 of the June 12, 2018 meeting of the City Council. I'd now like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you Mayor. Council Member it's Cron. Here. Matthews. Here. Chase is currently absent. Brown is absent. Naroyan. Here. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Tarasov. Here. And now the clerk could please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. The United States of America and to the public for which it stands, one nation under visible Thank you. Now it's at this point in the agenda that we have the opportunity to meet some new employees to the City of Santa Cruz. So at this point I'd like to invite up the Interim Director of Parks and Recreation Carol Scourge. Good afternoon Mayor and Council Members. Interim Parks and Recreation Director Carol Scourge and it's with my pleasure to introduce Annalise Bryant. Annalise has been with us for almost six years as a temporary employee so we're so happy to have her on board now as a regular employee. She's taken on the position of Building Maintenance Worker 1 out of the Wharf and one of the projects that she's started working on just to give you an idea of the very things that she does is she's going to be working together with other staff to replace a portion of the deck in front of Ideal and that's a real different kind of an exotic wood and so she's working with staff to figure out how to work with that to make it nice and strong and workable for our salsa dancers that go out there. Annalise is born and raised. She's a third generation Santa Cruz in. She enjoys paddle boarding and softball. She started softball when she was in high school and probably even before that and continued to play softball all through college. She went to Cabrillo and then went to USMB where she got her degree in environmental studies and a minor in business. She enjoys family. They've been here for a long time interesting or not. Her grandfather worked for the parks department for the county and her grandmother also worked for the county of Santa Cruz so she's following in her family's footsteps and we're just so happy to keep her here and keep her on as a regular employee. Welcome Annalise. Welcome Annalise. And then now I'd like to invite up Director Public Works Mark Dettel. Good afternoon Mayor and City Council. It's my pleasure to introduce Aurelio Flores our new equipment mechanic one. He was a temporary employee since November and so we're really glad to bring him on full-time. He works with the fleet vehicles, large equipment in the garage and today he was working on refuse trucks. It's a never-ending story there. So Aurelio was born in Santa Cruz actually and when he was two he moved to Mexico for four years and then he came back at age six and he's been here ever since. He moved to Watsonville, lives in Watsonville about eight years ago and currently has three daughters and a dog and he's been working in the mechanic industry for the past 17 years. He attended local schools, Harbor High and some Cabrillo and when he's not working he enjoys camping and working on the honeydew list. A fun fact to share is his first name has all the vowels so please join me. Welcome. Now it's my pleasure to recognize the wastewater treatment plan. It seems like every year they receive some type of award and this year is no exception. Our City of Santa Cruz wastewater treatment facility has won five prestigious awards this year and before I describe them if the wastewater treatment plan staff here today could please gather at the podium around the wastewater system manager Ann Hogan, Operations Manager Mike Sanders, Laboratory Environmental Compliance Manager Akeen Babatola and Wastewater Collection Flood Control Manager Rome Norman and also Public Works Director Mark Dettel. That's what I was just going to ask, right? You got it on Operation Cruise Control. All right, thank you. Let's get a picture while you're all assembled there right now. You can share with the council. And while you're taking the picture I'm just going to continue reading. The California Wastewater Environment Association Monterey Bay Section has awarded the facility with not one but four 2017 awards. The first two awards go to individuals. Wastewater Treatment Operations Supervisor Dave Myers, if you'd please step forward if he can make it through the class. Dave was awarded the 2017 Operator of the Year for his dedication to excellence in process control, staff training, workflow management and service beyond the call of duty. Thank you Dave. And the second recipient I believe James Locatelli, he is, is he here? No. He is in Costa Rica, I understand. We'll kind of recognize him in absence. I hope you pass that along. But Wastewater Collection Field Crew Leader James Locatelli was named 2017 Collections Person of the Year for his efforts in managing sewer collection system work crews and staff development. So again, Jim is unable to be here today but let's give him a round for award is for the overall plant of the year, recognizing the wastewater treatment facility for its services as a regional wastewater treatment and disposal facility that includes lab support and testing for other facilities. The facility is the only plant in the Monterey Bay area permitted for this work. The plant also provides wastewater treatment and ocean outfalls disposal beyond the city to the Santa Cruz County Sanitation District, which includes LIVO, Capitola, Soquel and Aptos and provides solids processing and ocean outfall disposal for the city of Scotts Valley. So again, thank you to the entire crew for to work on that. And the fourth award is for Regional 2017 Plant of the Year Medium Size. It acknowledges the outstanding achievement in more than 20 categories, honoring exceptional treatment plants, water, environment professionals, and collection systems. It is based on a review of infrastructure, management practices, and in compliance records. So I think just hearing these awards makes me really proud to know all of the good work that's going on there. Again, that's not all. And last but far from least is a statewide award. The plant received second place for the California Wastewater Environment Association 2017 Best in State Plant of the Year. This award acknowledges outstanding achievement as an exceptional California treatment plant. It is based on a competitive review of infrastructure, management practices, and compliant records. Ann Hogan, Mike Sanders, Rome Norman, Dave Myers, and our man in Costa Rica, Jim Locatelli. Congratulations to you and every single wastewater treatment facility staff member. Please accept these awards that Vice Mayor Watkins and myself are going to give you with deep appreciation for the City of Santa Cruz and all of us here on the council. All right. Thank you. Okay. This is for the uh to you as well. All right. Congratulations. Thank you. Spread the will. Are you framed? Thank you. Stand somewhere and then we'll can Thank you. Nice. One last thing. Oh, yeah. Hold on. Please. Yeah. You have the floor. Thank you. Ann Hogan, Wastewater Systems Manager. Mayor and City Council, thank you for acknowledging the wastewater treatment facility awards and the individual awards we received from the California Water Environment Association. Most importantly, these awards weren't mandated or driven by managers. This was a grassroots staff decision to take on the application process. Staff volunteered from every department at the facility and in the collections department to edit and to draft and to write the applications. The plan of the year award applications is 140 pages of text and attachments that describe the facility accomplishments, regulatory compliances, innovative practices, management systems, cost effectiveness, and evidence of superior plant operations within the past three years. I'd like to name the members of the awards committee. Amanda Bird, Michelle Cortroll, Monica Tomlinson, Daniel Stains, Armando Dillera, Vince Lockyer, Gail Mackie, Dave Myers, Jamie Cortroll, Eric Baumgartner, and Tom Pretzer. These individuals were instrumental in the CWEA application process. We're proud of their efforts and we're proud to be an award-winning facility. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. That was amazing. I think that's the most awards to a single department in a meeting that we've had. So it was wonderful. Now it's my pleasure to move to the next item on our agenda, which are the Queer Youth Leadership Awards. The City of Santa Cruz is proud to honor and recognize nominees and awardees for the recent 21st annual Queer Youth Leadership Awards, held this year at Soquel High School on May 12th. I'd like to highlight a few things. The very first Queer Youth Leadership Awards took place here in downtown Santa Cruz at what was once Hobie's Restaurant, if you can remember that, which is now Cafe Mare. This council is proud of this legacy. In 1983, California Secretary John Laird was one of the first openly gay elected mayors in the United States and a member of this Santa Cruz City Council. And this council, in 1992, passed the Santa Cruz Antibias Ordinance, which included sexual orientation and gender identity and jobs and housing. Other cities passed similar ordinances throughout Santa Cruz County following that action. The individuals and organizations we are about to announce continue to make our community a stronger, healthier, and safer place to live, work, and go to school. As mayor and on behalf of the City Council of Santa Cruz, we thank you for helping us continue our city's strong legacy and we thank you for your work. I'm particularly proud of the young people and adults who are here today, who are actively engaged in their communities. I say this because there is a difference between accepting or tolerating our community's queer and transgender youth and celebrating our community queer and transgender youth. We're here today to take just a moment to celebrate our community's empowered and celebrated queer youth leaders. As a father of young students, I am personally grateful for your work, helping make sure that any children who enter the halls and school or walk within the community, the spaces you all work to make safe for yourselves will be safe for my children and for all of our children. We will now call each person and ask for you to come up to the podium to present you with a certificate of appreciation. After each of you received your certificate, please stay near the podium so that we can take a group photo together. And I'm going to say your names one at a time and Mayor Trazos will hand you your certificates. Will Tara Liam, student from Branson Forty Middle School please come to the podium. Marlena Kroll, student from SoCal High School. Megan Tracy, student from Santa Cruz High School. Natalie Ramirez, student from SoCal High School. Sadie Reeve, volunteer the Diversity Center. Jamie Joy, youth program coordinator from the Diversity Centers Youth Program. The Diversity Centers Youth Program and big brothers and big sisters of Santa Cruz County if in attendance please do come as well. Congratulations. Okay everybody look this direction. Okay get a little closer to David. He's not too scary. One, ready? Okay one, two, three. Looks great. Thank you. Thank you. Now the next item on the agenda is the presentation regarding the realistic policies for housing affordability. As many of you know this evening we have a 7 p.m. session on our housing blueprint subcommittees recommendations. At this time we'd like to invite up presenters Kate Roberts from the Monterey Bay Economic Partnership, Matt Huerta from Monterey Bay Economic Partnership and any others who may be joining us in regards to the presentation. Thank you mayor. Good afternoon council folks. Kate Roberts, president of MBEP. I'm here with Matt Huerta who runs our housing program initiative and we may be joined momentarily by Sibley Simon who is the lead author on a policy paper that we published in January which was the culmination of a lot of work that we've done over the last two and a half years on our housing work but really tried to nail down nine low-hanging fruit items that local jurisdictions could implement both at the city and the county level to create more housing especially more affordable housing. So I just want to take a few minutes just to set that context and say how proud I am to be with MBEP and to be part of the coalition of folks that are really working hard on bringing more housing to the region. We have done the presentation you're going to see throughout the region. I think this will be our ninth presentation. We're trying to basically hit all 17 jurisdictions because we didn't write this paper in January so it's in a drawer somewhere. We really want to see policies being implemented and reformed and taking action and I am really happy to report that this morning at the Board of Supervisors meeting in Santa Cruz County we were there to support the consent agenda item for the board to recommend to staff to take action on some of these items and they did. So we're going to see a progress at the county level. So thrilled as a Santa Cruz City resident as a county resident to see us taking this leadership position and I know you all especially Councilperson Chase and Watkins vice mayor Watkins are very interested in co-authoring the paper that you did and I just thank you so much for your leadership on this topic and I think there's some exciting things and some good things to come from this work that will really positively impact our community. So thank you. With that I will introduce Matt Huerta who as I said is MBEPS Housing Program Manager and I'll give it to him. Matt. Mayor, council members, thank you for your time this afternoon. We want to take you through our presentation here so that we can guide this very quick but meaningful presentation that we've been presenting to our local partners here so from the beginning. Is it up there? I think so. Okay there it goes. Okay. So yeah so again keyword is realistic. We aren't in so much into pipe dreams. We really want to see what's the world the universe of possibility and exhaust those things across the region. So just again to set the table it's always kind of sobering to look at the big numbers here. Regionally again 12,600 is the overall regional number that we've targeted that as you know the state produces these goals for us and then we allocate them fight over them and viciously try to obtain them hopefully through our housing elements across the region. There's 17 different jurisdictions across the region that we're tracking. City of Santa Cruz is a leader among all of these jurisdictions so in terms of Santa Cruz County the your numbers are baked into this 3,000 number you see there so obviously it's a forward-thinking projection. Something to remember is that when and if we do achieve these goals it's getting a D in terms of achievement because these are projections. It doesn't necessarily take into account the pent up demand and so that's what you've been hearing when you talk to folks is the incredible overcrowding and other conditions that we see in the community that reflects a pent up demand and not so much of a projection. So in terms of looking at Santa Cruz and other cities in the region you know stack up right there in the middle there is some meaningful progress in terms of 200 300 and this is actually about a year old now so you have approved other projects that are in the pipeline currently being being built Water Street was one of them as an example I just drove by and it's under construction as you know and that was over 40 units of 100 affordable units there and on your way to achieving hopefully that 747 and so we're certainly behind the curve and everybody is behind the curve that's kind of what the takeaway is for this slide. Do you have a question ma'am? It's just a quick question so you said that for the Santa Cruz County that's inclusive of what the goal is for the city that's in that graph. That's correct. Okay so 283 of that 658 is the county's overall goal. That's correct. Okay that's correct. Thanks. Good point. And so in terms of what we want to go with the affordability what the study took into account was okay well not everything's built or considered this on the same level of impact when we see these amazing affordable 100 subsidized projects come forward and get approved through a process that takes five to seven years on average those have a huge impact to the bottom line of the community in terms of seniors folks and disability other people that are looking for housing that would otherwise not have that housing so that's the highest impact and as you go across the spectrum to ad use other rental for sale condos attached detached product and then all the way over to high priced for sale you can kind of get a sense okay well this is kind of achieving less and less impact in terms of the amount of folks that you all are beholden to as as your constituents right and what we see as a result of approving certain projects across the region is this kind of dumbbell condition where you have some meaningful progress in the subsidized category a lot more progress actually when you look at the the other end of the spectrum and so very little of unit type product and opportunities and options in between so when we looked at what we need to do in order to achieve our arena goal we need to do something dramatically different what are those realistic changes that we need to make so that we can achieve much more balance across unit type delivery okay and so that's really what we're trying to do here in our policy paper that we've been promoting across the region and I see from many areas in the blueprint as an example that you've taken up some of these areas a lot of of the recommendations that are baked in we can talk a little bit further about that a key element I'm surprised over and over again how many local governments aren't necessarily on board with the process of analyzing the issue measuring the progress and integrating community engagement and then setting specific policy goals and and continuously measuring those those that progress against goals so that process takes a lot this loop we we kind of maybe annually every couple years not waiting for the you know the four or eight year cycle to come but this is a continuous process that we want to engage in so I'll take one more question but I also want Sibley to join me because he's here and I know we want to help you and dig into a couple other slides about the specifics some highlights from Sandy housing commission is that that's not the planning commission that is just focused on affordable housing or or what housing overall but specific charter for affordable housing so actually Sibley can probably make the members of it I'm wondering Sibley can you address that yeah I mean they it's like the planning commission and I think it has planning commissioners on it has some community members are experts in housing and stuff so they set it up specifically to go deeper on the issue of creating setting specific goals and you know doing this cycle so they've done a pretty impressive job of that but you know they're looking at housing affordability so some of it's definitely how much affordable housing they're producing is one of their biggest goals but also you know affordable housing it's affordable to everybody I use the right button here so we have a bunch of policies in here again a lot of these are in the some of these are in the recommendations and etc so I'm not going to go through every one we talked about the setting goal setting and I think that's extremely important so we know what we're trying to achieve and measure things against that you know we still have a lot of we have a lot of incentives that have the unintended effect of pushing towards larger more expensive unit development in various ways larger in square footage larger in number of bedrooms for sale as opposed to rental you know in that chart we had of how much a new unit affects affordability overall or reduces displacement we have unfortunately as well as structural incentives to build at the bottom into that which is the you know big new units and so systematically looking how do we what are the sensible you know ways to alter that is incredibly important and so one of the things the county just county board of supervisors passed unanimously this morning is one of their directives to staff is look on all the fees that the county has direct control over and try to get as many of them as possible if not all of them to be per square foot as opposed to per unit or even per bedroom so then if a project is not penalized in a way can for building smaller units are not pushed at least in this one fee way to build bigger units in order to pay for those fees density measures city already does some of this and a lot of its zones where it's you know the downtown amendment address this and stuff it's not about what density you have it's about how you calculate it but we still have a lot of multifamily zones including in the city where we could move forward with smarter calculations of density because if you just say look you can build eight units on this property then in order to afford it the developers basically got to build the biggest most expensive units possible so if you can measure in bedrooms and in size of building then you can look and say hey can I have a smaller a larger number of smaller units just really important with this is just blocking and tackling we need to do more of this not going to talk a whole lot about edu's because there's great recommendations locally for moving forward edu that was a big part of the subcommittee's recommendations other than to say some of these were in our way paper some of those were not in our way paper we like them all there's a good well thought out regulations that need to be grappled with and made specific and we've already seen in Santa Cruz this was Portland you know adu production but Santa Cruz is starting to climb up this over the last couple years so that's great to see and definitely more can be done and we definitely one of the things we're really promoting around the whole region is bonus density and and I think that's mentioned in the recommendations and we've written a whole separate paper now about details of of how this could be done effectively and with we've engaged a broad set of organizations not just us but affordable housing advocates nonprofit developers etc and coming up with this paper to get in more detail what what is it what could it mean to have a better bonus density ordinance that and this is the best way we've found all over california to get more affordable housing without paying for it with tax dollars and so and again that was in the unanimous recommendations by the board of supervisors this morning is to direct staff to create a new bonus density ordinance that goes a bit further in its amount of bonus density but requires developers to build more affordable housing for that and when you get that trade-off right like san diego's done but a number of other places in california also then you instead of having most marker rate developers build only the minimum amount you require an inclusionary ordinance now they're building the maximum amount to get that bonus density and by nature of sites and parking requirements are the things that causes them to build smaller units overall and then that just pencils out just as well and so you get the market working for more of what we need found this to be very powerful and as we got into more details we found out a more places in california have are starting to do in addition to just more bonus for more affordable housing get developers up to the top of building the most affordable housing in that trade-off also been implementing having that scale go further so if you build even more affordable housing you can do even more units if those units are small rental units so again it gets back to the density calculation if you have smaller units with fewer bedrooms smaller in number of bedrooms as well as in total square footage then you're not more people or bigger building so some aspects of density you're not actually giving a bonus for you're saying if all your units are on average two or fewer bedrooms and you know less than a certain square footage then you can get more bonus and what that does is tip the market from building only for sale units to building rental units which we just drastically need for affordability here so again that's just in multifamily apartment buildings but something so I look forward to sharing with all of you that longer paper we have especially we were kept editing it while the until the county was approving that we're really excited about that so and then you know this is rough but really taking other third-party research out there and you know studies by Kaiser Marston which you've used a lot and other parties saying you know you could really bring down for building small units and rental units you can really bring down costs by doing a lot of these things so mentioning that and the last one I'll mention which nobody's really taken up in this region but all the big cities in California have already finished is this VMT traffic analysis and that's going to be required by the state at least the date's not set yet it might be 2022 last I looked but if we could tackle this every year we tackle this sooner then projects will save money and it's about the fact that now it's recognized that sprawl has an advantage under our current traffic analysis system because the intersection right next to something built way away from downtown there's not a lot of traffic it's not the traffic is not too heavy there whereas really to reduce traffic what we need to do is build housing near jobs which is downtown which is where traffic is busiest so projects get penalized the most so it's it's not taken away out traffic out of the equation or out of what developers have to pay for and be concerned about it's just updating the analysis again it's going to be required under state law we could do it like big cities have done we could do it sooner rather than later i'm gonna end there with my highlights of the paper any questions on any of these things comment they're all highlights yeah thank you any questions have you seen the rents come down in portland as a result of building all those ad us that's a great question i gotta go back and look i i believe so and i can't remember but i can't remember the numbers but the but the there's no question for sure it hasn't had a rapidly rising rent like here like seattle even you know etc so it's had a very significant effect on rent and it's always hard to disentangle all of the factors right but i'll i'm very interested in that too so i'll get back to you on that i have a quick question i don't know if you had a chance to look at the recommendations for this evening yeah is there something that you could call out as like what is the number one priority that we should be focusing on as a city in terms of like pushing forward you know it's really hard to balance a lot of these things against each other because of course like having the right public process is the way to win people over you know and and get input you know to get the other things right so i don't want to downplay that one for example but as far as look my bias is way down in the weeds because i'm trying to get rental housing and affordable housing housing built so from that perspective alone what would allow the things we need for affordability to really get built um then it i think we've highlighted the biggest ones here that i found are i think the three you know are reducing barriers to ad use those it's not one thing it's 12 things so that's where the recommendations get into that it's the the impact fees which are realized are not going away because cities don't get enough revenue but restructuring them and some of that's the water district so you know but we got to pursue that and um and then it's bonus density and i think again i know density is a very challenging topic but instead of just going out there and saying oh we're going to raise densities everywhere if we could use a tool like this to say density only goes up if it's just for what we're really looking for what really benefit has a more of a consensus benefits the community um i think it's extremely powerful tool so those are my top three thank you thank you do you have any opinion also on um there's proposals under the state law where we've um school districts now can use their property for development for teacher housing and also development for um housing for school workers any any opinion on whether the city should get behind that to help support those types of projects yeah i don't know what get behind it means exactly but yeah absolutely i would i think uh you know it's my first opinion is that it's such a tragic subject because there's so many people who are really important to our community and uh to be here to have a thriving economy to have education to have child care you know i mean i want my daughter's preschool teachers who are so wonderful to afford to be here right and and so it's like such a niche solution that like our schools are not prepared to be developers or to go through this whole process to figure out the long-term pros and cons of that and i know they're working on it because they have to so it's like yes we have to do it but we got to put so much more effort into solving the overall challenge i think in addition so yeah i'm no concerns about it whatsoever i mean we we've got to have teachers in our community and housing custom is a number one barrier we got to solve that but it's um are we then going to solve it for our police force and our you know and go around to every job and solve it well we got to solve it in general all right thank you have any other questions or comments go ahead council member chase thank you mayor um i just wanted to thank embep for being here and um appreciate your uh collaboration with the city i know our housing blueprint subcommittee consulted with several of you throughout the process and really appreciated the recommendations that you have and and that you're bringing a regional approach to this so that we're looking at best practices in the region but also across our state and our country to find evidence-based solutions that are really going to allow for the best realistic solutions so i just wanted to thank you for your collaboration with us on that i can just make a closing comment based on that it is that that's what a lot of what we want to do and it's for example with the county making that stance this morning on starting to work on bonus density ordinance fee structures and we take that to everywhere in the region and say see it can happen here and here's a jurisdiction that wrestled with the pros and cons of the details here's where they came out so consider that as a starting point and whatever the city's doing on these recommendations the action you take so you're not alone i mean that's what we want to do is go to watsonville go to scott's valley go to monnery county you know and say here's some smart things that were done do it because our housing markets are all tied together and if one city tries to do something and the rest don't you know we're not going to solve the problem so thanks a lot thank you for being here thank you for the presentation but now we'll move on to the main portion of the agenda i have a few announcements and then we'll move on to the regular meeting today's meeting is being broadcast live on community televisions channel 25 and streaming on the city's website at cityofsandercruise.com jennifer cameron is our technician this evening she's in the back recording the meeting and presented on community television i'd like to thank her for her work today as all city council members can be emailed at city council at cityofsandercruise.com if you would like to communicate with us about an agenda item we'd like to receive your email by monday at 5 p.m. before our council meeting this provides us with an opportunity to review your email and include it with the rest of our agenda packet please bear in mind that all items of correspondence with the city and city council constitute public records and are generally subject to disclosure upon request by any member of the public accordingly if you have sensitive or private information that you do not wish to be made public you should not include that information in your correspondence our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption and we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you're inside or outside of chambers at this point in the meeting i'd like to ask any of the council members if there are statements of disqualification i will have one in the evening session okay and i i think i should be specific uh it's for the uh giving direction regarding the farmers market um i have a conflict of interest due to location of property that i own proximity so in regards to the um evening session you'll hear the presentations and vote on anything else other than that item yeah okay any other statements of disqualification okay it's seen none um i'll ask the city clerk is there are there any um announcements regarding additions or deletions to the agenda there are not okay oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda oral communications will generally occur at the conclusion of our afternoon business at or around 5 30 p.m but may occur sometime before then at this point i'd like to call on the city attorney to provide a report on the closed session thank you mayor trazos members of the city council uh this afternoon's closed session convened at 12 p.m in the courtyard conference room the items that were discussed by the council are as follows uh there were a uh there was a conference with legal council concerning liability claims uh the claims of melanie p gordon csa a insurance excuse me that's melanie p gendron csa a insurance company on behalf of the same claimant the claim of jesse book bo u ck and the claim of alisha lopez those items are also listed in uh agenda item seven on your consent calendar this afternoon there was one item of pending litigation the case of amily sinclair versus the city council of the city of santa cruz matter pending in the santa cruz county superior court council received a report from gave direction to the city attorney's office on that matter uh third item was a performance evaluation involving the city manager lastly real property negotiations the council received a report from its negotiator water director rosemary minard and gave direction concerning a potential real property acquisition and the property was 1210237 newill creek road no reportable action okay thank you and the next item up is the city manager reports on events it's our last count council meeting yes i do have a brief uh update on the emergency shelter i'll put up the slides here real quick here we go thank you mayor and council uh i wanted to do a brief report on the emergency shelter as you recall a council to that took action at your last meeting to request the county their commitment towards a partnership in funding for the phase year round emergency shelter that we've been working on with the county over the last year or so and an item was placed on the board's agenda this morning and they did take action to essentially direct that the chair send the letter to the city articulating the board's commitment and partnership to achieve re-around sheltering and increase county funding for the next fiscal year so they did approve that um we'll have to work with the county staff to work out the details but uh it does sound like they uh are interested in partnering with the city and in working towards uh achieving that year-round shelter in the coming fiscal year uh i wanted to just highlight uh because i think it's important to note some of the work that's been done with the current river street shelter um because it's actually pretty remarkable some of the things that have been accomplished in such a short time uh with that shelter and uh every time i hear about some of the achievements i think it's like you know pretty incredible and it's uh good good to share so there have been some really positive outcomes at the river street camp considering there's about 52 campers we've had already a number of people moving on including uh four exits for substance abuse disorder treatment for for housing traditional and permanent housing to to improve living situations of board and care and the one who's exited to to hope outbound uh as well and the average day has been 22 days so i think it's you know really interesting statistics about uh the work that they're doing that's approximately you know close to 20 percent have found uh you know uh more permanent housing or other situations to improve their lives which is good uh so assuming you know with the county's commitment uh now we need to look at the transition of the river street camp uh and again i think the transition a large part of the reason for the transition is that we do want increased capacity in our region uh and provide that year-round shelter services uh continue to do that in an effective way but have more capacity we also recognize that in order to be able to do that to move to a new site that we need to have a robust community process in order to decide a new facility so we'll have to engage with that we also know that uh we're not going to be able to do this by the end of this month and it's going to take some time so we may need to extend the river street camp we could certainly close it or we could extend it and so we will have to reach out to the community there to be able to assess how to go about doing that and so we'll do that we'll work in partnership with the county to develop plans and next steps and we'll report that back to you at your next meeting on june 26 now that we have you know commitment from the county we'll we'll get that letter from them and report back to you uh the other bit of good news that i think it's important to recognize is that i think finally it's just really great to see that the state is also acknowledging and taking action on this issue because homeless has just been such a major issue an impactful issue in the entire state and it's good to see that they are committed to helping to fund and so now as i understand it in the budget agreement with the governor they've included 500 million in one time funding for local governments to address homelessness and there's different pots for different cities but it's a good sign and that we'll be able to meet our goal hopefully here in the coming year so with that i'm happy to answer any questions are there any councilmember questions yeah thank you um martin uh so if how long has the shelter the campsite been open do you know approximately in a couple months uh it'll be four months four months and so 22 average stay how many folks have stayed there all together then over those four months do you know that question i'll i'll let susie answer this question she's probably better lastly 67 good afternoon susie ohara principal management analyst i don't have that exact number but our current population is about 52 people and it is cyclical and there is attrition so i would say probably on average 70 to 80 people have gone through the program how is that a 22 day average stay then i don't this doesn't seem like it works out yeah so there's a number of people who will come for a day or two and determine that that it's not a good fit for them and so that does bring down the average but we do have a handful maybe a dozen folks that have been there the whole time oh okay and um how many people are in the waiting list about 70 is there any progress toward the transitional shelter that you could report on or anything well martin went over what we what we do understand and where we should be getting a letter from the county chair board chair um hopefully very soon that will articulate what they um directed just this morning thank you if you could comment martin on the um the first bullet how long do you think that you may need to extend the river street camp um we we have to uh work that out with the county again assuming that we have a partnership but i think you know we do need to um work with the community the the surrounding area because we didn't make a commitment to uh have the shelter there through the end of the month now the the feedback that we've gotten from the neighborhood and the community has been that it has had no impact on the community so it's actually uh coexisted uh well there however we have to be respectful of the request and and get their input and then it also depends on the uh the next phase and how long that'll take um so that that is to be determined um but we'll have that flushed out for you a little further at our next meeting then just as a follow-up does the uh we'll we'll hear when we get the correspondence back but does the um contribution support also include um support for this extension as we're in this transition period so they're supporting the uh this time period now that we're moving forward yes i think that would have to be part of the uh the arrangement yes so that the overall budget works for the transition as well as the uh the next the next phase and how that's structured including this extension of i think from a general service perspective it would it would be best not to have to put you know people out in the streets if we don't have to but you know it is a possibility though and we'll have to come back to you with uh with those details no no my question is um about just funding this extension as we're in through the transition period yes i mean i think i think moving forward with respect to budgeting for whatever whatever transitional approach that we take the partnership and the funding should should be consistent throughout thank you any other questions uh vice maria walkins in terms of the potential to get some support for funding from the state knowing that we're going to be voting on our budget later how do you estimate the impact that could have on the general fund or potential savings um we we don't know the details completely yet but i think the estimates are anywhere between something like eight to nine million dollars might be available to the county of santa cruz so it could be pretty significant particularly to the phase three option which is you know to create demo permanent facilities and also we gave during the budget here in this looking at reimbursement for the setup costs for the river street correct correct so we'll be looking at all that as the they flesh out the uh how this is all going to work okay and uh council member chase i just want to clarify so it's it's not competitive correct the state the agreement that they're talking about because that's one of those things where like for instance with prop 47 yeah we don't have all the details there's there's there's portions that are uh set up by the size of there's a portion that goes by the size of city i think cities that are over like 330 000 and then there's other portions that are based on the your numbers your hap numbers um and and and so we have to it hasn't been fleshed out so we'll we'll hear that so there's there is some allocation though coming it's it's not that we've got it yes we'll get some allocation no no doubt about that and that's the estimate of the eight to nine million any other questions all right thanks for that presentation and update thank you until when the letter comes out um we've received the response that'll be um distributed to the full council yes okay okay first up is the consent agenda these items are numbers four through thirteen on our agenda all items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by council member for further discussion council member crone has requested um items eight and eleven be um removed from the consent are there any other council members who wish to pull other items okay and also council member crone you had a comment on ten and we'll do that as we come back to the council after public comment okay so um items number eight and eleven are pulled from consent um i'll go to the public comment is there any uh member of the public that would like to speak to um any item on the consent agenda other than items eight and eleven these are items four through thirteen except for eight and eleven seeing none i'll bring it back to the council for action okay moved by vice mayor walkins i think council member matthews had her hand on the motion so council member uh vice mayor walkins with motion uh seconded by council member matthews any further discussion council member crone you had a comment on ten yeah um just uh just wondering i still don't know how much is the bottom line on this i was sent um i appreciate the follow-up uh to the public works department but there was a document i was sent from 2012 that we signed a contract with uh olyn chlor alkali and for 235 thousand i'm just wondering was there a bidding process now are we just going extending