pattern the land use pattern at this point in time um our last direction from the council was to um proceed with the zoning ordinance amendments and consider if there was any utility after this after we have these these amendments these zoning amendments in place that there was still um need or utility in pursuing an amendment to the general plan land use pattern um and then you know have objective review standards rather than relying on our subjective development review findings that we've had in the past so just to remind everyone the council direction to which we are responding at this point comes from October of 2019 to move forward with establishing mixed use zone districts and objective design standards for housing and embark on a very broad public outreach process and then in august of 2020 we also got direction to contract with urban planning partners upp to create these objective development standards and then to invite the planning commission to outreach events and incorporate updates to the planning commission so now i'm going to talk to you about how um the state law i'm sorry my cat is joining me um i'm going to talk about the state law um that brings us here to to sort of needing that direction and then i'm going to go through the our um community engagement process and our outreach process and show you um how that worked so um lee mentioned that there had been some changes to state law so they are there are two main bills that create the housing crisis act and the housing accountability act um and these have been updated they have been updated even at the beginning of 2022 and i think there and there's some more legislation in the pipeline that would make some further additional amendments to these um to these sections of the state government code so essentially um cities all over the state must allow the development of housing so parcels warehousing isn't allowed use they must allow housing to be developed the standards that we apply to that housing must allow for that full capacity of the property to be developed and that capacity is locked in as of january 1st of 2018 so whatever the planned capacity was on january 1st of 2018 that's the capacity the number of units that we have to accommodate on that site so um the state also addresses when there is a mismatch of zoning or general plan and in some cases the zoning might allow slightly more development or that in our case locally it's the general plan allows more development on certain parcels than the existing zoning um whichever is greater is the one that we have to accommodate so um subjective standards can't be used to limit the amount of housing um shall not reduce the intensity of land use and that reduction of intensity of land use would would include reductions to height density a floor area ratio which is a measure of total building volume or square footage relative to the square footage of a piece of property um or lot coverage or they could also reduction to intensity could include increases in setbacks or open space or minimum parcel size so all of those things um you can see would kind of have an effect on how much housing can be built the state is saying if you're doing anything like that you're going to need to show us how you're increasing something else um on the parcel to ensure that we're still accommodating the planned amount of housing so that um responding to all of that state law is really a big part of our purpose with this project so um what you see here in the purple box is the quote from the government code about the definition of an objective standard that includes no personal or subjective judgment it's verifiable to a reference to an external and uniform benchmark and it's available and knowable by both the development applicant the public and the public official prior to submittal so it's important that we have these published it's important that they be measurable and it's important that they be as objective as we possibly can make them um and i think we've done a pretty good job but as you will see there is some there's some trade-offs when you try to make things truly objective it's hard to make them site specific and that's one of the challenges that we've been kind of grappling with so broadly speaking our purpose here is to provide a clear objective and measureable standards for multifamily and mixed use residential development that's consistent with the character of Santa Cruz while also ensuring that new housing development is economically feasible so um we are interested in ensuring that new residential development contributes positively to the urban environment to the built environment and at the same time we understand that there are um certain things that we could impose on projects that would really make it so hard to build housing that we could fall behind in terms of actually meeting our obligations under rena and meeting the needs in our community for housing at all income levels um so our community outreach um process which i'll get into next really prioritized sustainability affordability eclectic architectural character and high quality materials and details and so this this process of these objective standards really focuses on the physical form and style of development um rather than specifically on the density because that's really established already in our general plan and as we mentioned we are not doing anything here that changes those densities or development allowances that are already established and in place based on the general plan land use designations um so what we're really talking about is design we have a lot of standards that already exist in our code that apply already to all development and the place where we haven't had written objective detailed standards is really around design because we've relied on this design review process with a set of 10 findings that we just can't use in the same way that we intended to when we created them so going back to fall of 2020 when we sort of kicked off with our consultants we started this project with um a zoning and economic analysis we did um some technical analysis which are called test fits and Kristen's going to talk about those in a little bit where we basically take you know some examples of some existing real physical sites and try to fit the development capacity that's allowed on to them and just see how it how it works out can we meet the parking ratio you know can we fit this number of units how tall does the building have to be in order to make this work um so that kind of analysis then we got started getting into our community engagement process which my next slide goes into more detail on that and then based on that community engagement process and combined with the test fits we started to develop these objective standards and draft them together and then um we released the public draft in November of last year we came to your council with a presentation at the end of November of 2021 you may remember that we also went to the planning commission and received input from them both at that time and at the with the test fits and we had presented also the community outreach approach to the city to the planning commission and got some feedback and insight from them on that as well so November of last year we brought the draft standards to your council to the planning commission and to the public and started gathering input and feedback and reactions to those standards and got a lot of really great um comments and um requests and you know information from folks and we were able to incorporate many of those things there were also many of those things that are already addressed by state law by other sections of our code you know we had a lot of folks sending us comments you know they're really concerned about health and safety and yes we are also concerned about health and safety and that is all very heavily regulated and um taken care of by our building codes and our fire codes which are not being changed at all by anything we could do here with zoning so um we did put together a set of responses to all of the comments so folks could you know see their comment and see where where we either made an adjustment to a standard or where it was already covered by an existing standard or where you know some of these standards some of the suggested standards we got just really um wouldn't fit in given the other goals that we have of our project so if that was the case we explained why that wasn't going to work um and so that was uh we presented that to the planning commission when we went to them with this package in June so that was an attachment to that letter of June 2nd or agenda report um so actually got this feedback we've refined these standards and now here we are doing public hearings so just to zoom in a little bit on community engagement because um I did excuse me I did um read all the correspondence that came in and I do um hear people that they are um didn't feel like they had a chance to get involved or really understand this huge packet of information and I do understand that this is the large amount of information and it is very technical and so we really did what we could to provide lots of opportunities for the community to ask questions provide input and you know really get involved and get into these standards because they they are quite technical and they are quite detailed um that was something that came out of our community engagement is that um Santa Cruz really wants to preserve that eclectic style and um they like to um what am I trying to say here we have a community that's very interested in details I think is what I'm trying to say and so there are a lot of details that are in this package so um starting back in winter of 2021 um we launched our project website we um you know also had our two meetings at the planning commission first with the engagement strategy and then with our first set of test fit analysis um and then in the winter to the early spring we had um a webinar our first um outreach event was at a webinar called designing Santa Cruz for all where we really helped people understand a lot of the history of zoning which is um not all of it very pretty I mean there's a lot of our existing land use patterns that um um really entrenched a worldview that I don't think suits Santa Cruz very much anymore and so we wanted to help people kind of understand that history so that they could understand why is why is planning staff always pushing for multifamily housing why do I only hear planning staff talk about meeting sites for multifamily housing and pursuing density a lot of that has to do with the history of zoning and what we understand about the ramifications of creating exclusionary zoning in so many neighborhoods across the nation so we provided that that webinar in both English and Spanish in the spring we created that content it's on our website um following sorry following that um event our next big outreach event um effort was a survey to define community character and um we got over 800 responses to that survey it was a really phenomenal response rate and and it was like it was not a short survey this was not a five minute survey this was really something where we asked people to really pause and think about what do they want their urban environment to look like and what are things they care about when they're walking down the street and we got really fantastic robust feedback from that tool and it um really helped us put together with our technical analysis and start writing some drafts of standards and then because um we collected demographic information as part of that survey to make sure we were getting a representative um response from our community and that we were hearing from all of our various demographic groups and then we filled in the gaps with focus groups where we hadn't heard from enough students young adults under 30 um low income households our Latinx Chicanx community renters specifically we wanted to hear from and then also east side residents so we had initially scoped three focus groups but as we were looking at the responses it seemed clear that we wanted to really make sure we were hearing from people who were likely to live in new housing that gets built so that was renters and then um and young adults and then also um we wanted to make sure we were hearing from folks who are going to be living close to some of the more intense changes and so that was east side residents so we made sure we had a focus group with those folks as well and that provided us with really like more detailed and nuanced information and feedback that could really help us like shape those standards that we had kind of started putting together based on our technical analysis and the survey information um so then as we were further refining we had um when we were releasing our draft standards to the public we also held a focus group with um housing developers they're the ones that are going to have to respond and use these standards so we want to make sure that they're clear that they understand what's being asked for with the various standards and so that was really helpful in in helping us clarify some of the language that we had proposed or like the way that we were requiring certain things um also we knew that that was a big amount of information and I I heard this from folks in the um in the correspondence that it's just so much information yes it is so much information and that's why we wanted to hold you know a community meeting a launch event to launch the draft standards they were available for public comment we had a public comment um web survey available on our website for four weeks and and during that those four weeks we held office hours twice to make sure that people had a chance to look at the standards get confused come ask for help ask to understand why we would be proposing something or what the end goal was and like how they should respond um and do all of that and collect all of that feedback before we went to public hearings so um following the the office hours in the winter of 2022 then we have spent the um the spring and the summer really refining things making sure it's consistent throughout our zoning code bringing in these other sections from parks related to street trees from public works relating to sidewalk and public realm and underground utilities just making sure that all of that can be consistent and integrated throughout the code and now here we are at public hearings we went to the planning commission um and in two different packages we split this package so that the planning commission can really take a deep dive into each of them and so we had one hearing at the beginning of June and another hearing at the end of June that that one at the end of June ended in tie votes since it was actually continued we had a third hearing in July um with the planning commission and I'll talk about the recommendations that came out of that um a little later Sarah just one quick clarification the office hours I believe were winter of 2021 not 2022 you're right sorry yes winter of 2021 because they were yes they were before the end of the year you're right thank you but yeah so we wanted to make sure we did that twice different times of the week different times of the day so that folks could check in um you know sort of regardless of what their um family and work needs were so um a little more detail here in getting into the um various phases of community engagement I mentioned our first phase was this educational component so we provided this in English and Spanish the recordings are available on our website and so to introduce the project explain the need for it and then provided a lot of historic and our current context for housing policy and zoning and talked about this concept about racial and economic segregation that can really result from zoning and the zoning patterns that we have created over the last you know 100 years suburbs and single-family homes are a big piece of that and um I won't give you a whole a whole explanation of red lining and white flight and we did kind of go into that with the community so you can link housing to long-term health outcomes as your council is well aware and so there have been lots of bills recently in California specifically relating to increasing housing production and then also affordable units and those are related but separate issues so I just want to show you a couple of the slides that we had used in that presentation so when we're talking about um zoning patterns and um land use patterns in Santa Cruz um we want to talk about our general plan which in 2012 was adopted and intended to focus development into certain areas based on those areas being close to transportation choices um existing jobs and existing um commercial corridors with services for residents so those areas are shown here on this map this is these are the areas when we say there's a mismatch between the general plan and the zoning code we are referring to these highlighted parcels on this map um and then we're also looking at um standards through the objective design standards that would apply to all multifamily housing and there is um low density residential rl and mid-density residential multifamily residential rm throughout the city and the state law has really reduced our discretion as we've mentioned and then we're also thinking in everything we do about equity and social justice and zoning can seem very neutral we talk about it in a very detached and analytical kind of way but history history shows there's really a disparate impact of how zoning has affected different um populations so I just want to show these two maps you have seen these before um this is a generalized zoning map of the city of Santa Cruz the areas shown in yellow are single family neighborhoods the areas shown in brown are multifamily both our medium density multifamily and our low density multifamily um the pink area is mixed use downtown so that's our existing zoning is um you know sort of that's what's identified there and then the lighter pink color are our commercial and industrial areas um and then the next map that I'm going to show you is based on the 2010 census we don't quite have the detail yet from the 2020 census to update this but I would be interested to see how these patterns have shifted um but this next map shows one dot per person of the population of Santa Cruz and it's colored based on race so this app is available on our website um you can you can get it there and blow it up and spend some time with it because I understand this is probably really hard to see on your screen and I'm just going to flip back and forth between them a couple times so you can see I want you to watch lower ocean and beach flats and downtown so here you can see that those areas are brown they're zoned from multifamily development and you can see that they just turn orange in this next image so orange represents this is the classification system that the census uses so they use the term Hispanic um that shows both that that um Hispanic communities are highly concentrated they live in denser housing and then they also are limited to certain neighborhoods so being limited to certain neighborhoods we're lucky in Santa Cruz that all of our elementary schools are great schools and you can see how having patterns like this where there's highly concentrated pockets of certain exclusive races can create inequities between communities and challenges for households so um in talking about housing whenever we talk about housing um folks want to talk about the whole of housing policy and that is indeed wise and I just want to center this project and end our every discussion about zoning within this broader context of what is complete housing policy so complete housing policy talks about protection so that's about um protecting households and people from eviction protecting mobile homes enforcing their housing law housing vouchers so subsidies that go to individuals and households it's about preserving existing affordable units so that's affordability restrictions and deed restrictions that are either permanent or very long term it's our inclusionary policies that create those deed restrictions replacing units if they get lost and legalizing existing units so that they can stay in the market and hopefully stay at an affordable rent and now zoning is part of the production component of this three-piece pie and permit streamlining the density bonus the regional housing needs allocation that comes through our housing element all of those are related to the production of units so all of these things are