the contract how how does that work and what is the total that were that um the waste water enterprise fund is is uh paying out for this product sodium hypochlorite and hogan wastewater systems manager we competitively bid the chlorine contract in 2012 and received four bids and awarded the contract to the low bidder at 62.9 cents a gallon and we have re uh energized that contract annually ever since without any price changes this year olyn chlor came to us and other chemical companies came to us and carefully explained the costs going up of caustic soda and of transportation they offered to renew a contract for two months at a price increase of 12 cents a gallon they also offered to renew at one year with the first six months being at a cost increase of eight cents a gallon and the next six months being a cost increase at 12 cents a gallon we decided to accept that offer to give us time to go out and rebid again we budget in our uh chemical capital outlay budget our operating budget every year for chlorine um and so we will competitively bid it again for the contract to start up next year so it's going from 235 thousand to well it the quantities have gone up considerably since 2012 in 2012 we spent about 235 thousand but as the drought continued and the heat came up we used much more chlorine this year we will actually spend about 450 thousand dollars on chlorine i find this very interesting so i i really appreciate your uh the information um and i would just make a note that i would love to see the totals in any of the staff reports you know what we're spending it's just really helpful as a council member to see that the figures financial yeah thank you thank you thank you okay so now we have a motion on the floor by um vice mayor walk in second by council member mathews um for the consent with the exceptions of items eight and eleven all those in favor please say aye aye those opposed that motion passes unanimously with council member brown absent so we'll now move to item number eight on the um agenda which is the uh general obligation refunding bonds tax rate authorization yeah i just had a question for uh oh excuse me go ahead man yeah i was gonna um ask and this is from fiscal resources um i think marcus pimentel so go ahead chris yeah this is always a fascinating meal as well and wondering about how bonding is done and how much we end up paying when we borrow seven million dollars back in 1998 and this was a very good reason i mean the fire station and the more creek uplands and the depot park uh but how does that because we're we're looking at bonding at various ways all the time and i i think it's it's not so clear to me how how it all works and i was just wondering if you could explain like so on this bond for example we took it out 20 some years ago 1998 it set to expire in 2028 i believe or 2029 um and how much of the seven million have we have we paid back and including debt servicing that's that's a bigger question i can get back to you with those details dating back to 1998 ballpark uh five million plus in total probably mostly interest and some refinance costs that were refinanced in 2009 and the expectation when we borrow seven million 30 years later we pay how much is there a formula i mean this is a formula here that you're setting the tax rate and how much we're gonna pay this year it's all about the interest equation and um i think we can probably expect to pay i don't know let me get through those numbers thank you i'll move it when you're ready mayor is there any further discussion on item eight okay we're ready oh wait is there any mother uh member of the public that would like to speak to item number eight which is the general obligation refunding bonds seeing none we'll bring it back i think council member crone was making the motion seconded by council member and royan all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that motion passes unanimously with council member brown absent okay next up is item number 11 item 11 is the installation of power to bike share stations and on item 11 i'd like to invite up claire place layer transportation planner and i'm available for any questions you have on this item actually what was your question yeah um i love this program but i'm hearing a lot from the public about it so i just want to clarify it in public what um the questions that are coming up because the city the council was told that it wasn't going to cost us anything and a jump bike was going to be financing this program and now this is a 15 000 uh uh from from the carbon fund albeit but for electricity stations there's also um staff time and and people have said there's a bunch of staff time i'm just wondering how much staff time has gone into the program working with them from the beginning and um the real estate that the jump bike stations occupy is also you know worse something so i'm just i just want to people are making it clear that it's not free isn't free yeah so i think with regards to the item in front of us and the 15 000 to electrify to the bike share stations um we will be uh with this item pulling power from existing power sources to the location of up to four bike share station locations it's in the responsibility of jump to install those charging stations at their cost and reimburse the city for all electricity that is used this was something that came up uh at the city sustainability team as an opportunity to utilize carbon fund money to accelerate the goals of our climate action program to increase bicycle mode split to 12 by 2020 um and was something that was voted on unanimously by that group to allocate funding towards this um it is something that we presented as a no cost to the city contract and this is a a subsequent action then to that uh if you have i'm trying to figure out how to how to best answer your question there i understand what is what is the act of pulling power what does that entail what does that mean so from behind where the existing city power sources are from either our existing electric vehicle charging stations or from behind existing city uh boxes where we already have power drops to get it from those locations to the location where uh council granted encroachment permits for bike share stations thanks and the only i know you're probably not prepared to answer this but maybe get back to me on how much of our staff time has gone into working with jump on this contract and subsequent you know and i and i know you're you're always doing stuff about it and i and i appreciate that and i like the program but i want to be responsive to the folks who are asking questions yeah i would have to look into that to give you a more refined answer but overall um a significant amount of my staff time and our uh transportation coordinator staff time and other people's staff time in order to do this that being said it's part of our overall work program in order to increase bike bike mode split and to reduce carbon emissions thanks any other questions i have a question i mean i see the jump bikes everywhere and i see a lot of people riding them can you give me a comment on what what's the feedback been in regards to the utilization compared to other cities yeah so far since our soft launch on may 10th with not even up to full fleet during that first couple weeks we've had over 5200 rides since then this average is out to about six trips per bike per day national average is between one and two trips per bike per day so we're doing extraordinary in our program and we expect to see that continue to play out we see new people sign up every day by the dozen uh actually by the dozens and uh so far the feedback from our vendor has been that it's been great they've been getting great feedback i've been getting great feedback um and as issues have arisen we've been able to handle them very quickly and just one other question in terms of the um the utilization when will we are all the bikes fully uh installed we will be up to full installation in the next hopefully three weeks yeah any other questions okay any members of the public that would like to speak to this item this is item number 11 the installation of power to bike share stations sir please go ahead you have two minutes i'm brett garrett i'll just say what i usually say which is i love the bike share and i appreciate your supporting the bike share program and i noticed if there's ever a chance to install solar panels to charge the bikes that would be really cool i know that's not what's on the agenda right now but that would be cool thank you very much all right thanks i know that there's solar panels that charge the circuitry of the bikes that are on each of the bikes now but not to power the bikes all right um one other question when we bring it back to the council for discussion is the um um uh goal of getting uh platinum bicycle community i'm wondering if you could comment as far as how does this uh get us forward towards reaching a platinum level uh bike community yeah so one of the elements when we received our gold level bicycle friendly community award the league of american bicyclists gave us essentially a report card that said steps to get to platinum that they recommended this was one of those steps so when we go to resubmit that application at the end of our uh certified period which i believe is another two years this is one of the actions that will include is something that we've rolled out and will include those statistics about number of users we have number of rides we've had average trip distance average trip duration um as well as other elements that we will have done by that time such as construction of the rail trail implementation of green lanes throughout town and other significant pieces of bike infrastructure that we will have installed so it'll go a long ways great thanks okay so we have it back here i'm looking for a motion on this item okay motion by council member mathews second by council member doroyan um all those in favor please say aye those opposed that motion passes unanimously with council member brown absent okay next up is our consent public hearings um the the consent public hearing are items number 14 through 16 on our agenda these items will be acted upon with just one motion unless pulled by council member for further discussion are there any council members who wish to only comment on either of these items is there any member of the public that would like to request an item to be pulled or to speak on now is the time to do so this is a consent public hearing item these are items 14 through 16 can request to pull it or we're just going to vote on it with one motion definitely item 16 for sure i want to pull okay pulling item number 16 isn't that the budget yes item number 16 so item number 14 and 15 okay any members of the public that would like to speak to item um the consent public hearing agenda consent public hearing these are items 14 or 15 okay seeing now we'll bring it back to the council for action move to approve item 14 and 15 and second okay motion by council member doroyan second by council member mathews these are items 14 and 15 um all those in favor please say aye those opposed that motion passes unanimously unanimously with council member brown absent okay next next up is item number 16 we had someone in the audience here in favor i know i saw that i saw you got an unanimous support up here too so item number 16 our budget and this is on consent based on the last council meeting that we had for discussion and so i'll turn it over to marcus pimentel i could just do brief recap please um what we have for you presented today is the adoption of the fiscal 2019 balanced budget we have four action items one is directing the city manager to make necessary general fund offsets to accommodate the items that came out of the budget hearings from last last wednesday restoring 56,755 for the three-year core funding and funding a one-time $45,000 set aside for the programs the second item is just accepting the water commission's report it's included in the staff report the third item is just noting that measure has passed and we were now able to fund the tier one capital investment projects and the fourth item is regarding a pension payment um allowing the city to borrow internally to make upwards of an $8 million annual payment to calpers to save us about $11 million annually over the remaining life of this particular debt issuance or liability for calpers i could pause there for questions i can go into slides two through 200 sorry uh two through 13 just slide 155 155 council member um chase yeah on item number four i think that that was one that was in the sentinel this week that we received a variety of questions on so i'm hoping that you can just address that because people had some concerns and questions about how that related to measure s and things like that and absolutely you could clarify that'd be great um as this council's known we've been talking about the things we can do internally and the things we need to help on externally and one of the biggest items we can do internally was resetting our general fund fund balance our operations um we've achieved a big bulk of that with the fiscal 19 balance budget and two is things we can do internally with the smart investment of our resources we have an investment portfolio that earns about two percent a year yet we're paying calpers uh upwards of seven and a half percent to seven three quarters percent interest on our liability of their investment losses it's it's part of our plan has been to leverage that investment portfolio and redirect some of that to paying down calpers saving about a five and a half percent annually on whatever we pay the calpers for us it'll save the city about ten point nine million dollars over a 25 year period logistically it feels like what we did in 2010 so the second bullet there in 2010 the city borrowed 24 million dollars externally to pay down calpers in that instance we we borrowed money from corporate banks had lawyers and issuance costs and all these other things go go on board to conduct that borrowing in this case we're going to look inwardly within our investment portfolio the general fund will borrow from itself from one of its other funds pay that fund about two percent annual interest rate instead of the four four and a half percent rate so it's a an effective ability for the general fund to borrow money at low cost better use of our investment portfolio to save money for the whole entire city annually we should see about four and sixty thousand dollars of reduced payments that might be too much information too complicated but I can happily delve very deep into this as you'd like did you follow up question I just think it's really important for the public to understand that the investment portfolio where we're taking this eight million dollars is restricted funding it's not something that was just laying around that we were able to tap into and then also ask the voters to vote for a quarter cent sales tax increase that this money couldn't be used for really anything except for the funds that it's designated to which I believe are a lot of our enterprise funds waterfront and as well as calpers and so you know just to make it really clear to the public that you know this wasn't just laying around and well absolutely something that we could do whatever we want with absolutely we've yes absolutely did I answer your question councilwoman chris councilmember crown could you go over quickly or briefly where the money's coming from is it eight million is that what we're talking about yeah so we would come from based on each we have a collection of funds enterprise funds internal service funds also have library employees who are not part of the city but they're part of the county library system they have pension costs so we would go to every one of those funds and allocate a certain portion of our liability payment to those funds for example when we looked at the library the county library system their contribution would be five hundred thousand dollars from their investment pool towards this pay down our general fund is the largest contributor of that we might be upwards of five million dollars that we would borrow from one of our other funds to make that payment so we don't we're not necessarily setting aside cash we're borrowing money at a lower interest rate to pay off higher interest rate for the general fund so it's enterprise funds library fund there are many hoops we have library fund we can't direct their money we have to get a board approval that a lot of people have done at the board meeting in august the enterprise funds we still have to work through with the cash flow and the managers i don't know if that's too much information or no how much would we because we've remarked in the past that the calpers didn't meet their you know yes yearly targets how do we know they're going to and and could you give an example of what we would get if we left that money in our own funds versus putting it over with calpers because i think i understand we're getting a better deal with calpers what how do we it's not that we're getting a better deal we're being we're being charged interest by calpers the state is charging us interest at seven and three quarters percent so if we if we left the money in our own investment pool we might earn two or three percent so it's that's a huge savings in we're giving up maybe two or three percent of earnings but we're not paying seven point three seven five seven and a half interest and why did we stop at eight million or how did that arrive at that more of what we can accommodate any more than that and we were taking on a bigger risk for one payment we might you know i think our model predicts a couple million every year rolling forward depending on cash flow needs and short-term duration needs i think if we do any more than that i wouldn't be comfortable that's right now it's a you know it's approaching 10 percent of our investment portfolio and i wouldn't want to lock up much more of our cash proceeds and with a bigger payment and do we know but i know you mentioned Santa Monica gave like 45 million uh it was the last year of the year before the last year but they they did a direct pay down that you know they didn't borrow anything they just paid out from their reserves um the we're closer to what the state of california did the state of california last year borrowed internally to pay down their debt so we're following that model where we're really leveraging internal borrowing to pay down our debt and are there any other cities in the area that are doing this uh that you're aware of well watsonville did um circa 2009 we did in in 2010 um i recently know i'm not recent not in this year's budgets that not that i've seen thanks i have a question in regards to um when we had our presentation it was just about the time um we had the election results and part of the budget was contingent upon new funding i wondered if you could talk a little bit about investments in new capital infrastructure that were part of this now revised budget yes um nope i should have cleaned up that slide a little bit um but we had several projects including a wildland fire engine that was put on hold um we have revertment repairs on west cliff drive that we want to get to and we'll get to and we have several storm grains around the downtown area that we will get to now it's part of next year's capital improvement program those are the big the big projects there's also some smaller components of some of our it investment projects um that need to get done do you have any estimate on when that work will start i would suspect the fire engine is a purchase the work on the other projects i don't we can probably report to you back on that and then just and this is some comments that i've received recently there's a lot of interest in kind of investment in maintenance um in our downtown as well as kind of improvement of some of our um facilities that are there i was wondering if uh in terms of um maybe city manager burnall could comment as far as what's in store for maybe further investment in the downtown uh yes and actually it might be some of that when we do the study session later later today too on the downtown but uh i know we are uh looking at we had a uh you know bob gibbs come to santa cruz a few months back and they did a walk through downtown and he had some suggestions and ideas and then we had staff go through the downtown and identify a variety of things that need fixing you know signs that are bent or benches that need to be repainted that sort of thing so uh economic development is taking the lead on working with parks and public works to develop a sort of a refresh program for the downtown so they'll be working on that over the next few months any idea of when that we'll see start to see that work um i don't think we have the specific uh uh implementation dates worked out yet i know they're meeting to sort of figure all that out um and bonning may have some more information later on when we talk about the downtown thanks any further discussion well council member matthews um just to say that in the partial revenue from measure s for this year is um going to be designated to the capital improvements that's right not to operations just to be clear no but i was i had two questions one was the uh the three projects that were included in capital improvement but other in general budget that we've already that's part of this approval process that we're finding through economic development and others unrelated to the increase okay any other question council member crown this includes the um the peer jurisdiction budget comparison this item or you're asking just no it does it includes those slides as well that are in the in the packet so um i had some you know we didn't get really a chance to digest this uh incredible amount of analysis that's taken place with one two three four five six seven eight eight cities um similar in some ways to ours um just wondering um just a few quick questions which of the of these cities um selected serve as a county seat do they all serve as county seats like we like we do kind of criteria why selection criteria and totally i'd have to look at the list and think about it i don't know i i'll drop my head i do not know that answer and page 13 um business license tax why so you know why the such a differential difference between us and other cities our rate hasn't changed since adoption and it is adopted incredibly low yeah that's largely historical i think uh you know many cities had different methods and then over time i think every city's history of tax measures and how the approach budget varies uh by different by communities and so if uh if a community had one approach and then took a different approach it kind of got set at that and it's not if it's called a fee but it's actually tax so it requires voter approval to to raise and then when we look at uh revenue measures it's one that uh you know a significant increase would really not generate a whole bunch of additional revenue so we've tended to focus on other revenue measures like the sales tax and tot h4 it's a um it has ucse on the side panel it says peer demographics no city of santa cruz service population is well beyond city limits and it includes ucse in that i'm just wondering how did that what why is that what does that mean well it's just referring to population uh the data was looking at our our resident population and just factoring that there's employees and others who are on campus that aren't including our population numbers and in addition we we serve the university's fire service we provide fire services to the university so in the 65 000 our city population campus is included or not included in that uh that's a bigger question i'd start with the state of california there'd be some who would be included in that but not all it's always a question that comes up all the time like the state department of state department of finance is the one who pulls those numbers together so looking at page six staffing levels why so high compared to most of the other cities how does that how do you interpret that data it's familiar with the city manager monologist mentioned we library is a great example there's a hundred employees in that data that aren't our employees at the county library system um also including that data are uh 10 firefighters on the ucse that you know word ucse firefighters are now part of our employee base we get reimbursed by ucse we have lifeguards that serve down the coast that we've expanded to include that we have five unfunded police officer positions allow for over hires and attrition we also have services we provide beyond our boundaries and utility funds that we have employees is effectively serving other communities um who would typically not be in our employee base if we weren't going beyond our boundaries so we have employees working beyond our boundaries that take our numbers up higher and certainly when you think of the library countywide we have all the countywide libraries all the employees in the county system except for watsonville are included in our employee count but those services are reimbursed for yes so it's not not a net loss right right the other thing i would point out is that those numbers aren't adjusted for the variations and the the service deliveries that that happen amongst the cities as well as the scope of the cities and uh uh marcus pointed out some of the scope differences but also uh we tend to for example we operate our own solid waste and recycling programs uh so we don't contract out for garbage collections uh many cities contract out do we know if these cities do that that was my question about uh county and that's my point that that has not been adjusted for any of that those are just a wrong number so it's uh it's deceptive i think to just do it that way and it's one of the feedbacks that we've given management partners to try to make some adjustments for that so that they're more uh apples to apples comparison as it is now it really isn't because you have to adjust for all these factors that we provide for example our water system serves you know 100 000 plus population the library system serves 200 000 population the fire department serves the city and the university so our wastewater treatment plan is a regional wastewater treatment plant and again we don't contract out for garbage collection we operate a landfill many cities don't we have a full surface water so we tend to be higher because we have a fuller scope the fuller scope plus and we don't contract out as much as some other communities so those are the factors but to to make that a good comparison we need to make those adjustments management partners continuing to work on this just are they gonna come back to us with some no narrative interpretation and analysis the the initial scope was to wrap up this comparative data collection i think there's strong consideration to bring them back for additional a new project for additional analysis delving deeper into certain certain data that we want to go deeper on i put martino spot well how do you interpret this how is this useful for us just in this raw data kind of thing because i would love to see some analysis you know to come back to us but i don't know how how is this being used i mean i think it provides a sort of a check to see how we compare to others and and certainly there are things that sort of stand out we can kind of delve into it and help explain that and because it can be confusing to the average person again i think there's so many factors that depend on in terms of what the numbers show again for example you know we have a robust set of parks and recreation program but that's because it's a community we've chosen to do that i mean a lot of cities don't have civic auditoriums a lot of the cities don't have municipal war so a lot of cities don't have over 2 000 acres of open space that's a community value so our parks and services are more robust for that for that reason also tax bases vary so i think it allows us to have those discussions for when those questions come up certainly those were some of the questions that came up in the context of measure s and i think this helped to provide some of those answers but by and large i mean i didn't find anything surprising there we tend to you know compare favorably with with most cities and you know certainly be uh in terms of being effective uh and uh in terms of uh the again the scope of services is tends to be larger than most cities and that doesn't surprise me at all okay chris just as a follow-up i know one of the action items regarding this project for management partners were some additional questions we asked for them and so i understand they'll bring that back and we'll probably as when the ad hoc budget subcommittee finishes up we'll probably provide a updated report some of the questions that we looked at were the direct purchases of services from the county comparing it with other cities how many cities do actually do that others um cities that take the lead or counties that take the lead in regards to homeless service programs and also the funding for um some uh nonprofit organization community programs looking at that in the scale and that was the the subcommittee wanted to get some metrics from other cities uh peer cities to look at what they're doing in those in those areas correct and that will come back in august but it's not a separate project yes and just to wrap up is that you know i i think that it does i don't think we with all due respect comparing favorable to other cities in a lot of ways you know the questions that come up and maybe your average council member is also confused as your average citizen might be looking at these numbers but davis and monterey are spending so much lower in administrative functions functions than we are and why is santa barbara and berkeley weigh off the charts on property tax collection compared to us um and i think that um the housing issue on page 32 we're spending is it is are we talking about affordable housing is that what the housing is on page 32 is that how much we we have we have to delve deeper into that to really quantify what they were looking at and what they're comparing to so that's the question with that was miniscule compared to some other cities that they're spending so i just and that seems to be an important community value if we're talking about affordable housing um then i'd also want to know what the nonprofit grants you know ours are there but most of the other cities are missing and be interesting to see how what they're doing in terms of that's an active project that mayor torosas mentioned that they're still collecting that on thanks thanks a lot yeah new problem and it's my understanding that with respect to administrative costs that actually we're we're sort of below most most of the city's not not about advice excuse us go ahead clarify that included in our administrative costs or are those programs you just mentioned the our core programs our homeless programs our police auditor programs are all under the just functionally they fall into city managers they get bundled into his administrative costs so we'd have to extract that out to be an after that comparison my point of the administrative functions is that davis is um several times lower than we are and so is monterey but it would be who the question like well what are you guys doing that we're not doing you know what can we learn from you that's what i that's all i would like to know maybe there is some like thing that sticks out again when i think you when i think you take out about two and a half million dollars of stuff that really aren't administrative costs then that that normalizes us but there's a lot of things like that in the study because they they just pull ground up levels of budget detail yeah um there's a lot more deep dive that should be done and i think we had that discussion maybe at the budget here and we looked at one of the items for code enforcement you know what was this specific pro program that actually pushed it over some of the peer averages so i mean we did have some of that deep dive look during our subcommittee discussions and i think when we come back we'll probably have some further discussion um is there any other discussion on this item in the council is there any member of the public that would like to speak to this item we're speaking to our budget please step forward this is item number 16 hi everybody i'm norah caruso from the santa cruz toddler care center um it's still hard for me to interpret what's going on but it looks like um the new proposal is to restore 50 percent or a hundred thousand dollars to the community programs budget um i want to thank you for that partial restoration um especially for the set aside funds because i know neighborhood child care center for example wouldn't have gotten anything last year had it not been for the set aside funds we're still curious in terms of what the process will be whether or not we can apply for those um and how that will work um in terms of the conversation last time about sort of this across the board five percent cuts i just want to reiterate the difference between cutting community programs five percent and cutting another department five percent um you know we are consistently being cut to the point where as i keep saying you know we've been cut 40 percent child care as a sector has been cut disproportionately in the past many many years if we were looking at something like a five percent cut on our budget um you know for example families we still are able to operate on a sliding fee scale we're not going to be able to do that much longer we just can't um families that are low income that are paying a thousand dollars a month for full-time child care which is still the toddler center somehow subsidizing them a thousand dollars a month if we had to pass on a five percent increase for them they'd be having to come up with an extra fifty dollars a month for child care these are not families that can just say we're not going to go out to dinner this month these are families that don't have an extra fifty dollars and that are pretty much going into credit card debt by being able to afford a thousand dollars a month for their child care if i tell my staff they're looking at a five percent cut my teacher that's a single mom that's making fifteen dollars an hour who has three kids who's never been able to afford summer camp for her kids those kids are staying at home with her disabled mother this summer because she can't afford child care for her kids i'd have to tell her she's now going to make fourteen twenty five an hour just some perspective thank you just a quick question how much uh excuse me how much less is neighborhood child care center not getting this year step up this year's budget from last year's budget so lily from neighborhood is here you know um we'll uh we'll take that question um but let's uh do you have another question or no i just was wondering what the difference was okay if you if you'd like to answer that question so how much had you been getting from core funding previous year and then how much did you get from set the difference from last year um we were cut a hundred percent from the core funding um and we were getting we had gotten forty three five thank you okay all right thank you okay we'll bring it back is there any other member of the public that would like to speak to item number sixteen this is our fiscal year 2019 proposed budget adoption okay seeing none i'll bring it back to the council for further discussion and action i'll go ahead and move the recommendation in its entirety okay that's moved by council member matthew second by council member chase i'd like to just say that i feel this budget represents really a strong kind of movement for to demonstrate fiscal stability and not only in the programs and investments in the future um i really feel very thankful for the work vice mayor walk-ins and council member brown um on the ad hoc budget community doing a proactive approach by looking at our budget kind of in a different way than in past years one we engaged with management partners to have a peer level review of our budgets for different cities to see how they were operating to see where our comparisons were to see if we were under funding programs or overstaffed in some areas and then we also um engaged with a focus group with community members to get some direct feedback regarding our budget and some of the needs that we have moving forward to make sure that we are representing the needs of the community and investing in projects that are aligned with the city's priorities and then we also thirdly had a public meeting in collaboration with santa cruz neighbors where we had a group a well attended group on the first night of the nba finals and it it's really made me feel thankful that people were interested in our budget not only in the process that we had going forward but also in providing their input and um the ad hoc budget committee will come back in um august we kind of gave a glimpse of maybe some recommended action so that we continue this process moving forward even though we had fewer days in terms of the budget hearings we did a lot of proactive work up front to help maybe steer the process in a way where it led to really good outcomes and i felt from the feedback we received from not only the focus group but also the members that attended the community meeting they felt that it was a good process and i know if you wanted to comment at all no i just i appreciated the opportunity to be involved in the process and um knowing that it is uh in a sort of exploratory stage and kind of getting to your questions earlier uh councilmember crone that it's all kind of just starting to to kind of become more clear how we can improve as we move forward into the next sort of strategy for policy moving forward so i look forward to reconvening and discussing um other recommendations for next year as well councilmember matthews yeah i think the budget subcommittees work made an enormous contribution to the understanding both within the council itself and the community about the complexity of the city budget and the opportunities for public involvement and outreach and education and that has to go on because it is so complicated so kudos to you for all of that and what strikes me is that with this action here today we are really presenting a perfect case study of what we pledge the voters we would do in terms of a long term plan for fiscal stability in one action we're reflecting five percent cuts in our internal budget our city budgets we are investing the proceeds from measure s in capital improvements for the first time general fund we told the the public we would do that so we've passed a new revenue measure and we're putting it to use right away and we are taking a very responsible action to reduce our pension obligations so in one motion we are demonstrating the multi-pronged approach that we have to take to fiscal stability over a long period of time and which we will continue to implement into the future but this to me shows the public there's not one answer there are a number of things we have to do and we are doing them and it's it will it will benefit the city in the long run right council member crumb i don't know if there's any support up here i'd make a motion to restore the 101 000 for a set aside an emergency funding for meals on wheels and the day worker center the neighborhood child care foster grandparents and the Santa Cruz child care center i don't know if there's support up here but i think that's very worthy and i think we can find the money to do that i think that we found the money to hire someone recently for you know to evaluate our city manager i think we can find the money to um support um these incredible programs in our city okay there's that's a motion or is that a motion motion well i mean all my okay i don't know if i'll second my i would second the motion with the friendly amendment to double the set aside amount which was my original request last time knowing that we had the one time funding and that it would go through the same process um so i'd still be behind that but i didn't get the support of that last time so i don't know if you'd be willing to make that it's a friendly amendment it's sort of a bit of a compromise from your full restoration but recognizes that half the dollars um you know could be available for more what would could you say that one time because i'm not tracking it so um for the original proposal when we had that conversation it was around the core funding and then it was around the one time set aside but then also there was a one time um funding for programs that um were awarded it without any kind of application process in light of the core transition um so at the time when we had the conversation about the budget we would recognize that that one time funding would sunset but in light of um the need and um kind of a more formal process we could potentially increase the set aside recommendation to help potentially make it so that more programs could get support that way um so your amendment would be that was the previous meeting i mean when you made the amendment my amendment would be just through my original proposal which was to double this the one time set aside to be 90 000 to help offset the gap there so is that a friendly i mean i'll withdraw my motion if you know and support that if you're if that's a motion sure that could be a motion okay you're gonna have to break that out and make sure that everybody's clear on it okay there's a mode go ahead go ahead my motion would just be to double the set aside amount to 90 000 from 45 000 okay and second okay the motion and the second um is there further discussion on this i'll i'll just say that um i think that one of the comments i mentioned when we first um we're discussing the budget is the fact that this year we did not have our community programs review our funding programs they there was it was something that was done on the floor with all seven council members i think what we have right now is a set aside that really kind of provides that bridge and an opportunity for the community programs to delve back into any sort of future investments that are going to be made in these programs so i do not see the need at this time to do that set aside it's an opportunity really for the community programs committee to look at this um you know outside of this a budget approval process to see if there's a time at the um mid-year where we could look at further changes to address the needs that you're speaking to here i yeah i wonder i mean in terms of a compromise which i know i don't want to you know go back into this conversation i know we had at last at the last meeting but perhaps we could commit to this amount this year and then know that on the table for the mid-year is a conversation about doubling it based on need or something like that council member ma'am council member matthews i want to remind the council that we went through a great deal of time and effort to develop the core process there was a great deal of energy over a period of a number of years to look at our collective investments and making sure that with different amounts from different jurisdictions they were focusing on our priority issues and yielding the collective impacts and benefits that we intended and i think we have to have faith in that core process uh we did last year do one time set aside one time transitional um but i'm going to oppose this uh last minute amendment because i think we need to um um proceed with the core um process that we've developed particularly at a time of that we're looking at here of extreme budget pressures over time council member chase yeah and i um i will also not be supporting it i think we had a really good discussion that our budget session and had several different ideas on the floor and i think we came to what was a reasonable uh position and so i will not support the motion that's on the floor council member norion and i won't be supporting it either and i just really want to make it clear that we have not cut community programs um and in fact we've increased social spending um with our own programs within the city over the past few years um we reprioritized funding and that is true so there are individual agencies that have felt like that that they've received cuts from us but we did do this core process to determine what our biggest needs were and i think a lot of really good work went into that i was involved um with that when i was still in the community programs um committee and you know these are gut wrenching choices i i would love to have uh to not have an issue with providing funding for these groups but i also want to remind everybody we've gone two years without any um projects on our capital improvement plan being um completed and that's a core service as a city too so um you know it's not that i don't um feel the spirit of the proposal but i just don't think um considering everything that it's