needed to these create a complete housing policy and what we're dealing with with zoning and with standards for design deals with one piece of this larger pie and the availability and affordable housing affordability of housing are related and we have a challenge with both so California ranks 49th out of 50 in the nation in terms of housing units per capita the only we are exceeded only by new york and housing production has to be one piece of this answer about housing availability and affordability we have Santa Cruz residents every income level we need housing production at every income level and we all know it's hardest to produce housing at those lowest affordability levels and that's where we have to start looking for other tools to add into there because they need subsidy they need those tenants need protections in those very low income households so this project is really centered in again production and responding to state law that comes out of the state seeing a shortfall of 1.8 million housing units between 2018 and 2025 that that was that their estimated production need and we are not close to meeting that at this point and but this is the number that underpins those rena the numbers that we're all seeing come out throughout the state um and while this project does not create new development capacity or density we do feel and believe that creating objective zoning standards can smooth the production can shorten the development timeline and make it easier to produce the housing that we're already zoned for so that's really the goal with this project so in phase two we were talking about defining and measuring community character um and collected input through a survey to form draft standards so we had our survey out in March we did our focus groups in July and got really great input and feedback so key findings were um a desire for corridors to have active ground floors so shops restaurants um just generally activity front door stoops for you know residential units that are on those corridors um if it's residential on the ground floor um there was a big preference for architectural freedom and variety over creating like a really strict standard like a Santa Barbara style standard where like everything has to look exactly one way um people really like the mix that Santa Cruz represents there were our priorities for impart apartments that we heard from people renters and low-income households especially concerns about security access to sunlight and a strong preference for private open space over um shared or you know sort of community open space within apartment developments and then of course a lot of support for affordability for livability in the housing stock and for access to nature so I just want to show you a couple of slides you've seen these before too um some of the results from our survey so this was a question about um the heights of buildings that would be uh necessary on ocean water and so Cal so the test fit analysis that we did that Kristen's going to talk about in a minute um showed that we need at least four stories to make that development capacity really fit so we wanted to hear from the community what are you ready to accept in those locations and so this blue this blue oh goodness sorry this blue segment um it shows folks that responded with four stories five stories six stories no maximum or something else and and most of these something else answers were something less than four stories um but so to me when when I look at this I see that there is um you know pretty good support for um accommodating some additional height in those neighborhoods and in those locations in order to create the housing that we've planned for okay another one of the questions we asked was about you know what are the most important things to include with new buildings even if maybe that does increase the cost of them and the two standout um answers to that were architectural details so variation reform bay windows you know juliet balconies things like that um or ground floor shops and restaurants and there was really strong support for those um for those key components oh I got these out of order I'm sorry oh I guess I added this slide twice I'm sorry about that so um we got really great feedback from our surveys and it really helped us figure out what was important to folks and how do we define that community character what are we looking for so then we moved on to phase three shaping and refining so we collected feedback and responses from our public review draft um we came to your council in November we came to the planning commission in November we got really good feedback from all of you as well um we held our office hours we had our web platform up and and gathered input and feedback there so that helped us really hone in on a couple of things so we had um some mixed feedback about active uses versus residential only buildings and commercial districts that wasn't something that there was like really strong opinions like one way or the other we did hear loudly and clearly from folks concerned about development impacts on neighbors so massing at height shadow concerns about privacy for next door neighbors we had a lot of comments coming in specifically about dark sky lighting in neighborhoods and then looking at neighborhood buffers and looking for additional open space amenities so additional things that could qualify to be included in the required open space on a project and then our feedback from from our developer focus group was really interested in creating some more flexibility around how we defined what an active use is for those ground floor you know commercial style uses and then cleared up help help us clarify some language around um some of the standards that we were proposing and then there was some concern about the private open space ratio um that came out of that meeting and now i'm going to pass it off to christin hall our urban designer to talk about um the analysis that we did and then the standards themselves these design standards that we wrote for um the multifamily housing and how we responded to those community comments thank you so much sarah can everybody hear me yes yes thank you so much uh do you want to go ahead and go to the next slide hey we already got through two more of the 80 um thank you so much uh again for hearing about all the work we've been doing tonight and just to pick up from where sarah left off she mentioned a little bit about these test fits that we had done um and this was really a way just to understand what are the constraints that exist right now in housing production where are the pain points and how might we use the these objective development standards as a way to enable more production of housing on lots that haven't seen that development so um we looked at two sort of we looked at one sort of typical site which is the one on the bottom here Santa Cruz has a lot of these smaller lots which are quite difficult to develop um and they're constrained by the narrowness um and also by things like parking ratios and so we're just trying to understand when you put together parking ratios and setbacks and far and all these very sort of technical aspects of what's allowed to happen on the site what might you end up with um what might it look like and how might it look economically um we also looked on at a larger site which tend to be uh more economically viable to build on just because you get economies of scale on larger sites so that's the image on the top there and we you know did all of these based on market assumptions that were given to us by our economists who did a survey of all the units that have been delivered in the last 10 years what are typical unit sizes um market rate rents that are our current in Santa Cruz and then they um analyzed a number of development scenarios looking at what could you do within the full envelope what could you do within the height limit and then what could you do if you met the most efficient um building design which might which is typically exceeding the height limit because again uh efficiencies of scale economies of scale um next slide so our findings were kind of four key things the first is just that small sites are challenging so you know where you have more height or far those places are more likely to develop because they can provide more units that but they have the same fixed cost so the cost of land is the same but the amount of units that you can put on it increases um that's just kind of a basic fact in development that happens in most cities that these small sites are really difficult um for larger sites um what we found is that projects have to be at least four stories in order to achieve the 2.75 fr that's allowed so you know to summarize that the the existing height limit is generally lower than what the density limit would allow so if you are able to go up to the density limit you would need more height in order to achieve the number of units that are actually allowed um by that density the third point um mixed use is more challenging than residential only developments and that's partially because and retail requires much higher levels of parking than other types of uses so um restaurant uses for example require eight spaces per thousand square feet which is significantly higher than the you know one and a half or so spaces per thousand square feet of a unit um retail also doesn't generate as much revenue as other uses so when you are able to rent out a unit versus retail um you are able to get much more revenue per square foot and then the last point is just that these scenarios where we had higher density were the most financially feasible so you'll see more developer interest insights that um have the 2.75 fr plus density bonus and this is why most of the projects that have been coming forward have been density bonus projects because that's the thing that has actually enabled these projects to become more feasible uh financially feasible next slide please go ahead so i'm going to talk a little bit about these um the development standards themselves and just a few thoughts kind of on the overarching organization structure of them sarah mentioned um that a lot of our feedback was from residents on about how you know neighborhoods are in Santa Cruz are really characterized by eclecticism which makes it difficult to create a set of standards that really regulate the look and feel of buildings in a way that's consistent right because the buildings aren't consistent and so how do you think about regulating buildings when this sort of eclecticism is really the character of the city so one of the things we found is that neighborhoods are distinguished by the relationships of the buildings to the street and to each other and not by specific architecture so you'll see a lot of different architectural styles in a neighborhood but in that neighborhood the things like the street width or the size of the lots or the setbacks are all kind of more consistent and that's what creates the character of those neighborhoods and those things already exist in the zoning code so we weren't and that's actually what's regulated why the buildings looked the way they do and so we didn't want to touch those things except in some cases to make it a little bit easier for buildings to be built and then there's also kind of two more specific types if we wanted to narrow them down of neighborhoods which are the corridors which are these more intense development areas they have more height more active uses particularly at the ground floor like retail office uses things like that and then the residential neighborhoods which are characterized by a lower intensity you know smaller buildings and a lot a lot more landscaping and again that just to the point about the kind of eclectic style of Santa Cruz throughout we'll show some of these little word on the street bubbles which were incorporated into the design standards and this is just kind of showing a little bit of a flavor of the what we the responses we heard from individuals about what they think about Santa Cruz and how it should look in the focus groups and in the surveys so we heard in these commercial corridors 67 percent of respondents to the survey preferred an eclectic building look over uniform one we asked them specifically which one do they prefer and they said eclectic we also heard this quote Santa Cruz is about uniqueness and being different like there's nothing that's exactly the same in Santa Cruz so again just more to that style the way the document is organized is we have sort of three key points there's the topic area which is the title of the section and then there's a bowl which tells you the intent behind the standard so if you know there's some question about how to assess the development proposal for findings this is how you would understand the intent and then there's the standard itself which is kind of lays out the quantifiable or kind of clear rules about how that that goal needs to be met so for example if we take neighborhood transition the goal is to create a transition between new development and existing neighborhoods and provide privacy for current and future residents and minimize potential shading on neighboring residents and then there's all the kind of quantifiable standards that come with that to achieve that goal which is what the planning staff would be reviewing when they look at a proposal yes sorry thanks so this the goals and students themselves are broken up into two sort of categories we have a list on the left and on the right on the left are all the items related to site design and on the right are all the things related to specifically building design so we want to think about how you cite the building on the site in order to create things like walkability what are the types of uses you're creating how are you reinforcing a pedestrian environment and then in terms of the building itself you know what are the specifics around the the roof form or the material etc the things that are highlighted in orange here I think so I'm going to share with you today and a little bit of detail about specifically and I just actually we didn't have a slide in here about maximum building length but we did include a standard about maximum building link which was specifically designed to encourage buildings that are more sort of apartment buildings that are more house shaped and you don't have parking inside of them have parking on the lot in the back because those are a type of building that are specifically understood to be more affordable by design and this is based on research that's been done by Optikos in California so you can see there's a number of ways we're trying to enhance affordability just through the way the building is designed itself and trying to support that kind of building design so going through these we'll start with parking location and screening and the goal here is really about minimizing the visual impact of parking we don't want to walk around a city and see parking everywhere so we required that parking be wrapped by habitable spaces facing sidewalks what does that mean that's like for example on the bottom image here you can see that street is lined with shops instead of parking garages so it's just that you have to put the parking towards the back of the building and then also surface parking has to be buffered by landscape and we have specific requirements about how deep that landscape needs to be how dense it needs to be things like that and the image on the top here gives an example the next one is landscape and buffering and you know we heard from folks that landscaping is really part of the character of Santa Cruz that it's a really green city this is something people are proud of and wanted to see more of and so the goal here is really to enhance the urban forest provide shade and help soften the building massing and also just to reinforce the character that we find um throughout Santa Cruz so in our districts we're requiring landscaping the front setback in commercial and mixed use districts we're requiring projects to provide straight trees and planted areas along the public frontages and on the right you can see two images of what that would look like um and we also require that this landscape be compliant with wheeler standards which is about um water savings so we're trying to create landscape that's not going to be very thirsty on the next slide um this is about neighborhood transition so the goal here was to create a transition between new development and existing neighborhoods this is something a lot of community members were interested in exploring and um actually surprisingly um the development professionals the developers we talked to also felt that this was a really important thing to include um because it helps them be better neighbors and helps clarify you know how they are going to minimize impacts on adjacent neighbors so um what you can see here is the diagram is hopefully pretty self-explanatory where you have a rear yard you are required to have a setback off of that shared property line and then starting from the third floor there's this 45 degree plane um that transitions the massing back away from adjacent properties so the idea here is to minimize overlooking of adjacent properties to minimize any shadow impacts and just to have a better um transition between kind of higher density corridors and the more residential neighborhoods um the next slide these are two elements that work together so this is roof form and building modulation and the idea with roof form is that one of the things you do see throughout Santa Cruz is a more kind of human scale pattern where you have buildings that are broken down with these different roof forms a lot of times you'll see gabled roofs you don't see a lot of um kind of like long uninterrupted flat roofs for example so the other thing that helps make a building feel more human scale is to break it up into a number of smaller pieces or you know planes and you can see in the images here how we're requiring that buildings are modulated meaning they move in and out at a certain rhythm um and these two things work together so the roof forms align with the modulation below it to help break up these larger building scales and make them more elegant and more human scale and more appropriate to the character of Santa Cruz um on the next slide ground floor design um we heard a lot about wanting to have walkable neighborhoods where you could go shopping for your local you know groceries or be able to get a haircut and maybe things like architecture firms don't need to be located on the ground floor offices so um wanting to really support that walkability of these local businesses and then also provide privacy for residents the other thing we heard is um developers really wanted to be able to put residential uses on the ground floor in places where it was appropriate where there may not be a lot of foot traffic because you know retail is struggling into require new retail in places where it may not be successful it may mean a retail space with a vacant so um we have a couple different approaches here for different places where we uh have where we require commercial uses we're requiring them to have a higher level of transparency and so you can see in and see what's going on and you can have eyes on the street um we're requiring those non-residential uses at the ground floor only in commercial districts where it's appropriate to maintain that commercial character and then residential uses at the ground floor where they occur have to be set back or elevated from the sidewalk as you can see in the lower image here where you have these setbacks and stoopes it creates this kind of nice intermittent zone where neighbors can meet and hang out but also it feels like a little bit more sense of privacy around your front door you're not opening the door read out onto the sidewalk um on the next slide we also had a standard about building materials um and really the the key here is that um building materials should be high quality and durable and reflect the existing character of Santa Cruz and this was something that was mentioned frequently in our survey really responses where we had an open areas you know to invite people to share any concerns um this was also a big topic of conversation at the planning commission where there was conversation about adding a standard specifically for windows to not be vinyl but to be wood which is a higher quality window um or sorry not a requirement to be wet just to not be vinyl um so the way we approached this was to provide a list of appropriate materials um so if you are you are you if you're proposing to use any of these materials you can be approved but if you want to use a material that's unlisted that would require a design review permit um again prohibiting the vinyl windows and then uh we also added a standard for how living walls um these green walls like the one in the bottom right here could be applied um you know this is yet another way to kind of bring more character more of this green character into Santa Cruz um the next slide is about lighting we had so much outreach from folks who were really interested in dark sky standards um and this is really about making sure that you don't have a light a lot of light pollution and there already exists a lot of lighting standards that have been used around the country that we could pull from here so um really the goal is to make sure you have the balance of safety and well at public spaces but not creating a lot of light pollution and there's a lot of technical ways you can do that by shielding light by shining light only on buildings by focusing the building the light around entries and faces rather than kind of point it up into the sky and so we were able to draw on that great body of existing standards for this document the next one um is that's it that's over to Sarah yeah thanks thanks christin sorry i popped this little slide into your section i didn't tell you about it so i'll take this one um so christin's just um gone through the design standards that we developed with upp and there are a couple of other development standards that are included and added in your package and these are things that came up through um like other community comments but they weren't specifically design related they're also um a couple of things that we as staff and you know and city council and public noticed in doing our first sp35 development application review that we had a couple of these standards um that were sort of not quite as objective as we had hoped or expected so um the package before you today also does include proposals to add um burn safe building design um standards and requirements those are things that we worked with the local sierra club chapter and um a burn safe building design ornithologist to develop um we were also adding a um requirement of regarding archaeological reports so we already had a requirement that um or a standard that required the creation of a report and the submittal of that report and what was missing was a standard to require compliance with the recommendations of that report so we're adding that um we also based on um uh suggestion of one of our planning commissioners um took a look at the way that ad use interact with our inclusionary housing standards so our standards inclusionary housing those are units that are um expressly set aside for households that make below a certain income level and we had in the um in existing code there's a standard that allows ad use under certain circumstances to be used as the inclusionary units on um other types of developments and especially in subdivisions of new single family homes we're recommending that we remove that um ad use are not equivalent to other types of housing and they should not be um used as an inclusionary standard you know to meet that requirement for other types of housing it also just creates confusion because there are certain ways that um because ad use have typically been associated with single family homes um it makes them monitoring very hard when those are the inclusionary deed restricted units um so we are recommending that we delete that allowance and say that ad use cannot be used to meet the inclusionary standard of other types of housing we are also recommending that we add a standard for multifamily properties that add five or more ad use because that's now allowed under the state law projects can add or existing multifamily um development can add up to 25 of the total number of units in the building as ad use and so we're recommending that when there are five or more of those that they are then subject to our inclusionary standard and 20 percent of them have to be um deed restricted on multifamily property we're also adding um coming out of the objective standards some definitions to our code so we're adjusting the existing definition of usable open space to allow the um the area underneath the canopy of any tree to count twice towards that open space requirement and our hope is that that can add enough flexibility to a site plan so that more trees can be retained on site um we know that trees are super important for um climate reasons for shade reasons for human livability reasons and we want to find ways to encourage and support them staying on sites where they're already existing we're also adding a definition of or recommending that we add a definition of volumetric factory built housing this is a type of housing that can be built in factory in modules these factories are regulated by the state and inspections happen at the state by the state at the factory and then when those modules come to the site um the site work can go much more smoothly and quickly and the inspections on site are limited to how do the modules connect to each other and how do they connect to utilities and so it can just really streamline construction and cut down construction time and costs for developers okay so now i'm going to talk about um what changes we're recommending for our development review process so um as we incorporate objective development standards into our zoning code it makes sense to take a look at the way that we currently regulate development and make sure that everything lines up if we have all of these objective development standards and design standards for multifamily housing does it make sense to still require making 10 findings of a design permit it should be that you know if you've met all these objective standards ideally these findings would be automatic right so if we've written the standards correctly we're meeting all of those findings so a compliant project should already be meeting those standards um additionally I just want to reiterate something that Lee said at the beginning um most projects most of our significant development projects that are coming in right now are seeking to vary from our zoning code in some way that is already triggering a public hearing so they're looking for a density bonus I mean I think that's the big one we can provide incentives in terms of making a smoother permitting process and we are recommending that we do that to create some incentives for compliance with these standards that we've just written and the financial incentive of pursuing a density bonus is always going to be really attractive to developers and so um those projects are always going to be coming in and those will continue to um require public hearing so I want to be clear I saw in a couple of the um course pieces of correspondence we received from the public that they were concerned that there would be no public notification and they would lose this opportunity several folks cited the they were involved with the developer at 515 Soquel so I just want to be really clear to those folks that is the that communication that you're having with that developer right now and with the planning department is a result of our community outreach policy which is staying exactly the same as it is so notification community meetings um you know posting on the site when development proposals come in all of that is staying in place um what we're talking about doing is creating some changes to reflect the limitations that have you know come down to us through state law limitations for housing where we can't deny or condition a project to reduce the intensity we have to rely on objective standards we can't lose any of that development capacity so here here are two lists on the left you see what's currently required under our code community outreach and notice and meetings public hearings for commercial development density bonus applications land development permits variances coastal permits subdivisions buildings that are in proximity to slope residential development and commercial zones um there's a right of appeal with all of these applications and sequel review is required for all of these projects on the right you'll see what we're proposing which is that community outreach happens with notice and meetings exactly as it does now public hearings happen for commercial development density bonus projects land development permits variances coastal permit subdivisions proximity to slope exactly as it does now this one place where we're suggesting a change to recognize the objective standards is that um we now limit public hearings to only one alternative designs are proposed for residential development so we keep this right of appeal we keep our sequel review this is this is really crucial several people commented that we were moving to a ministerial review process i just want to underline this is not a ministerial review process ministerial permits are like building permits it's really it's literally just a technical checklist and no one can appeal an applicant can appeal a building permit but neighbors don't have a right to appeal that um what we're talking about is an administrative process and as we mentioned in his intro this is essentially the same as the existing administrative process that we have for for conforming development proposals in our multifamily zones that exist throughout the city that's a standard in a practice that has been in place since we adopted our current zoning code in 85 and perhaps predates that um so currently with those conforming proposals we still do make design permit findings and as i've mentioned a couple times that process just can't function the way that it was designed to and intended to when it was written but we there's still a right of appeal on those projects they're still subject to sequel so in our proposal we want to keep essentially extend this administrative review process and have it applied to fully conforming rental multifamily projects in all zones so we're creating mixed use zones it makes sense that mixed use development that is fully conforming to all the standards that we have in our code if we can make this finding that they are fully conforming that they should be able to get through this process without a public hearing the same way that residential development happens now on multifamily property without a public hearing unless there's an appeal and because of that community outreach policy people are going to get noticing they're going to drive by site and notice that it's been posted for development and they're going to have the the same ability that they have now to get on the email list to check our website to follow the project to meet with the developer and as we mentioned that's really the most productive way to affect a project and to change a development proposal public hearings where your time is limited to two minutes and you don't get to get into a back and forth with the actual project proponent it's just not as effective in terms of a tool to like really affect change and really participate and understand what's happening with a project so we want to make sure that we're maintaining all of that and so now I'm going to go into more detail on this I will try to move a little bit more quickly through this because this does get pretty technical so our proposed process for fully compliant proposals is that an administrative design permit would be required so it's administrative no public hearing still have the right of appeal still subject to CEQA for proposals that want to vary from some of these new design standards so there's design standards that are in 2412 185 um any of them as soon as you vary from one of those standards um a design permit with a public hearing would be required and um it would be heard either at the zoning administrator or at the planning commission level depending on how how many variations from those standards they were seeking and that would still retain the right of appeal and it would still be subject to CEQA sorry let me go back once um so the finding that the that the decision makers would be making at these public hearings would be essentially what Kristen identified so that we have that goal for each one of these standards so we would be looking to see does this alternative proposed still meet the goal of the standard that was from which they're seeking to vary so that's the text and those are the changes that you see into our design permit process it's to create this situation where fully conforming projects we make one finding that that they are fully conforming they meet every one of our zoning district standards they meet every one of our community design standards in chapter 2412 they meet all of our our objective design criteria all of our public work standards and there's no other trigger in there like a density bonus or a subdivision map if they're creating condominiums or new parcels that would trigger a public hearing and so I just want to mention on this last slide again of the 16 proposals that we've had since the beginning of 2020 that are significant large projects 13 of those proposals have been for a density bonus and all 16 of those proposals would have triggered a public hearing under this standard so 13 of them were seeking a density bonus one of them was seeking a planned development one of them was seeking to vary from our standards in some in some other way and then one of them was in proximity to a 50 percent or greater slope so in terms of taking away opportunities for public engagement this process really doesn't do that what we're doing is recognizing an existing process that we have for conforming development and extending it to places where we are seeking to create residential development and we want to make sure that all of those processes that are working so well around community outreach stay in place and that we create this right of appeal so that when when folks really feel strongly about something or feel that these objective standards aren't being met that they have recourse and a way to you know seek restitution on that so stretch break so now we're going to get into our new mixed use zones that we're proposing to create to implement the general plan and the ocean street area plan so our 2030 general plan has many policies and vision statement and goals and there are several that relate to this action that we're recommending that your council take tonight so optimum utilization of infill parcels so keeping a compact community with boundaries that are defined by the green belt in the Monterey Bay so we're not expanding we're not growing outward we're looking for a complementary balance of land uses and a land use pattern that promotes social diversity so this is again one of those foundational values that when we as planners come in and we're like we're looking for places to put multifamily housing this is part of that we we we need more places to accommodate people in our community who need multifamily housing choices and then also specifically in these locations where the general plan identifies parcels that should be designated for mixed use we're looking at land use patterns that facilitate alternative transportation and minimize transportation demand so we're transitioning to higher densities along the city's commercial corridors which are shown here on this map again this is the same map of our general plan these are the parcels that we're going to talk about now that are proposed for rezoning we are rezoning them to exactly what is called for in the general plan which to reiterate is already available to be developed under the state law so within these districts i also want to recognize that these represent sort of the commercial core of our city so these are places that hold our existing you know commercial uses that serve our neighborhoods and help us meet our daily needs for our households and both through employment and through services and entertainment options and restaurants and things like that so in these mixed use zones we are looking to require uses that are active um on the frontage so we are supporting mixed use in these locations but we are going to continue to allow or we're recommending that we continue to allow um development that's a hundred still 100 percent commercial because these do represent our commercial core and we don't want to see all of we don't want to see all of that go away we want to still maintain that option so all the commercial uses that are allowed in these zones are based on the existing uses that are allowed in the cc zone which is our you know most extensive commercial zone and most of the sites that are proposed for rezoning are currently zoned in the cc zone so we didn't want to be taking uses away from any existing property owners um the ocean street zones encourage more commercial and visitor serving uses so they're kind of skewed more towards commercial uses whereas the um the zones on mission street and on the east side are more skewed towards residential style mixed use and then the site standards that we're proposing are based on the adopted general plan and the ocean street area plan so the heights are determined based on a combination of the floor area ratio the far that's set in the general plan and then um the stories limit that's set in the ocean street area plan so there's six of these zones i'm going to go through this part pretty quickly so all on mission street these sites would be rezoned into a new zone district mixed use medium density mum it would have a maximum height of four stories and 45 feet for mixed use development and slightly less for commercial development on the east side these sites would be rezoned to mixed use high density muh located in clusters along a cluster here at brand support in water cluster here at water and morisey and along this part of soquel and then at the corner of brand support in soquel um so a maximum height here of five stories and 55 feet for mixed use development um on ocean street so ocean street because of the way that the general plan land use designations intersect with the height standards in the ocean street area plan there are actually four zone districts here um and some sites that we can't yes we had a request to slow down on the slides oh sure do i need to go back go back a couple and we we are receiving a presentation we will be able to have questions in public go ahead sarah um okay so again these are the sites that are along um along mission street you can see this is the um the site where the safeway is and and this intersection here adjacent to miramar um this is the corner of van nest this is bay street right here this is bay street elementary the site that's left out so that can kind of help you orient yourself here on this side so mixed use high density again here we're looking at um these blocks of soquel between morisey and brand supporty with some um areas that are excluded and then there's a note at the corner of water in brand supporty and at water and morisey this portion of water is not being rezoned this the interior portion between poplar and stanford this is the area that has that 2.75 floor area ratio and so we are recommending a maximum of five stories and 55 feet in height for these areas when it's a mixed use development um so on ocean streets there are four zones and um the first one mixed use ocean street medium density is shown here in this light orange color so it's here it's on this the back side of oh geez well this is really sensitive on the back side of um may here going up to hubbard and then um on this upper part up here and then there's a little cluster down here on barson at barson and ocean at the intersection and um this would be a height maximum of three stories and 40 feet for mixed use the ocean street area plan also includes minimum heights so um one story in 16 feet would be the minimum height on these mixed mixed use ocean street high density is shown in the darker orange color so that's at um broadway and ocean this big cluster here and then um up here further above ocean and water above the intersection um that's also proposed for this zone district so this would have a height maximum for mixed use of four stories and 50 feet and a minimum height of two stories and 24 feet so mixed use visitor high density shown in the light blue color so it's at ocean and water and at ocean and soquel and then there's also a piece here that's all the way over off of river side just adjacent to the river and so this again