so a wise move to do right now okay so if there's any further discussion just just a comment um you know i really feel like my kids are grown but i know that quality childcare was a real issue when they were in childcare and i think that for us to to support because i know that a lot of the parents are paying above and they have a sliding scale and what the city is helping out with i'd love to have a national health or national child care policy where we had national child care um but that doesn't exist until it exists it's up to um folks like these this board council to you know help backfill some of this money and i think that it's a real need in our thing and i i do think it's a core uh uh mission or it's a part of a core value of this community and it's a part of our mission to um you know work with local child care agency so that's that's why i put that forward i appreciate your amendment thank you council member chrome council vice mayor walkins um i i appreciate your your interest in child care as i share the same and i and i know later this evening also in the seven p.m session is um a recommendation to look at our child care developer fees and see how we can also find other ways to support child care so i believe that the conversation is just beginning and how we can find ways we also visited the conversation in terms of the children's fund um my sort of the spirit because behind the the additional money was that i think the core which i am fully behind in terms of moving in a collective impact strategy is a three-year process and it was um shifting from an annual to a three-year and sort of just recognizing that it's not necessarily clean and that's and that's okay but trying to find a buffer for that i do believe that the community programs will be meeting to discuss the nuances of the various types of um community services provided and that at that time we can look more deeply as we hopefully you know ideally would have had a chance to do prior to our budget uh hearing and i think if if we do find and i'll withdraw my motion at the time if we do find doubling the 45 000 necessary for midterm i think that makes more sense if it does come through that process so i'd be happy to do that and revisit that knowing that sort of we'll have another chance to look at it okay so then the motions withdrawn so then we have the main go ahead councillor vice mayor excuse me city manager bernard i'll take vice mayor that's fine uh thank you i just wanted to uh just to point out that the the motion is to direct direct me to to to make the necessary offsets but we'll have to report back those to you as well so so you have that context as well so just to point that out and just so you can be clear that there's a motion on the floor from council member mafios and a second to for these three or four areas um with a second by council member chase when will the the recommended offsets be presented to the council for final adoption so we'll we'll do that probably in august in august first meeting in august yeah yeah i think that's doable okay okay so there's a motion on the floor and a second um any further discussion on this all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed okay are we i'm sorry the main well she would she went through the the uh vice mayor Watkins withdrew vice mayor Watkins withdrew the amendment to the motion we're back to the main motion from council member mafios seconded by council member chase that are those four items that are up on the screen now for the budget adoption um there is any further discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye those opposed no okay that motion passes with council member crone uh in opposition um uh council member neroyan vice mayor Watkins council member mafios council member chase and myself uh voting in favor council member brown absent okay i just want to say thank you council members and i also want to acknowledge all the department heads we have budget leads throughout all the departments did a lot of work this year we had a lot of people in finance that did a lot of work this year and i want to acknowledge that there's been a lot of people helping i really appreciate that all committee they did a really fine job thank you we still have one more meeting i think in august or July so we'll see you again okay thank you so the next item up is the system sewer ordinance and before we begin that does it any council member do you feel the need we need to take a break or to continue on i would appreciate a couple minutes okay so we'll take we'll take um uh while you're setting up we'll take a five minute break we're back so we're back to item number 17 is um the public hearing for the sewer system ordinance number 16.08 this is a long-awaited amendment to the ordinance regarding our system steve wolfman's here to make the presentation when he's ready all right waiting for it to show up there we go good afternoon council members and public i work for the public works department i'm the senior civil engineer and i have uh been there for a while and my expertise is in my uh responsibilities is the wastewater system so we're going to get started here to go over an amendment to the existing sewer ordinance and why we are doing it and really it's to protect the environment essentially by better defining the property owners responsibility to maintain that part of the system that is private the ordinance only applies to those uh properties in the city and it's really we really tailored the ordinance to be reasonable for the public and to be easy to implement for city staff so we really haven't added any positions to uh run this program we figure it'll probably take about half of an assistant uh engineers time as we once we get the system really up and running this shows how the system is laid out in the city uh the sewer line is usually in the middle of the street not always and the city is responsible for that portion of the system but each house or property has what is called a sewer lateral or a building sewer which goes from the private property into the public right away and connects to the public sewer so the individual property owners are responsible for that red portion of the line including that part which actually connects to the city pipeline now this is a picture of what we consider a private sanitary sewer collection system typically you'd find this in a condominium complex where it's a large enough complex where each building has a lateral that goes out to a main that's in a private road and then that private uh pipeline goes out to the city pipeline so in this case everything in red is the responsibility of the condominium complex and it doesn't always have to be a condominium complex but that's most typical and you know you could have a hundred homes or townhouses uh that have to be maintained by that HOA and the ordinance addresses that also and we'll get into some details this is probably our most important slide and it is actually part of the new ordinance it reiterates what's the responsibility of the homeowner or the property owner and how what portion of that line that they will be required to inspect as part of the sale of the property one of the one of the issues that has come up as well can the city help financially with meeting the requirements of the ordinance and we have come up with an incentive program that will rebate money to those that improve their sewer lateral regardless whether the city is forcing them to or it's part of a sale of a home could just you know it could be anyone that is going to improve their system they would be eligible for up to $1400 and we would waive a $339 fee so they would be saving some money there some good money probably typically maybe 10% or so of the total cost of the project that they would um be doing so there's three components sewer spills uh is probably uh is we'll go into effect first the private collection systems as you showed is is the second part and the third part will be sale of real property so the sewer spills you know we have in the ordinance now it doesn't allow sewer spills it talks about fine for sewer spills but in the new ordinance it's a clear timetable on how much time a property owner has to deal with something as severe as a sewer spill and they are severe as you can see in the photograph and it requires that the property owner uh inspects their sewer with a television video which is has there been great improvements in that technology and then they fix the problem and then they give that video to the city it won't be on a video i guess it'll be a c either a cd or a disc the second part of the ordinance is to require that private sanitary sewers get inspected and cleaned periodically we clean our pipelines pretty much every year many of our pipelines that are we call problem pipelines we clean monthly or every three months but most of our pipelines we clean once a year so these requirements will be the responsibility of the hoa and when they do that inspection they will inspect everything they will be required to inspect the laterals also that connect to that so if someone is selling a condominium they would not be required to inspect their lateral because it would be done every 10 years as part of the collection system inspection um uh sale of real property uh really we're trying a lot of the ordinances really to educate uh the property owners and we feel that um when we educate the property owners of their responsibility and we also educate them on the condition of their pipeline that um we'll see some great strides in improving the private side of the sewer collection system there's exemptions um our our records really our good records go back to 2010 so if someone has installed a sewer lateral 2010 they would not have to inspect it on the sale of their property until 2030 and then also if they have passed inspection uh within five years so if somebody if a house keeps getting sold every couple of years you know that they might not have to do inspection either uh we have certified plumbers local plumbers in the city that will have to do the inspection uh they're actually not all well eventually they won't all be local plumbers but right now they are and uh those plumbers will have a standardized sheet to fill out so it's easy for the homeowner and the city to know uh that it has passed inspection and we have a grading system and one of the things that is probably unique with our ordinance compared to most of the cities and and jurisdictions is that we're allowing a pipe that I would call it gets a D we're allowing that to pass inspection we're not going to force somebody to replace a pipe that's in D condition and we'll you'll kind of see later what that would look like um the one thing that we are uh requiring is that if there's a p-trap in the sidewalk area they will be required to replace it and uh typically it needs to be replaced anyway because you can't TV a sewer lateral that has a p-trap but this requires it no questions um we do allow once the pipe has been inspected and this was something that the Santa Cruz County real estate association uh kind of requested was that we we allow the ability to transfer the responsibility to the buyer but only in the case after the inspection has been performed so that the buyer knows what they're getting into so I'm going to go over a few scenarios there is a typical p-trap just kind of like the ones you have under the sink it's typically where things get clogged and there's probably none in the city that are less than 60 years old so typically they're just a problem and the plumbers just can't stand them they can't get their cleaning rods through them they can't get their tv cameras through them uh the one time we had a contractor try to tv it it got stuck in the bottom and he had to dig it up to replace it so that'll be an immediate improvement so this is a pipe that has some cracks in it these are probably mainline pipes so that's probably a six inch pipe but this pipe would pass inspection no problem it's got some cracks doesn't have any roots you know and now of course this is just one section of the pipe and you'd have to continue with the inspection to see what the rest of the pipe looks like now this is a more severe uh these are called pipe fractures and if that was the only thing that was wrong with this pipe uh it would pass inspection we would not require them to replace this pipe we would hope that based on the education and the fact that you are now responsible for this that the buyer would negotiate some sort of um you know replacement of this pipe but if they want to take the chance and continue one with this pipe and you know hey if they are careful with what they send down the sewer uh you know maybe it'll last um for a long time uh and we have a price range there of probably what it would what it typically would cause to replace a sewer lateral from including the clean out if you did the clean out and all the way out to the street now that's not on mission street um but that's on a you know a nice street and and and getting several bids not just um doing it under an emergency condition that's one of the issues that this will hopefully help is that you know it's not an emergency you got some time get it done you can ask three four five plumbers for a price this pipe we would require that it get replaced no matter what so um the plumber and we might not never see this in in what the plumber gives to us because if they see this and they grade it as a grade five structural defect they're going to tell the homeowner you got to replace this you can't go on and you know we don't want to see the failed um systems we only want to see the ones that have passed inspection uh we are um we're at June 12th now this is our first reading at the council meeting we're hoping to begin implementation of the rebate program and remember the rebate program is not contingent on the ordinance um it is um available for anyone who wants to improve their their part of the sanitary sewer uh uh system um and then on august 1st is when we would begin the sewer overflow response requirements requiring you know how fast they have to get the work done and how they have to show us proof in january we would begin um sending out letters and beginning to get the larger complexes to start to look at cleaning and uh tving their system and we would actually wait until july one of 2019 before we would uh implement the sale of property requirements and part of that is to be sure everybody's ready staff is ready the plumbers are ready the real estate agents are ready and the um and the public is ready you know we've done a fair amount of publicity but that gives us a year to really to distribute some of these forms and to get everybody uh prepared for that requirement and i'm available for questions of course are there any questions at this time council member royan yeah so um you know i i understand it protects the environment and its state compliance is involved but i just have to say selling a home or buying a home is one of the most stressful times in most people's lives and my concern is adding a whole another step to that process um especially when that people are spending a lot of money at that point too and so i'm wondering if there was another way or another time that you folks thought of to do this um instead of just being at the point of sale well i mean truthfully visit i mean this is really what has been propagated throughout the state um you know is the idea of at the time of the sale there's large sums of money being exchanged um and it is the it's probably the easiest way for us to track something we don't necessarily know when sewer laterals were constructed whether they were constructed in the 20s or the 30s but they were replaced in the 60s um you know if we knew when every sewer lateral had been constructed then yes we we could maybe target it in a different way but we really have no way of knowing other than you know what we know from like 2010 so the last eight years we have a very good tracking system well that leads to my oh sorry hi mark hi mark deadl director public works i would say think of this as a termite inspection for your sewer line i'm you wouldn't buy a home without doing a termite inspection this really protects the buyers to understand what they're buying and then there can be some negotiation if they want to with the seller and the buyer but it's a hidden issue that could be a $15,000 problem that happens two months after you move in you didn't know anything about it it just as a provides that information that education which is a key point well and that brings up the next question um that i had you know will this actually catch spills because it seems like a point of sale is so random you know it's not based on anything more than point of sale i mean what really leads to failure of these laterals i you know is it age is it some other criteria that is the reason for these leaks happening well we we do feel that the cleanouts are a major problem the the unstandard cleanouts the p-traps so that's one thing that we're targeting i don't think we're looking at this solving the problem in one year or even two years but over a period of time i mean it's kind of like what we do with the mains we're not going in and we're not replacing all 160 miles of mains in one year we're doing it slowly and methodically and um you know we feel like this is the best way to address this over a period of time without um you know without without being really forceful with the people who haven't had a sewer spill the people who have a sewer spill it'll be much more stringent on what they have to do but on the sale of the home i mean i think you're gonna see um you're gonna you're gonna see that you're gonna see that have to be replaced two to four thousand dollars that's gonna happen and you know we're not sure what percentage have a p-trap it might be as high as 20 percent you know it might be 10 percent it might be you know we don't know how many have been replaced typically where you'll see these is you'll see those little square um little square metal cleanouts in the sidewalks that's typically where these occur i wouldn't think it's more than 20 percent of the city it's probably last but we don't know but that's probably the easiest thing for us to um get corrected so um follow up question cities are most cities following this model going into having to meet this new state mandate or are there okay so you haven't seen a different model for this inspection most of the models are uh more string way more stringent way more stringent one of the you know and i i don't off the top i think in the staff report i mentioned which cities have similar uh ordinances but um some of the cities in the bay area are basically saying you know just if you have a clay sewer you got to replace it we're not saying that they're making them do pressure tests on it we're not doing that so we're we're trying to let the marketplace play a little bit more and and we're trying to have education be a bigger thing i mean maybe the person gets a sewer line like that and they say well i'm gonna wait a few years and then i do it uh but at least they know it's there and it's something you know when their sewer starts to drain a little slower they'll start thinking about it of course a lot of times you'll see roots the guy will go through and he'll clean those roots but you'll see remnants of the roots and then at least the homeowner knows i got a root issue i better stay on this i better get this uh cleaned more often than i would typically because usually you never have to clean your sewer line you know till there's a problem and then it's sometimes it's too late and then what my biggest concern is that the plumbers available to actually do this inspection so obviously when you're selling your house you're under time constraints there's escrow and i know that you listen to feedback and the seller can transfer to the buyer the responsibility but you still have a 90 day limit and i have to tell you i recently moved and i've tried to schedule contractors from plumbers to whatever and i can barely get a call back these folks are so busy and have so much work right now i can't even imagine what it might end up being with not only plumbers but plumbers that have to have the special certification so i'm i'm really concerned about the administrative this just causing chaos in people's lives and if they can't meet the 90 days are we prepared to recognize that um so the person does have more time well two things um the the it's only the inspection that has to be a certified plumber the fix can be by any uh either plumber or um type eight contractor so any contractor that's allowed to work in the city street can actually replace the pipeline you know for example i mean you know any of the large contractors down to the plumbers they can all do the work so it's a much broader uh you know mix and of course staff is always listens to issues i mean if somebody has to do the work we had one over here that had to go under the railroad track or one that has to be on mission street where they have to get permits from caltrans you know i mean we always have that ability to change and to give people a little bit more time if they have a good reason and they're making the effort and they've contracted with someone and he that that ability is there that's a really bit it's just my own personal experience the past year trying to hire contractors has really really been difficult you know to them not showing up to them just not even calling back because they have or my project's too small it's there's i mean people are really finding jobs and works out work out there so the contractors that we have listed we have eight of them right now they are this is their specialty this is what they do they don't do big projects they do sewer laterals they do inspection and they actually do the replacement and like i said that list will grow some because there's out of town contractors and also your larger contractors like granite and monorail and you know all of the chape and that they all can do the work they just may not have the tv cam or to do the tv work thank you council member crown council member neroy and asked all my questions except the 10 to 15 000 what was that for that's to replace that's to replace a clean out and a sewer lateral out to the middle of the street how many you said 20 percent the p traps how many would you suspect in this category tough to know oh for the replacement yeah i would expect it's going to be very very little because if you have a pipe that looks like that you're probably experiencing some some real problems you know and so you know more than likely we're not going to see pipes like that we may see some pipes like that you may see some pipes that have roots but we're not going to require people uh at that level you should know that you're having a problem and so even this level is marginally may pass inspection but you don't want to you don't want to go forward with that and and really it's it would be unusual because if the plumber sees that he can go in and cut those roots out if it's only at one location but if it's at every location down the pipe he's going to give up after a while because it's just too much work to try to clean those roots out so i don't expect that we'll get um you know many pipes that have to be absolutely worked on prior to the new property owner last question septic clean out somebody emailed me and said is the city ordinance proposal improving the San Lorenzo river bacterial loading when county has such a high septic concentration along the San Lorenzo river well we like to blame everything on the county of Santa Cruz will continue to do so but uh when we when we got when we got um what's called the total maximum daily load limit from the state um the bacterial load limit uh they pointed to the city of Santa Cruz and they said you know you have to uh you have to do some things to improve it and one of the things was to adopt a sewer a sewer lateral program and that's what this you know fulfills kind of that promise that we made that okay we'll do that um and more than likely you know the bacteria level in the in the river i mean it's very hard to measure um a lot of it is masked by all of the wildlife population so you're not going to see a small amount of human uh input but we know it's there and we actually we can find it at times you know so but we we want to do as much as we can so you don't know if it's going to improve it correct council member chase thank you for the presentation and um i i think i have a question i haven't fully formulated it but it's basically as it relates to condo complexes and sort of and how that would work and so maybe we can talk to through an example like i i lived in a condo complex and we did indeed we had a lot of routes going through the pipes and so then we had our HOA fees that were our normal HOA fees but the cost to actually repair and replace was probably going to be a special assessment of a pretty sizable amount so i'm trying to kind of understand how this would work in that scenario because some were owners some were renters like what how does i guess i'm i'm concerned about the impact to people who are not expecting uh what was going to be an on the case of the complex i lived in of tens of thousands of dollars given the size of the project so how would this work in that scenario well i mean with what we're going to be requiring is that the complex have their system number one inspected that they inspect the whole complex so it's going to be up to the HOA to figure out how to do that it's it won't be that much money to inspect it i mean it's just it's not it may be for even a large complex okay it might be a couple of thousand dollars for 100 you know complex or something like that and then we're requiring so if they do that inspection and there are pipes that are looking like this then yeah they're gonna have to come up with money to fix it i mean and those are some of the worst things that come upon is is a complex that was no one no one knew it and all of a sudden they got sewage coming out of uh yeah maybe you live there yes i'm pretty sure we're talking about the same project and and you know of course we have to respond to it but it it is you know a big issue i mean i think what it would help is that you know it might give them a warning that hey you gotta do something and then they can i mean i'll tell you with our projects just like for a private person's project it really helps to give the contractor lots of you know time and get lots of bids so that you can get the best price and on something like that you know it's it's possible that you can save a lot of money by by knowing early on that you need something and i appreciate that this is intended to be preventative so that you're you know getting ahead of things and addressing them before they get to be that tens of thousands of dollars i want to thank you also for bringing this forward i know that it's something that public works use to even the staff has been working on and came up originally when we had that one broken lateral down on lower pacific and i think it's good to finally see this and kind of discuss it can you talk a little bit about the implementation so this is this a first reading so we'll have it yeah come back again yeah so it'll come back in two weeks uh on what june 26 would be the uh the anticipated approval and then it's you know 30 days after we just kind of rounded it off but portions of the ordinance will go into play right you know after 30 days but on august 1 we'll begin to implement the overflow requirements so hopefully no one has to deal with that and then and then six months later we'll begin to implement the i'll just call it to be the condominium requirements and we'll probably what we'll do is we'll probably do that in stages we'll probably target the bigger condominium complexes first so that we kind of spread it out over time and you know down to the smaller complexes so that may take some time to get those um happening and then the sale of the property requirement won't go into effect until july 1 of 2019 so basically a year from now before uh that requirement will be thanks and then also what kind of outreach will you do to provide the the real estate community and you know brokers and then in contact with the real estate community um through the santa cruz county um realtor's association so we'll do that more probably maybe we'll go and we've gone to at least one real estate agent probably go to more of those meetings uh we have um a blog on the coastal watershed council's website and of course the city's website so that's probably and and we've done mailers through the um through the schmoo review so we'll do some more of those and that and that's part of the reason to give us that year so that people really know it and we can also publicize the rebate program because i think that the people are gonna like that yeah i don't know if you take submissions how the but the city manager has that newsletter now that started that goes out to a mail list it might be something you can include in that as well okay any other discussion at this time so i'd like to ask the public is there any member of the public that would like to speak to this item it's item number 17 regarding the sewer system ordinance 16.08 please step up and you'll have two minutes you can go ahead Nathaniel go ahead natalex.candidategmail.com uh what i have to say about the sewer inspection i think every five to ten years or somewhere in that range everybody should be mandated to get an inspection as well as when properties are being bought and sold and uh one of the big things is this would let people know when there was when problems start to arise and obviously fixing the problem itself is something different but the inspection at least the cost of the inspection should be covered by the city not the homeowners not the buyers or the sellers but the city uh any actual repair should be the uh owner of the property and uh like i said i think not only do we need to do this when houses are sold we should have it uh every every at least five to ten years mandatory inspections for everybody thank you thank you next speaker please Dr. Numair council members my name is Robert Singleton and i used to work as the government affairs director for the santa cruz county association of realtors um just like to build off Nathaniel's uh comment that actually i think the county of santa cruz should pay for the inspection if you had my way um but uh so i just want to actually say uh thank you to steve and his staff who actually while i was working for the realtors association steve did come by um multiple times and multiple settings both to the local government relations committee to the board of directors and held a larger open meeting for the real estate association as well as we published it in our newsletter at the time so steve has done the rounds has done a lot about reach the real estate community and out of that process there were some concessions as a result of this this program uh being able to transfer the uh the burden of replacement onto the buyer um talking about the incentive program um you know which one is a passing grade versus not um and so i i think the the ordinance you have before you while won't make everybody happy and obviously um real estate agents in the real estate community is not like point of sale ordinance is a matter of principle anything that makes it harder to sell a home and adds to more stress to both the buyer and seller is not ideal but give them the lack of data and give them the fact that the city is not prepared to unilaterally replace every single lateral in the whole city there's not too many other options available for doing a comprehensive replacement program um and most of the the uh affected properties here will simply have to pay the cost of the initial inspection and will pass and that is in the hundreds of dollars not in the thousands and we don't expect a lot of the larger replacements and and honestly if you're suffering from a grade five and you're leaking stuff into the water table and and also probably experiencing some of your problems yourself you probably really want to get that replaced no matter what um and you certainly don't want from a sake of consumer protection to pass that on to an unknowing buyer that would not be something that i as a new home buyer first time home buyer would want to experience to have that um and to deal with that replacement on my own um so uh i think overall just wrap it up you just keep well i think overall he's done the outreach we've talked and i think this is you know in ordinance that we can all live with thank you robert okay is any member of the public that would like to speak to this item seeing none i'll bring it back to the council for discussion and action council member matthews yeah i was impressed with the outreach that was done and was glad to hear that had been modified based on the input from various sectors and um i've had personal experience with a major uh replacement of a line with an old clay pipe it happens i'm curious uh how many and robert maybe you know this um how many property sales on average in in the city of santa cruz in a year you can probably answer well well okay if you want uh robert um that's the question you want to ask yeah just call him up and ask them okay unless steve knows it but uh and we've looked at it a couple of times but i can't do you know the answer to that question yeah city get step up to the mic please it totally varies depending on the time um i mean we had like 23 sales in december of last year i'm thinking annually it's 23 times 12 is probably a rough ballpark but honestly it varies so much depending on the time and the median home sale so there's not really i don't want to give you wrong information so that's a really really rough ballpark anyway hey thank you thank you um and i'm gonna support it i i think i'll move the motion go ahead and move the motion i'll second that okay but i do i'll give you i do have just one other comment um that i maybe mark can answer this um we've had the toilet replacement on point of sale for a long time how long's that been 10 years something like that ballpark at least at least yeah 10 years with the water department maybe this oh this is rosemary's question yeah and um um and so over time as properties sell again that the need to do that decreases but uh it it seems to me over time we start to see a genuine net improvement right uh rosemary minard the water director so i believe that uh the ordinance on point of uh retrofit on resell it's called the ordinance and uh it went in in the early 2000s and it has it's contributed that has contributed greatly to the decline in per capita consumption that we've seen because the you know you're replacing out older toilets for ones that use 1.6 or even some places just slightly under one gallon per flush and obviously that accumulates a lot so it does produce results over time point being i think um it's a a relatively modest expense at point of sale that over time really does improve um the situation that the community as a whole faces because uh as you all know you walk down the street you see is you know failing sewer that's pretty gross and also does not contribute to public health water quality all of that stuff so um to me it seems like a well thought out ordinance that responds to state requirements but also um you know it's been improved through the discussion yeah so we have a motion by council member matthew second by council member neroyan is there any further discussion i just want to emphasize i'm really glad to hear that you'll work with people who may not make that 90 day deadline due you know even though they're in earnest trying to get a contractor to come to their home yeah thanks and i'd like to also extend my thanks to the public work staff for the work they did to bring this forward and um looking forward to getting updates in the future so there's a motion on the floor all those in favor please say aye aye be opposed that motion passes unanimously with council member brown absent thank you okay next up is our general business items um as a reminder the order will be a presentation followed by questions of staff from the council will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberations in action so a few bonnie would put up the slides i know i gave you an eye chart there on the uh slides i handed out um the slides will be up on the board this is item this is an item that um i'm bringing forward to that item 18 what's that Steve yeah i think they're high-fiving high-fiving or sewer replacements better if they did it right here it's great that matched up with the wastewater treatment plan yeah that's true okay thank you okay agenda item 18 is a consideration of the direct elect mayor and election by district and there's i don't have a i don't have a just tell you you can just i'll go like this next slide um there's eight slides and this is just brief and it coincides with the agenda report as all of you know you know we have a city charter that governs our our municipal affairs it's kind of like our city constitution and established the roles and responsibility of not only the the council the city manager but also the process for our elections we can establish new procedures through the charter for selecting the officers such as a directly elected mayor we can also direct changes to recommend at large or district elections we currently have an at large election in the state we've seen a series of bills that have made it easier for local governments to transition from at large to district-based elections there was just a recent article in today's paper what was going on in Santa Clara we've seen that also in states up on our cities up on the peninsula as well where there's been challenges to the voting systems this is an opportunity really to have a discussion with the council about our current system we had at our last budget meeting a pretty lengthy discussion about the role of the mayor and the council members as well as the salary that is assigned in this role in terms of the changes in the demographics of people that are serving in office we've had a lot more working folks that have been serving on council than in the past I think we've seen more people that that do hold a full-time job many of us already have family and so it does create these work life balances in terms of those that want to serve in our community currently the mayor selected by a majority of the city council from among currently serving council members and oftentimes when I speak with people in the public they they're not aware of the process in terms of how the mayor so this is also a part to kind of share that when we do have rotations it takes place over each year we have a change over the takes place each year and really in the near in the most recent time we've moved to a two-year work plan where we've actually set up a process where we have council priorities they're identified and over the two-year work plan we are as council members manage those priorities we have now a process where we have the mayor will change mid-year and though it doesn't really have the opportunity to have a continuity in terms of oversight of the priorities that have been identified by the current council and an opportunity to directly engage in terms of making sure that there's some accountability in terms of the results that take place and so the this is kind of taking that into account of recent changes we've we've had as a council to have more of a kind of a two-year work plan that looks at prioritization of outcomes and having someone that's directly responsible for kind of managing those implementation and nurturing kind of good results so when you are put in the mayor's shade there is really a there's limited direct allocation of resources or staff time you don't have any new resources that are really provided to you or staff and so it does result in different challenges in terms of one meeting constituents expectations in regard to some of the external roles you play in terms of meetings but also in terms of directly kind of influencing some of the work that's taking place and ensuring that we're getting the results that the community has requested and also the council has directed in terms of policy actions so again there is no staff no budget that's technically aside in the mayor's position and there's also as I mentioned an increased need to really retain and attract people to serve in public office and I think this is really something with a nod to that there's a need to kind of look at maybe the current structure with a mindset of moving forward perhaps those that have served in the past that might have been retired or you know might have independent wealth to serve it excludes some that that may need to work or have families and are unable to balance kind of some of the time commitments that are required to serve in office another piece of the of the agenda report talks about the selection of the council members in the city charger it discusses the process where there's an at-large election and again all the council members are voted from the city at large and for those of us that are up here know that you know even though we're about which we mentioned earlier population about 68 000 there are so there's so much diversity in our city and walking the neighborhoods when you go door-to-door canvassing during the election you you see first town you know the scope and issues that community members have in each of our neighborhoods you're seeing also at the state level there's been a kind of a movement towards look at these district elections back in 2003 the california voters rock voting rights act became law making fundamental changes to voting rights in the state and then more recently in january 1st 2017 there was some changes at the state legislature to encourage processes to move from at large to district elections there is one in particular the safe harbor provision is when there is kind of a challenge to the current election process like we've seen in other cities nearby recently to say that it provides a process so you can avoid any sort of litigation costs when you are challenged in the current election process so that leads to this discussion about consideration of our current system of at large some will say advocates of at large argue that it's governance improved when elected officials answer to the entire community and they also contend that officials elected by districts tend to have too much influence over decisions affecting a smaller neighborhood or district and that districts and district elections encourage deal making across different groups and then others say that districts are unnecessary in small cities like ours where it's relatively easy and inexpensive to reach out to the entire electorate I know in the past we've seen questions about the cost of elections here in the city by some and knowing that there is a certain but even though it may seem small there is nonetheless a cost for people that run for office to serve here that that should be taken into account you know from district elections there's two different types of you know elections that could be looked at when you look at how you can move from an at large one is from district election where you have each can't council member elected by voters from the entire city but the city is divided into districts and each council member must reside within that particular district for office it's kind of a heart hybrid system that provides assurances of geographical representation and also promotes some city-wide decision making looking at the best interests of the city and then the by district election is where you have similar to what's exists right now for the county board of supervisors where you have a city divided into districts and one council member is elected from each district by the registered voters residing in that particular district you know advocates will argue that the officials elected by district are more responsive to the constituents in the in their district and also that they voting makes it easier for members of protected classes to elect candidates of their choice within those particular parts of the city so when we think about the composition of the council I mean you see in some areas that you know there are fewer council members in certain cities where you have elected representation and I know when we talked about during the budget hearing about the idea of that current level of compensation in council members you know one it might be that if you look to movement in terms of the size or if there's budgetary concerns or representational issues you could look at having a five-member council with a direct elected mayor that helps to kind of mitigate what the what any sort of financial impacts there may be and then also when you think about this there could be a public evaluation of proposed revisions to the charter where you could look at not just the the idea of a direct