carries that highest floor area ratio of 2.75 and we're recommending here a height maximum for mixed use of four stories and 50 feet and a minimum of two stories and 24 feet and then our last one mixed use visitor serving additional height is this central portion this includes the county building site the hotel paradox and then the um this block between dakota and ocean so this also carries that 2.75 floor area ratio in the general plan and in the ocean street area plan it's identified for a height of six stories so we're recommending that for mixed use it'd be a maximum height of six stories and 70 feet and a minimum of three stories and 40 feet again these heights are based on the um what's been adopted in the ocean street area plan and so then this is a table um this is also provided in the agenda materials as a standalone pdf that just sort of summarizes everything so you can see it all together um I will just point out you'll notice that in um mu m and mu h the maximum height of commercial is less than the maximum height allowed for mixed use and on ocean street it's reversed and this again reflects our um the goals of the general plan for the ocean street corridor and of the ocean street area plan to encourage be focused more on creating commercial development and for these um mu m and mu h sites on mission and on the east side to be more focused on creating residential mixed use and really true mixed use in the traditional sense so um so that's why you'll see that sort of change in heights from um between the mixed use zones so um the rezone creating an amendment to the zoning map doing a rezoning requires a finding the planning commission did make this finding at their hearing and um had included it with their motion and their recommendation to your council um so they found that the public necessity general community welfare and good zoning practice would be served and furthered by the rezoning and that the proposed amendments is in conformance with the principles policies and land use designations set forth in the general plan the lcp in any area or specific plan um and that is true we are implementing exactly what is called for in our general plan and um to the extent possible in the ocean street area plan as well so there are some other amendments that we made to our existing zones because as we've talked about these objective design standards will apply to multifamily housing that's built anywhere in the city that's outside of downtown so downtown already has design standards in the downtown plan um so these new objective standards won't apply in that area but they will apply in all other areas of the city so there were some um sort of like tightening up and sort of adjustments we had to make to some of those existing zones to recognize that we're now using these objective design standards would be using them um and so uh in our residential zones our multifamily residential zones so that our rl zone and the m zone that we made a slight modification to the way that you calculate the side yard setbacks that allows for articulation at the top of the building and allows more floor area to be on the lower two stories in the residential high density zone rh zone we're deleting standards that conflict with any of our proposed standards um and the rh zone only applies to about three parcels in the city and um two of them are already fully developed so and one of them is in the downtown plan expansion area so those those standards really don't apply very far and then you'll also see in all the zone districts we um recently updated our wireless communication telecommunication facilities ordinance and so we had to sort of add wireless communication facilities as an allowed use in every zone district where it's allowed so you'll see that throughout the code amendments in our beach residential zones um the anywhere where the zone itself describes the purpose as providing housing or providing for residential development we made residential uses principally permitted rather than currently they require a use permit or and in some cases a special use permit depending on the size of the project so we're recommending that those all be principally permitted because essentially under the state law we're not permitted to deny them so what's the function of requiring a use permit um we're removing a distinction recommending that we remove a distinction based on project size but the other site standards and the densities are not changing commercial uses are not changing and we're just adding that wireless update in our commercial zones in certain commercial zones so this is the commercial thoroughfare the neighborhood commercial the commercial at the beach which includes the wharf and in our um professional administrative zone districts we're requiring active uses at the ground floor level and in each of these zone districts we're recommending that we create a category that identifies uses for active frontage so that's very clear what is appropriate to fill that requirement um we're making mixed use development principally permitted in those zones so you can do residential along with commercial development and then limiting the ability to to build standalone residential to just a few um sort of some of the existing conditions in which you can do standalone residential we're really making sure that that's tightened up and clear that there are very limited circumstances um the density for residential development in those in these zone districts is either based on the existing residential medium or residential low multifamily um which is staying the same as what it is currently and then we're adding that wireless update in those zones in our cc and rtc these are our main commercial zone district so the cc is a long mission along so cal along water along parts of ocean street um and rtc is the the beach frontage and the boardwalk um down in the beach area so active uses in these areas are encouraged we are not requiring active uses in these locations because currently the code allows sROs so single room occupancy units which is the densest type of housing the city allows can be built as standalone projects so in order to not reduce the capacity for housing we didn't feel like we could make a change there without making some other change to either increase the height and we didn't want to touch that so we're just going to continue to allow the current condition um and your council might recall that we just created flexible density units fduz and when we created those units we made the determination that in the rtc zone at the beach and downtown where those units are allowed we would require them to be part of a mixed use development so we do require a ground floor commercial use of some kind but in the community commercial that cc zone that stretches out far along our corridors um we are going to allow those to be standalone developments as well and we're just recommending we maintain that decision that we just made um a few months ago so um typical units are allowed either as mixed use oops jeez either as mixed use um or as standalone residential and when if you're doing standalone residential then we want to see some live work we created some standards that some of those units on the ground floor can be created as live work units and we're hoping that this can create some more opportunities for small businesses in santa cruse for people who are entrepreneurs or um you know people who see a couple clients a week or something to have a commercial space that's combined with their living space and um just create some opportunities for that kind of land use in santa cruse and again there's the wireless update okay so now we're going to get into the planning commission recommendation um on everything that i've talked about so far so the planning commission reviewed these at two separate here three separate hearings but you know we started off with two separate hearings to really dive deep on all of this content and in both cases they had sort of a yes and approach to them so they are recommending approval of the staff recommendation of the standards of the zone districts of the zonings of the process changes um christin mentioned um uh desire to prohibit vinyl windows on street facing building facades they also um direct or are suggesting that the um that your council require bus passes for projects of 50 or more units and then um they also are recommending that you increase the inclusionary standard for projects of 50 or more units to 25 percent um inclusionary and for 100 or more units to 35 percent inclusionary um and then with the in this part of the second hearing they also approved the staff recommendation about the mixed use zones and the process and then also added um uh the recommendation that your council increase the inclusionary requirements specifically this time for density bonus projects so um our staff response is we've incorporated this um change about vinyl windows um we actually took it a little bit further so prohibiting vinyl windows on building faces oriented towards streets for buildings that are up to three stories in height and then for um buildings that are over three stories in height um vinyl windows are not permitted on any building face so they would have to be some other type of material um in regards to bus passes and requiring them for every development over um 50 units we are recommending that your council um defer consideration of that till you are considering the climate action plan next month there is a lot of content in that climate action plan that gets into transportation demand management and um we think it's important to think about context and and make sure that bus passes are the right measure to really reduce transportation demand um because that could be kind of different based on where you are and what the bus routes are um relating to the inclusionary increases we understand that this is a really important issue affordability is something that everyone in our community cares about and um staff is concerned that we could increase this rate without studying it or testing what effect that might have on overall housing production um we are concerned that it could chill development of all housing and reduce the number of affordable units that are created and the number of market you rate units that are created um this could put us into a tricky situation with failing to meet our rena obligation and then that means we're going to have more super streamlined sp35 development applications come coming through and um we are thinking about making sure we can certify our housing element that we're currently beginning to to draft and we're going to be working on over the next sort of 18 months um inclusionary requirements are considered under housing element law as a potential governmental constraint and they need to be analyzed and we need to be able to show that our rate is not a governmental constraint on housing production we're not sure how we would do that without a study identifying that this rate could work without chilling production so um um failing to have a certified housing element could have big ramifications in terms of the grants the city can apply for for everything from road work to affordable housing so um staff is really recommending that your council be cautious before um taking any action that might put that in jeopardy okay with that i'm going to pass it off to nathan win from public works to talk about um public work standards for the public realm loading spaces underground utilities sidewalks things like that thank you sir uh good evening city council members of the public my name is nathan win i'm the assistant director of public works uh city engineer and tonight i'll be presenting uh items related to uh essentially the the public works in public realm um the standards that uh you have on our slide uh as as lee and sarah and team has mentioned that these proposed revisions to uh work together to create objective standards uh that comply with our general plan area plan and zoning codes uh one of the first things that we looked at was the loading uh off street loading uh facilities so we added additional use cases there we had warehouse and other similar items uh already existing on our code but we wanted to be more explicit with regards to residential and office and mix use development as uh as this project is about mix use and uh creating those objective standards for that and so um we added the in our community code some uh additional requirements in regards to what type of off street parking would be required and so type a uh you can see there the dimensions of the eight by 24 and a type b is what we had before which was a 10 by 30 actually with the 14 foot height requirement too and this is to again require developments to make sure they have enough adequate off street parking for the types of development that they're proposing mainly mix use uh and high density type of housing uh in addition to that we also wanted to include uh mix use or uh multifamily developments that are three or more units to include uh refuse enclosures so trash enclosures uh again it's something that we in public works often have to battle with regards to um picking up trash and recycling containers uh in the rain we want to make sure that those things are uh neatly organized and that there is a a path of travel for our our collection seems to pick those uh collections up next uh we went into underground utilities uh economic development reached out to public works asked us about um the idea of trying to put uh conduit uh in these development projects for future use so while one uh development may only be working on a certain section of roadway you know maybe a hundred feet or or or or less uh the idea would be is that we add language our immune code now so that we can only uh we can have them install a a a future conduit for things like fiber as as other developments come along uh along the way um that again that system gets built out and or when we apply for grants to build out our own uh communications network uh that conduits in place and so that's what um again working with economic development trying to build out our communications uh network um the third item that you have for you is the public realm and sidewalks and this is this is something new so this is under title 15 um this again relates to mixed use um and housing development um what we decided to do is you guys may be familiar with the traffic study requirements that has been before you in the recent months that that usually is typically tied to uh our TIF program as well traffic impact fee but what we wanted to do is we wanted to bake it into our immune code so it's much more explicit for developers uh their understanding that the transportation study is required for uh developments that have 50 or more peak hour pm peak hour trips and that the transportation study itself the will evaluate the impacts of the project and what comes out of that evaluation leads into the next item you have for you just traffic control devices so um as we gained experience with some recent sp35 project we realized that the transportation study needs to be performed in order for us to evaluate what needs to actually be included in a development project and so now that essentially is explicitly stated in our immune code now on top of that we added that um projects from our city adopted active transportation plan our area plans and then we called out these other standards the california manual uniform of traffic control devices the national association of city transportation officials and the american association of highway transportation officials again these are these are standards within the traffic engineering field and we want developers to know that they have to meet these standards and that our city um must comply with those um the third item we have there is under C which is 88 bus stops so we worked with metro on this one as well the idea here is that with uh developments that have five or more units and that are greater than 10 000 square feet of commercial office space that we want that type of development to install an 88 bus stop again we we want to help try and promote more mass transit in our area and so this this is one tool in which we would implement that uh on number d letter d street lights so roadway street lights um you guys may have also heard in the past our local roadway safety plan you know lighting is an important safety feature for our roadway system and so the units or developments that have three or more units or that are commercial would be required to install a street light as a part of their project and then lastly and this one also gets a lot of attention here in our review is the corridors and sidewalk widths so in instead of having developers having to go through all the different area plans that we have uh throughout the city we try to take all those uh standards from those area plans and again bake them into our mini code so it's easier for developers to see what those minimum sidewalk widths um are going to be um on these you know high these uh arterials and um major collectors again this this relates mixed use development and uh we put an eight foot minimum on on sidewalks that um that aren't necessarily identified in the area plans but that are again are still on streets where this is zoned for mixed use development so this is an eight foot minimum sidewalks for your local or residential streets but as as Sarah has shown you on the maps earlier these are for those roadways where we expect to have a lot of foot traffic uh due to high density mixed use development and then um one thing I'll I'll kind of close off with is um couple things actually is in we took these standards to our Transportation Public Works Commission on May 16th of this year and they unanimously approved the uh revisions before you but they also added a couple additional requests in seeking uh staff to look into Assembly Bill 602 with regards to um uh charging housing fees based on square footage rather than units and so we've looked into that and we'll continue to look into it more but um at the uh based on our initial analysis uh at least with regards to the public work standards that are before you right now these aren't uh fees that are generated from these particular standards so these are standards that we're we want a developer to comply with but uh at at no point here that's being presented that um these items are based on um generating fees that the developer has to pay so I just want to be clear on that that the AB602 wouldn't apply essentially to the public works revisions but possibly others um in in the revisions for objective standards in addition to that our Commission TPWC asked us to come back with some future objective standards reason being uh staff we we decided uh not to um take uh a lot of maybe what we consider controversial or more complex objective standards at this time we wanted to be able to provide and present something to uh the Commission and Council that can be approved so that we can get these objective standards approved and then at a later date uh with regards to uh I apologize that should be an on-street parking in multimodal facilities those would be evaluated as a part of a future project for a curb management policy once we have staffing capacity to do so and with that I will pass it on to I think Parks and Rec. Thank you Nathan. Good evening Mayor Brunner, Council members and members of the public. I'm Travis Beck Superintendent of Parks and I'm here to discuss the portions of tonight's item that pertain to street trees so before we get into the details I want to take a little trip back in time to April of 2021 when this council reviewed and approved our street tree master plan and this master plan set a number of goals and actions for the city to achieve in order to increase our urban forest and those include three items emphasizing incorporating trees in development and redevelopment projects exploring revising the municipal code to promote the protection of community trees and evaluating larger in lieu fees for mitigation so the three items that we are presenting for your consideration tonight and that are detailed on the following three slides are really the actions taken to achieve those goals that were approved in the street tree master plan so the first and principle one of these is amending the zoning code to require street trees and development projects and this is really the origin of our involvement in the whole objective standards project as Sarah Noisy approached Leslie Keady urban