elected mayor or some sort of by-district election but the idea of you know what are some of the authority that comes with that in terms of staffing or other support that might be granted to the mayor or how the council approaches its job so I laid out in the agenda report some you know recommendations it's really the question is whether the city of Santa Cruz should have a directly elected mayor including the term and any applicable term limits or whether the city of Santa Cruz should transition from its at-large elections by district elections and really this is a request for an advisory measure it's not even looking at kind of direct changes it's really to kind of spur a discussion about how we're currently operate as a council you know how we can kind of encourage greater accountability for the work we're doing in our policy and where we might look to seek changes to address some of the expressed issues that we've heard even during our last budget meeting about the job of the council member in this day and age and how we can maybe have you know some resources available to make sure that those of us that you know that work and have families can make sure that we're being effective in our job and also able to meet the needs of the public in getting the types of desired outcomes so I suggested in the agenda report some possible motion language in regards to the preparation of an advisory ballot measure and associate resolutions for the June 26 council meeting and a recommendation to call for the election to let city voters make the recommendation of whether the city of Santa Cruz should have a directly elected mayor including the term and any applicable term limits and also whether or not the city of Santa Cruz should transition from its out large elections to a by district election with an estimate of the cost associated with placing a measure like these on the ballot so that concludes the presentation and I'll take any questions if people have them at this time any questions we're all thinking yeah one how would you transition say you had a five member district elections and you have seven council members and say that you shift there's three people up for real action three seats would you would you then how would that shift occur does that contemplate that I just yeah yeah I thought about you would you would do it during like the when you have the presidential election where we have four council members that are elected you might reduce that to two on on that particular year so that it does reduce by two on a particular election and then you'd have the rotation where they would just continue to elect based on the normal schedule yes it would be helpful for me to better understand what an advisory ballot measure how that works exactly because I appreciate that you're wanting to spur discussion about this and I think that for me is the biggest part of this is I know that when I was mayor people talked about this all the time they were confused about how the mayor process works how elections work some of us thought we had just or some of them thought we had districts there's a lot of misinformation and confusion about it and a lot of ideas about it but not a lot of I think accurate information and one of the things that would be really important to me about any changes we made to this is that we have a very engaged discussion with the community so that they know kind of what we're talking about and how it would impact them and how they would be involved in it so how does that how does the engagement with the community factor into this proposal because if it's going to be on the June ballot I'm sorry oh the November ballot rather but it needs to needs to happen next meeting right in order for that to happen yeah in order for it to be on for November that's right yeah go please yeah I can say I can give you some examples I mean when this this actually kind of provides a framework for the discussion we're going to update our two-year work plan next year so in 2019 we'll now reset the work plan to add discussion about you know what that is we will the council will prioritize and one of the things I think that we've discussed and I've heard this even from prior council members that are no longer with us about the idea of kind of restructuring the office a little bit to be more effective and accountable in the role as a council member and as the sitting mayor so what would this would do is allow a framework assuming the council supports putting on an advisory ballot measure and it's supported by the community you would then have a community process to discern what the scope of that role is and changes it would then be something that would require charter amendment by the people and that would be having a charter committee that would look at the changes and come back with those recommendations and putting at the putting on the ballot at a later date so between June and November then the city would have the role of being of advising the community or initiating the conversations and supporting the conversations happening around that in terms of education and outreach and all that yeah absolutely and I'm thinking of um three well recent actions that were taken I mean we just had measure you that was put on the ballot that was an advisory measure that was put on the ballot by the city we also had changes to the charter under measure t that was the the the changes to the charter actual changes to the measure k ordinance and then we also had measure s which I think that you had individual council members kind of led the charge on bringing that forward with support from staff in regards to information so yeah this is also about kind of kind of informing the public about the current system and looking at ways that we can demonstrate accountability for the results of some of the council priorities we have and have a stronger role in terms of not only the policy but making sure that you know one we as the elected officials oversee these uh these council priorities and we want to make sure that you know what we are making certain that we're getting the results of the community wants to see having changes to the process for directly elected mayor I think creates an increased level of accountability for that because you have someone who perhaps runs on a on a um campaign or a platform and we say these are the things that they're working on and these are the how you inform the uh council work plan and you're able to kind of one see through those results could be a two or could be four year I tend to support more of a two year plan but at least it kind of syncs up the accountability with the work plan one more follow-up question and that is is the our council council members individually just like in measure s is an example I know I could support this but is the city council is a whole prohibited from doing any it's probably a question for the city attorney so could council be involved in in a formal way in engaging with the community or would it only have to be individual council members as community members I'm not quite sure I understand your question so like measure s well we voted to put it on the ballot um or we couldn't as a body add you know campaign for that but individual council members would and did so how what would our role be for this because I think that's really important the main restriction is that the city as a whole is prohibited by law from um using public resources to to advocate for the passage of of a ballot measure so council members could or the council could um provide educational materials but the the law would prohibit the council from using city resources and support including staff support and things like that that's right and I think that that's more of what my question is who would be educating the community if we couldn't do that well just the city could present factual information about how would play out people who felt strongly one way or the other would be on one or other campaign committees and those would be separately funded well for now thank you council member crown just a follow-up your example of measure u it seems to me this is even much less aggressive if you will by placing this before the voters if we would have gone the same approach with measure you would have said you know do you think we should put a ballot initiative on that says no growth or or growth so I mean this is even less so than that this is just taking a temperature check really of the public to see you know is there interest there it seems to me I'm I I'd agree with that that perspective council vice mayor walkins I just have a quick question and I and I was slow to respond because it's a bit it's a big topic and I know we sort of started the conversation at our last meeting in terms of how to best sort of evaluate and look at this one of my question is around um sort of the second component of the recommendation which is the at large to buy district and then the reference in the agenda report of the various kind of in-between which is the from district by district at large but then also the group that came up with ranked choice voting I think are we um what was your thoughts I guess in terms of going straight to by district as opposed to looking at some of the alternatives or well this this is not going to direct um by district this is about whether or not the community supports looking at a by district voting process so I would say that if you had support by the community let's say support by the council to put it on the ballot and support by the community to have the council direct us to look at this you would have again a charter committee to look at the election process in terms of how it places its council members and seats them I guess my my follow-up question would be if it's not offering the in-between of other it seems like you either have one or the other but there's it seems to me that there are also other alternatives which is like ranked choice or from district that could be so I think you're presenting maybe I see it as being presenting kind of maybe only two options when there could be potentially four well there's numerous options right um I personally don't support um you know the the ranked choice voting and I kind of spoke to that I know that there was a a measure that was put forward by um you know a group and I don't I don't know what the status is whether that was dropped but I understood it was something that they didn't have the level of support in the community to to uh to bring it forward but um I'll ask I'm to return that ballot or the petitions for that has passed and and they did not garner enough signatures I don't even know how much effort if any was put into circulating that petition but but the deadline for submitting it has passed but certainly I mean there's a variety different methods and as a charter city we can consider any one of them I guess if I sorry just one last follow-up if I may I think my hesitation is I don't know enough about the various potential solutions so it's hard to say that that would maybe be it or that we want them to weigh on that's just my kind of without having a full kind of understanding of all the different options would be my hesitation the direct layer I like to mayor seems relatively straightforward yeah council member and ryan I see these as two different questions and think that if this were going to go um to the ballot it would need to be two different measures because um district elections versus the direct election of a mayor to me are two completely different um topics so I think it would need to be split because I can't imagine there are people who support both and people who support one and not the other and and vice versa um I would be very interested before pursuing this how much it would cost the city to put these on this year's ballot they um again it's broken down so that you would have either or so it would be two measures is how right that's that's how it's framed up um either or either and or so if you know if there's not support for one there's one support for other I mean it could be that that would need to be like almost two measures like a measure a and a measure b understood okay and then the direction is um to have the um staff come back with an estimate of what the cost would be we are going to have other items on the ballot this year that will um influence the cost reduce it because we are putting things on the ballot and so that would be something that there there wasn't an opportunity to get an estimate at this time based on what other costs will be so process wise we would hear this again because I wouldn't feel right making a decision on this until I knew the cost yeah again the recommendation is to direct the city attorney to prepare the advisory measures and then it comes back with the cost so you'll know at that time I think that's premature though to prepare the advisory measures um I would want to know the cost before directing the city attorney to prepare them so that would well let me let me say this that I checked in and it's going to be less than a couple hours to do the advisory measures so it's within the eight hours that we have as individual council members the reason why I'm presenting that this way is because so that there is some advance notice on it and also that the cost associated with that would come forward at the same time so obviously if it's something that's that you individually or the rest of council feels cost prohibitive that could be the question um on on June 26 but at least have the opportunity to present um an advisory ballot measure for consideration at that time so that we can at least determine whether or not you want to individually or as a council put it to the voters to on June 26 we expect the city attorney to already have proposed ballot measures yeah that's the recommended motion language language yeah okay recommended language as well as uh we'll also have a separate cost of what it would be to put it on the ballot okay councilmember crown I wanted to respond to um vice mayor Watkins um it seems to me there's just the apples and oranges of it um that the that rank choice voting is distinct from what these these two issues I know Berkeley uh does directly elected mayor directly and they have eight districts and now they also have rank choice voting they put in place after they did those other two um interesting the New York Times Sunday came out in favor of rank choice voting um and was explaining how well it worked in San Francisco I was like really um that was it could be a game changer this last election in San Francisco for rank choice voting as a you know I think it's a move in the evolutionary political you know the way we elect our our representatives any other questions okay I'll I'd like to ask any members of the public that would like to speak to this item this is um item number 18 thank you just let them there and council members Glenn Schaller from the Monterey Bay Central Labor Council AFL CIO um we have 80 affiliated unions about 37,000 folks you know and we have had almost no time to consider this um in front of you know I noticed that many of the letters were received yesterday in support and many of them are form levers so I would first suggest that this is premature and a rush to judgment to ask the city attorney to bring you back some ballot measures I think advisory measures are wonderful and they play a role and measure you is a perfect example but I think I've my observation has been over the my over 40 years here that advisory measures follow a community discussion not create one and the ballot measures are the very worst way of having an education campaign or a discussion or a community conversation I think we deserve that conversation before anything's put on the ballot you know and I'm glad to hear some folks saying that so my overall suggestion is that these are solutions in search of problems and problems that we don't have in our city you know I work in both counties Monterey and Santa Cruz and the Labor Council 12 cities in Monterey County 11 of them have a separate elected mayor one has district elections now we of course only have one city with district elections in this county of Watsonville now I take it back King City now has district elections or two in Monterey County but in all three of those cases they were to solve problems that existed of um large um a large number of the population that could not elect folks to the City Council and I would argue we do not have that here we have renters we have homeowners we have landlords we have a majority of women we have people of color we have um folks from throughout the city people on the east side used to feel unrepresented they certainly don't feel that way now also um the having a separate elected mayor means that we don't get to have that wonderful rotation that um happens and the diversity of leadership and the diversity of issues that are addressed um the way to solve the problems that may exist would be to start having some discussions not um head straight up all right thank you thank you thank you next speaker please my name is Steve Bosworth I live in north uh uh north pacific avenue uh I want to propose something which will seem maybe outlandish at the beginning because it's a relating to a different kind of electoral system which would have the claim uh which it will seem strange at first and I apologize to the council for not my not giving you time to enough time in the email that I sent to you last night with supporting materials for what I'm going to propose so you could think it through in advance so I only want to plead for your uh patience and consideration after probably I speak looking at the materials to see whether the claims that I'm proposing are valid and attractive the uh what I want to do is would propose a third type of electoral system that is third beyond the two that the mayor has mentioned this uh electoral system uh would ask would elect the council members at large so that doesn't change that part but instead of the current way of electing the council members uh citizens would be asked to judge the suitability of each candidate for the for the office they would grade each candidate as either excellent very good good acceptable poor or reject on the basis of that information it is possible to uh to elect a council that would be supported by 100 percent of the voters because each uh citizen would be able to uh have his or her one vote contributing to the uh one member of the council who they had valued most highly um I appreciated meeting also yesterday in your email so um your time is up but thank you so much for being here and for your perspective on this matter thank you for your time thank you next speaker please as was said this is a solution in the looking for a problem to be solved uh personally I think the way the elections are set up right here right now it's just fine we don't need to change it and I think we're only looking for more problems to be created if we do change any of it around from the way it is right now um so in other words I don't support this at all one bit thank you thank you next speaker please anybody who would like to sir sir sir please thank you next speaker hi I'm Brett Garrett um I just want to say if we go to a mayor election or a district election third the devil is in the the details a little bit about how we do it is it a an election in June and then a runoff in November is it a plurality kind of system is it ranked choice um I'm I'm a huge supporter of ranked choice also known as instant runoff um I think it's worked working well in Berkeley Oakland San Leandro San Francisco and I'll speak a little bit to the the little committee that formed the yes on ranked choice committee um that was oriented around a ranked choice for the single transferable single transferable vote for the at-large system and I I think I speak for myself and other people who were on that that uh group that we really strongly favor ranked choice in the context of a single electing a single person like a district representative or a mayor um I think the single transferable vote is also a very good system but it's very confusing to people and it's kind of it's hard to explain and we kind of everybody on the committee had other priorities and a dozen other things that we were focusing on and we kind of um disbanded um but I still I support the cause I support ranked choice voting and I think it's good if to specify the method being used along with if we're voting for a mayor etc um yeah I think that's what I wanted to thank you very much I thank you thank you for your perspective next speaker actually in council um I'll keep my comments brief since I sent you an email kind of outlining my concerns as well as what I kind of see as positives about these proposals again I think they're definitely two separate proposals full-time directly elected mayor versus district district elections in terms of the fully elected mayor I actually think that'd be a really good thing um I think uh one of the the biggest barriers for uh people wanting to contribute and play a part of public service in our city is the fact that um the time commitment is so stark and the compensation for that time is so low um I imagine David on a given week as mayor you probably serve at least 25 hours if not more just doing city-based work or you know talking with constituents and and helping to set the agenda and so forth so and I'm sure your salary compensation on hourly level is nowhere near what you could get on the open market for the same set of skills um so I think the the direct election of mayor would serve to help the city and help serve create more accountability for the citizens at large to be able to have a full-time civil servant working on their behalf in terms of district elections um my biggest concern with district elections is that you set the stage for a collective action problem whereby individual districts are having to kind of posture against each other for various location specific policies so whether or not we're locating housing in certain areas whether certain districts get more access to parks or capital improvements or whether you know for instance where are we going to put the temporary homeless encampment these are all problems that you might find a little harder to solve if you had district by district loyalties and I think um having uh council members be uh responsive to at-large elections and therefore the whole city um might still be important for making those kinds of tough decisions so that's kind of all I have to say on that also ranked choice voting is pretty cool you should look at it thanks all right next speaker please hi uh Kurt Grutzmacher parent and local businessman um I fully support the by district elections and we talk about uh the cost to the city or the community is just the cdra alone um is a big consideration as a risk manager um most of my career it seems silly that uh uh that we would continue uh in um process that allows uh a cdra challenge at any point and you know looking at some of the data here I mean someone one sitting $900,000 to defend it another one four and a half million dollars to unsuccessfully uh defend it that alone uh I think should be a big consideration and the other um deal making and compromise is I think with this you know our country's built on and uh just because I disagree with you that doesn't mean that I'm right um and it's not what uh any one particular voting bloc um uh wants it's what is best for the city and I think having a directly elected mayor will increase continuity I mean I don't know how anyone can do the job for a year I think it probably takes at least three months just get up to speed um and it creates accountability I also think that the by district elections will represent the voting community um more accurately because theoretically all seven of the council members could live on the same block and you know you how do you know what's going on on these side other than you know spending time and going there and if you don't do this full time um you know how do you have the time and resources that if you're in uh that area that particular district you know what's going on so I fully support it thank you thank you for your comments um sir next speaker Mayor Trazos and council how you do my name is William Kingsley I would like to express my support for both of these A and B measures uh I think uh as a member of a protected class also known as the east side I think it really is going to help people out that have homes and and uh businesses in the community if they have the opportunity to work closely with council members that are part of their community and neighbors thank you thank you Mr. Kingsley next speaker hi everybody I'm page concanon sea bright beach neighborhood I totally love this idea two reasons one we don't know what they're doing on the west side the east side doesn't know what the west side's doing we're so spread apart but yet it's a small community and I think when the police cut up cut up Santa Cruz that kind of gave me an idea of just this since we since they've already started that here's your section here's this section here's that section and maybe we can get council members who live in that section who live on the east side who live on the west side who live you know midtown and that with the elections at least we know that somebody from our neighborhood is representing us so thank you for doing this and thinking about it but I would like to see it become a thing thank you thank you next speaker please Mr. Mayor council members uh Damon brooder concerned citizen um I'm in full support of the directly elected mayor um the district uh council members district district elected council members it would be awesome to know that the council someone on the council lives in our neighborhood or that neighborhood or that neighborhood and knows firsthand what's going on what happened in the middle of the night there I would love to see that representation as far as directly elected mayor if anybody's a sports fan you know that a sports team doesn't height doesn't fire their coach because they have one bad season they let the coach work out the problems for a little bit as a mayor unfortunately when you're on your last year it's like a game of planco you get to point the whatever you want to happen in the general direction and then just hope it lands where you want with a directly elected mayor with some terms you'd be able to have a little something a little a little hand in guiding what you're trying to have the community achieve and I think that's a really big thing being able to follow through on the things that you're trying to do um I think a directly elected mayor would allow us to voice who we want to help guide our city to where we need it to be I think this is a really great thing I would love to see it come to fruition and at least be explored in depth as as big as possible thank you all right thank you are there any members of the public that would like to speak to this item please my name is kender baker and I wasn't planning to speak on this I'm actually here to for the next agenda item but um I am moved to say that I'm interested in learning more about this and I think this is the the process for doing that and I think it would be really interesting to hear what the community um has to say about it and to learn more about the different possibilities thank you thank you okay is there any member of the public that would like to speak to this item it's item 18 this is regarding consideration directly elected mayor or election by district seeing none I'll bring it back to the council and let me just say that I appreciate the conversation we've had in terms of just even exploring this and discussing what available options there are we did receive many emails and some of them discussed the interest in this I wouldn't describe them as form emails they were all individual and we'll leave them out there they're part of the public record so you can decide for yourself you know the nature of the content and what they are they'll be in our public record but really this is as council member chrome mentioned it's like a almost an initial toe dip in the idea of looking at different methods of not only electing the mayor but also the current process we have in terms of electing our council members and even just initiating this discussion is one where we want we want to make sure that as we enter into 2019 and have our new work plan that we can at least have some benchmarks to see whether or not the community would like us to pursue these measures over the next year to help better not only provide the resources for the council council to do their job but also to have greater accountability for the mayor and the the council members in terms of the implementation of council priorities and constituent priorities for our city so on that I'll I'll ask if there's any further discussion or action you know you mentioned in your presentation the remuneration that is kind of lacking in this job and I'm wondering if you would put that on as a as a c if there's an a b and c you know something like asking voters whether the city of Santa Cruz should pay a living wage to council members and the mayor I mean I would I would be interested in looking at as part of that kind of review as far as a direct lick to mayor to look at the compensation what type of you know hours or what the the system would look like so absolutely that would be something that I would that I would support something that we could put before the voters and see if they would support it as well and looking at it and it's again not they're not making nobody's making any decisions we're going forward with the process and it seems to me would we have to have um if there was a yes vote put together a committee um and do we have to outline that committee uh that that's going to look into you know the future ballot the future charter amendment yeah I think that's what it would be who's directing you know the formation of a charter committee that might look at council council um compensation council member constant compensation mayors compensation as well as the um authority of those those positions we would have to consider that though at another time and agenda is that because that's not no we wouldn't I mean this is this is directing the city attorney to prepare an advisory measure so it's um right now and that would come back at our at our um June June uh 26 meeting I don't think it's a bad way of getting a discussion going and I mean I I'd like to hear from other council members what what more of their thoughts because I just just um putting it on the ballot as an advisory measure really does not have any teeth to be really clear but it does stimulate the thought of oh okay they're they're it could clarify in the minds of a lot of people that we don't already elect our mayor because if you've been mayor of Santa Cruz people think they voted for you for mayor many times and that's not our process council member noyan so I think you know the question before us right now is do we ask first to pursue this idea via the ballot or do we hold a community conversation first that leads to a ballot initiative and so I think that's kind of the the choice we have before us or and then the next choice is you know do we feel we need a different governance system than we have now so you know I think those are the questions that are before us right now and I know that right now I don't think I'm prepared to direct the city attorney to prepare an advisory ballot measure but I would be prepared to support a process to have the conversation um and to see if there really is community support to get something proposed normally we don't have a discussion before we have a motion and that's a situation we're in right now I'm sorry I know but just to say um there is a great deal here it's true that there's been a lot of discussion on every side of this I have my own very strong feelings favoring at large elections but I'm not even going to get into that right now also not here is the whole question of council member compensation having a directly elected mayor does not necessarily equate to a full-time mayor and bear in mind that if we give direction right now we have to have something submitted to our agenda report on June 21st I think this is all right for a lot of discussion but I have to agree it's very 11th hour um let's have that discussion um I also agree it's a solution in search of a problem um I agree with virtually everything that Glenn Schaller put forward um but let's have that discussion we can give direction at a future council meeting to initiate um a process for examining these issues it doesn't have to go to the voters so um that's just where I stand on this I think it's way too complicated last minute and premature to put on the ballot council member chase and I would agree with both council members Matthews and Naroyan on that point too I think we should absolutely have a community conversation um and these things should be a part of it but I think there's also any number of other options that the community might be interested in that we are not even considering as part of this and wouldn't even go to the community to consider as part of the proposed motion for the advisory ballot measure so I would like to support a community conversation about what they want to see I think absolutely we should be doing that council member crown um I was thinking about what but uh it all due respect to Glenn Schaller Schaller um five out of the seven us live within two or three blocks of each other you know that I mean the east side has been historically underrepresented on this council on the west side has been over represented for many many years I don't see that east side representation uh happening uh or happened in the past um I it just seems to me that if you have when and where the the community conversations going to happen around this without first like measure you we got a conversation about university growth amongst people in town we put measure uh s we got a sales tax discussion going on um it seemed to me that that's happens a lot of times around elections that you start these conversations um where are we going with measure you I think now people are it's on their radar screen in a big way and I'm hearing from people about what they'd like to do or what maybe vis-a-vis the university what the city how the city should be acting and in negotiations with them so I just see this as as a way of beginning that conversation because I'm not sure how the other conversations going to happen um but if you if you have ideas I'm all ears too about starting a community conversation around um directly elected mayor and district collections and vice mayor walk-ins and compensation yes I appreciate the input of the council I am it's very complicated and I think um that is is for sure clear for me um and I also appreciate the initiative by the mayor to really bring up the conversation of looking at our current structure understanding our our potential solutions and checking in with our community about that um for me just sort of with my kind of background and training I my hesitation is not having a full understanding of the problem having a full understanding of the potential solutions and what the outcomes could be in terms of how we would want to frame you know recommendations so I really appreciate the um also the concept of having a more in-depth subcommittee or group looking at it with community input um to really vet all of that to entertain what's before us today I think the directly elected mayor to me seems relatively straightforward I I can kind of understand that I think I you know we could get a pulse on the community in terms of that or or prepare the language and then to have that conversation later if we want to in terms of that but I'm hesitant for the second part because I think that's a much more in-depth kind of analysis that needs to take place as as the directly elected mayor but I mean to entertain potentially what you're hoping to have us move on today I think number one we could look at having that language created would you support adding a second part of that um to uh whether the city council or the city of Santa Cruz voters would um pay a living wage to council members I think that if I may I think that I think that for me feels like more of that broader conversation which we brought up at the last meeting and I really appreciated your you know leadership and actually talking about that I think we need to look at it I for me just for I think what where my hesitation is is really fully understanding the issues the current the current um structure the potential solutions the you know what I mean really doing the time and the work into researching it um and then also you know checking in with the community I I feel somewhat hesitant at this time to have that right now um but I do agree that we should start that process and that conversation should take place and that research should happen and we should vet that with the community and look at what could work that's going to be sustainable and best for our city and the residents of our city and how we can represent them and so I'm all for that um I think just my hesitation is uh the proposal and how to do this with the ballot in the not subcommittee meeting quite yet well this is you know one suggestion might be to look at that that sole issue of the direct or elected mayor and again this would have to come back to the council as a um you know a proposed um you know advisory measure but included in the resolution could be in consideration of the salary because that would be something that would then be if there is a community support for that the council would still have to meet um to kind of review that if they were to prepare a ballot measure so I mean that would kind of address I think both of your issues as part of that question about and consider the the salary consideration of the salary and that would be either a yes you know yes or no vote you're looking at those those those issues um in their entirety council member norion I'd like to put forth a potential motion uh for us to at least focus our conversation on um I'd like to move um that a council subcommittee be created to explore the possibility of district elections and the direct election of a mayor excuse me I'm going on with a run on sentence right now and explore compensation options for council members community engagement would be a part of this exploration and that's clunky I just wrote it in the last 10 seconds so I'll second for the purpose of the conversation thank you um so as a seconder would I mean I think an important part of this is that there's more than just these two options so I would want that committee is going to get together I think we should look at any number of other options that have been mentioned some by various council members and it looks like we're talking about changing the structure of our council in any number of ways so if the committee is getting together we shouldn't just limit it to these two things because otherwise we should just vote on that today but we should really look from my perspective at what else is out there including compensation so we're you're talking about expanding the scope to look at our overall system of governance I mean yeah I mean that's because I think that's where we're sort of getting caught is that we're not as familiar with the details on these things and that there are other options that the community might be more interested in or might be a better fit for our community and so I wouldn't want the committee to just be looking at these two things council member Matthews um that's I was prepared to second as well just to head in this general direction I think that makes a whole lot more sense there's so many issues wrapped up in this and I think if maybe you could tweak the language to say to explore issues of governance including but not limited to I would be happy to do that and I think the the process of really open study of what's happening in other communities and engaging different sectors of the community is is important that we we have some sense of context for when a recommendation comes back for us you did have compensation in there yeah she did yeah and I'm and I'm also taking the suggested language that we say that include but are not limited to yeah that's some overcrown well it's interesting there's a lot that exists to somebody sent me the uh fremont they they've transitioned to district elections and in fact is a there's a glossary that has all these different cities and stuff um in it I'm wondering if we could include members of the public on this I mean totally yeah because this is just another you know council is already from my perspective from being here pretty overburdened right now on committees subcommittees and commissions so I would really I think um be a great thing to bring in that wealth of of outside um help maybe kind of clarify what what type of committee did you refer to it as explore issues of governance that include but are not limited to district elections the direct election of no just the type of community because one of one of the one of the one of the one of the one of the ways you might approach this and I'd you know suggest that maybe you look at it as a direct the council to create a charter amendment committee so that you're looking at these things and coming back with a recommendation and that would be something I feel would kind of get at the heart of this issue so that if you want to have that community discussion it's through a charter amendment committee so that you're looking at what those specific recommendations are after significant public input in regards to any proposed changes that might be made so instead of calling it a subcommittee you're suggesting we call it a council charter committee charter amendment committee without the word council only because if we're not that doesn't we're not going to sit on it I think it should have council members on it you could yeah I think having two would be great I mean definitely I mean it's we could look I know it's been discussed in the past but yes it's on this returning this into something that was much more focused to something much larger are we that you know acknowledging that yeah okay yeah yeah I I mean I can support that as far as a charter amendment committee to looking at those issues and I just want to restate the the motion if you would in terms of what are the kind of areas that will be focused on I could restate so to create a council charter amendment committee to explore issues of governance that include but are not limited to district elections the direct election of the mayor and compensation for council members including the term and applicable term limits right for well that's I could make I mean this could go on forever I have include but not limited to I don't I just we could sit here that's good like 20 all right I could support that so there's a motion on the floor from council member Naroyan second by council member chase is there any further discussion and this is a resolution and does it need any like the three council members want to volunteer to put together some sort of you know charter how this group's gonna start out and you know function kind of that should come back to us so that's why I think we need the word subcommittee in there because the subcommittee implies and actually it's it's legal that three council members can up to three can participate and be happy to serve on that all right I think that um one when we talk about creating a charter subcommittee I think we'll come back in terms of what that would look like I don't you know I we'll come back with a recommendation this is not the first time there's been one okay is any further discussion okay thanks again for the time and and and you know I appreciate you review and discussion on this item all those in favor any opposed okay that passes unanimously with council member brown absent okay we'll next move on to item number 19 which is the revolving line of credit for agreement and the presenter is um rosemary rinard our director of water um good afternoon mayor and council um this hopefully should be fairly quick for you I know you have a lot of folks here here for the next thing we have this item uh that we are asking for your action on today for a um a revolving line of credit for um 25 million dollars with the bank of america it was uh they were selected based on a number of dozens of agencies were solicited to um give us proposals we received I believe four proposals and we did reach out directly to local financial institutions and didn't receive anything from anybody locally lighthouse bank or a bay federal credit union or santa cruz county bank although we talked to them all individually um I'm going to introduce you uh to Jeremy becker who is our finance manager relatively new but in his first time presenting to you but he has a just a few brief slides to give you the details uh yes good afternoon mayor and council