forester and myself and said you know we're hearing a lot of feedback from the community that green space landscaping trees are an important consideration in the objective standards but in our current standards we have no requirement for actually planting street tree so we worked with our colleagues in planning and public works and came up with a set of requirements basically whenever you have a development that triggers a sidewalk wide enough to incorporate street trees within it it would trigger this planting requirement one tree for every 30 feet of street frontage or fraction thereof would need to be planted and maintained permanently and the existing trees on the site would count towards this total and they would of course be subject to other protections existing in the municipal code in chapter 1330 our tree ordinance and 9.56 our heritage tree ordinance in those objective standards we included criteria to avoid conflicts with utility infrastructure as you heard in Nathan's presentation just a minute ago the objective standards include certain utility requirements street lights etc we want to make sure that they're on conflict between the trees and those utility items avoid conflict with existing trees and avoid creating traffic safety that is to say visibility issues and then we also include a provision that where trees cannot be planted those street trees if there are a variety of conflicts with that infrastructure they may be located elsewhere on the property including in a permanent planting bed on a roof deck at a ratio of 1.5 to 1 and that would be rounded up that's the zoning code requirements that we're proposing and then the next element that we're bringing forward tonight are some updates to our tree ordinance chapter 1330 and after much back and forth with planning again with the city attorney's office and with our parks and recreation commission we came to these proposed changes to add certain elements of the objective standards within chapter 1330 those dealing with the selection of trees with the size and quality of the trees also required that the planting and care of street trees follow industry standards which was a recommendation from the street tree master plan and then a lot of that red ink that you see on the page in the chapter 1330 revisions is really cleanup clarifying changes to the title we're proposing a new title which is the street tree and nuisance vegetation ordinance for chapter 1330 clarifying the purpose of the ordinance and its relation to the heritage tree ordinance adding definitions to be consistent with other portions of the municipal code clarifying the duties of various parties home owners parks and recreation commission etc and then a lot of cleanup in terms of our procedures for permitting appeals damages etc so after two meetings and discussion with the parks and recreation commission the changes to 1330 were recommended for adoption on June 13th of this year and then finally associated with those changes to 1330 we're bringing forward a proposed resolution to establish an in lieu fee for street tree replacement so in circumstances where a property owner seeks the permit to remove a street tree normally we will continue to require that that tree be replaced on site but if it's not feasible to replace the tree on site we're proposing that an in lieu fee would kick in and these fees would fund the planting of a replacement tree elsewhere on public property the fees are based on the costs to purchase install water for two years until the tree can help with survive on its own and then perform an initial structural pruning on a replacement tree now as you can imagine all of those costs add up so we're looking at for smaller trees those seven inches in diameter or less a fee of fifteen hundred and ten dollars and for trees that are needing to be replaced over seven inches a fee of seventeen hundred and five dollars and those would increase over time with inflation we looked at other agencies throughout the state to see what they were charging we found that in lieu fees were common ranging from a low fee of two hundred and sixty seven dollars for single family properties in los angeles over thirty five hundred dollars for the largest trees in los gatos and trees in sacramento and as i said these payments would go to fund tree planting and maintenance throughout the city so this resolution that's before you tonight was recommended for adoption by the parks and recreation commission at their august eighth meeting those conclude uh the elements relating to street trees but urban forests of lezli keydie and i are available for questions at the conclusion of the presentation and now i'd like to turn it over to planner katherine donovan who will discuss some additional changes to the zoning code good evening uh my name is katherine donovan i'm a senior planner with our advanced planning division and um just because this ordinance wasn't going to be long enough no that's not actually the reason um at the same time that the objective standards were being developed we were working on one of our uh sort of almost annual zoning ordinance updates and as both of those projects progressed to the public hearing uh in the public hearing cycle we realized that both of these ordinances were going to be um going through at either exactly the same time we're very close to the same time and that meant that there was going to be a problem because we were working on some of the same chapters of the municipal code and if they were approved and we sent them off to the code publishing to update our municipal code those two ordinances would overwrite each other and um it would be very difficult to to uh make sure everything went smoothly um so we took them separately um up to the planning commission or through the planning commission as separate projects and then after the planning commission um recommendations of approval we integrated the two ordinances together um and so that is part of the reason why you have such an enormous packet um there's this incredibly um dense and important objective standards document um and then there is also um one of our normal uh zoning ordinance updates which always um becomes longer than we had intended um so that said let's get on with the zoning ordinance update so why do we do these updates um there are a variety of reasons we need to provide internal consistency in the zoning ordinance um we want to improve development processes we want to make sure that the municipal code is consistent with state law which is constantly changing um we want to update our standards and regulations either because things are out of date or because um we've noticed that something is causing problems consistently and we want to fix it uh we also want to do minor revisions to make things clearer and easier to use and we just want to improve the ordinance to the better meet the needs of all of the city's residents as well as developers and city staff next slide so i'm going to go through each sort of the types of of updates that we have and some examples so the first type is the consistency amendments um and there are several different examples here um in a previous ordinance um amendment we removed the conditional driveway permit requirement but at that time there was an error in the way it was written in the actual ordinance itself and um the title and the first paragraph of that section that part got removed but the rest of it was still in there so we're removing the rest of that as it was originally intended um another thing that we're doing is there's a process called a use determination um which in all of our zoning districts we have allowed uses uses that require use permits and um sometimes there is a use that is similar to what is allowed in a district but it's not listed because we can't list every single use that can be imagined and so there's a paragraph in each zoning district that says um if there is a use that's similar to other uses the zoning administrator can make the determination of whether that can be allowed and whether it requires a use permit based on what use it's most like those sections occur in almost every district but the wording in them just varies just slightly depending on probably when it was added to the district um so we're updating that section so that it's consistent across all the districts um we're also updating uh in our chapter 24.04 the administration chapter of the zoning ordinance there is a list of the projects that for use the use permit projects that do not require a public hearing and um we're updating that list and we're also updating the table that shows which body makes the decision on what type of a process. Next we also are doing some amendments in our processes um um we're removing the public hearing requirement for low risk alcohol permits and that is for an alcohol permit that is associated with a restaurant um we currently require a use permit public hearing at the zoning administrator um the current planning division tells us that they almost never have anyone but the applicant at those public hearings and so um requiring a public hearing for that type of use seems to be over and above what's needed um we're also clarifying um if you are applying if you have a minor modification to an existing approved use permit um there is a section that says that you can only do that once in five years unless you are not increasing the intensity of use but there's a uh it's not actually clear that if you are not increasing it you can do it more than once in five years and so this we're just clarifying that and then we're also making some revisions to our fencing standards so that fewer projects would be required to um get conditional fenced permits. Next slide. Um and then I mentioned before that we um state law is constantly changing and we're always playing catch up to make sure that our ordinances comply with state law and so a couple of the examples for that um the last time we updated the requirements for family daycare homes which was I think in about 2017 large family daycare homes required a use permit and that has changed under state law we can no longer require any kind of a permit for any family daycare homes so um we're changing that and that is another change that is in all zoning districts that allow residential uses so um that changes in many places but it's a minor change um but we also are updating our replacement demolition and relocation assistance standards we are maintaining our city standards where those standards are more strict than the state standards but instead of reiterating every single standard that the state has at this point in time we're simply referencing um the state standards and saying that when the state standards um are more strict or would provide um more assistance or more units um that the state standards would apply next slide so some of the specific updates to standards we made some changes to our fencing ordinance um and these were based on recommendations from our current planning division because they are dealing with people and projects day in and day out and so a lot of our recommendations are to help them make processes simpler or more sensible for the general public so um one of the recommendations was to change the fence height on interior side and rear fences so um the fences that are between two properties and in the rear of a property um from a maximum height of six feet to a maximum height of eight feet um with that two feet above six feet or anything above six feet being at least 50 percent open so with lattice or slads or plexiglass or something like that um we're also recommending a change to the setback um for a six foot tall fence on the exterior side yard so this is on a corner property on the not in the front of the house but on the side and we currently um you're required to have an eight foot setback before your fence can be six feet tall but that often defeats the purpose of putting a taller fence which is to provide some to allow the property owner to use that space um as as a usable open space with privacy and so we're recommending changing that to a three foot setback um and requiring that that that three feet between the property line and the fence be kept landscaped um and then that six foot fence would start either behind the front setback or behind the front uh or aligned with the front of the building so that it would not encroach into the front yard next slide another example of the standards that we are updating has to do with our accessory buildings and structure section a few years back we um did some updates to this and um changed the ordinance so it was addressing only accessory buildings and um after that had been done we realized that we de we also needed a section about accessory structures so we added in um a second we kept the accessory building sections and added a second section on accessory structures um the difference being buildings have walls and a roof and structures are more open um we also currently do not allow accessory structures or buildings in the front um setback and we're proposing to allow structures that are less than eight feet tall in the front and exterior side yards as long as they are outside of the clear corner triangle so that area that you need to be able to see on a corner so that there's not a traffic hazard and also so that they would be 90% visually permeable above the first foot and the idea there is that we want to be able to allow things like a gazebo or um a pergola something like that um that would not block the view either from the house or to the house um but you could still have some sort of a structure in the front yard um the other exception we had a previously uh proposed a a little an exception for a children's play structure play house um and the planning commission expanded on on our idea and um their recommendation was that children's play equipment that was less than 50 square feet in plan area and less than four feet tall be exempt from the regulations in the accessory building and structure section um they would be required to have a three-foot front front setback and to be um visually safe next slide um and then there are some other sort of miscellaneous um updates or or corrections for clarity where we found that there are still some references to the redevelopment agency so we removed those we revised the a couple of references to the downtown recovery plan to just say the downtown plan um we're changing there's an allowance for projections that currently says into conforming interior side yards and we're we would like to change that to into required setbacks um and we would like to include the planning director as an initiator of zoning map and municipal code text amendments currently only the planning commission and city council can do that um we also added in some definitions for the flexible density units that um were accidentally left out of that um ordinance change a few months ago and we're also clarifying the method of determining building height in our definitions chapter and also updating the definition of family daycare homes next slide and I will also be doing the environmental review for both of these projects next slide so for the objective design and development standards the rezoning the public work standards and the street trees um they are they are implementing the general plan which was studied in the eir for the general plan and so under section 15183 of the sequel guidelines no further environmental review is required and the zoning ordinance updates fall under the general category of 15061 b3 which basically states that when it is clear that a project um would have no environmental impacts then it it's not required to review it under sequel next slide and I believe Sarah is going to take over now thank you thank you um everyone for your time and attention and for your great presenting and clear descriptions of the many different parts of this package of information so we're reaching the end here and I just want to hit a few of these key points again because I know this was so much information for everyone to take in and um I just want to be responsive to some of the comments that we heard repeatedly in the community correspondence because I understand there's a lot of concern and a lot of just a feeling of overwhelm with the amount of content that we've provided today so um key reminders the objective standards are not the same as the former corridors plan changes in state law have come down since the corridors plan that just really completely changed the ballgame in terms of what's available to us and in terms of what our options are and the processes that we can use for regulating housing development and for moving development intensity or reducing in development intensity as it may currently exist in those planning documents so the zoning amendments that are here before you today reflect the general plan they go no further and they and they also reflect the entirety of what's in the general plan the goal here is to provide greater transparency and certainty for everyone ensure better design and materials as we mentioned at the beginning and we've talked about um the state law requires us to allow that level of intensity that's currently planned for in the general plan that can happen today and it has been available for developers since the beginning of 2020 so members of the public could go and look at our zoning code and really not understand that because our zoning code doesn't reflect the true development intensity that's available on those sites and provided to those two project proponents under our state law so these design standards that we're creating are really about ensuring good community design we have as a reviewing agency as a public agency limited ability to improve design of projects currently because we have few of our objective our objective zoning standards which we have several very few of them address design and so what they currently address are you know boxes building envelopes is what we have currently in our code because we've relied on these subjective review processes to get to good design and we just simply are not able to do that anymore um the objectives these objective design standards really give the city the opportunity to retain some control over those design elements that we know are so important to creating a high quality urban environments that are livable that are walkable that are wonderful places to live to raise children to work and that our community really cares a lot about and then lastly about the development review process I just want to say again this community outreach policy is completely intact folks who have been relying on email lists on the project on the city website to learn about new projects coming in folks who know that sites have been posted in their neighborhood who've received postcards because of projects none of that is going to change community meetings will still be required for projects that have more than 10 units anything that currently triggers a public hearing in terms of like a coastal permit or a tentative map for you know creating ownership units plan development permits use permits variances density bonus requests anything that varies from these standards in our code will trigger the need for a public hearing and so let's be clear a community meeting is an opportunity for the community and the developer and the planning department to come together and have a conversation that goes back and forth a public hearing is a formal event where a decision making body is going to be making findings or a decision about a project and the community input is limited in terms of time so the community meetings staying in place some limited small number of projects that can fully conform to everything that we've discussed tonight and more that we didn't discuss might not trigger the need for a public hearing but if they're in the coastal zone they're going to need a coastal development permit you know as we've mentioned that doesn't that density bonus is going to remain financially attractive for lots of developers so those are going to continue to require public hearings and then lastly also this administrative process maintains the right of appeal and it ensures that sequel applies to these projects those are really important points being able to appeal a project that you feel very strongly about nothing about that is changing and we want to make sure that we're continued to provide environmental review and appropriate mitigations where those are necessary so some next steps this is presented tonight as a first