members uh it was just a short month ago rosemary was kind enough to introduce me to you all so it's it's nice to be up here working with you and it's nice to see so much public participation I moved here from the state and I was in a lot of legislative hearings and there was not nearly this amount of attendance um for discussions that were affecting a lot more people so it's refreshing uh I just yeah I just want to give you a quick background and just sort of the purpose behind what we're doing to in uh acquiring this line of credit uh basically this this is not the first time that we've really uh brought this topic before you um uh just kind of a short history on on how this is developed we we have brought the capital improvement plan or investment program before you and that's been passed uh what kind of started that was our long-range financial plan that was passed by the council back in june of 2016 um basically kind of set for setting forth a 300 million dollar capital improvements over the next decade and instead of what we have done up to that point which is mostly doing uh paying out of operating revenue kind of we're we also wanted to work into uh acquiring debt uh so that only 25 percent of those expenses of our in our capital program would be um paid for through pago funding and the rest would be through debt financed um and basically the next step in that was we uh the council passed our our policy 34.4 which which kind of just put everything into uh just put forth all the um requirements that were laid out in the in the long-range financial plan as far as um just establishing a framework of funds from what was our existing funds but also adding to those funds and then kind of um adding uh requirements on reserve levels for a couple of funds and uh where we had a lower reserve level we set forth a higher requirement and i'm happy to say this year we're going to be uh meeting one of those requirements by the end of the year um in our emergency reserve fund um and all this was kind of set forth in order to increase our keep us strong credit rating when we so when we do go to market for debt issuance uh we will get a credit rating and lower issuance costs lower issuance costs as a result of that uh and then um since that point kind of in between that and the final bullet point is that um we also had another resolution before this one asking for reimbursement and um that precipitated a loan that we've gotten from the iBank which basically uh we by the point that we acquired that loan from iBank we drew it down immediately for all the past um spending that we had done that really uh that was a result of just hard work of staff members and Nicole Dennis and Melissa capping um just getting that loan in place and helping us revert a negative balance in our primary operating fund um and now we have our final resolution uh before you um or that's we introduced our re reimbursement resolution back in march which you passed and that was basically uh precipitating this um all of this is to uh basically what we are trying to achieve is just to uh diversify our loan options and this is all in an attempt to just um get the cheapest financing that we can uh before this point we really had basically paid for all our capital improvements through just operating revenue and now we can no longer really do that so our objective at this point is instead of just always reaching into our operating funds uh to see other sources and what we've kind of come up with up to this point is um we're putting forth applications to the uh to the water board the california water board for a drinking water state revolving fund grant we're doing that for our concrete tanks which is one of our projects and then we're also submitting an application for a newel creek which is another project um and then we're also going to uh reach out to uh the epa for a with the alone which is also a lower method of financing and the final thing is kind of a final choice will be revenue bonds um and again all this is just kind of um the reason we're we're um having alternatives to just go going straight to market for revenue bonds is basically for to give us some flexibility uh it's really um allows us to kind of go for the most efficient option in terms of you know we we have a lot of we're kind of bouncing keeping a lot of balls in the air trying to bounce as far as loan sources and with that and the fact that we have a capital improvement program which you know things we have uh i'm not quite sure the amount of the number of projects but it's it's a lot of projects so it can possibly you know a lot of those some of the expenses can come in sooner some later so this it's in itself is this line of credit allows us some flexibility in terms of being able to kind of wait if we have to wait some time in order to get the uh the revolving fund financing or epa financing or if the time is not right for the market right now um and really this was all kind of this is all pretty common too is to kind of use go for a variable rate financing which is what this option allows us it's only a two-year line of credit and what we hope to do is at the end of this basically issue debt pay off this loan and we also have the option of we're really not going to get tricky with our debt financing but our financial financial advisors also said instead of typically doing a 30-year loan term we could also or bond term we could do a 28-year to to encapsulate what we pay off here instead of sort of extending our debt into the future kind of capture what we've already used through this line of credit and then lastly as far as the way the whole process has worked we did put out some rfps like rosemary had mentioned uh to local banks the only local that really responded or gave us a proposal was county Santa Cruz bank it really didn't allow us enough um we wanted a higher uh credit um they only were able to give us i think seven and a half million um so that rolled them out and finally who we ended up choosing was bank of america it was really the lowest interest rate that they offered us and it is like i mentioned a variable rate of interest where um the turn that we're going to choose is the libor this is one month libor and we take that times 80 percent and then add 45 basis points um and just general terms that's about two percent right now two percent and they basically compounded daily but then it's also divided daily so that rate um i could always get into more details if you're more interested so i just want to make one comment um that bond council has worked with us on this indicate that because we're borrowing more than a hundred thousand dollars and need to be a general business item and so otherwise you know we probably would have put this on consent for you but it does require um action in the general business part of the agenda thank you and thank you for the presentation i remember when you were introduced right is there any count or any council members do you have questions at this time just quick could you go through the just say a little bit about the process of trying to get a local bank and or community credit union and having to um settle on bank of america sure the um recognizing the potential interest in our local community of investing in our infrastructure improvements we reached out to um several of the local institutions lighthouse bank um santa cruz county bank bank of santa cruz county and also uh bay federal credit union a lot of them don't have the quantity of money that we're talking about here this is 25 million which means that when we call for money on this loan they pretty much have to give it to us it's a short term and so it has to do with their inability their lack of the um enough money available in their assets that is liquid for them to be able to meet our needs and so we did sit down with them and we gave them a little perspective and had a little conversation with each one of them because we wanted to make sure that there was an opportunity for local investment in what we're doing if that was feasible they give you a sense of a 10 million they could do 15 million five um the santa cruz county bank um had an indication that they could provide seven and a half million and at the time that we were talking to them in march um we were thinking that we would need seven and a half million for this just for the end of this fiscal year and that that wouldn't help us this is really bridge funding right so that the idea is to spend this money and then repay it out of long term financing that gets established once we have things more solidly defined about how much and so it really wasn't enough um for us to make that work for us we couldn't mix and match no it it's more our financial advisor really advises against that it makes things very complicated and it's already a complicated enough thing so we um we didn't go there any other questions okay see then we'll put it to the public are there any members of the public that would like to speak to the side and please step forward and you have two minutes you have two okay thank you my name is Elise casby and i'm an activist here in santa cruz i'm extremely opposed to the council passing this measure today i think it's very interesting that today just after we've managed to pass um a community opinion about the university and growth and so forth which is an issue that's extremely tied to water it couldn't be more that's one of the main factors is water bank of america is a uh a completely discredited bank it is one of the banks that went a long way to destroying our nation and thousands upon thousands of people lost their homes and never recovered a home at all drove up rental prices and more i think we all know about that it was also related that horrible situation to debt and debt acquisition i just think this is interesting that it's coming forward today and since i'm not a politician who needs to be elected to office i will also say that the insider political group that is behind the council oftentimes is largely university and as somebody said before west side santa cruz it's a really tightly held power block it couldn't be more important that this extremely delicate and sensitive issue that involves our water safety and security banks that we're trusting with our public resources in the most important way it has to be local bank there's a bank that was not considered it's the one on front what's it called the credit union at the end of front i don't hear that being mentioned as a bank i think this needs to be in fact something that's done with public bonds and not such a political maneuver as the bank of america and i urge the public to speak up right now and not to sit in your seats this is a very political move please do not pass this measure do not hear any excuses about it this is a power block move to tie up our water and resources thank you very much thank you lice is there any member of the public any other members of the public who would like to speak please line up now if you if you're here to speak on this item now's the time to stand up and line up on my left and you will have your opportunity any other members of the public that would like to speak okay sir please go ahead right garret just a one liner please support public banking thank you okay next no public bank was available for lending here next speaker please my name is gene brocklebank i would like to reiterate what the previous speaker said to you when i was listening to the conversation um lighthouse bank is our bank and um i was wondering too why we have to do 25 million dollars with bank of america that maybe we could ask for um x million from lighthouse x million from bay federal x millions of dollars from the others i know that that's complicated but it does support our local banks and i in addition to that i think her point about this should be public bond money and not money um from a private bank bank of america does have some uh bad history is well taken and i encourage this council to rethink um voting on the the loan line of credit from bank of america and let's see if we can do a little bit better thank you very much thank you again uh any members of the public that haven't already spoken that would like to speak to the side and please stand up and ma'am just step right up they could speak up to the mic please any other members of the public this is a final call any members okay please just a quick question um was bank of the west considered okay we'll answer once you're done with your public comment okay okay is there any other member of the public that would like to speak to this item okay c and none will bring it back to the council was was bank bank of the west consulted regarding this i'm um i can't tell you for sure but i will tell you that the list of um entities that was solicited received solicitation the rp were dozens of national international local banks so everybody that if anybody got the solicitation we got four responses thank you thanks and i can provide the list if you'd like that afterwards i just i wasn't part of the solicitation but i'd be happy to provide that it'd be great to send that to the council thank you okay council member matthews well i'm going to go ahead and acknowledge the um very well grounded sentiments that people have about bank of america i acknowledge that but i also want to respect the serious efforts made to reach out to a whole spectrum of financial institutions behind all this is the financial plan for progressing on the overall master plan for the city's water system both for maintenance and treatment and developing future supply and that has been that has come before the council on many many occasions we know it's a very ambitious capital plan for all this and it really set the stage for the issue that we have before us here and i certainly respect that um we are going on the advice of a financial advisor how to most effectively ensure that we have the resources to go forward um most cost effectively to deliver the system that the community will need for the long haul so having said all that i'm going to move the um adoption of the resolution before us here i'll second that okay thank you and i appreciate those comments i'll say that um you know i think this is something where we have repeatedly said how can we engage local banks in our process and i think this is an opportunity also to look how we can kind of help nurture these lending agreements so we can not only reduce our costs but do business here locally so hopefully moving forward will it be able to kind of explore new opportunities to see where they can provide us with these financing tools to help us here in our town councilmember crone what were the four banks that responded yeah it was uh bank of america jb morgan bbva and then the county santa cruz was the only local county santa cruz county bank santa cruz county okay all right no problem any other discussion discussion on this side no see none okay we'll ask the council for a vote all those in favor please say aye those opposed okay that passes with councilmember crone voting no um all other council members voted yes with councilmember brown absent okay um the next item on the agenda is item number 20 which is our downtown study session and i'd like to invite up have amanda ritello no okay bonnie ellipscomb can you also claire okay should i make an announcement now um yeah you know at this point at the beginning of the meeting um we have uh noticed when there's any conflicts so i'd like to maybe ask councilmember math used to repeat the notice she provided at the beginning of our council meeting um i do have a conflict of interest due to proximity of some property um in which i'm a co-owner uh which is in very close proximity to the um parking lot on which the farmers market currently um uh does its business and so by virtue of that proximity i won't be able to participate in the discussion and decision about a permanent home for the farmers market however i have talked with the city attorney and the mayor um that it would be appropriate for me to listen to the presentation of the overall spectrum of issues related to downtown um the mayor has agreed to hold questions and discussions until after that presentation at which point i will leave yeah so i'll turn it after the presentation i'll turn it over to public comment and then and then at that point bring it back to the council and councilmember matthews will leave okay so we'll turn it over to you great good afternoon mayor and members of the council um bonnie libsum director of economic development with me today is claire fleece or our transportation planner for the city and so we have a presentation today and we've titled it changing downtown um but first just to introduce the item um wanted to mention sort of why we're here today and um to because it has been some time we did have a direction from council in december 6 of 2016 um to form a downtown library advisory commission to develop a community process to explore a downtown library branch also to explore a permanent home for the farmers market and to develop a parking rate strategy to support new mixed-use supply project in the downtown so we have a council direction that is um that is from some time ago and um this is part of the process um in providing some new information to you um when we were looking at sort of framing uh the presentation today and we were talking about a lot of the changes um that have recently been happening in the downtown as well as a lot of the opportunities so that really is sort of framing the presentation today is to go through some of the changes recent changes and then some of the opportunities and then ending today with a focus um on the farmers market as well as a recommendation so to kick it off um just showing a few historic photographs um to talk about how our downtown is always changing and obviously this is the has labeled a photograph from 1888 and then after the devastating fire of 1894 and what that did to our downtown um but we're very resilient and we rebuilt um here's a photo in 1926 1930 1940 you can see um continuing to change downtown and downtown has always been vibrant and is continuing to be to be vibrant so despite the natural disasters there have been periods of rebuilding and development in the downtown and of course um we had the devastating earthquake of 1989 um here's what it looked like um after that um in 1990 you can see it as well and then here we are today um with the last remaining hole after the earthquake is being developed um by 1547 pacific um in recent years though um there has been a period of some stalled um physical development in the downtown and part of that has been um due to a number of economic conditions actually we've had tightening markets increasing land prices um and then some outdated policies that we've had at the city that don't um respond directly to the market that have sort of culminated in um development particularly downtown development where the cost of development is higher due to land values and dense development which requires a higher construction type and higher construction prices so for these sort of combined reasons we haven't seen a lot of projects going forward in the last number of years in fact the project um that you're looking at right now 1547 was actually stalled three times over the last decade before it's finally going forward and some of you may recall that um so one of the things that's really enabled some of the change that we're going to talk about today is actually the downtown plan amendments and so I want to take just a minute to talk about um the effort led by our planning department um in 2017 and that was an amendment to the original downtown plan um that was approved by council after the earthquake in then 1991 and so there were some amendments to the plan um last year that updated land use development standards and design guidelines um specifically um development standards for the river walk so after many years of sort of turning our back um from the river the levee we've embraced the river walk and we have a number of of sort of fun things and changes that I are exciting that we'll talk about briefly today um also updates to circulation and parking plan streetscape and and open space as well so the big picture of what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about community spaces parking and housing and incorporated with some of the parking will also talk about some transportation and I think it's important is just sort of framing the big picture um as our goal here is really a long term downtown sustainability and there's a lot of important components um and elements that make that happen it's no just one thing they all work together and so we're going to focus on community spaces parking and housing today um and then we'll come back next week and talk a little bit more about uh the the library and library recommendations and we'll we'll overview that in a minute um but today we're going to be focused on recent changes and future opportunities in housing parking and community spaces with an emphasis um on the farmers market towards the end of the of the presentation um so first off um to talk about housing and as it specifically relates to the to the downtown it's important as a context to really talk about how Santa Cruz is largely built out we're in a housing crisis um the greatest opportunity for substantial housing creation is in our downtown core where zoning and land use support a denser urban core in fact in downtown specifically the denser the development the more housing we can create and the more sustainable our downtown will be the more economically stable it will be for our businesses and merchants and the more vibrant it will be for our community and residents and I think that's an important element to go into some of the things we'll be talking about um both this afternoon and this evening as we look at some of the um blueprint council subcommittee recommendations as well we also have the um council strategic plan to create five to six hundred units in the downtown so we'll touch on that briefly as well so this actually is an excerpt from the downtown plan amendments and it's just important to highlight here without going into a lot of detail that one of the important changes was the increased height in the downtown of plan amendments which allow um denser development residential development primarily in the downtown as well as the zones for the increased height um go out further from pacific than they did previously which will really enable some residential development particularly on front street as well as lower pacific and so that's key to some of the projects that you'll hear about today going forward again recent changes so moving into some of the recent changes 555 pacific as I mentioned earlier this project was delayed for a considerable period due to financing it has gone forward it's a beautiful project it does include 14 inclusionary units seven during the rental period and then they're also paying a substantial in luffy actually so this was negotiated on this project in addition to a contribution towards future parking so there are quite a bit of concessions that the developer made in moving this project forward that's not always sustainable for developments this one is actually was able to make it work another recent change is 1547 pacific I showed a slide of that earlier this one's under construction right now this is 79 units with 12 inclusionary units so these two projects one the previous slide for 94 units and the 79 units are already going to greatly impact sort of physically what it feels like from a residential perspective to be downtown and we have a lot more coming we're on such a cusp of tremendous change right now in our downtown council has a two-year work plan that you all are very familiar with and as part of that direction to staff that is for us to move forward with approving five to six hundred housing units in the downtown we have the that number in the pipeline right now in either under construction or in the proposed projects including the city supported pacific station project which is a hundred hundred unit affordable housing project just to orient you to that right now included in the circle is the actually the metro bus center as well as the small in the lower part of that circle city owned parking lot of roughly 26 units and then the recently acquired nyak national alliance of nonprofit insurance providers that's in the building the larger building in the lower right hand side so the city now owns those two pieces we're looking at assembling additional land adjacent to that to be able to create a hundred percent affordable hopefully 80 to 100 units depending on what the final land assembly but we're also working with metro metro bus center right now we have two scopes underway to analyze the current bus center operations to see if we can more efficiently lay out the bus center to allow for the opportunity to potentially develop the street fundage the pedestrian frontage along pacific avenue with a mixed-use project with affordable housing on top just to give us the greatest options and opportunity and so when those scopes are completed we'll bring that back to council for your for your consideration and direction and then while you can't see all the detail of this part of this is a direction from council to look more specifically at our downtown properties that we own those as well as projects that are in the pipeline so this sort of a combination map of a number of the projects in the downtown right now two of which I've already mentioned 555 pacific and 1547 pacific pacific station is is listed there as well and then two that are proposed that are in early stages in planning review and that is the pacific front project at laurel and pacific between pacific front and laurel and the project that's referred to on this is riverfront apartments both will be really lead towards that five to 600 units in the downtown and housing creation we'll be considering some of policies related to this including inclusionary housing and parking at tonight's study session as well and with that I would like to turn it over to claire to talk a little bit more about parking good afternoon again claire fleece lair transportation planner I'm gonna briefly go through parking with a goal to prepare you for both next week's meeting and the 26th to reiterate what bonnie mentioned earlier council gave us direction on December 6th 2016 to develop a parking rate strategy which we're in order mr. mayor um there's a there's two different meetings could you explain the bifurcation of the meeting tonight and the meeting next week so people are clear what's being discussed tonight and what's being discussed because I was under the impression the library was next week but I do see it on the agenda this week thank you council member crown I'd like to ask the city manager to kind of let go over like what the structure is in terms of the meetings that have been scheduled so today is a more of a broad view of the downtown and the various components of downtown and then the farmers market so those are the two two two subject areas today the next week the study session will focus on the recommendations from the downtown library advisory committee so they'll be presenting the recommendations to you and the report that they completed in january and in addition we'll be presenting the uh the uh parking rate strategy that the council directed does that answer your question it does say receiver presentation discuss initiatives in downtown santa criss for improved community spaces including the downtown library so I'm just saying that's that's confusing as um I was under the impression the library and parking were next week study session this was about the housing downtown are you looking at the recommendation that's included in the action agenda okay yeah no so the to reiterate the the focus today is to present you know those those areas and then focus on the library and the parking rates and and the parking strategy next week okay the public's include into what we're doing here I appreciate it thank you for the question and clarification okay yes yes so to reiterate on december 6 2016 council gave us direction and the parking component of that was to come back with a parking rate strategy which would support a new supply project as part of a mixed use development today what we're going to go through with regard to parking is our current efforts um where we stand with parking in our current efforts to reduce single occupant vehicle travel and parking demand as well as our upcoming opportunities so what we'll start with is our current transportation demand management strategies we've been investing in tdm for decades in the city of santa criss and we've seen this play out in having a remarkably low single occupant vehicle mode split mode splits the term that we use for how people travel to work um our mode split in the city of santa criss is 56.5 which I'll cover on the next slide but is about 20 percent below the national average through our investments in education encouragement and infrastructure projects and programs we've been able to increase our biking and walking mode split to just under 20 percent which is astronomical we've done this through targeted investments in expanding our bike lane network as well as our off street facilities and we have the rail trail coming soon which we're really proud of specifically in downtown we've expanded the number of bike lockers which are available we've sponsored encouragement programs including open streets and bike to work day we've recently launched our bike share program which I'll cover in more detail in a sec and we've made sure to complete our sidewalk network to make getting to downtown by biking and walking as easy as possible and we'll continue on those investments uh specific in parking we have a shared parking model which allows us to have a 30 to 70 percent lower parking requirement in the downtown and more effectively utilize a lesser number of parking spaces for a greater parking demand we also use paid parking which is shown to have an effective transportation demand management strategy in encouraging people to use alternative modes and we have demand based meter rates which change an increase in parking rates the longer people stay to encourage turnover additionally we have zip cars located in downtown to encourage and enable car sharing we have the transit center pacific station in downtown we offer traveler information in partnership with the rtc through the cruise 511 program and we have the downtown trolley operating summer weekends and holidays specific to our mode split and how we're doing as you can see from this graph the city Santa Cruz is in purple and this compares us to the nation the state the county and then you can see ourselves our single occupant vehicle mode split as I mentioned is 20 below the national average which you all should feel very very proud about and that's a statistic that I like to repeat as often as possible as you can see from this our transit mode split is fairly high at 6.8 percent our walking mode split is seven and a half percent above the state of california but is you know 4x the state or 4x the nation and then our bike ridership is the second highest in the state of california at 9.5 percent and rising this is the direct result of our decades long investment in non-auto programs specific to this since 2011 we've been successful in gaining over 21 million dollars in outside grant funding to build continued improvements to our bike and pedestrian network and we'll be investing in those those are programmed between now and 2021 we're also continuing to seek outside grant funding specifically to construct the rail trail and to fund continued non-auto investments as well some of the recent changes and things we have upcoming wayfinding will be one of the programs we'll be rolling out specific as it relates to parking we'll be expanding the amount of parking wayfinding in downtown and making it more informative for users the goal of this will be to direct people quickly to where our parking facilities are to minimize the amount of circling and congestion within our downtown as you know we've also rolled out bike share to date as I mentioned in an earlier item we've had over 5200 rides yeah 5200 rides since may 10th a month ago averaging over six trips a day very very successful and we're looking forward to continuing to expand this program and continuing to increase those numbers in terms of future opportunities we want to continue to utilize our shared parking system so to expand on this because it's a rather technical term that we use a lot in in transportation shared parking is when you can utilize an existing supply of parking by a larger number of users than you could if they were to provide it individually everywhere outside of downtown each business or residence has to provide their own parking an example of this would be a restaurant that has to provide all of the parking that's required that's next door to an office that has to provide all of their own parking which is next door to a residence which has to provide all of their own parking this results in the graph on the left as you can see in a large number of parking spaces that are only utilized by single uses we have a higher quantity of parking required outside of downtown within the downtown parking district we utilize a shared parking model where the public supply of parking is provided by the city we utilize a shared parking model in a few ways we have businesses and residences and other uses downtown which operate for different purposes for different times of day and can utilize the much less quantity of parking to get an increased demand we have about a 30 to 70 percent lower parking requirement in the downtown than we do elsewhere in the city and it's utilized at a much higher rate one of the things that I want to make very clear this evening is that we are projecting to have a loss of parking supply over time to orient you to this map here the blue boxes that are on here are existing parking structures we have four of them and the orange are our existing surface public parking lots we looked at a 10-year and a 20-year planning horizon and we have projected out which of our existing surface parking lots we will be losing over that time period and I'll go through those quickly now lot two we've lost 30 spaces and that goes to the 1547 project that Bonnie had just mentioned so we're taking that offline and we're putting it in the bank on the right here a loss of 30 spaces they're not building any parking at all they're building parking as part of their project but this is a loss of existing shared parking in our public supply a net loss right a net loss of 30 spaces these spaces are they building as part of the project you know I don't have that off the top of my head you know Bonnie you know I don't know exactly but they're they're building you know for the residential for the new residential units they're creating so at least 79 at what it most likely at 79 I don't know if we gave them some concessions for the inclusionary units they're building so we'll have to get back to you with that exact number but they're not providing any public parking next I'll first start with lot 23 projecting loss of 24 spaces there that's a parking lot that we dedicated to an upcoming development so that will be coming off another important one is the Calvary church lot the red church lot there that's an existing lease that we have it was a two-year lease with a two-year option that lease will be done in October of 2019 and we're currently in the option period one of the elements of that option period is that if the Calvary church is to enter into a development agreement they could then exit our lease immediately so a projection that will lose 106 spaces from there yeah I was just going to make a comment I know we were kind of having questions but councilmember Matthews is going to leave after questions I'm going to have it go to the council beforehand council member crone so if we could hold questions until after public comment next we have lot 12 which is adjacent to metro now that's a lot that council has had a previous action to dedicate towards the future affordable housing project there that will be adjacent or with the metro project additionally lot 22 which we it was with the nyack and will be incorporated into a future development there so more spaces coming offline finally lot 27 is another lease that we have that we would be projecting that would come offline in 2025 this results in a net loss of 233 spaces by 2025 which represents approximately 10 percent of our overall parking supply that we have a key point to realize here in this visual is that our existing parking supply is by and large in the northern half of our downtown the southern portion of our downtown is vastly underserved by the shared parking supply two notes the potential library mixed use project which will be discussing in the future is on lot four there which could result in additional loss of parking and the potential farmers market lot which we're discussing this evening this afternoon right now in this item is on the existing lot seven there as with right now when the market operates on lot four on wednesday afternoons that's parking that's not available on wednesday afternoons similarly in operating on lot seven that's parking that would not be available on wednesday afternoons we do not include that in our net loss of parking looking at our future demand side so parking is a function of supply and demand and we just discussed supply looking at demand the purple shows where we're reasonably certain there will be future increases in mixed use housing projects which drive demand many of these will include parking as part of their projects but there's also the potential to link parking policy to being able to create additional units in downtown specifically with some of our affordable projects a key piece to notice here is that while the shared public supply is in the northern half of downtown the increase in demand will be in the southern half of downtown so as we talk about supply and demand and think about what is full as we go through our parking model for our garages and surface lots our off-strait facilities general uh academic and state of the practice accepts that 80 to 90 percent of capacity is your effective capacity what this does is allow for a cushion for people to be able to get to a parking facility and have a reasonable certainty that there will be a space available this minimizes the amount of circling and congestion in downtown and overall traffic in downtown it's estimated about 30 percent of congestion in downtown is from people driving and circling for parking the other thing that this does is allows for fluctuations for special events good examples that we have in Santa Cruz are the wednesday farmers market warriors home games first fridays or other events that cause a temporary increase in parking demand but are not functions that we would suggest that you build additional parking capacity for similarly on street effective parking capacity is considered to be 85 percent this allows for one to two spaces to be open per block face and really encourages those short trips to our retail establishments so we took the supply and demand that we just showed you the decrease in overall supply and the increase in parking demand that we will see and we utilized the 90 percent off street effective capacity rate to be as progressive as possible and the 85 percent on street occupancy rate to model out what a 10-year and a 20-year horizon would be the graph in front of you shows with no new parking supply so just a lot said i showed you that are coming offline and the increase in demand that we're reasonably foreseeing what our surplus or deficit ratio will be what this shows you is that in 2026 we are anticipating having a parking deficit of 657 spaces and in 2036 a deficit of 1210 spaces we also modeled this looking at the assumption of adding 600 spaces in supply this actually results in a net increase of 230 spaces because it accounts for the net loss that we had discussed earlier with those lots coming offline with this addition of 600 spaces we are projecting out we are projecting out in 10 years to see a parking deficit of just under 200 spaces and in 2036 to see a deficit of 745 spaces what both of these graphs inform us of is that we will with a new supply project or without we will have a parking crunch they both also inform us that we need to continue to invest in our transportation demand management programs to continue to move the needle on reducing our parking demand and increasing the amount of non-auto trips that come to downtown they also speak to in not adding new supply it really creates a limit on the amount of new development that you can target towards downtown and with that i'd like to take a few minutes to talk about some recent changes and future opportunities around community spaces so first up is Abbott Square i'm sure many of you have been there many times this has been an amazing project in our downtown it's a quasi public it's owned by the county but operated by the maw and it really has been a great example of downtown revitalization we need more of this this is looking towards the future of projects like these that will sustain our downtown so we're pretty excited by this project the success of this project and really grateful to the maw we also participate in a lot of the community programming performance art programming on this going forward another recent change is been our activated river walk and obviously this is a part of the parade related to past year's ebb and flow event which has become very popular with the arts arts council the coastal watershed council arts commission and the city council support and this just shows sort of how we're re embracing the river walk from the tannery to the boardwalk with renewed activities and we're going to see even more of that with two of the projects including some proposed changes in that are changes in the downtown plan amendments that really help to activate the river walk including some proposed development that we have that take those connections from downtown and connect them to through to the river walk which we'll see in some of our proposed development we're really going to have more activities and we're seeing some development now that really do embrace the river so we're pretty excited by that and then we have some other future opportunities and community spaces and just to touch on them very briefly I mean we have considerable amenities and resources in our downtown and so first just want to acknowledge that not every downtown has all these things we have a professional sports team anchoring the lower part of our downtown and arena we have our civic auditorium and while yes it's definitely need of some refurbishment it is a major draw for our community and if we can reinvest in that for the future it can really help be an anchor in our downtown we have our opportunity with the library you'll hear more about that next week and then finally we have the farmers market if we can invest in these now we'll be investing in the future sustainability of our downtown this is just a visionary slide as an artist rendering of what the downtown library could look like this is needs to be subject to community extensive community outreach this is just sort of a concept drawing at this point so I'm going to take the last few minutes just to talk about our future opportunity of the farmers market this is just to orient you this is what is our lot seven which is at Cathcart front and it's just south of the new leaf new seasons parking parking area so these are on a combination of city owned lots and council had directed us in years past to look at the site as a potential two things potential affordable housing site as well as a potential site to move the metro bus station center so we analyzed it from both perspectives and what we found out is it's actually not a good site that's suitable for any type of vertical development and you'll see that in a minute but part of the reason why is that it's wider at the northern end and it tapers down significantly when you get to Cathcart street and so any scenario where we were building anything above a single story we just we couldn't make it efficient and when it wasn't efficient the cost the cost was high and so building affordable housing if we were to include any parking on it the cost per space was about 15 to 20 thousand dollars higher per space than it would be on a more regularly larger shaped lot as well as vertical development just became inefficient for layout and the cost of construction as a result went up so we took this off the off the sort of drawing board as far as a site that had a lot of potential for vertical development but that's why we think it's ideally ideally suited for a permanent home for the farmers market so what you're seeing here again is just an artist rendering and we