meeting for your council should your council take an action to approve this we would bring it back for a second meeting at the next available meeting and then so we have two different ordinances one that involves sections that are part of our local coastal program the lcp and one that involves sections of the codes that are not part of our local coastal program so the lcp ordinance um after the second reading should it pass would take effect outside the coastal zone 30 days later the ordinance that contains the sections of our code that are not part of the lcp would take effect citywide 30 days later um those remaining pieces that aren't in effect in the coastal zone we would need to submit to the coastal commission for review so we would ask for that direction as part of our second reading and submit that to coastal for review um you'll see an analysis of lcp consistency in your agenda report and then we would begin implementation of these standards and they would start applying to new development proposals in october so we're going to need to be working with our consultant team to create some implementations tools for staff and applicants series of checklists we're going to update the stand alone um design standards document so that that's really just easy to use and um easy to access for all members of the community we do need to get to um an amendment to the ocean street area plan to adjust the height that is um currently limiting certain parcels that carry the highest 2.75 floor area ratio and there's just no way to make them match so um we didn't rezone those parcels tonight and we are going to need to come back and do an amendment to the ocean street area plan to raise that height limit so it can really accommodate what's called for in the general plan and then we'll be able to rezone those um parcels into one of the zone districts we created this evening or that would be created as part of this package um we also when we were here in november with the draft standards we um highlighted that there is an amendment to the text of the general plan that we really should make for the sake of consistency and clarity um it contains some language that is no longer enforceable under state law so um we just like to clean that up and um you know make it clear to readers of the general plan what what's actually happening and able to be done um and then you know we know this is um one of the first times we're using objective standards to try and control design which we have always done in a very site specific and subjective way and so we are anticipating that we're going to need to be making some tweaks and updates to this and so um sometime in the next you know 12 to 24 months um you should expect us to be back uh with sort of a set of cleanups amendments you know little updates for things that you know are not working quite the way we expected or um you know need a little more clarification or a little more specificity so um you know you can expect that and then i also want to mention i forgot to put on my slide there are two other next steps from public works they are going to be considering um pursuing more of a comprehensive set of standards around curb management all the things that happen in that curb zone they're waiting on some staffing up to happen to support that work and then in the parks and rec um department they are going to be working with their commission on looking again at the mitigation requirements for heritage tree removals um later this year so that may be coming back to your to your council for some more adjustments to those um heritage trees or large trees that are on private property and so then with that we have our staff recommendation which is printed in your agenda packets we're introducing for publication two ordinances one that includes sections of our code that are part of the local coastal program and one that includes sections of our code that are not part of the local coastal program um and then we are also introducing for publication and ordinance that would make um amendments to our zoning map and we zone parcels into newly created zoning districts and then um our last recommended action for your council is that you adopt a resolution establishing a new in-loofy requirement for street tree removals and that is our 80th slide so thank you so much for your attention over the last um two plus hours and um we are available the whole team is here to answer um any and all questions you might have after um all of that content thank you very much Sarah Noisy and your team that was uh probably one of the longest updates um but thank you I appreciate addressing a lot of the email questions we received ahead of time and creating the clear columns of what exists and what is being recommended and changed the visual on that was was very helpful uh rather than reading through dense text at this time I will uh bring it to council for further clarifying questions on any of the presentation before I take it out to public comment council member brown I do have a number of questions which um I'm I'm not sure that I'm gonna we'll see how things go if I want to lay all of those out um tonight um but I'm gonna reserve those for now I um and I would I would ask we have people in the audience and people online who have been waiting a long time and so it just feels like it would be nice to let them speak um I do have a procedural question though that I want to ask first um because I received a query about this and so I was um checking with Tony Kandadi about um the way our zoning ordinance is worded and the relationship between um Planning Commission recommendations um which we have there's there's it's kind of muddy whether or not we've received um their recommendations as per uh requirements in our code and so I gave but I'll ask my other questions later yes the concern as I understand it is whether or not the Planning Commission's recommendations have been adequately communicated to the city council as part of the staff report and presentation um what the code says is um or essentially what the procedure is for uh a zoning text amendment is that a public hearing is held by the Planning Commission and then the Planning Commission uh the code says shall forward a recommendation for approval or modified approval to the city council for final action um and then based on that the code further says that any substantive change proposed by the city council must be referenced back to the Planning Commission for a public hearing in such case the commission shall report back this actually says report hack to the city council within 40 days after the date of the council referral I'm assuming that's a typo but um what you have is a series of recommendations that were presented to the Planning Commission over the course of three meetings in June and July uh the Planning Commission made some recommendations to the city council which are reflected uh in the agenda report and in the minutes to the meeting but the text amendments that were provided to the council reflect the staff's recommendations in my opinion because it it's reflected in the minutes it was mentioned in the report and also in the agenda report I believe the procedure has been adequately followed but if the council makes any additional substantive recommendations that have not been presented to you either as a staff recommendation or as a Planning Commission recommendation then you'd need to refer that back to the to the Planning Commission for further recommendation I'll save my other questions okay uh council member Myers yeah I just I would um agree with council member brown with the public um being able to allow to go forward um I'm also wondering just with the lateness of the evening and the amount of information and the amount of information that uh excuse me communication that was received on this and and really um I mean I do want to compliment our staff really good presentation cleared up a lot but um I am a little bit worried about starting this big project at 9 30 at night um when this is just sort of hit and so um I would possibly consider mayor if you would consider potentially a motion to continue the item to the next meeting potentially um has something to do either before or after public comment I think public comment would be nice to hear just because it gives us additional information about the community's thoughts but it's always a little bit hard to do this stuff so late at night because I don't think the public is fully aware what's happening thank you mayor thank you um council member Cummings I'm just gonna express my support of that as well because I think there's a lot I mean for a two and a half hour presentation by staff I have a ton of questions and I think it'd be a good opportunity for us to hear from the community we can have staff incorporate some of their comments into maybe an update at the next the next time this can be heard and then we can it gives us time to have um some of our questions answered because I have a there's a lot that was presented that I now have questions with around street trees and some other things that came up so and it this will go on for another three hours minimum so I'll be bold and make that motion I'll second that and if we could email and if we could email because I know we've all been if we could email our questions and vice mayor Watkins and I I I to um agree with with the proposal to continue the item and allow the community to digest this information and I know a lot has gone into it and I'm looking at you on my screen Sarah and all of the planning department in terms of your outreach and I want to applaud you and thank you for such due diligence and what's a couple more weeks in the grand scheme to allow our community to really weigh in and to clear up some of the confusion potentially with the planning commission's recommendations but I would also really want to honor the folks who are here and who have called in so I'm wondering if we continue the item after we hear from our community members um and then revisit this and then agree with the point that councilor golder made in that if we can just make sure to get our questions and comments to our planning staff in advance to allow them um the time to really digest that as opposed to us on the dais late at night um you know doing the interrogation questions if you will yeah thank you thank you I'll just chime in that I would support that direction as well to hear from the public and then move the motion all right it looks like we have a motion council member Myers and a second by council member Cummings golder to continue this item after public comment and so to honor those that have been waiting here with us um here in person as well as the hands raised online thank you I will um ask for a roll call vote and then we'll move we can just do it with direction all right here we go with public comment so if you're joining us here in person please line up to the right of the dais if you wish to comment on this item on the agenda if you are a member of the public and you are joining us virtually via zoom uh please raise your hand by uh dialing star nine following the instructions on the screen and dialing star nine on your phone to raise your hand or choose the raise hand webinar control on your computer when it is your turn to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted and the timer will then be set to two minutes all right so I will go to I'm going to alternate our first hand raised is the name Henry on virtual Henry go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi there welcome can you hear me yes we can thanks so much uh really honored to be the first person in line feel quite lucky my name is Henry Hooker and I just want to first of all thank the city planners for an amazing effort to comply with state law and to provide a comprehensive framework for the city of Santa Cruz to encourage new development where it's most sustainable your services and public transportation hindering home construction in the city which seems to be a goal of much of the opposition here is fine for the folks who secure their place in this paradise but it's terrible policy for those who work here but cannot afford to live here and most importantly for our children and succeeding generations who are depending upon us to make decisions that will keep the planet habitable for them among other things the objective standards do facilitate multifamily housing which compared to single family homes used dramatically less land infrastructure water and electricity especially when located near existing services and transportation this provides a rational process for doing so and does not add housing it's not already allowed in the general plan I urge the council to approve this effort to allow more neighbors in the city of Santa Cruz and to make a big step for equity and sustainability thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person welcome thank you hello my name is Colleen Douglas I'm a home owner on the east side of Santa Cruz looked here for almost 50 years a lot of good stuff in what I saw so I appreciate a lot of it but I have one big problem which is that the community principles sustainability affordability there's promoting social diversity there's apartment and parking design which is affordable by design but whenever inclusionary units were mentioned somehow affordable was not key for our community anymore and this is not good this is not good I do not understand how we can continue how our kids can live here when they're the housing is not affordable for our community and I just do not believe that all 180 use should be used to meet inclusionary units for primary residential areas we want we would like them on our property you know I understand planning commission proposed for a higher share of new units to be affordable for people making less than 87,000 a year but that's not in there where is that I didn't hear that at all there are not higher rates of affordability affordability is key you must spend more time having affordability primary for us it was mentioned over and over again as key for our community over and over again but where is it it's in small little bits it's not enough it's not enough I don't believe thank you thank you for your comment I'll invite the next person in person welcome Madam Mayor and Council people Gary Patton for Save Santa Cruz I'll try to go very quickly and I'll be back with you based on your motion first as you may or may not remember the council in initiating this process said that preserving and protecting residential neighborhood areas and existing city businesses was to be the highest level policy priority did you hear the staff talk about that is that in the staff report no in fact what you heard was they judged things based on what was going to be profitable for the developers these so-called test fits you need to reorient what you're trying to accomplish secondly I've submitted a letter it's been passed out I assume on CEQA the exemptions claimed don't work for you you need to evaluate what the impacts are under CEQA and that's a real procedural deficiency the public hearing issue you know on page six of the staff report kind of the brags about how we cut back the need for public hearings and then the next page well they're going to be appeals well appeals cost money there's a real equity issue there and then tonight we hear from the staff and and mr. Butler don't worry everything's going to be the same as it ever was no matter what don't worry about it well if it's always going to be the same keep those public hearings in that's what saves Santa Cruz once and I think that's what the public wants the housing issue you just look at page I think it's 12 in the staff report in which you're planning director and planning staff says the development of new affordable housing units will be more successfully addressed by supporting market rate housing production that's simply not true we'll be back with further comments you need to upgrade this this document thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public I'll take virtually the name is Jim B go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi can you hear me yes welcome as as one of the vast majority of your constituents who wasn't surveyed about this I'm calling in now to express my views about the draft work before you I'm a slow talker so I'll just try to squeeze in three points point one well I appreciate your staff has put considerable effort into this they just don't seem to be able to see this project as an opportunity to address the serious issues that will increasingly exist if insanely tall buildings are permitted to be built right next to long time r1 neighborhoods I suspect most of you weren't all that happy with the outcome of the a3 1 watershed hearings well that nightmare will be a recurring one if you can't figure out how to address this obvious land use conflict as a layperson I'm certainly not in a place where I can propose specific solutions that address that that would add housing while also addressing constituents wide breads widespread concern about overly tall buildings but your planners should be able to acknowledge this conflict and there was virtually no mention of it in the night's presentation my second point is to wonder why staff's work doesn't focus the tallest buildings not in the downtown aren't parcels closer to ucsc as the a3 1 water street project made clear such large projects often have the smallest most student friendly units yet the parcels along mission street seem to have more modest mu m zoning kind of makes no sense point three while there's some good work in these proposed standards the staff should be proud of I fear really that city residents are generally losing faith in the planning department's ability to advocate for the many many people who live in residential neighborhoods that's a trend that should worry you as city leaders a lot and it probably explains why so many of us are alarmed at any hint that public input would be curtailed regarding such overly large projects finally just want to say I'm I'm I and so many other people are for housing we aren't opposed to housing we just want it to be done reasonably and not create massive health and safety problems thanks a lot thank you for your comment our next member of the public is here in person welcome thank you my name is Michael finale I heard a lot tonight about density I heard about profit maximization I didn't hear anything about infrastructure can you move the microphone closer to your mouth thank you so the the question is how are we going to move all these people around the streets in this city were laid out nearly a hundred years ago for a population much smaller than we have now I heard nothing about I mean I did hear about seven inch trees and some shrubs but I heard nothing about parks or open spaces all those things that contribute to quality of life I heard nothing about recreational opportunities and then of course there is the issue of water we are already in a water shortage are we going to supply all these additional housing units with water I also heard that this is all part of a state mandate that we're just complying with a state mandate I'm curious when I go through communities like Los Gatos or Santa Barbara I don't see any offensive high rise buildings that are are ruining the the character and the nature of those those communities but I look before me and I see people who are representing the investors and the developers I question who among you is going to represent the long-term residents of this community people who moved here not to live in a densely populated city with big city problems to live in a relaxed seaside community our next member of the public is calling in virtually the name I am watching you yes hello I want to talk about the tree ordinance authority alone doesn't make it well thought out or justify the restrictions or the new penalties entirely I notice that this all inclusive list of about 30 allowed trees mostly all grow over or far above 20 feet high that are allowed what do you literally have then against maybe ornamental fruit or citrus trees that can grow between 10 and 15 feet tall and maturity that they cannot be planted and then removed in parkways I think you need to bump the exemption from 10 to 15 feet from at least parts of this ordinance such as permit the plant will remove and then must pay a more aggressively large fines if planted then removed there's a gap there your reduced definition of a small tree I point out also includes down to a zero trunk