have a series of conceptual drawings this is about a 25 foot clear the idea is that you would be able to drive in the farmers market vendor trucks as well as have clear to some of the retail from the back so you can see the yoga studio through here we wanted to have that visibility both for the existing businesses as well as for the farmers market sizes key a couple of the elements that were important we have been talking with the farmers market since last summer a couple of the elements that were important for them was year-round seasonality and that is why you see a structure versus just moving as straight from the existing site to the new site as you'll see in the next few drawings there's different options and and ideas floating out there including one that would have the ability of a very sort of temporary roof structure instead of a permanent one like this so that during the summertime it could be open so you know very early on in sort of the concepts that we felt like it was important to actually have some visuals so that people could start to visualize what it could look like some other important elements to the farmers market we're having the amenities of public restrooms as well as some of the things that could be available to have those as permanent that they don't currently have at the existing site so this is and I'll just toggle toggle back and forth for a second so you can see so when it's not being used by the farmers market or potentially another public event it could still be used as parking so we feel like this is a really good use sort of the highest and best use for this site at this time here you see another version or style of what the farmers market could look like this one's oriented a little bit more towards Front Street and the proposed future development and here again is seeing it during the market and then when it's being used as a parking lot and I will point your attention to the front facing Cathcart you'll see that we created a plaza area towards the front of that we did that intentionally because in the downtown plan they envisioned having that Cathcart connection which currently terminates on Front Street to be continued through to the riverwalk and so we thought it would be really good to have a plaza area and as it so happens with one of the proposed developments that we're reviewing today at the city it connects really nicely to a great public plaza and I'll show you a view of that and in a second and here it is so here again is a third version of what the farmers market could look like and this one's not particularly detailed but you see that connection across Cathcart and across the crosswalk into a public plaza area that's actually wider than Abbott Square goes up a grand staircase and then connects into the riverwalk so the potential there is pretty exciting for some of the synergies that could be between the farmers market and our riverwalk not to show you too much detail here but here's just a comparison between the two sites so you can see the site on the left is the proposed new site and it is it is narrower than the existing site but we were able to efficiently lay out all of the stalls we have a couple different configurations that we've been talking about with the farmers market it is a smaller area so one of the things we're looking into and this is is kind of where we're at this point coming to you now is looking at if we were able to expand into part of the lot that is not owned by the city and that's the new season's new leaf parking lot we could actually accommodate the full market plus room for growth in the future which is really important to the farmers market board understandably additionally at the city we could also consider other things of temporary street closures if we wanted to expand any further or for special events but that's an element that's really important to the farmers market and important to us as well so this one shows sort of an aerial view as you can see it has solar on it again and in numerous conversations with the farmers market they really also want to pursue a canvas like or a temporary type roof structure that potentially could be rolled back or open air during the summer so as I said these are very preliminary just for the purposes of of moving the discussion on so that's where we are today we definitely are at the point where we feel like we need some council direction to move forward we'd like to explore the parking lot and seeing if we could come into an arrangement with new seasons new leaf and the owners of that lot so that we could circle back with the farmers market and see if we could reach an agreement with them to move forward with further exploring the site for a permanent home so that's where we are today initial analysis is promising but more work is really needed before we can fully address all of their long-term needs and so that's where we are today and leads us to our recommendation which is to pursue an agreement with the Santa Cruz community farmers market for development of a permanent downtown farmers market on our parking lot seven so just to recap we've talked about a lot today and our brief presentation and again it's really all these elements together community spaces parking housing transportation we didn't touch on a lot of the individual things that are under each of those categories but our hope is that over the next few weeks we will touch on all of those and give you a bigger picture of recent changes future opportunities how they all work together for long-term downtown sustainability so with that said next week's study session is going to focus on a presentation from the downtown library advisory committee and all the work that they did that led to the recommendations that they made in December of 2017 and so they'll focus on that next week as well as a presentation on a sort of parking fee structure proposed sort of parking strategy for your consideration and community feedback thank you okay at this point council member matthews is going to leave and then we're going to go what we actually you wanted to stay for the comments right from the public you're going to hear the public comment okay okay bye bye all right we're going to um well actually let's do this um since she's leaving now are there any questions that council member have before we hear from public comment yeah i just want to um go ahead do you have a question council member chase okay so um i'm i'm glad that you're coordinating well with the farmers market and you've been working with them have you also been connecting with the adjacent businesses around the proposed site and heard from them what their concerns or ideas are we've had some preliminary conversations we have had some conversations obviously with the owners very preliminary with the owners of the new leaf new seasons lot and with the lease holder and they've had some conversations directly with new leaf new seasons about that we've had some and that's also part of why we're looking at the 25 foot clear as well and so that you can have that continued visibility and we also believe and i didn't mention this but we in some of our early discussions that there's a lot of synergy between the farmers market and new seasons and often you go to the farmers market and you get all your fresh fruits and vegetables and then you go into your grocery store and get your other other items that go with that so we think there's going to be it's a really exciting combination that's very supportive we also think with the parking structure the soquel garage that we have right there that there are opportunities for parking so even though we're displacing that parking during during the farmers market that they'll be parking in the structure both for the new leaf new seasons as well as the patrons of the farmers market and i think you mentioned it but i might have i might have missed it that the intention is also that it would be a real gathering space not just for the farmers market but we have dance week downtown we have other things that are kind of regular performance opportunities and gathering and cultural festivals and things this is also intended to be a space that could support that as well absolutely and i think that's one of the exciting elements about it is creating a new community space having the ability to have that four seasons seasonality and being able to have cover if needed during the winter events having the ability to be open air and as far as the other surrounding businesses there is a developer to developers that have submitted some preliminary plans one is in pre-app review at the city right now for a majority of the property that's on the other side of the street and they're pretty excited about this and that connection and that is the proposed river riverfront project that with that connection with the farmers market and how that connects to their proposed public plaza and the riverwalk yeah um i want to go back well first the 1547 pacific could you put that slide up you said there was 14 inclusionaries i believe it's 12 yeah and um what i was under the impression that these are market rate rentals for the next 10 years after their build is that correct yeah if it um i believe that is a math project this that probably is is the arrangement um similar to if we toggle whoops to thank you 555 um and we can give you the exact breakdown of this tonight since we are having a very specific housing focus study session tonight and i know that we were going to briefly touch on a couple of these projects so we can we can recap some of this information um for your questions fully talking about your questions but on 555 um in addition for the 14 inclusionary units we have seven which are section eight units right now and then a 2.2 million inclusionary fee on top of that and then on top of that we also have a 500 000 parking fee to the city um that's a lot um on this project um and this is 15 percent so on both projects we do have 15 percent on those projects um an important thing to mention and i need to confirm that it is a map project but under our current um under our current inclusionary if it's mapped um we're not able to enforce uh the 15 percent so we've negotiated um to include that um downtown um and um this is something i think there's a it is mapped it is mapped so this is something that we're proposing as one of the recommendations tonight that will come back um in the fall um which is to address that so that all the projects that are mapped during the rental period will also be subject to inclusionary so we were able to negotiate for that for this project but that we don't actually have an ordinance on the books that enforces that right now and i just wanted to point this out as some of the tension around this issue is you say inclusionary but that's not for 10 years right i have to look at the exact agreement on it's 15 on 555 i need to look at what the actual time period is for 1547 building housing but we're not um building it for folks who live here now who can't pay these exorbitant rents and we heard from the developers of this building that the rents are going to be you know in excess of three thousand dollars 3800 up to 3800 for a two bedroom unit i think lee butler is going to provide clarity thank you mayor and council members lee butler i'm the planning director and uh there is no specific time frame that uh is uh placed on the 1547 pacific in terms of the time frame in which they need to rent it once one unit is sold then they need to provide those inclusionary units so all of the inclusionary units would need to be provided concurrent with any unit being sold what you're referring to is the 10-year time frame is a distinct possibility there is the construction defects time frame of 10 years and so that is something that developers take into consideration when they are choosing the point in time in which they want to sell the units there's a liability period of 10 years for construction defects so that's okay a potential but it isn't linked they could rent it for shorter or longer or 20 years and i just want to make clear that this there's no affordable housing here um and the seven units at the other is um through the housing authority which i'm happy that there's seven units but the fears when we go through this process is that there's not going to be much affordable many affordable units at the end of the day and i just want to put that out there for building you know hundreds of units i know we have one building that's going to be you know affordable um how many parking spaces will it be at the farmers market when the farmers market isn't there at the new farmers market i think we had um i'd have to defer to the parking and maybe claire knows the number off the top of our head for the existing number of spaces but i believe the net number of spaces we're losing is not more than six or seven um so it's pretty minimal and um what's the tension between or is there tension between the canvas roof versus the roof with solar can you clarify what you mean by tension uh well you said that some of the farmers market folks want a canvas roof and the the the beautiful picture we saw was a permanent roof which makes some sort of sense in the rain but solar is quite a uh a great thing i think a lot of people would be supporting yeah i i think it's just an area of discussion i mean i think we defaulted to putting solar on it because i think it meets our climate adaptation principles but i think we're open for discussion and i think um that's just something we can talk about in the future yeah and i saw a member of the farmers market board shaking his head he'll be here to speak perhaps but i mean i said i think there is support for the solar and covered parking so i i don't think that's an issue my last issue was just about the history of the river because we i don't know when when you said we stopped turning our back on the river but the river was worked on by bruce van allen and a whole river task force and a river commission and that started in like the nineties and right up until 2003 when we have the river plan so i mean the river has been something that folks have turned around for at least 20 years that not not turning our backs on it but you know wanting it to be part of our daily life in sanacris thank you chris council member crown so i think one of the things right now is we have had our council questions and we'll go to the public but before we do get public comment regarding this item item 20 generally our opportunity for public comment for items not on the agenda is at 530 and i just want to get a show of hands of who's here for public comment for items not on the agenda one two six i'll just ask the council do you want to do you want to take a pause on this and do the public comment we say 530 and no no i mean for continuity's sake it'd be kind of nice but i understand that people did arrive here for at 530 expecting to speak but it would be nice to not have this kind of weird truncated break okay so i'm going to ask then those that are here for public comment we'll just we're going to finish the item 20 and then we'll turn it over to for the public comment on items not on the agenda so um uh mr longinati you you uh contacted in advance for your group to to um uh have four minutes i would make a motion that we have public comment at the time we said we're going to have it on our on our you know and i know people are here for an item and that's part of the process that we've um okay i was playing with up here that it's 530 but you know it's not it's a thought of a time sort of a time certain but not a time certain so it's really one second um so i mean that's why i was putting out to see what the will of the council was there's a motion on the floor to immediately go right now to um public comment is there a second i i saw some people shaking their head that it was okay to continue and there wasn't an issue so i i'll just think right now thank you chris for pointing that out and uh we'll right now continue with this item um so this is item 20 and uh rick you have the floor for four minutes yeah actually lauren uh okay i'll advance the slides yes um good afternoon my name is lauren mcgloughlin and i'm a business owner in downtown santa cruz um my my uh business is salon on the square which is right up against um abbot square so i've been lucky to experience some of this new community space in town but i'm here because um a number of business owners have been gathering and we've been lucky enough to speak to a few of you um because i think uh we kind of felt like we weren't sure after voting in the funding for the library that all of a sudden it was going to be a part of a four-story parking lot and so people started gathering downtown with the concern around that and i think also people looking at open space open space that is welcoming to all and has an organic sense to it so it's not maybe always as organized with something that i think people were looking at you know what type of open space what type of downtown engagement are we talking about and so many of the business owners had different viewpoints so um i was asked to come here and just read the slides and be able to represent and have a little slice of what it's like to be a business owner downtown and what people are looking forward to um in this consideration so um from pure pleasure we have someone saying please don't take away our last downtown space for community events like the farmers market antique fair pride and replace it with another mega parking structure from bird elves we have um i think we need to be smarter about managing our current parking situation before we make a large financial commitment towards a new garage um with plazolane optometry we have when i think about santa cruz building a very large new parking structure it flies in the face of what we know about climate change it seems to be the um seems the obvious solution is to reduce the demand for employee parking downtown um go ask alice um is stating that with the savings from not building a garage let's do something about our homeless problem the homeless problem affects my business more than parking availability um from um meta vinyl it says i want to see a vibrant downtown with more pedestrian cyclists and transportation options not more cars more traffic and more emissions um from thrifty cuts barbershop we have building a new garage would be a big financial risk for downtown businesses if we hit a recession the debt on the garage would still need to be paid before taking that risk we need to pursue lower cost alternatives and i'm just going to say that was a big point was has the cost of putting in this garage really been examined against what what could happen in the future um i think also in addition to that just the feeling of a library being a gathering place and sort of a um this space that doesn't have a garage on top i mean i saw the picture of what you just showed and it didn't look like there was a garage on top of that so i think people are kind of waiting to see what does it look like and how does it feel like an inviting place for people to gather um then with gabriel cafe which says after 25 years downtown i've heard very few complaints about parking santa cruise needs more homeless services once again affordable apartments and event space and more events i'm not happy about moving our popular farmers market to an inferior location um from us the salon rare bird salon um which is right across from the um farmers market now we need to restructure the parking permit program so that permit holders pay by the day rather than buy the month when the employees pay by the month you create an incentive for them to drive every day from spokesman uh bicycles um we're at technological crossroads lift and uber um transportation concepts here and on the near horizon it doesn't make sense to choose a new garage from the acupuncture clinic um our focus should be lowering negative environmental impact since we have the green technology to create that type of city i'm going to go on because we're about out loop aloe the approach garage appears to us a dated and short-sighted concept and will not only create more congestion but also fragment and diminish the character of our downtown so i'll leave it at that thank you that actually thanks rick for advancing the slide but your time is up and i appreciate i appreciate it um so um those that are here to speak for item 20 now is your time so if you'd line up on this side and if you want to speak to this item um you can come up and you have two minutes the biggest problem these days is dirt is too expensive and what we need to do is utilize the space that people can use i would love to see us allow people allow constructions of uh say a 20-story building and the first three or four stories could be all parking you know then we'd have a lot more space for for uh commercial for residents and simply put the there is so much demand for housing in this town that it has caused rents to go sky high and not only are the rents sky high but even if you have the money it is very very difficult to find housing in this town or a business location and so on and i think the biggest problem i see is that too much of the land in this city in this county is one story you know i if i think in residential areas people should be able to build up to about four or five stories on a private house but i think what we should do for commercial areas let it go as high as like 20 i mean even then it's not a major uh skyscraper at that point but it's going in that direction and i think for us to be able to keep things together where we have enough places for people to live we have enough places for people to work we need to build bigger and taller and even in one of the uh the uh forums that we had for city council i remember i said that we need to be build bigger and taller and a bunch of the crowd uh give a gasp to it but you know are we going to stay this tiny little expensive nothing town forever or are we going to build up thank you next speaker please good evening council members remaining council members i am chip i'm the executive director of the downtown association we are our special board meeting this morning got a presentation of a lot of these related elements and we're very excited to continue the conversation i think there's a lot of very exciting projects here a lot of potential and and a lot of details to be worked out so we're very excited to continue the conversation about all of these and the the one direction we were able to come to fortunately today was that we do i'm keeping on on the agenda item you're talking about we would like to extend our support as a board of the downtown association sent to me as to extend their support for the farmers market and the proposal to consider moving to the front street location uh those of us who uh spend a lot of down time time downtown and um work in the public private realm understand the difficulties and challenges of managing public space and the farmers market has done an exemplary job of doing that over the years they're a wonderful partner for downtown a great number of many of many fabulous businesses downtown and we want to support them to stay downtown in creating a good uh and vibrant event space for not only the farmers market but for the community to use the downtown association produces a number of events and finding an appropriate location is always a struggle so looking for infrastructure investments that accommodate the antique fair the farmers market and other events for the community is really important so on behalf of the board of the downtown association i did send an email uh i don't know if you got it yet it was kind of late incoming because we just discussed this this today but we do want to support this proposal uh related to the farmers market thank you very much thank you next speaker please good evening my name is bob morgan i'm going to speak to parking alternate as i prepared some remarks on october 15th 2015 the planning commission and downtown commission inviting consultants nelson nygard to on a presentation of parking alternatives i highly recommend viewing this archived video among many strategies that they proposed in a holistic analysis of a system of parking alternatives in santa cruz was a utilization of shared remote parking sometimes called satellite parking opportunities within 1000 feet of pacific avenue there are hundreds of unused parking resources available at various times of day weekends and during various seasons these include holy cross santa cruz high mission hill the city council parking lot the civic lot and the county office all empty after five p.m and all day on weekends and in the holy cross and civic center case on weekdays and of course from september through may 5000 spaces one half mile away just about from where you're sitting we have 5000 unused parking spaces available nelson nygard recommended incentivizing satellite parking providing discounts restructuring downtown parking rates to reflect what they call core parking zone the most desirable spaces pay a premium peripheral peripheral and remote zones pay less wi-fi downtown congestion park at a remote lot connect the downtown and the remote lots with jump bikes provide lift discount vouchers even this downtown shuttle makes around some people walk some people use permanent bike lockers at the sites savvy entrepreneurs set up an app and advertise quick cheap lift to downtown soon and not very far away autonomous driving shuttles route through the various satellite lots let's all think creatively first and use the many resources we now have in place instead of leaving them empty while we build something new and expensive of this magnet magnitude which i think will be a very contentious issue for the city thank you sir thank you next speaker please good evening my name is judy grunstra and um the uh i have this uh picture of the downtown plan uh which shows the cedar street village corridor which um is characterized as a mixture uh sort of maintaining a village quality uh you know pacific af and um front street the heights are going to increase but uh along cedar street the plan is not to have tall buildings so to have a garage there just goes against this village corridor issue that was planned um and a question about the farmers market in this sentinel article of november mr mr burnall says that the um cost of this farmers market um could infrastructure could be five to six million dollars now in the staff report uh one point three million dollars is mentioned that that's kind of covered so where's this other money gonna come from for this revamped and improved farmers market not that i'm against it but where's the money gonna come from and so and you spoke about the space um it's gonna be a farmers market on wednesday it's gonna be a parking lot other times and yet we've heard a mention of it possibly being used for some other events so when would that lot be vacated for these other events so these are you know questions of this you know um everything you know sounds great in the you know vision but is it really feasible uh lastly um yeah nobody spoke in here about the importance of a cohesive civic center that's being left out of the whole downtown discussion you know um we have a civic auditorium of a library there we have city hall offices um no mention is made of what's gonna happen if the library is moved so that's a big gaping hole there so that i hope we'll to talk about that more next week and one more thing thank you nope that's it okay thank you okay so we have i was only a member of the public that like to speak to item 20 other than those that are lined up to the left anyone sitting down here okay so just want to comment okay ma'am next speaker hi my name is debbie bolter i'm a big fan of the farmers market i go every week um i think uh is interesting looking at your graphs for uh parking needs for 2036 um we might need uh boat tie-ups rather than parking spaces in 2036 um nobody's talked about the magnificent 100-year-old magnolias that are at the present site of the farmers market and um i'm very concerned about that and i'd like to see that as part of the discussion if we put a garage in that lot they will all be cut down um if we do something else with a lot maybe housing maybe we could design around them uh or if we keep the farmers market there we can keep them and one of the benefits that they offer when i go to the farmers market is the shade and um i don't want something rolled back in the summer quite frankly i'm quite hot when i go down there often and i like to sit and enjoy a snack um in the shade so if we do put up solar panels or a cover wherever it is i think it should be something that's there in the summer not drawn back in the summer um so please think about the trees at that site and um they will also help uh continue to be carbon sinks so we don't have to take boats in the future to downtown thank you debbie okay next speaker please thank you very much for that extensive presentation my name is alise casby i'm an environmentalist i am have a specialty in environmental design i've been an activist for the last 22 years in grassroots movement and i would just like to say that this is a bogus bogus plan um first of all i want to start with the fact that we are facing catastrophic climate destabilization the people who are pushing this design are reactionary people they are developers they are bankers notice the alliances here downtown uh the downtown association is not a very forward or progressive organization that understands environmental design um i just want to start with a couple things please can i please be heard i'd like the mayor to be listening to me please i'd like to say that 555 pacific avenue is a huge wall there are no alleys that were left open there are no publics can i please have more time i want you to hear me please i would like to start again i'm here to talk to you david 30 minutes thank you i apologize i had to take care of something okay and i had to move back in line because you needed to take a break before so can i can you add 30 seconds okay okay to use 555 as an example it it's painted in nice colors there are no affordable housing units for people who are making the kind of wages in retail that we have here the emphasis of our transportation uh presentation um that's bogus too um it's focused on comparing us to national standards the united states is in an enormous reactionary modality it has been for the last 30 years college is like the one i went to that we're really teaching people about true environmental design with great incredible really big innovation we're shut down by oil interests these interests are still dominating our local government state government and federal government these same plans remind me of what i saw in san diego they are not affordable they are developer friendly they are apparatchik just like the new bike share that is dependent on you have to have a smartphone you better have some money it's a corporate thing i'm saying there are simpler solutions that can really serve us much better that can really help people who are old who are disabled people who are working at the jobs we actually have if you look at the one statistic in our transportation plan i'm having talked very fast um the bus metro is barely mentioned it's the weakest component it should have been the strongest component measure deal was pushed through by big money interests we didn't get millions of dollars into our bus system instead that's going into highway widening which is shown is only going to the benefits are only going to last a couple years please understand that although this may appear to be a good plan it actually is not a good plan in any way whatsoever at all we need to rethink a lot of this thank you very much thank you alise okay next speaker please um my name is judy gear and um i was just thinking that 20 or 40 years from now what's what's our situation going to be like we're building heavily right next to the river which i assume in 20 or 40 years is going to be a lot higher than it is now so we're building in a flood plain and it doesn't sound sensible to me and i understand that cars will not be as prevalent as they are now so we should be building towards mass transit and not towards cars so parking lots and building parking lots next to the river just doesn't seem like long-term thinking to me that's it thank you first of all before you step up we just talked and i apologize to alise because i was trying to clarify something for mr longinati um he was granted um four minutes his group was granted four minutes per his request to speak um on this item and i just like to speak to the city attorney on this when you speak on behalf of it as a group um my understanding that that was you were speaking on behalf of yourself and the group you're covering that matter it's not you doubling down on the time for the comment that would be um the discretion of the mayor and and i think it's reasonable to conclude that if you've taken four minutes uh as to provide a presentation on behalf of the group that that's your opportunity to address any individual concerns as well i forwarded the the email that you sent to me because you've requested four minutes today and you've also for this item and you've requested four minutes tonight for the um for the downtown housing blueprint and you've also requested another four minutes from the um for the meeting on the 19th so i guess you know i granted that additional time with the understanding that you were speaking for it and that's and i'll have your email if you almost send it back to you or yeah display it our group has a number of members and because i speak i don't think that should preclude others well i would say this you're the one that made the request i granted it based on your request on behalf of the group you're going to be speaking tonight as well so i i just asked that you defer and and hold those comments to this evening so you can speak further i mean we i did hear the comments and i respectfully asked based on kind of the email that you sent and if you go back and read it you'll kind of understand the interpretation that i have on this so you could wait i appreciate that thank you next speaker please yeah no problem pat kittles is either 20 sir we're not at public comment right now are you understand that 20 thank you you don't need to remind me just wanted to do that just in case that's all right so i um regardless of whether people want to think we should start a war with i ran or not the subject i want to address is the same one that you're addressing and that is endless growth where you can put a pretty uh prefix on growth you can call it controlled managed smart sustainable which is the most ridiculous one of all um growth has to stop in a finite place you guys can't bring yourself to deal with that and the fact that you've got a sanctuary city policy for over seven billion people in the world to move here which is in effect what you're doing because there are 7600 million people in the world rounding it off to the nearest hundred million you got it 7600 million people out there rounding off to the nearest hundred million 300 of them are in the states you're inviting the other 7300 million people to move here when you've got a sanctuary city policy you guys don't want to hear that but you can't refute it you can't refute it and i reserve most of my frustration for my fellow environmentalists who are afraid to bring this up they'll preach and preach and preach about carbon footprints and reducing them and yet here they are not saying a peep or else actively advocating inviting 7300 million people to the most notorious carbon emitter on the planet you people really need to be honest about that endless growth in a finite place is he insane next speaker please um hi um i just want to say my name's kendra um i'm really grateful for the presentation that you guys gave today and all the work that you put forward into that presentation because i have a much clearer understanding of where our downtown is going and i'm really excited about it i think that there's so much possibility for downtown and i think that's where we should be doing it in terms of housing and creating a vibrant center and to get to the point of number 20 i'm in support of the farmers market moving to a permanent location where they can feel like they can grow and create an awesome community hub for our people here and visitors at a place where our farmers feel like they can sell their amazing produce and fruits um and ultimately if they i'm a community member i am a part of the farmers market with the penny and i think if the board um decides that that's the right decision for them in the direction they want to go then we should support them on that um our farmers and our farmers markets are important to santa cruz um so i'm in support of it i hope you guys will be too thanks kendra um before we get to the next speakers are any other member of the public that would like to speak to this item other than the four people that are standing to my left and mr norris who seated okay begin thanks hi everyone my name is tom i'm a local grower in watsonville owner of live earth farm also sit on the board of um farmers market board and i really commend the idea of having a permanent structure um i i we've been going to that market for 20 years um and it just seems like it takes um the whole local food scene and bringing farmers together and connecting with the community to a whole another level to give them the opportunity to be there for year around um and and a protected structure the one thing that um we feel as i think small medium scale farmers is that um our market is so important when we go to um downtown santa cruz at a west side i think it's really important that we have that structure so i'm really um glad to see the proposals and we can probably work things out as far as the expansions or other things um i'm also uh president of um santa cruz county farm bureau and i think um speaking on behalf of agriculture in this county i think it's just given it is the the number one economic engine in the county i think it's um just speaks to that as well i think supporting something like this um would be a tremendous asset for local farming and agriculture so thank you very much thank you thank you for your comments next speaker please keith and um mckenry like the library and um um i one thing that would disappointed me in the process of getting towards talking about this library change was that most people spoke out against it at the library you know meetings and so on and so it's uh it seemed i got this sense that it was just kind of pushed through because two people might who were developers would say that's the greatest thing since slice bread and 20 other people say they didn't think this was a wise idea they wanted to didn't need more parking they didn't you know maybe affordable housing we have millions and millions of dollars for the business community and i know there's this theory that if you give a lot of money to the rich it'll trickle down we heard that in 1980 and so you look at the little pictures that we've been watching and everything of building after building being demolished a new taller buildings being made and there's going to be like maybe 15 uh allegedly affordable housing units and maybe some time in 50 years from now there'll be like 100 person units someplace where low income housing people will be and that you find out low income low income person is a person that makes 130 thousand dollars a year that's not or you know it takes like over 35 an hour wage to pay for even the minimum housing in this town and so we're just making lots and lots of developers who are really wealthy and people that can contribute to campaign so that we just have pro developer city councils and city governments and pro developer commissions that ignore the interests of the people so i'm all for like a i've been to permanent least built beautiful farmers markets all over the world so i'm totally in support of that i've been all over eastern europe where they have them all over they're all over the world they're wonderful so i'm all for that but i didn't hear like a lot of um um you know that that was not the conversation that was had at the library meetings it was all about let's get rid of these trees let's pay build a parking garage with a library to breathe dirty air and thank you very much thank you next speaker please marley i'm a former city planner for 20 years in california i uh want to congratulate the staff for putting on a fine presentation bold accentuating the land use relationships and housing and transportation excellent presentation my concern is though from an architectural standpoint the existing 100 thousand square foot publicly owned land where the current farmers market is currently located uh think about this when you when you're constructing at a parking unit structure with a combined with a library it's a it's a terrible design concept i don't think you're looking at this clearly i think we ought to air this out perhaps in the next meeting but uh the mr morgan uh the previous speaker spoke about satellite parking uh outside the cities for people to come in victor grew in one of the earliest city planners from the 60s uh accentuated planning emphasized the need for downtown open space and community areas so this area could be combined uh into uh some housing some open space some other better designs and what you have currently on uh you know displayed on your architectural renderings i also was under the impression but d lack that we were only spending 23 million dollars on restoring the existing library i think that's an excellent building there should not be vacated for a more city room and more facilities for the city should be uh actually renovated should be a it's a perfectly great building to remove existing asbestos and structural requirements and still stay under the 23 million dollar uh budget thank you sir thank you next speaker please okay mr norse you're up and is there any member of the public that wishes to speak to item 20 any member of the public ma'am are you getting up to speak to this item no okay you're the last speaker okay members of the community and members of the city council it sounds like there is a some serious disagreements on whether this project should go forward based to some extent on the fact that at least at the few meetings that have been held there has been little attention paid to at least parts of the public who appeared here today the question is is there a need for urgent rush on this project uh i mean library is an important resource for everybody here particularly for poor people and particularly for people actually outside who often have no other place to go during the day in spite of the best efforts of mayor charasas when he was on the board further restricting homeless access to the library for which i regret and then extending that to the parks and rec and the entire city using stay away orders which i continue to feel or unconstitutional and a vicious attack on the right of public assembly for all of us but the library is an important an important institution it's it's one that really it's i think it has a place that's close in the hearts of a lot of santa cruzans rich and poor and to dump it at the bottom of the basement of a parking structure here is a serious move and i think you have to consider the entire community's input on this and you have the opportunity to do that take some time to consider it before you proceed thank you thank you mr. Norse okay that closes out the public comment portion of this item we're going to bring it back to the council for deliberation and action any uh further discussion okay is anyone um interested in making a motion i have a couple questions okay go ahead um the uh one person brought up uh went from five to you're quoted in the paper five to six is that true and why is it 1.3 now is the library was going to cost five to six million for the to move the farmers market you mean the the the estimate for the farmers market yeah no the i think the uh the estimate is in that range i think what we have budgeted uh to begin the process is the is the smaller figure so the remainder would have to be obtained through grants or fundraising or other mechanisms also the cost of so it was based on you know the permanent with solar and all the bells and whistles so i think we have a variety of options that we can pursue with cost including new bathrooms right and um the hundred year magnolias that came up uh is it planned to work around those or are those um not work around the ball um you know we haven't i think it just depends on what the design would be and in which trees we're talking about i don't i don't we don't have a specific uh uh layout uh that's final at this point but if there was a construction to occur there would be some removal of trees so that there there are there that is unavoidable to some extent but some could be safe probably i had a question for tom from live earth since he's like an expert on on stuff tom could you is there any kind of consensus around the canvas roof versus the permanent roof you mentioned permanent i thought uh structure and you were happy for that and that's so am i um and i agree with mr mccanary too that uh the eastern european farmers markets and a lot of places have these really beautiful um places can i comment you can answer the question executive but just to answer the question please nationwide executive director santa cruz farmers market so as far as the roof structure that was that there's just a discussion point so permanent roof non-permanent roof that nothing has been decided on just everything was being thrown out on the table to look at options what would be the best use and in fact the preliminary design that you saw was exactly that it was just a preliminary design my intent was to have something that was more visual so that people could kind of rest their eyes and their mind on something without like letting it wander because they kind of gave people some parameters and then the discussion point could start happening but nothing has been decided everything is in the preliminary stage thanks thanks for coming up okay okay vice mayor walkins i'm prepared to move the recommendation to direct staff to pursue an agreement with the santa cruz community farmers market for the development of a permanent downtown farmers market on city-owned property facing calf carton front streets a second that so that's a motion by vice mayor walkins and i'll second that and i just like to thank you for the presentation one question i have because i know this is directly related to the action for the farmers market but if in the future we can get some more information on who are the actual kind of who are the parking lot customers who are the people that have our permits how many of them are residents downtown that use a spot if we know how many are employees i mean to be better i'd like to have some more information about the mix of the uses how many are people that are like one our day use so we know where they're coming from because that kind of helps to better understand who we're actually serving we can provide that information we can present that information to you next week as part of the rates discussion thank you okay so is there any further yeah i just want to clarify how contingent is the move of the farmers market to this site and the utilization of the space at cedar um with the proposed parking structure i mean is is this a quid pro quo if this if that doesn't happen then this won't happen or this is totally independent of that and this is going to move forward it's independent we think it's the right direction for permanence for the farmers market okay thanks that thanks okay great so then we have a motion on the floor vice mayor walkins and second by myself all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that motion passes unanimously with council member matthews and council member brown absent or council member matthews absent due to the conflict council member brown absent okay thank you okay so we have basically our public comment period now this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to any item not on today's agenda can i get a show of hands who's here to speak on the public comment portion okay um give me account one two good two raise your hand i want two three six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen fourteen i'm gonna um there's no objection i'm gonna say one and a half minutes on this so we can have you speak okay yeah i understand we're trying to go through if you if uh it's yeah we've got a big agenda i apologize um but if you for the record uh i object that i you know two minutes is two minutes we've we've done this to ourselves so um for the record i object that one and a half minutes is not enough thank you council member crown i appreciate that so next speaker please public comment my name is mark jansen i'm a property owner here in in san jacuzzi and also the uh trustee of the jansen family trust established by my late mother and father which is the owner of a nine-unit department building uh maple in uh washington which we have had for 44 years and this is a um uh property that my father always believed in having below market rents taking good care of the property so that we maintain quality tenants and minimize turnover and uh we have carried on that tradition uh in his absence i'm here to point out that the emergency two percent rent control ordinance imposed by the city council is extremely unfair to landlords like myself uh and i've got information in writing about the increase in property taxes the increase in insurance costs which far exceed uh the allowed two percent in fact the property taxes alone by the san jacuzzi county have gone up 6.99 percent since the base year of 2013 and you're expecting landlords to absorb the property tax including assessments that pay for schools and benefits for tenants without being able to pass that on to the tenant so that's number one point is the absurdity of the two percent control i'm also here to uh to oppose the petition for rent control and just cause for eviction because of the uh the fact that what it does is it makes a more difficult and expensive for owners to manage their properties in good faith the way that we have with our nine units it's a time uh we have a we have a ten we have 30 seconds please we have a tenant for 26 years who's now paying 1350 for a beautiful apartment and with with the if this thing passes uh selling converting or uh exchanging this property makes a lot of sense in which case this 26 year tenant is going to have a disastrous outcome along with the other tenants on our property thank you thank you sir and also tonight we have a 7 p.m session regarding housing recommendations so you could come back as well okay ma'am thank you sir next speaker everybody take a deep breath i'm nancy macy i live in boulder creek i'm speaking here as chair of the valley women's club environmental committee for the san lorenzo valley over two years ago we came deeply involved in the effort to prevent pg&e from removing trees and shrubs from a long pressurized natural gas pipelines intuitively we knew it was at minimum overkill it was an attempt on pg&e's part to try to appear proactive after the horrific disaster and criminal negligence of san bruno as we spent dozens then hundreds of hours researching the situation we came to understand and confirm that pg&e's project was ill-conceived unnecessary environmental destructive and illegal we demonstrated this to the county the board of supervisors unanimously voted to prevent the removal from happening when pg&e began to undertake removals in the city the folks up off upper ocean street faced the loss of enormous trees along graham hill road and in the cemetery we offered them help this included the county's letter to pg&e which i offered to you again but nothing was done to stop the cutting ksbw covered all the cars blockading the tree removal by those upper upper uh ocean street neighbors the city did not react ocean street neighbors enlisted a lawyer to write to you delineating the problems with this so-called safety project nothing was done to stop it those trees are gone the santa cruz group of the ventana chapter of the sierra club had joined the county effort and has since brought an appeal to the city planning commission to be heard later this month before more trees are removed i'm here to ask you to follow the lead of the county and to stop pg&e from removing the trees and one of the big points that you need to know is that removing the trees will make the pipes less safe not more safe thank you ma'am next speaker please good afternoon my name is kevin colons i live in the rural areas of the county as well i'm on here to speak on the same topic in support of the people on the ocean street extension and in other parts of the county of the and city who are going to be impacted by this pg&e action uh as uh nancy pointed out we extensively researched the engineering issues and the legal issues related to the authority of a city in a county to act in this case numerous cities on the peninsula polo alto manlo park uh i can't even remember all of them there are about eight they all protested and they stopped the cutting of heritage trees in front of people's houses and they required a much more thorough explanation from pacific gas and electric is why they were doing it pg&e has no legitimate uh explanation for it they claim that the trees are in their way when you think of a pipeline it's miles long an individual spec spot that they might take a little bit of time to remove the tree to get to a break is irrelevant what really counts is their ability to depressurize that line shut it off and then get to it to repair it so this is a bogus issue i have no idea why pg&e is pressing it so hard or why they're so insistent about it i think it's just because it's a large bureaucracy that controls two-thirds of the state of california and it's used to bullying people i've been confronting them for years over their power line cutting successfully but it takes me an immense amount of personal time to do it i would hope that the city council would stand up for its own residents and protecting what they value about the places they live in thank you thank you next speaker please good evening my name is mary joe walker and i'm here also to talk about the pg&e tree removal i do not live in the city i live in the unincorporated county up near felton i actually am lucky i have the privilege of living next to your lachloman reservoir property but this city is my community too i worked for many years across the river as your elected county auditor controller i carry very much about the environment of the city and including our trees i know that the city council has addressed pg&e tree removal on a public property a few years ago but you really haven't done much to address the removal on private property but you can and you should and other cities and counties have done that you heard from nanti macy what the county of santa cruz has done palo alto required pg&e to allow public review of any tree that's being removed to assess the environmental impact walnut creek pressured pg&e to reevaluate tree to reevaluate all the trees that they wanted to remove near the pipeline and provide data to justify why that tree needed to be removed there's other examples as well pg&e does have alternatives to blitzing trees near the pipelines this is the cheapest method but there are better methods such as inspecting the lines using video technology or pinpointing individual trees if pg&e had its ways it would remove every tree over a pipeline every tree under a wire and every tree near a pole um you don't need to let this monopoly monopoly um dictate what your city looks like what our county looks like and they actually this is a statewide problem thank you very much for your time thank you next speaker please next speaker i also remember the environmental committee and the renzo valley there are some problems here one of the problems is that this program that you are not approved of is um not legal right now the program basically suspended itself january 1st 2018 so any project that may be approved doesn't should not have any monies associated with it pg&e currently is saying that it has a valid project we don't know about that it hasn't satisfied um the state requirements for project approval even their own literature says that i have all sorts of information for you um one of the things that i'd like to impress upon you is that this program and we can prove it is uh making this pipeline less safe not more safe there's a very good possibility that if they do what they're going to do and we can show you pictures of what's going to happen they will basically make your pipeline extremely unsafe especially in areas underneath your roadways tree roots deteriorate and when they deteriorate they have subduction liquefaction and uh they lose the ability to restrict motion with the loss of the root systems the restriction of loss of motion is lost and the pipes will jump out and you will get something that looks like this this is exactly what happened with respect to um the uh san brodo this i'm sorry your time is up yes okay thank you i have a literature for each one of you and i will give thank you your secretary next next speaker please i think what we need to do as far as uh all the agenda items is we need to increase the time to three minutes that people can speak just for the first three to five people speaking then we can lower it down to two maybe a while after that lower it down to a minute and a half but the first couple of people in line they they're put all this extra effort into having something to talk about we need to give people people more time at least if they can get to the very front of the line um also uh another big issue i've been working with the downtown streets team extensively as uh david here will and martin know pretty well um in one when we go out we're cleaning up trash all over the place and a lot of it is dirty needles it's disgusting and the record we've had so far one day we managed to collect over 70 needles from out in the bushes and most of it was from a single campsite but with that said what is really really important and i've said it i've been saying it for years we need to get disposal make biohazard disposal boxes all over the place over the trash cans in the bathrooms everywhere where people can can take their garbage and put it away in a proper way because what's happening now is people are throwing their needles into the garbage somebody comes up to to empty the garbage and they get poked with the needle because we don't give the the junkies if you will a good place for them to throw away their junk all right well that's that natalex.kennedy gmail.com 346-9888 thank you next speaker please um my name is marita shutler i'm a ucsc student intern with the warming center program um and as a project manager i'd like to introduce you to connecting the dots which is an annual homeless needs oriented survey um so why do we need a new homeless survey what gets measured gets done and this phase is no truer than in homelessness there's a bi-annual point in time homelessness survey as a function of access to federal funding but what's not being measured are specific unmet needs um experienced by people who sleep outside and in cars the survey was conceived of as a student intern project to put students in direct contact with people who sleep outside a second phase of this project is to analyze the data in order to focus intern and volunteer services towards hot spots um within the data and this survey is expected to be conducted annually within the ucsc spring quarter um we expect that the data produced will be used by the greater community to both improve in existing services and to create new services that are increasingly more effective at addressing unmet needs experienced by people who sleep outside in Santa Cruz there were 48 respondents answering 30 questions and the results of connecting the dots are alarming um 62 percent have received homeless related citations nearly half report to being not safe or in dangerous situations as they sleep sleep at night far more than half report of to having no id fewer than half have no ebt benefits um nearly half access no services at homeless services center more than a quarter of respondents have no known mailing address thank you okay is there a website we can go to to get that information yeah i'm actually going to pass out some information so you'll be able to have access to more of the results all right thank you next speaker please mayor city council city manager great to see you all today i want to back all the burnt atoms warming center program and in this case night and day storage program uh i want to uh back off take a few steps all the way back what do we have a minute and a half here um uh before the san lorenzo encampment i was really so happy about the 20 recommendations including uh storage program uh but as you may know i i work closely with the population of people experiencing homelessness i've videotaping them i was out here that with that campman every every night and over at the post office what's occurred is i i guess i take you at your word city that you really care about homelessness and you're doing a lot and i think we're in this together uh whatever may have transpired uh that is limited our ability to work with the city i totally accept that but going forward you're spending a lot of money and a lot of energy in homelessness and it's for a small amount of people what i would like to encourage is we have a storage program that is now operating in its second week in the city and we want to take care of every single other person when we do work every dollar spent benefits every single person not just a small amount of people when you talk about shelter capacity increase i'm the warming center guy we've increased shelter capacity for no pen for not any money for the city at all uh on the worst nights of the year and i encourage you uh and i hope city manager and uh we'll hear this also we're looking to have a meeting just some awareness we're not looking to partner we're not we don't want any money but we're operating within the city and we don't want the city departments to shut us down we've got funding for the whole year and we just need a couple of things and it's just a conversation will be good some awareness about what we're doing for the city for all city residents and businesses thank you thanks Brent next next speaker please hi my name is truth Burton i'm an employee at the night and day storage program and i would please ask you to meet with Brent we are literally changing lives one weekend of the program we have 30 clients with no publicity what is a client a client is someone who trusts us to put their possessions in here and they have access to it twice a day so they can come in the morning and they can put their sleeping materials in and they can come get it at night right now at 6 30 our program is open five to seven in the evening people are coming right now to pick up their sleeping bag and they're also coming to put things in there that they don't feel safe to have with them at night so every client almost every client has looked me in the eye and said why hasn't someone done this before this is literally this changes everything this simple program we're doing these little plastic boxes are changing people's lives and changing how they live i go to bed at night and i lock my door these the people who are living on the street they have no um dependability or um any way to keep anything safe and we're offering that and as Brent said we're not asking for any money all we're asking for is a meeting and my understanding is Brent has reached out to multiple branches of the government and not uh city government not had a response so please we want to work together we're on the same team so if you guys would please meet with us thank you sir the last thing i'll say is one one please we're up thanks next speaker at least all right thank you david i'm sorry for being so intense but like my time just got cut so now i have to rush again um i just wanted to say this about catastrophic climate destabilization um the elites and when i'm when i'm saying that i mean power brokers in washington dc i mean the very most um largest corporation um ceo's these people have understood climate destabilization far longer than most of the public have um and they also understood that liberal concepts that we that we have here in america that are very widespread uh believed in a very widespread way um we're uh harming these people's interests and the the man who wrote about this is francis fugiama he wrote a report uh in the early 90s and i'm sorry i don't have the name of that so the reason i wanted to say this is because there is a film that i've discovered i've probably watched at least 10 climate change films that are excellent it's called tomorrow you can look at it online i really like this film because the science is totally up to date the human race may no longer exist on the planet as early as 2040 this is current science first 30 20 minutes are very doom and gloom but the film's solutions which take up the rest of the film the filmmakers visited these solutions it's fantastic and i just wanted to say about social engineering when it comes to companies like the car company and car company and so forth this is the kind of thing that they're trying to rush through as we get more democracy we'll have less of the kind of solutions being offered that we see that are still rather reactionary i'm sorry to go over thank you thank you elise next speaker please i'm louise jimmond i have a letter here that karen kaplan has written to the city council i'm going to submit copies and read just a little tiny bit of it it has to do with what she saw as unequal treatment of home of between how did i say this that she was as a middle-class person treated one way in the homeless in the louden elton treated in another way and and i have come here today because of the closing of the the bathroom at the louden elton and now the the bathroom on soquel and i i i think that there is bigotry behind behind those decisions and um and that much better a much better way could be found to for instance guards at the at the restrooms if you have if just like for this this building that the community obviously doesn't want then you have money to place guards at the restroom why close these restrooms to the whole community why and you know it's just if the the the parks and recreation has gotten used to treating the homeless as though they were vermin and now it's extending to the middle class and i'm just really angry about it thank you thank you next speaker please next speaker you had two minutes right one one point 30 i called the office the city hall yesterday i'm phil posner i called city hall yesterday and was told i had two minutes i worked very hard to get my talk down to two minutes okay keep going you have your time right now hello my name is phil posner last week i attended a meeting that was held at the louden louden elson center where i had to use the bathroom which was locked even though the organization had rented the meeting space the last sentence of the louden center's mission statement reads the center strives to create a space that feels welcoming comfortable safe and accessible to all of us members of the city council not only is the center no longer accessible to individuals who have no place to call their own as you just heard from part of karen kaplan's letter homeless individuals are often denied the right to do what you and i take for granted use a bathroom we who call ourselves conscience and action and thousands of other santa cruz citizens are appealing you to exercise your conscience for those who often have to go behind a bush or some other place to do what is a necessity of life and we believe it is your responsibility to direct parks and rec to find a way to rectify this discrimination and injustice two suggestions to deal with the legitimate issue of drugs and vandalism one is to place a notice outside the bathroom something like quote in order for everyone to use this bathroom it is regularly checked for inappropriate illegal behavior if you are caught doing so you will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law quote another suggestion is for individuals who need to use the bathroom to sign in at the reception desk agreeing to use it properly appropriately lastly in order to avoid the center staff and bearing the responsibility of having to keep the bathroom clean perhaps the street team organization or other volunteers would be willing to take on this task thank you without speaking for without speaking for chief mills this morning i asked his advice regarding these two suggestions thank you thank you thank you sir thank you sir next speaker and is there any member of the public that wishes to speak to public communications this is items that aren't did not appear on today's agenda i see one mr. Norse you're up after and you'll be their final speaker go ahead so keith mckenry like the library and you know one of the most important people in our community everybody's important but this person phil posner has done more for our human rights than most anybody alive in santa cruz so he should be given you know so additional respect um the uh no i mean when you go on the free spot time yeah quit talking back on people yeah i think our standards are that everybody gets the same amount of time and nobody has okay and we are given regardless of their position they don't get more time i just want to state that okay when people call and they get all two minutes they get right so much this embarrassing called up and got his two minutes they told him on the phone he would get two minutes and he has a legitimate argument yeah i mean we should respect two minutes out of a i'm gonna ask i'm gonna start over yeah i'm just gonna ask you to resume the time where you were and i've asked that all the council members just listen uh intently to the speakers during the public comment until we finish thank you okay so um anyway the um i'm here because the bathrooms the bathrooms are often closed they're closed in san lorenzo park they're often closed at so cal you can't take a bike into i saw like two rangers and a cop spend 45 minutes ticking a person ticketing the person for bringing a bike into the so cal restroom but you but they don't spend that much time chasing down the people to steal your bikes while they're outside while you're going to the bathroom and that happens all the time that's like a major problem in this town so people of course go in the bathroom with their bikes so they don't get ripped off so you know it's what a crazy anti homeless law that is that's directed at us for a certain group of people and because the city fails to meet the needs of the people here we have rented a portable toilet which we are now going to put downtown and that's going to be there uh permanently so that the public can have access to it and it will have like a very widespread access and so that starts uh um at the same time as our protests at recreation and parks department for the closing of the bathrooms at loud nothing part now i've been all over the world and they pay people at every bathroom in the whole world to sit there and give you toilet paper and make sure the thing is clean we're you know we're the richest town in the whole world and we can't do that and we have the street sweeper a sweet team thank you okay so we have our final speaker uh please you're all right um others have proposed the obvious open the bathrooms to stop people from shitting and pissing all over town you have opened the bathrooms outside city hall tonight briefly for this meeting a convenience for middle-class people who's come to engage in the charade of you're listening to them and then supposedly paying some attention to what they say and rather in fact you cut them off and move them through a schedule it is preordained um many bathrooms however remain closed during the day and all are closed at night those of you who are tired of this crappy situation and i'm not talking really to you city council because i don't think you care if you did you would have done something but one can always hope but the community out there does hear some of this and may be interested in a protest coming up on thursday in front of the same department the parks and rec under the ultimate supervision of martin Bernal here our city manager and ultimately your jurisdiction have directed that the loud and nelson bathrooms be closed except to the privileged people of which you are a group and also that the san lorenzo bathrooms be completely closed so this is a group called conscience in action that's going to be doing this protest noon thursday in front of parks and rec right across the street that's a coalition offering ideas suggestions and impromptu assistance to those trying to hold their bowels and their water i'll be joining them how explicit this is my last phrase here do we have to be to shame you folks and i'm the staff i don't know do we have to bring breathing gear and bags of poop to the next council meeting i hope not that concludes our public comment portion of the meeting i'd like to move on to item number 21 which is the city council calendar review is there any changes other than 19th that was coming up no okay and i would like to make a comment about the subject that was just brought up i agree that we need to do something about our situation with the bathrooms i want bathrooms to be open i want to figure out a way for the city to be able to keep them open and without having them vandalized and costing thousands of dollars to keep them open so i'm i'm i keep trying to figure out a way to get to that point and i'll keep working on that okay thank you um so we're gonna recess we're gonna recess excuse me we're gonna recess until our until 7 15 we're gonna be coming back for our evening good evening good evening welcome to the 7 p.m session of the june 12 2018 meeting of the city council um thank you for your patience we got a late ending from the afternoon session um and i appreciate your patience in starting our meeting now i'd like to now ask the clerk to please call the roll thank you mayor council member it's crone present anthea here chase here brown is absent neroyan here vice mayor Watkins here and mayor trazos here and uh council member round gave us advance notice that she would not be here um uh the there's one sole item on tonight's meeting agenda and it's the housing blue print subcommittee recommendation and as a reminder the order will be a staff presentation followed by questions of staff from the council and will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation in action except in this case it's the council committee members um which included council member brown um vice mayor Watkins and uh council member chase who prepared this item for tonight's meeting so i'll turn it over to them to begin the discussion thank you mayor and we're uh sad that sandi our committee member is not here tonight but um know that she put in uh equal work into this recommendation and um we're sorry she's not here so we'll try to to fill the void uh in her absence um before we begin i want to really while you said we prepared this we really can't take credit for preparing it staff really did the really really heavy lifting on this the bulk of the work we um obviously did a lot of the debating and and things around the policy recommendations but i want to acknowledge uh kasey he mard bonnie lipscomb and lee butler who really put in a huge amount of work along with the committee members to get these recommendations ready for council and as you can see they are not um we we really wanted to make sure that you knew that we were putting our work in so it's not a small packet everybody should see on the window ledge over there the housing blueprint which is available for all of you i believe there's probably enough copies for everyone it's also available online but i do want to give you a moment to get those if you'd like because while our presentation is um slides the slides are actually referencing the blueprint so you should follow along and it's um the presentation is in order of the blueprint itself so this is going to have the majority of the detail in it and then we're going to kind of cover the high points the recommendations um uh vice mayor wattkins and i will and then staff will provide the level of detail that could to answer questions and to kind of flesh out the recommendations so um i want to begin um by just letting you know that this committee worked really hard we really had a we had a quite a few directions from the council on things that we were supposed to be deliberating on we also had recommendations that came several months back of things that the committee was to look at and then we also spent a lot of time really taking feedback from the community from all of you who wait in and a lot of different ways and so here is a timeline of where we began and where we are now so this started in may 2017 so we're actually adjusting over a year of the process so we had our two-year work plan that really um kind of set the stage that this council adopted that we really wanted to work with the community on housing issues and we had a community engagement process that was very very thorough we had 1300 housing surveys that we uh received we had listening sessions all over the community in um residents homes in churches in pubs we went everywhere and we listened to as many folks as we possibly could uh we also had the housing voices report in december 2017 uh as and then we had recommendations that came back for the subcommittee to work on subcommittee came back in march with some updates and at that time we had some ideas of where we wanted to go but we wanted to make sure that we were still continuing to be responsive to the community and made sure that we took some time to really run those priorities past the community and check in so that's actually what we did um during this period of time between march and now and in specific in a very well attended event that we had on may 15th at laudan nelson center and then that brings us to tonight where we took the feedback all the way through of all the surveys out continuing outreach engagement um events and then uh the deliberation of the committee and now we're here tonight with our recommendations for council's consideration do you want to add anything vice mayor waltkins i'll just briefly echo your remarks earlier it's um it's been a really wonderful experience to be part of the subcommittee and i really want to thank the staff as well for all their hard work with us um as well as the council's input and direction tonight is a great opportunity for us to look at the recommendations to hear the process and to hopefully move with some action and really hopeful that we can get going in that direction and um also disappointed that our uh fellow subcommittee member uh council member brown is unable to join us as there was a lot of really robust conversations for a lot of big policy um topics for us to cover so thank you and before we move into the next slide i just want to reference the introduction page of the blueprint because that's actually a joint statement that we all worked on together and it really does sum up the what this report is and it's really founded in the principles and values that we all share as a community that we heard from you and with this idea that we were going to work hard to reduce the suffering that we hear in our community that so many members of our community share we know that none of the single recommendations in this report are going to quote-unquote solve this issue but what we do believe is that in combination these things will relieve some of the pressure that many members of the community are feeling and that really was our goal in this package of recommendations that we're bringing forward tonight so on to the presentation so we had two primary mechanisms one was a survey that went out to residents of the community in spanish and english we got nearly a thousand respondents to that that informed us throughout the process that was actually available for many many months and so those continued to come in and as they came in we got that feedback and we incorporated that into our prioritization and then we also had the may 15th event where we had over 200 community members and at that event that was not all the recommendations it was asking the community members are the areas that we felt were the priority the right priority and we got a lot of great feedback there some of the things that we heard actually surprised us and and it was really great to hear that feedback the results of that are in the packet in the blueprint so you can see what those were and we really used that to make sure that the report tonight really reflected the feedback that we heard so this is just a brief overview of the prioritization process and as somebody from a policy background I love this type of process we had 82 recommendations and so you can imagine the task before us so we needed a way to identify how we could look at waiting the various potential recommendations that could rise to the top so we looked at four different kind of criteria one the level of impact and we started with a conversation which we'll also get into in our presentation about our community values so our level of impact to relieve pressure and affordability impacts for housing in our city speed to implement cost to implement and community readiness so through that scaling of a one four and seven we were able to go through this prioritization process ourselves as well as bring this process to the community in our community outreach strategy through our surveys as well so through this process we've had several categories that came to the top community engagement specific strategies on how to engage the community with all things housing legalization of unpermitted dwelling units accessory dwelling units housing affordability and inclusionary parking policy considerations density bonus recommendations moving forward with zoning and density downtown housing creation and then other additional items like the child care impact fee housing legislative program and budget considerations for tenant resources so these were the areas that were vetted by our group and also were presented to the community on May 15th. Good evening council Lee Butler and I am the planning director and Bonnie Lipscomb and I will be filling in on the next few slides regarding some of the things that we already have underway we we wanted to make sure that we keep the the recommendations that we have here in context with the many other things that we already have going on so we've we've picked a select few of them here just to highlight for the council and the public and earlier this evening you heard from Bonnie and the discussion about downtown how we recently updated our downtown plan the council approved that and it was accepted by the coastal commission and that has really helped to stimulate interest in additional downtown development so we're excited about the many prospects that the increased height allowances in the southern end of our downtown will have in promoting housing growth in that area we also had a new short-term rental ordinance adopted late last year that was accepted by the council and and then by the coastal commission and we heard a lot of a lot of concerns about people who were forced out of their homes for short-term rental opportunities that may be more lucrative than long-term rentals and so we took a balanced approach and the council came to a reasonable way to allow those who have been doing short-term rentals legally to continue and to help also protect our housing stock for long-term rentals we also have a series of parking requirements that are already responding to many of the concerns that we heard through this housing process but we and you heard a little bit about this earlier this evening with lower parking ratios for downtown and reductions citywide when transportation demand management measures or shared parking is being considered but this committee has gone even farther in making additional recommendations about parking and you'll hear more about that in a few slides we also talked a lot about the protection of housing that was one of the key themes in the housing voices report and one of the things that we have in place is our rental inspection service that really helps to make sure that health and safety standards for our existing rental units are being met and last year we performed over 3200 inspections in 2017 and of those only six of those units were vacated and so it just shows that we are doing everything that we can to keep people in their homes and to work with them and only in very egregious instances are we forcing people out and we also have as part of the housing protection a Unpermitted Dwelling Unit Legalization Program so we have over 420 units that have been identified and 89 of those were phasing those through the process 89 of those the first 89 are in the process of working to legalize them we've had a few that have successfully been legalized and a few that have ultimately decided not to proceed because of the the costs associated with that but I wanted to stress as part of this that nearly all of those units are occupied we often hear that oh there are these units that are out there and when we come across units we do not that are not permitted we do not kick the people out unless we recognize that there is a life safety issue and so in the seven years of the rental inspection service fewer than 20 units have been immediately vacated as a result of that rental inspection and so I think that is a testament to our approach of wanting to continue to provide housing but also wanting to upgrade that housing through this rental inspection service make it safer and make it make sure that it's meeting applicable health and safety codes also want to take a few minutes to talk about some of the other programs that we have underway and through our housing division at the city and in addition to us having the nationally recognized ADU program we also have just in the last two years implemented the My House My Home program with Habitat for Humanity which is an incredible program it's a very creative program to help seniors age in place and that's something that we've presented on in the past and we're really really really proud of of of this program and excited to work with Habitat on that we also have a security deposit program that we partner with the housing authority who implements that on our behalf we do use home funds for that program we also have an emergency rental assistance program with that's actually using our Red Cross funding with CAB and then our most recent program is our landlord incentive program with our affordable housing trust fund and while it's a minor program it's it's it's new it's it's a way to incentivize landlords who may may not want to consider having Section 8 tenants to actually reduce some of that risk of taking them because they know if there are any damages there's a fund to help offset those costs so that's in addition to the other programs we have and we think it's a countywide effort and we're excited to participate in that we also have review of state legislation and this is actually just a sample of a process that we're going to bring forward to you with one of your recommendations coming out of the housing blueprint subcommittee tonight hopefully to have a more intense in-depth look at housing legislation across the board you're going to have a more detailed presentation coming up tonight about ADU legislation but this is sort of the slew of all the other legislation and just as an example and obviously you can't read the fine print up here but this is one that we're taking forward that we're proposing to bring forward related to our former redevelopment bonds that are still on the table so as many of you know we have frozen bond funding that we issued our affordable housing bonds we were able to use and we've earmarked those and spent some of that in the acquisition of NIAC project but we additionally have capital bonds that are frozen by the state we've gone through all of the we've jumped through all the hoops met all the requirements by the state and we can't actually defuse those for a number of years and so we've drafted and actual council member brown has been really instrumental as well as sort of supporting this as among the other housing blueprints of committee members and we've met with assembly member stone who is interested in sponsoring some proposed legislation for us bill language of the next legislative session to actually enable the city of Santa Cruz to use those untapped bond funds those that are sitting on the table that we will have already paid off in just a few years it's 15.7 million we're really hoping we can get support from this to take through the state legislature so this is just an example of bill by bill on all housing related legislation that we want to bring forward to you periodically to update you and have sort of a recommended position and then follow up actions um finally wanted to just mentioned um hot off the press today and now posted to our website under housing division measure O which is where we started our inclusionary is the draft financial feasibility analysis um for our proposed recommendations around inclusionary so did want to just briefly mention what we already have in effect we do have 15% inclusionary and both rental and ownership in place today we did have a have a period in which we couldn't enforce for mapped projects that were rental and that's one of the recommendations that we're also proposing that will come back to you in the fall so