inches with the only difference to you a fine of five hundred uh fifteen hundred ten dollars and worth seventeen hundred and five you must think an 11 foot tree is almost as big a deal as a fan farm as the fundamental logic here while I get big trees are a big deal I say if the city plants a tree it's a city tree but if I plant a tree it's always still my tree just as much as if I park a car in the street it's still my car its presence can be permitted or regulated but in my mind only up to the extreme point where the city can order its removal requiring citizens to replant a tree if removed would be no different than requiring they plant trees in the first place which any moron would consider an overreach oh wait you propose to condition that also for development in an adjacent if an adjacent property owner has already planted a tree and doesn't like these new rules I say it's their right to remove this tree property no charge for expo's facto reasons if privately planted it's not the public's tree it never was to recap about parkways the city plants nothing waters nothing trims nothing pays nothing assumes no duty assumes no liability but things trees planted and maintained by others are now somehow their trees to demand replacement but the new penalties like the unspecified batch from the cost of the old hundred dollars in lieu of replacement fees tells me it's about money thanks thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person please come forward thank you oh good evening I'm a Greg banks and I'm a registered voter and I live at standalone so park I'm almost guy I had other things to state but coming here and listening I'm just massively impressed by the fact of the amount of I it's it's thank you to the people the staff and and the elected officials and look how few people are here you guys and um I didn't plan on coming to do this but you guys deserve thank you and more people need to get their parts out here and just come and take part in government because it does happen here it does that's what's cool and look at you guys except for kandadi I got to talk to you someday sorry but I appreciate it and I'm gonna next time I'm gonna bring more people and then it'll get interesting then but um I was wiped out by the fact of how much effort was put in by by staff and and and everybody reviewing it and so I just decided to say check that and just thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public is virtually Robin and Doug Anker go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi this is Doug can you hear me yes hi there well thanks so much for taking our call well that was a meal I've I've provided extensive comments and in writing and I appreciate staffs and council's attention and responses to those comments nothing I've heard so far tonight though changes my perspective on this matter the wisdom of the ages stands festin alante let's make haste slowly here may seem ironic coming from me as council the planning commission and staff know I've been engaged with and generally supportive of the process since its inception there's a ton of good work here for example the height transition guidelines and I applaud staff at the extensive outreach they've engaged in throughout the process but despite tonight's tour de force presentation by staff I agree with the sense of council that this item should be continued giving ample time for council and the public to absorb digest and potentially improve the recommendations so that we can get this as right as possible the first time and in so doing in gender broad base support among the community for these changes so we can move forward together rather than in conflict with one another to achieve a built form that meets our community's need for housing especially affordable housing especially affordable housing accessible to folks with housing vouchers consistent with responsible integration with our existing neighborhoods we can do this thank you so much for your time thoughtful attention consideration service take care thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person welcome good evening council this is Ralph Sonfeld I came down tonight to support the staff's recommendation for the objective standards I know how long and hard the city's been working on really trying to bring real equity into this process and reach out to underserved communities and underrepresented communities and as part of this process so I think that's something that's really important and and the what we're seeing tonight is a reflection of like over I think it's two years worth of work and there have been a lot of folks involved in that I understand that like for a lot of public folks they haven't seen these proposals yet and they're complicated but I think at the end of the day we'll end up back right here with a very similar proposal because it conforms with state law if we don't approve something tonight essentially the same kind of development that we heard earlier is going to happen in our city anyway so we do have some time to get it right but I don't think getting it right is going to look any different than what we have tonight so that's why I'm here supporting what we have and I just wanted to say I'm a homeowner in this community and I feel very privileged every day that I get to be in this position but there's a lot a lot of folks and from my generation who can't afford to be here and I think this proposal that we have tonight is the kind of proposal that we need to move forward so that we have as much affordable housing in our communities we can get and that's what I want to see and I think we can get as much affordable housing the most number of affordable units with this kind of proposal thank you thank you for your comment I'm going to go to the next member in person hi there welcome good evening good long evening my name is Andy Schifrin and I want to thank you for the opportunity to speak as a member of the planning commission I wouldn't ordinarily speak about an item that was before the commission I have my chance at the commission and I'm not going to talk about the substance of the issues tonight my concern was really with the material that was presented to to you it's a huge amount of material so I'm a little reluctant to say things were left out but I think important things were left out and I might account for one of the reasons why there was such a response around the issues around public hearing the planning commission considered the ordinance changes having to do with public hearings at two meetings the June 30th and July 2nd and the theft report doesn't reflect what happened at that meeting at those meetings it doesn't reflect the actions that were taken so I hope when this comes back I'm glad it's continued that it will be the theft report will have a more full explanation of what the what happened at the planning commission how the issues were dealt with the other problem I think tonight and I just want to bring it to Steph's attention your attention in case it hasn't been recognized is that the ordinance the clean the ordinance that's proposed does not include the what was recommended at the planning commission for the non-coastal area that has to do with the objective standards it's 24 04 130 it was in the agenda packet for the planning commission it's not in the proposed ordinance next time around so that you have the full you have the full ordinance otherwise it's going to be incomplete so thank you very much thank you for your comment our next member of the public is virtual phone number ending in 7650 go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hello can you hear me yes hi there hi good evening there bruner and current city council members I am my name is Sean Maxwell I'm also a current planning commissioner as the previous speaker but I'm here as a west side resident as well the current renter in the city I've been through what you've just been through more than once so I understand everyone's feelings right now this is a very important topic it relates to everything that you've dealt with today and previous agenda items and what I'm here to talk about right now is one important item that I think is on everybody's mind is housing affordable housing and the planning commission's recommendation to increase the inclusionary housing for projects with bonus density I feel like one of the main objections by staff was that there was no next study showing the feasibility that the of the increase but there really hasn't been any studies showing the feasibility of any of the recommended objective standards in fact there was a similar argument when we were trying to increase the inclusionary to 20 a while back and it seems like that has gone through and even when the developers at 555 Pacific they request they requested a modification for their permit they readily agreed to the 20 so things have changed we we said it wasn't we were nervous maybe it wasn't going to work it's working and what we're doing by increasing the density bonus is not really getting we're not going to get 25 we're not going to get 30 what we're going for is the 20 percent because of the density the density bonus units do not and are not included in the inclusionary I think that's what we're trying to do okay thanks for all your time we're going to do this again thank you for your comment I'd like to invite the next person in here in person hi there hi I'm Deborah Marks and I'm gonna kind of go micro on my comments about my neighborhood I live in the Central Park neighborhood which is composed of Leonard May and Dakota and my concern is that the way the zoning is on this project my neighborhood will be devastated we're we're most single family homes we're blocked from Ocean Street a block from Water Street and I spent five or six years participating in the Ocean Street area plan where I worked very closely with planners who invited the community I heard nothing about this I and also the other thing is I was promised at the end of that process that our neighborhood would be included in the zone rezoning of Ocean Street or the zoning of Ocean Street not rezoning and you know of course time went by and that certainly never happened but I don't think I'm unusual I think almost everybody has not heard of objective standards and I know they did a nice effort to put this out to the community but I don't think it reached a lot of people you know maybe a select few and I and the 800 survey represents .01% of the population so it you know it's it just you know there was no community meeting there was no public hearing community meeting that was really interactive not being in a council or planning commission but back to my neighborhood I do want to point out that there is a house on the corner of May and Leonard it's 119 Leonard that was specifically left out of the Ocean Street area it's a single family home it makes no sense to take that lot and put a tall building on it it'll ruin our neighborhood and it really needs to be looked into Sarah Noisy this is something we have to talk about it's it's absolutely wrong and we've been just shoveled over and I'm I'm quite quite upset thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public I'll take in person thank you good evening mayor and council members my name is Ryan Mechel I'm a transportation and public works commissioner lead for Santa Cruz Yambi and a resident of the city I'd like to preface this by saying that I've participated in the objective standard process pretty much from beginning to end from webinars to surveys to the focus groups that happened to the city meetings as well staff put a lot of time into this I'd like to thank them for that it's clear that we are in a housing shortage in Santa Cruz we need more housing each year I see friends and co-workers move out of Santa Cruz because they can't afford to live here and I am under no illusion that I may be next approving these objective standards is an important step that we need to take to build desperately needed housing in Santa Cruz I also strongly support the transportation and public works commissions unanimous vote to take ab 602 into account and make site improvements proportional to square footage rather than the number of doors please support staff's recommendation and direct staff to study how site specific improvements could be more in line with ab 602 thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public is phone number ending in 3031 go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi there good evening this is Scott Graham as far as the trees go I lived in Isla Vista which is right next to you CSB back in the mid 70s and they had a street tree program which was actually planting fruit trees along all the streets in Isla Vista so that people could you know have food to eat while they're walking on the street and your ordinance makes it illegal to plant fruit trees along the streets which doesn't make any sense whatsoever especially given the fact that there's so many hungry people in town anyway the other thing that I object to is that there's they're saying well this is not the quarter's plan well you're right it's not the quarter's plan it's actually worse than the quarter's plan this plan makes it so that people that uh don't that can barely afford to live here are going to end up having to move away because this plan was going to build mostly market rate housing that's all you know it it's in the plan market rate housing is the objective here um the other thing I object to is taking away the right to public hearings now the staff said oh well there will still be public hearings through this that and the other thing yes but there's this administrative process of administratively of approving projects without a public hearing so I would strongly recommend that you get rid of that and make it so that there will be a public hearing on any project that's bigger than a single family house thank you for letting me speak and hopefully you'll pay attention to the public on this one thank you for your comment our next comment is uh here in person welcome hey thank you so much uh so first I'll say I support the staff's recommendation I don't necessarily like everything that's within the plans um but it's really about codifying what we want to have be objective now we can change it later that's the whole point here um and I think staff mostly puts this together from what was realistically already objective standards but all of that is just like technical umbo jumbo around it when really you know what I care about and why I come and speak on this is that people live in homes like the whole point of doing this is to build a warm place for people to live where they or that they can live among us and that we can welcome them as neighbors I mean that's that's fundamentally that the purpose and why we're doing this it's not because we care about what the lattice looks like or what we're gonna have for for sightings um and so as a as a transportation commissioner I was one of the people that pushed for hey you know if we're gonna have these site specific improvements that are only for three units and above well either all projects should have them and it should actually apply to all of them including single family homes which I might add have no affordability requirement so I don't want to hear from people talk about oh I'm really worried about affordability and then they're gonna say they're worried about single family homes there's something wrong there there's an incoherence and I'd like for people to actually look at that and analyze you know are they really looking for affordability or are they trying to protect their single family home there's a big difference I'd really invite everyone within the community to seriously think about that please move forward with this I look forward to the continuation thank you thank you for your comment going to invite the next person here welcome thank you Mayor Bruno council members Jillian greenside um with all due respect I really think that in an issue as complicated as this that uh staff should not just be reading power points we can all read staff needs to be explaining what he's meant in each of those categories I attend many meetings um and I couldn't follow a lot of it here's an example in the last presentation what we read and what was read to us was that the change is to clarify how to determine building heights but it didn't say how that was going to work so it's sort of glazed over so I really suggest that we get a different sort of presentation next time no mention of density bonus it sure sounded a lot like the corridors plan to me with the nodes the closest one to me would be mission and bay that was straight out of the corridors plan and 45 feet in that node or that area well with a density bonus it could be 70 feet so we need a much clearer explanation if you're going to think that the public will get on the side and uh I mean it's hard to not think that um when we hit the comment is we have people at all income levels we need housing at all income levels no we don't the people with money are in their homes the people who are leaving are low income people and it was the Spanish speaking residents who answered the survey who wanted lower heights finally as I see the times running out um is a very disappointed we submitted something from save our big trees to protect heritage trees on site that will be cut down it wasn't reflected anywhere in these objective standards I hope we'll be taken more seriously in the next go around thank you thank you for your public comment I'll uh go to the next uh member of the public virtually and uh Reggie Meisler go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself hi can you hear me yes hi there hi um I am it's an unfortunate that I have to be like apparently the only explicitly like far left person to sort of like scold other people here but I am absolutely tired of hearing about people freaking out about five story buildings and then getting these like bizarre compromise bills where we care about housing but then we limit it to five stories but then it has to be mixed use I mean it's like either we care about housing or we don't like just make it a hundred stories so I don't give a fuck and like nobody should give a fuck at this point right like this is a serious problem and if you call yourself a progressive you are gonna support uh housing with the absolute maximum density and not care about freaking trees in the way or freaking height limits or setbacks like we need to at least get to that point and obviously I want all of this to be low income I think it's ridiculous that we're talking about market rate at all I think that's true but then I hear other people talking about we can't do anything because of water like if you think we don't have enough water then I don't know just like your life's over right I mean that's such an existential crisis it's just totally irrational to bring that into the equation like just build as much as possible don't even make this a compromise I think this is too compromised as is um so I support I suppose what you guys are doing here I just think I'm just like frustrated that it's like as watered down as it is and people are still freaking out about it like I think it's just unacceptable thank you for your comment our next member of the public here here in person welcome you have to follow that um good evening Mayor Brunner and members of the council my name is Diane Alfaro and I am a renter in Santa Cruz and I am also vice chair or sorry yeah vice chair of housing Santa Cruz County I urge you to pass the objective standards but I will mention this as a response to an opinion piece that was released through various news sources today a point in that opinion piece was made planning decisions can have big impacts on the community that's true in total I can't deny that but planning indecision can also have major impact on the community and that's the point community Santa Cruz is very unique um a very unique place and has its charms and that has a lot to do with its diversity of people we must remember that it's the people who make our community unique and we have a major housing crisis to address so that we can remain unique Santa Cruz County is the second most unaffordable county to live in in the US according to the national low income housing coalition is that shocking not to my generation the young professionals who are trying to make it work here young families who would like to raise their children here and our essential workers like our teachers and emergency personnel who make our community functional are trying to make it work here I understand that Santa Cruz County residents want to preserve and protect the character and quality of our local neighborhoods totally understandable but at what cost by not allowing our community to grow to accommodate people like me you will continue to lose people like me our housing costs are too high and unattainable for people like me I was not around major planning decisions were made that shaped our community I wasn't alive I was born the year the first top gun moving came out so obviously not my time um and I didn't have a vote until the new millennium I am not the only one I can't change the past but I urge you to think of the future for people like me me hint that is unfortunately still a reality it's not obvious but it still exists so keep that in mind as you move forward thank you thank you for your comment I will now go to virtual hand raised christian cadner go ahead and press star six yourself good evening no star six on computer zoom thank you for the presentation I like much of what I heard and saw I would ask if that slide deck could be made available I couldn't find that online anywhere I've gone through all the pds and I see a lot of text but not that slide deck and my question would be in the face of those state regulations what leeway or what can the city still do in terms of zoning can the city still decide where five-story four-story building will be built or is that is that really up to the state um I live in Deborah's neighborhood she mentioned earlier that this is one house on our block that's a cute old victorian style house that would now in the new zoning be a four to five-story tall apartment build potentially and um we haven't been involved in in that process and I would like to know if there's any chance that we can be involved and work on compromises on setback rules and things like that that has been happening before um as far as I understand that hadn't did not happen here and I'm looking forward to the follow-up meeting and also looking forward to finding that slide deck online thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person welcome my name is nyanko and I've lived in this community for over 50 years and I wanted to thank the council members for listening to this tour de force presentation from staff which is most excellent my comments are around the um the the material or the um design elements and um specifically let me see what is it gonna say I think the um the design elements presented I think would appeal to the you know hipsters and you know places like Portland Oregon or San Francisco I think Santa Cruz has a diverse population and I think the design elements should reflect that that's my comment thank you for your comment all right go ahead and hi welcome hi welcome thank you for putting in over 12 hours it's amazing um my name is Candice Brown I'm from East Morrissey and I'm on the Transportation Public Works Commission um I wanted to make a few points here mainly that as a Transportation Public Works Commissioner um after reviewing the standards which we were told were draft in nature and that we could go back later and change them we were not told because there was no planning commission or um person from the staff there that if there's any impact on development with state mandates that we cannot make those changes and so I had some concern after the meeting called another commissioner who was as concerned as I was in fact so concerned that he was almost ready to quit and I encouraged him not to do that but we do need to look at things like for instance um they talked about the measurement of sidewalks they said on all other roadways which would mean anything that's not a main arterial or collector street I figured out in my street alone that that would infect and take out if we put eight feet 65 off-street parking spaces and as many heritage streets just on my one street so that one thing alone I think should really be carefully looked at it's worth noting that Santa Rosa I looked at Galita at Santa Barbara have objective standards and they've had them in some cases for a year or two they're seven to 22 pages they're simple they're elegant and they're worth looking at for instance try to figure out the maximum height of a roof line I realized that some say we shouldn't argue that point but I think it's important to note that it's so complicated you really can't figure out the maximum height things as based on the average of the midpoint of the average of the peaks and that may include dormers doesn't tell you anything when you look at 2.75 far which is a measurement of mass but not height it really was indicated in the original corridor advisory plan that that was too large and it's really been the problem from the very beginning and the staff has not been willing to look at that because it would require my statements I'll have to provide this to you later thank you very much thank you for your comment our next member is virtual Jesse Bristow go ahead and unmute yourself good evening can you hear me yes all right thank you Mayor Bruner thank you council members my name is Jesse Bristow with Swanson Builders thank you for your time today and I just really wanted to applaud staff I know they worked really hard on this and the report was a lot of information it was very very thorough one point I wanted to make there was a comment about high quality materials in the vinyl window concept and just when it comes to you know probably affordable housing you know you might want to take high quality out that's that is subjective in itself so you might just want to list what it would be allowed and what wouldn't be allowed and but again when it comes to affordable housing developers they're going to be trying to source the you know the best bang for their butt their buck so just something to take into consideration and then we've been dealing with this a lot in a lot of our buildings with the new electrical requirement the transformer rooms for buildings that are 100% electric they're taking up a lot of space and the utility company requires that street access so please keep that in mind and then what I really wanted to talk about was the discussion of you know trying to raise that inclusionary requirement there was a point in time where I think it was 2019 where it went from 15% and 20% and at that stage we as a builder and developer did not submit any applications it wasn't until the state density bonus increased from 35% to 50% that there was actually a financial incentive so I just think that by trying to follow planning commission's recommendation you're going to stall proposals in a negative way I think you have a lot of affordable coming in because of the 20% so I wouldn't want to try to fix something that's not broken and I had a lot more to say but I would just ask that you would follow through with planning staff's recommendation thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public here in person thank you for waiting hi good evening everyone it's very important to allow the public comment just like we're doing now it's not so bad right we can do it two minutes well guess what in our community the project's fairly new on water by market street that whole complex took into consideration what the community had to say it turned out beautiful there's no problems developers need to hear from us they need the information we know we live here same thing happened up on highway one and ocean street with the burger place going in meeting with the community matters who wants to do something that's going to booby trap their whole there could be a picket no one will go over you know think about it public comment is important please put that if it meets an objective standard it's great then no fear at all right you just have public comment it passes the objective standards that's great now you're listening to the community there's no reason to exit out exiting it out it's a problem you want to charge people to do an appeal how democratic is that just think about it oh my gosh you're pulling people together and more people get involved so they can have the money for the appeal I mean that just is a it's a bad policy and even though Sarah makes it sound like it's no big deal it is a big deal we can't just listen and be convinced we have to get real what the dailiness of this is this is all daily very important things that matter greatly to our community we have to put our thinking caps on and really understand we want to see drawings what is Sarah really saying let's see it in a drawing what does it kind of look like you want to do all these streets show us what it looks like that somebody can get behind all of her hard work a lot of hard work do this little bit we deeply appreciate it thank you for your time thank you for all your hard work and stay in so late thank you for your comment our next member of the public is virtual bodyshargel hi there welcome hi good almost morning at this point to the council um I'm I'm calling as a lifelong Santa Cruz county resident and candidate for council industry number four and I'll keep this short for the sake of time and because I'm I'm still learning about about these issues at this point I want to start off by thanking the planning department for a really fantastic presentation that was informative to eat to even me and really actually comforted a lot of my concerns about community character or neighborhood character and and all of those issues but I also want to echo some of the concerns that were brought up by Sean Maxwell a few comments ago over affordability in the new housing especially that that we're going to see in the downtown expansion um and yeah it's it's really concerning to me that a lot of these developments due to density bonuses are going to include almost exclusively market rate housing uh in in a lot of the discussions of the downtown expansion we've heard mentions of a new neighborhood going in but the fact of the matter is that there's already a neighborhood there because I live here I see the people who are here now living their lives many of whom are not going to be able to afford to live in the new neighborhood that's actually replacing the current neighborhood so along with increasing the inclusionary requirements for for these very large developments so that this neighborhood can remain affordable I'd like to see the council exploring some possibilities to guarantee current residents of this area that they can remain in housing that is at or below 30 percent of their income after redevelopment has taken place to avoid the displacement that has been so rampant in our community over the last 10 10 years and over my over my whole lifetime so that's that's my thoughts and I I thank all of you um on the council and just watching the the meeting for for staying so late and putting this energy into trying to better our community thank you thank you for your comment our next member of the public uh Beverly Day Show hi there hi hi Beverly Day Show thank you for all of your work and council you are troopers amazing that you've been here all these hours and still listening to people um I had a few comments to make one is um affordable is not really affordable for most people there's a skewing of of income coming from the people who have high incomes coming from over over the hill now uh so affordable isn't really affordable I didn't hear anything about low low income being included or very low income being included so that's a big concern that I have um I have a question about vinyl windows does that mean the windows themselves are vinyl is that just mean the surrounding um I I assume you mean the surrounding that the window is not really vinyl but if that could be answered for me that would help me um am I being stupid um uh bus passes that people should that the builders or whoever the owners are should be required to give people bus passes no if it's market rate those people are not going to be using the bus I've heard people and I've had in my own experience long long ago in taking the bus that it costs people about four extra hours a day to use the bus our buses are still methane 90 74% methane with the natural gas um when there's only a few people riding the bus at a time uh there's still a very high pollution rate going on so I don't know if it's being done for pollution reasons or for traffic reasons or probably both but um that seems like a silly thing providing a bus pass um parking um I may have missed that I had to step aside for a while but I didn't hear anything about parking uh is parking being required because um I'm I understand from the um the climate action plan that parking is being not required of builders and I think it should be required thank you thank you for your comment our next uh member of the public zen and you'll take crow hi council uh can everybody hear me all right yes hi there hi um hi my name is zen and alea crow I'm president of the student housing coalition uh and I just wanted to call it today uh it's the court of the objective standards I think that as a community we need to begin to look forward and to look at the root of our crisis and that crisis comes from a lot of different aspects but one part of that is a lack of clarity when it comes to housing we lost you destruction including uh displacement and including other non forms of or no forms of rent can you hear me again yes hey uh sorry lost me for a second there um I'm just calling on the road right now and so I just wanted to go ahead and reiterate the support for the other standards ordinance as it is an important step towards making sure we have more clarity in our processes in terms of how we go about approving housing which is very needed within the city of Santa Cruz so thank you all for your time I appreciate your support thank you for your comment our next uh member of the public has phone number ending in 8288 good evening can you hear me yes hi there welcome hi uh good evening mayor and city council members I appreciate it's been incredibly long day for you guys so I'll be brief as I can this proposal you're considering isn't understandable it's not transparent and most alarmingly it seeks to eliminate public hearings on significant large projects which would have enormous impacts on our whole community for generations to come to propose removing public hearings as especially alarming at a time when much of the community feels concerned and even mistrust about the city government I also strongly agree with those who reminded us tonight that we're not hearing nearly enough emphasis on affordable housing in this proposal as well as the important question about what is actually affordable for the seriousness of the challenges we're already facing with this issue we've got to have the dedicated focus and will to address it this isn't either or it's not affordable housing or public participation we need more public participation and more actual affordable housing thanks so much you guys thank you for your comment at this time it looks like that concludes public comment there's no more hands raised and we've there's nobody lined up here in person and so we will be continuing this item to the next date which it um do you have that handy the 13th September 13th is our next meeting and the agenda will be posted here at city hall and online council member Cummings I just wanted to um maybe just put it out there that I don't know if we're going to vote on having this at the very next meeting but depending on what that meeting looks like if it's another meeting that's going to start very early and end up having significant discussion that maybe we consider if it can be a special meeting or at a on a date where it's going to fit well with what's being proposed because we've been here for 12 hours and it'll be sad to see if we're here again in the same position for another there's going to be a lot of conversation and a lot of discussion about this item and so I'm just if it works for the next meeting great but I'm just putting that out there as a suggestion yeah I appreciate that comment council member Cummings it has been a marathon today we're looking at the agenda for the next meeting and we think we can reshuffle things so that we can not have another 12 hour meeting and clear clear the deck for ample discussion on this item council member Brown thank you I I just wanted to make a comment about which and I do support the motion to continue this item but one of the things that seemed very clear in the public comment and something that really resonated with me was the the level of complexity and the way that the material is presented I want to really commend the staff on on trying to and really making giving us a presentation that was thorough and clear in as far as it goes but in terms of actually understanding the potential impact of some of these proposed changes I feel like there is more explanation to be given and so I'm just trying to figure out a way to maybe I'll just put it out there I would like to I would hope that we don't just get the same you know the same presentation with a little bit of modification or a few extra responses because I think we're gonna we'll kind of end up with the same challenge so I'm I'm hoping that we can it's clear that the the direction is to that we get something that's a we can really wrap our minds around and that the public can weigh in on in a more deliberate way rather than sort of just trying to figure out what what the intention is so I appreciate that feedback council member brown and I think this evening's discussion was very helpful for us to identify what some of those key themes are we had very robust community community input both tonight and in advance of the meeting and we can take that information to hone in on some of those additional scenarios I think folks were asking for as part of that future presentation and not simply rehash that power point we had tonight so that's something the team will work on and in the meantime making sure that our community and all of you here can help share that this will be an item so the messaging the communication out making that very clear go ahead somebody from the public asked about the slides being made available and could that the site deck yes we can certainly make all the materials that were shared tonight available for folks to consume spend some time with there's a lot to unpack there and happy to bring back as part of our discussion at the next meeting some ways to kind of again reinforce the information that was shared council member calentari johnson just a council member brown's point I was taking notes as the public was speaking and as there were some comments and I'm gonna go back over the packet go back over these notes and generate some questions and send it to staff and hoping that that would help with the next iteration of the presentation we always welcome questions in advance from the council or the or the community and those three weeks will also give us an opportunity to to get responses out to those that have engaged with us and try to get as much information and clarity out there as we can council member coming I guess my last suggestion might be that given that you know we've had some today for example we've had some controversial potentially controversial topics that come at times when a lot of people might be working that given the interest of the public on this item that maybe it'd come back you know at a time when most working people can attend so whether that's six or five or you know just taken into consideration that oftentimes people want to comment and be a part of this but they're working and given how significant of a change this is to public policy in our community that we have at a time that is accessible to most working people and I would defer to the council on that it's always a bit of a balance of having the meeting started at a time that's available but not have a go so late that it's also inhibiting participation so happy to happy to do our best to have it scheduled at a time that folks can attend thank you council member Cummings okay so with that thank you everyone we appreciate all the input and comments it's very helpful we're almost there we need to vote on the motion to continue so we have a first by council member Myers and a second by council member Golder may we have a roll call vote please council member Callentary Johnson aye Golder aye Cummings aye Brown aye vice mayor Watkins aye mayor Brunner aye that motion passes unanimously thank you everyone for your participation and input this meeting is adjourned