we can address that as well thank you Bonnie and Lee so one of the things that our subcommittee really talked about and used as a guiding sort of element in our work was the input from the community through the former mayor's listening tour and how we can orient ourselves in terms of our policy recommendations and criteria and prioritization process around our community values um so we'll start with community vitality and I'll just read the value the city of Santa Cruz aims to foster a sustainable diverse and thriving community that is comprised of all ages races genders and socioeconomic demographics and out of that um our process which was one of the priority areas that was mentioned earlier is really thinking about how we can engage the community in a meaningful way especially as it relates to development applications and planning policy changes so in the document you can see that there's policy for council's consideration as soon as possible so that we can have community engagement strategies in place to have it early and meaningful so that input is well taken and also incorporate required preliminary reviews community meetings expanded public notification and enhanced website information so looking at real thoughtful strategies okay Bonnie we also talked about some other community engagement efforts in addition to some of the planning process and project review process and so part of one of these we've already been working on and which is an affordable housing map and so the idea is that this would be a clickable map with all of the affordable housing projects with project specifics so it would have number of units um funding sources um which sometimes can be very complicated depending on if it's a hundred percent affordable you know partial affordable but it would be a source and sort of a starting place to understand where in the city and the depth of some of the affordable housing projects that that we have in our community and then we are also proposing um recommending a state of affordable housing event um with status update on annually um on the blueprint recommendations so how are we doing how are we meeting some of those those target areas um and then also we could include in that um with something that we're going to come back to you in August which is a deeper analysis on our affordable housing trust fund and our in-loofees also a speaker and engagement series um as part of um council member Chase's last year sort of listening voices we um had a series of speakers and housing experts come to the city and so we would based on sort of community feedback and some of the survey work we've already done um we would bring certain speakers you know to to the community and public meetings to really talk about different issues around housing that we've we've perceived feedback on um we've also talked about an affordable housing academy and our housing staff and some of our professionals are pretty excited about this um the idea behind this is that we um would have different learning sessions around affordable housing specific content around Santa Cruz affordable housing um we've had elements in the past include a trolley tour around our various affordable housing projects um but we would have basic housing policy go into more detail inclusionary housing um and this would be something that we would offer periodically and then also enhance city hall to you tabling for neighborhoods and before we move on to the next area I want to say that if what was important to us about this aspect was if we've been successful in engagement that means that it's ongoing that means that people have an opportunity to continue to engage not just around specific projects that might be in adjacent neighborhoods but in this conversation all the way along because one of the things that's really important um that we've kind of talked about over and over is all of these recommendations impact each other just like any project in the community regardless of whether it's in your neighborhood or not impacts the housing availability and quality in our entire community so the community engagement is meant to have a series of ways that different members of the community can engage in a way that might work better for them but also that they have a voice in a meaningful way earlier on in projects that they really care about and that they want to impact and now we're on to our next value which is housing protection so the city of santa cruz strives to ensure all housing is high quality by way of effective housing protection strategies and in this way we have um a few recommendations actually in that are actually in the housing production category that are also a part of housing protection and so those are a few things that we'll get to a little bit later which is we have our city attorney researching local preference if that is supported by council that's one of our recommendations we've also recommended the exorbitant rent increase proposal which was brought forward by the mayor and and brought to the committee for consideration and then we've also got a recommendation related to tenant legal services that's an update on the contract of that that covers both protection and production and in specific related to um protection we um heard a lot from folks about the legalization of unpermitted dwelling units we know that there's a lot of properties here who have had um small units in their yards that have been there for very very long time but they're actually not permitted so what can we do to help make those be able to be permitted and have an immediate source of new housing available on the market so the more we can do to protect and to produce more opportunities for those things to happen we wanted to do that so that includes adu changes alternative densities setbacks and open space uh designated affordable housing options and fee modifications and we think with looking at each one of these things we can actually really move the needle on um getting some of these units legalized and create some more opportunities and i would just add there that um we're continually analyzing that as we go through our unpermitted dwelling unit legalization process we're evaluating what changes we can make to our codes to help facilitate the legalization of these some things are not in our control we can make recommendations to the state to change certain building codes but the things that are in our control if they're an impediment to the legalization of these properties and we have an opportunity to change our codes then that's the approach that we're taking we're considering um what codes can be changed in order to help facilitate the protection of these unpermitted dwelling units and their ultimate legalization and our next value is housing production the city of santa cruz will work to influence and assist the creation of diverse and affordable housing choices for all santa cruzans this is something we heard quite a bit about and in specific people really wanted to make sure that we had the diverse types of housing that we need for our community so not just short not just single family homes but smaller units um condos townhouses ways that people can downsize but also individuals who don't want a lot of space actually have those opportunities to have that in addition to what we already have in our housing stock so one way to do this is accessory dwelling units we heard a lot about this and while we do have a nationally recognized adu program we felt like we could actually do more so we're pushing ourselves a lot here we also have some state legislation that is helping us in this process and so some of the things that we're looking at are coverage square footage setback requirements junior adus which we uh took up at council was actually a another state um item that came before us modifying some of our green building requirements and looking at the affordability restrictions for non-owner occupancy which actually that was one of the outcomes that was surprising that i think we we heard at the may 15th event and then also short-term rental for limited time frame so these are all things that we heard feedback on and we've incorporated into the recommendations in addition to that we had recommendations regarding fees um and with this being one of the more important things from the housing blueprint subcommittee we have a recommendation from them to come back to the council with changes as soon as possible following the state legislative cycle and so the state will approve bills in by the end of august and the governor would need to sign them by the end of september and so we would be looking at coming back to council as soon as possible following that with legislative changes that are both consistent with state law and that may in all likelihood go above and beyond what the state law allowances are to really facilitate adu production here and this obviously relates back to the unpermitted dwelling unit legalization as well how other changes here may be able to facilitate legalization of existing as well as production of new units once that's done we are looking at updating the guidance materials that we have to make it easy for homeowners and the general public to understand what the regulations are and then we also have a recommendation from the subcommittee to review review efficiency units SRO which are single room occupancy and SOU which are small ownership unit regulations and those are related to both adus and junior adus but they are different animals at at times and we have heard suggestions from various stakeholders that some of those changes could facilitate the production of smaller units and so we're interested in exploring that further and bringing those ideas back to the council. As part of our efforts with the subcommittee we looked at three pending state bills and at this point in time I'm just going to go through the recommended modifications to those bills but if the council does have questions about those I'm happy to go through a summary of the bills themselves and some of the changes in more detail should the council like to hear more about those. For AB 2890 that includes a minimum ADU size of 800 square feet and one of the things that we have here is a 10 percent rule so if you have a 5000 square foot lot then you can have a 500 square foot ADU. If you have a 6000 square foot lot then it's a 600 square foot ADU and the the bill as it's written would have an 800 square foot minimum requirement meaning that these units would be larger and likely not as affordable so those smaller units provide affordability through design and one of the recommendations that we would have is to maintain that ability to have a lower ADU size similar to what we currently have we think that's right sized at this point with 10 percent of the lot size. So for each of the legislation that you're going to reference these are the modifications that you're proposing that be submitted. That's correct that's correct. Does housing and urban development use that term affordable by design is that what the criteria for getting a affordable unit is affordable by design? So they HCD allows us to consider ADUs under the moderate income. What's HCD? The housing community development so the state housing community development allows us to consider those as moderate when we count housing units towards our regional housing needs assessment. We can include those in the moderate income category in large part because they are affordable by design being a smaller unit size and a shared unit rather than a single family so it's shared with others on the same lot. So the second recommendation AB 2890 would mandate that ADUs are allowed in multifamily zones and we're recommending that discretion be allowed for that and I'll give you a quick example something could occur where we've got a single family house on a large lot and that house is deteriorating to where we would really like to see that site redevelop say into five or ten units and if we had a mandate to allow the ADU in the multifamily zone then it could perpetuate the existence of a substandard or a use that isn't the highest and best use of that property and so that would just allow us to apply discretion in those places in those instances. We obviously are supportive of new housing and in many instances we would be supportive of that but there are instances where we would like to see something different and so we'd prefer to see an ability to have local discretion within multifamily zones. On the third bullet right now the the state mandates that if you have an ADU within an existing structure that you cannot charge utility fees. If there is any addition say for a bathroom or a stairwell to access a second floor that would trigger utility fees and so we're suggesting that allow some flexibility that mandates no utility fees if small additions occur and then this fourth recommendation here is actually one that we've got in all the three all three of the bills that we'll be talking about tonight and that is to have housing and community development work with other state agencies namely the Building and Standards Commission and the Energy Commission. They're the ones that set forth they're the experts in creating building code legislation and we're suggesting that they work to come up with a new set of ADU construction standards that are more flexible than what the current building codes provide and what that would do is it puts the the technical experts in charge of a mandate to make it easier rather than having the the state who aren't necessarily as fluent in the building code standards preparing those standards which we've seen to be problematic in in some instances and then finally there's a recommendation to adjust the junior ADU standards and that is something that is an example of where the state has come in in certain instances and said let's mandate requirements such as a drain size limitation in junior ADU and so we're suggesting that a series of standards be adopted that are more lenient for junior ADUs allowing multiple junior ADUs in a single property for example. For SB 831 that has the same criteria in terms of local discretion within multifamily zones we talked about how the city would prefer to maintain discretion on that. Different from the prior bill SB 831 eliminates the ability to require owner occupancy on properties that contain ADUs and so we have that provision here and one of the things that our housing blueprint subcommittee discussed was potentially offering the opportunity for non-owner occupancy in exchange for an affordability restriction and so if you designate one of the units as affordable then you wouldn't necessarily have to live on site and that is something that we've actually been doing it's something that the council has allowed for the legalization of dwelling units that don't have owner occupancy so if a second unit was developed on a property and it wasn't owner occupied we've had we have the ability to come in and designate one of those units affordable. The state law if it came into effect and it eliminated our ability to require owner occupancy then we would not be able to include that affordability restriction. I just want to say you said we've been doing that that was a very limited action based on you know a particular situation that we should present to council so I think it was capped at a certain amount. Can you tell me how many units have actually been set up under that program? I can't tell you how many. I know that we have been continuing to to do that but I don't know the total number of units that have been legalized through the program. Something we can report back to you on. And then there's also a provision in the SB 831 that is somewhat concerning in that it indicates that if there's a life safety issue that that is a potential threat to the occupants but not a threat to the public that it could be stayed for 10 years upon request. In fact it would have to be stayed for 10 years upon request of the the owner. And there's the the law I don't think is is drafted cleanly and we believe that the better way to address this would really just to be set up a consistent set of standards as we talked about before that are allowing more lenient construction techniques. So maybe the energy standards aren't as rigorous for ADUs but they don't use as much energy because they're smaller units by their nature. So those are some of the things that we would hope to have come out of housing and community development working with the other state agencies. And then the final bill SB 1126 it has the same recommendation. It is in concept it's looking at loosening the building code regulations. However it could as written create a lot of uncertainty for the public. It could create discrepancies between how different jurisdictions apply the rules and regulations and we think it's better to just come up with a standard set of reduced building code requirements that can be applied throughout the state. So that's the the sum of the recommendations on the three ADU legislative bills. The next area is housing affordability and inclusionary housing funding. So we have three recommendations and specific about that. One is to prepare a transient occupancy tax ballot measure for analysis for early 2019 for council consideration. And we also want to express our support to the county board of supervisors regarding a regional housing bond measure. And we would also like to have an analysis of the in lieu fee funding and project outcomes presented back to the council in fall of 2018. And just to add by that we thought it was would be a good illustration to sort of demonstrate our overall funding that we have for housing and compare as a snapshot in time from the type of funding and the amount of funding we had pre redevelopment termination. So for example in 2010 you can see that our major sources of funding predominantly was redevelopment funding. That was the 20% low mod set aside and we received a little over two million each year for the development of affordable housing and that will become we'll have a further graphic and a few slides where you'll see what we were able actually to create with that funding. But you can also see if you look at the other bars in that in that comparison between 2010 and 2015 is you can also see the decline overall and some of our state funding as well. And so you'll see our home funds have declined just this this year for the first time we had a slight increase but it's been a series of years in which we've had decreasing affordable housing funding overall. We're hopeful with some of the projects in the pipeline. It's hard to project exactly what fiscal year they'll fall in but that we'll start to see our affordable housing trust fund rise again as it goes forward. And of course we're working on a number of initiatives and if the regional housing measure goes goes forward hopefully we'll have at least some of the funding to replace what we lost before to help create affordable housing. Is a quick question on the slide. So it has there as an item prepare TOT ballot measure analysis. I know we have a revenue committee that's also looking at this very issue of TOT and other tax measures. Are you suggesting this would be something for like dedicated for housing or what's the purpose of this? Yeah we definitely want to make sure that we're coordinating with the other revenue subcommittee. The part of the direction and conversation around this and preliminary outreach to visitor Santa Cruz County was around if we were to move forward and part of the analysis with the TOT measure would it be supported for some for housing or a creation of affordable housing? And part of the preliminary feedback we've received which we of course need to go a lot deeper if we included with the housing to end homelessness was an issue that was very front and center very prominent with the tourism industry and the hospitality industry here in Santa Cruz. So that was something that we definitely felt like we were able to explore a little deeper with direction from the subcommittee. But isn't the revenue subcommittee also looking at this issue? I believe that they are. I don't know if they're going deep into some of the mechanics behind the TOT measure as it relates to housing. So I think we're planning on coordinating with them. Actually short answer not actively right now. Additionally recommendations coming out of the subcommittee include to update our fee waiver ordinance to encourage affordable housing development and specifically what this is a reference to is that we have an ability in our current ordinance that a developer can request to have fees waived on projects particularly if they're affordable. The challenge this has from a sort of on a number of levels one from a staff level it becomes a sort of interdepartmental meeting of well which fees can we waive and which would we recommend and then it comes to council and it's always a very difficult time consuming process because you know some of the fees are parks and rec fees and and some are water fees and sewer fees and none of them are easy fees to waive. Some directly support critical staff functions and so part of this we'd like to revisit this and really make a distinction and make some recommendations to council of how we can modify and update the fee waiver ordinance so that it makes sense and still meets with the commitment to trying to maximize affordability on all on all projects going forward and that leads to the next bullet which was a clear I felt like direction that we had from the subcommittee was to make sure we were maximizing affordability we're feasible with all rental projects and Councilmember Chase I don't know if you want to elaborate on on that one really what we were focused on was wherever we can increase affordability we should and so if that isn't looking at fees if that's and looking at the types of units if that's a looking at parking requirements every place that we can do it we want to maximize affordability and I think you covered that and I know we'll get into a little bit more detail later. Next we had some of the recommendations around inclusionary housing we thought at first to just to take a quick step back and just to talk about what is inclusionary housing and this is actually a slide taken from a presentation that we had at the May 15th public meeting and this was led by Carol Berger housing and program manager but briefly just local policies what is inclusionary housing and this is local policies to require developers to set aside a percentage of each development to be sold or rented at affordable prices our inclusionary housing policies was actually set in 1979 this is measure O that included a 15% affordability requirement for new housing as I mentioned earlier this is both a 15% on rental development as well as for sale ownership. Question how have we been able to get around that by letting people rent stuff out for a period of time is that it's not the same thing? The distinction there we touched on a little briefly earlier today was in the case of mapped projects so that means projects that are for sale but for a certain period they're going to be rented and that's something that in part of these recommendations when we come back to you in August we will recommend that be changed and that for those interim period those will also be applicable to the inclusionary percentages that we're recommending tonight. So this chart and which will be I'll talk you through it as we add each color category is just a snapshot of the Santa Cruz multifamily development from 1994 to 2016 so it's if there are three colors we're going to show the first is the market rate apartments that have been created over the last period and we have on the bottom we have sort of a recap so this is the pink these are the units market rate that have not been assisted by the city and as you can see there haven't been a lot of them it's a total of that whole period of 106 units the next one is the single room occupancy projects and these are assisted by not having a density limit and reduced parking and additionally in one of them in the case of redwood commons we additionally had redevelopment funding some other additional funding in that project and so that's the little third blip green blip you see between 2006 and 2008 and then the last blue line are the projects that have been heavily subsidized or even a hundred percent city projects for funded by the city with a layering of different funding sources so state federal funding sources home funds largely redevelopment in most of these cases and so we have a few of the projects labeled so that you can see them pre-recession we obviously had some really great projects going forward we had our last project prior to redevelopment being terminated the tannery where we created 100 units of affordable housing and then using our last of our remaining before we issued our bonds in 2011 the riverwalk apartments at limburg street which was a 21 unit so those are the the projects that you see up there in the blue and I think one of the main points to make in looking at this is that the when you look at a snapshot of Santa Cruz and affordable housing development the substantial number of units when you look at that top line subsidize affordable multifamily housing projects 774 of those last period have directly been because of city assistance and that layering and that leveraging of different affordable housing funding sources including redevelopment so how critical it is for us to be looking at new sources of revenue the regional housing measure replacing redevelopment to a certain extent so that we can leverage projects and incentivize affordable housing development in our community because from a market rate standpoint developers cannot afford to without having some level of assistance build affordable units it just does not pencil out for them which leads us to updating the inclusionary ordinance for rental projects and I'm sure we'll get into a lot more detail of this and if not tonight when we come back with a direction but this establishes a series of things one of the things we looked at and this is based on some Kaiser Marston analysis which is now available in draft form on the city's website and if you go on to our housing page and go under measure O which is our inclusionary housing you'll be able to actually open a copy of the draft analysis that is just out today and so that's available these are the recommendations that are based on this analysis it is in draft form and so we really wanted to be able to provide it give ample time for community input also feedback with our stakeholder groups that we've been meeting with over the last almost a year now related to inclusionary and so the draft recommendations are out today it's based on a lot of preforma analysis is based on market surveys looking at co-star looking at what actual rents are charged in Santa Cruz what projects are feasible so the analysis basically came and and looked at the cost of development across Santa Cruz and based on the co-star market surveys rent surveys determine that there really is a distinction between in different depending on where you're located in Santa Cruz so specifically downtown versus pretty much everywhere else in Santa Cruz if we're going to be specific the cost of developing units in the downtown is much higher the land costs are higher construction costs are higher typically because you have denser urban core projects you end up with structured parking and so that combination in the downtown is different than elsewhere around around the community so we're going to start with the downtown we'll go to the other sub areas as well but I wanted to sort of set that framework of the basis for the analysis is based on the assumption that there's different analysis downtown versus non-downtown so the recommendation and there are some assumptions of this I'll briefly explain establishes a base inclusionary percentage of 15 percent in the downtown part of the assumptions in this and the analysis supports it is that in the downtown you're going to be taking advantage of the ability to do structured parking and to take under state density bonus law some of the advantages under the density bonus law basically to have higher heights and structure parking in the downtown and because of this assumption you can actually impose a 15 percent base inclusionary percentage it's important to say that without taking advantage of density bonus law to have these additional concessions on reduced parking which is one of those and additional height that it does not pencil to have 15 percent as a base requirement it's an important distinction we think with the new state density law provisions on ab 1505 that most developments in the downtown will be able to use these additional concessions under ab 1505 but there could be exceptions and so we'll talk about that in a few minutes and then another important element is to mention that there are submitted projects right now that are currently in the pipeline and we are recommending and this is based on additional analysis that those projects the inclusionary percentage for those projects that have already been submitted to planning who've already assembled their parcels and paid and you know paid the cost for assembling those parcels will be based on a project performer because imposing a 15 percent on them after they've already paid the cost for assembling those parcels would be an undue financial hardship so we'll approach those and bring those to counsel to you on a case-by-case basis. Bonnie I have a quick question where did you say that draft report is located? It's on our housing website so if you go under economic development housing and then there's subcategory on the left hand side button for inclusionary housing measure O slash inclusionary housing it is right there and all it's called the Kaiser Marston draft financial feasibility analysis on inclusionary housing rental residential development it's important to say that it is rental only we do have the one of the subcommittee recommendations is to come back to you later with looking at our ownership inclusionary percentage of 15 percent to see if we can possibly increase that but this study this draft analysis right now is just focused on rental. Okay other areas of the city and this is something that's it's not intuitive and so I recommend everybody to look at the draft findings but that in other areas of the city that developers actually may not be able to take advantage and there are exceptions to this as well but in general that developers may not be able to take advantage of density bonus provisions part of this is that many of the projects outside of downtown and you heard an earlier presentation on the downtown about how in the downtown we have shared parking we also typically have structured parking in the downtown outside the downtown you don't see some of these parking structures and in order to really take advantage of the density bonus provisions which reduces the parking requirement most of these projects outside the downtown need that additional parking to support their projects so they're not necessarily going to be able to take advantage of density bonus provisions so without that the financial feasibility analysis only supports a base inclusionary percentage of 10 percent with that said the committee and please weigh in really felt it was important that if there are if there is the ability to take advantage of some of these additional concessions if the city is able to reduce parking for them allow unit size reductions for example over space reductions that the inclusionary percentage could be increased over the base inclusionary recommendation of 10 percent but that would require some market analysis so I want to just add to this this was so the inclusionary rates that we are bringing forward as a committee this while we had 100 agreement on all the recommendations within the blueprint this was the one where we did have a deviation on that and so and I think it's important to mention because councilman brown is not here tonight to mention this this is the one area where we didn't have full agreement so vice mayor Watkins and I agreed with the recommendations of the 10 percent and all other areas in the 15 percent downtown but councilmember brown wanted us to go higher than that the recommendations that we brought forward tonight do include the where vice mayor Watkins and I supported this but we wanted to make sure that councilmember brown's opposition to that was noted and our goal if you really hear was that this was the base and that in both circumstances one in downtown with the density bonus and then these other potential parking reductions unit size reductions open space reductions that the idea is that it could go up higher than that but it could never go lower and the idea again being that we would maximize affordability and inclusionary whenever possible and that is a strong value that we want to bring forward in all of our housing projects was there an inlouffee attached to this as well or no you couldn't pay inlouffees you had to build the affordable units the ab 1505 does require us which we didn't have this requirement before to provide options or alternatives for developers who are doing projects so that's something that we'll bring back with you a further analysis when we come back in august and that is part of the recommendation that I had mentioned earlier that we get a report on how our inlouffees were collected the projects and then that they were the projects in which they came in on and then the projects that they were used on so that we actually have some ability to analyze what what has been produced through inlou and so that'll be coming back sometime in the fall I believe I just briefly add thank you for speaking on behalf of Councilmember Brown because I know she felt really very passionately about this and I want to sort of echo Councilmember Chase's comments that you know principally we all agreed that we want to optimize the amount of affordability we based our recommendation and consensus on the data that was presented before us which is the evaluation and sort of assessment and with something that Councilmember Brown felt strongly could be modified or didn't necessarily reflect what could be possible but that was sort of our basis we want to we agree and we have the data to substantiate this policy recommendation and I would add to that that well I know that Councilmember Brown and others are are disappointed with the with a percentage that this is it's a balance I mean we particularly on the on the housing side want to create as many affordable units as possible that the challenge we have is we look at the data and we look at these performers and we analyze them and the bottom line is we've seen a number of developments particularly in the downtown be stalled time and time again in the downtown because they don't pencil out and so it's it's a balance it's a balance of trying to find what is that point where a developer will still go forward and build and develop that housing where they have a diminished return when we put in affordability restrictions on them but that it still is financially feasible they'll still getting a minimum return that makes financial sense to still go ahead and build the project because if you start imposing it too high they just won't build that project either they'll sell the land they'll try to develop something other than residential but we've seen a number of these projects be stalled because the financial analysis it just doesn't work out and the risk is too great so it is always a balance and that's the the foundation the underlying sort of assumptions that this analysis is based on additionally and we want to also reconcile this and make sure that we're thoroughly analyzing the AB 1505 and some of the new state requirements we also felt strongly and the subcommittee felt strongly as well that we needed to make sure we were updating the market review every five years so that if there are fluctuations one way or the other that we're making sure that we're tracking on this so at a minimum of every five years potentially earlier that we would do a market review of those inclusionary percentages to make sure that we were that we were on target and then finally and this is because of some of the state density bonus provisions we felt that it was important because we know there are exceptions to be able to include a financial hardship appeal process we right now do analyze on a case-by-case basis and there can be some projects for a variety of reasons and council goals and objectives that we want to go forward but may not pencil out and so we wanted to have a process an appeal process whereby certain projects or any project that met the criteria could have have a fair review and fair provision and a fair and reasonable return in a on order to build to build the project so that's something that will be built into for your future consideration when we come back in the fall I already mentioned this one I'll just add to it the other area that one of the recommendations that came strongly out of out of the committee but we felt like our focus primarily or at least for the initial tonight recommendation was to look at the rental percentages inclusionary percentages but what after we bring that back in the fall is to turn to our ordinance as far as a 15% on ownership to see if that percentage could feasibly be increased and then we have the other two recommendations and council member chaser or Watkins I'm not sure if you would like to make any specific comments on those yeah I can if you want so the other two so the exorbitant rent increase was something that we wanted to look at well we were directed to look at by the mayor's recommendation and also wanted to see if this was going to be something feasible based on what happens in with the ballot measure that is still pending signatures but if it gets on the ballot for rent control depending on the outcome of that we wanted to look at this and see what the impact would be to our community and so that's coming up and we'll see what happens with that and plan accordingly and then we also heard very loud and clear pretty much unanimously that our community really wants us to look at local preferences wherever possible and so whatever we can do with that we want the city to city attorney to look into seeing where we can have local preferences in our in our housing in every way possible so asking him to explore that and come back to us on what the legalities are council member crown could you say a little bit about what the draft exorbitant rent increase ordinances um yeah I mean so this was recommended in our March meeting I believe and an idea was brought forward as an alternative to rent control and this is something that is not in existence that we're aware of in California but is in Portland Oregon and so that is the area that we're looking at to see what the legalities are and and whether that would be a potential good fit in our community and just if I recall it's in here somewhere an increase of more than 10 in one year or 15 in two years would kick kick in relocation that's just the concept exactly okay so this next one is mine there was a lot of parking policy considerations that came forward and we discussed in general we wanted to update the citywide parking standards asking for analysis of reducing required and covered parking we actually heard we were surprised I think some of us anyway that we heard this from feedback from the May 15th meeting again in lieu parking fee allowances we wanted to take a look at that our transportation demand management parking reductions so basically maximizing every alternative that we possibly can to vehicles update downtown parking standards and analyze off-site parking and updates to parking in lieu fees and permit programs and pursue additional parking supply and then resources for neighborhood parking permit programs so everything that we can do to both be really responsive to neighborhoods who are concerned about parking impacts near their or in our and around their homes and then also everything we can to increase the total number of units produced by combining parking perhaps in an adjacent or off-site location and we had a presentation earlier today about the density bonus and this was something that we discussed in our subcommittee as well so we're bringing back to the council for approval today some changes to our tier system which would include a required public hearing and I know this was something that was previously discussed with councilmember brown and I am disappointed that she's not here but really looking at how we can ensure that there is public process embedded in that and expand public opportunities as well we're also looking at square footage modifications we talked and heard a little bit about state law shifting for transit stop consistency and then in addition to some section 8 allowances and we'll also explore options for expanded density bonus but also being mindful of limited and limiting any impact that could result from from a density bonus in a neighborhood so we wanted to move forward with zoning and density planning in ocean street area plan this is something we've heard quite a bit from particularly from northern ocean streets that they're really really wanting some attention on ocean I think there's a lot of people who agree that ocean street needs some attention and we thought that this would be a good place to start so our focus is to look at rezoning in that area as our first step and then downtown housing we talked about downtown a little bit earlier we would like the to analyze our city owned property downtown for affordable housing development we've talked quite a bit about that was mentioned today but we think this is really an area that we can focus on where we have a lot more support a lot fewer concerns and a lot we believe of opportunity and I just to briefly add to that one of the things we looked at when you look at the yellow sites or those are the potential opportunity sites that we've initially identified not all of them are suitable but we have started some analysis on this and we'll have a little more thorough report for you in the coming months here want to just focus a little bit this is also one of the things that we presented at the public meeting on May 15th and getting some support on looking at one of the greatest opportunities in probably city-wide to create substantial housing creation is in the downtown and so looking both that like on the previous slide which we carried forward on this one on the yellow sites as opportunity sites that are under the city's control being that you know their city owned and without redevelopment another funding source one of the major ways that we can incentivize affordable housing development is through the land and underwriting the land and so looking at different ways that we can do that from a city property base really means analyzing more critically our surface lots in the downtown but also part of this was understanding that there are a number of projects in the pipeline right now to which we mentioned earlier today 1547 Pacific which is you know 79 market rate units with 15 percent inclusionary at the time of sale 555 Pacific which is 94 units with 14 inclusionary units eight currently for section eight and as well as they have paid or will pay during the rental period up to 2.2 million and inclusionary fees so these projects do have an element of affordability and certainly are contributing at least in the case of 555 Pacific to our affordable housing trust fund other projects in the pipeline that have been submitted or under preliminary planning review is the Pacific front project on lower Pacific Pacific and Laurel to front is a proposed 200 unit project and then at the top riverfront apartments is a proposed project on front street it's a unique project it's really connecting as recommended under the downtown plan and the downtown plan amendments to the riverwalk and it has a public plaza area about the approximately the same size as let me actually a little bit larger than Abbott Square and that really provides those linkages recommended in the downtown plan of connecting to the riverwalk so that project's exciting earlier today we presented on a proposed farmers market across the street from that project and then so there's some really nice connectivity between the proposed public plaza and permanent sort of public event structure and this proposed project on riverfront which is approximately 134 units and then finally the Pacific station project which we'll talk about maybe not in a little more in a little more detail that's a proposed 80 to 100 affordable housing project in the downtown 100% affordable we were able to secure funding prior to redevelopment terminating bond funds to help secure this site to be adjacent to the metro center so we're both analyzing the current bus configuration to see if we can reconfigure and have a more efficient bus layout which would provide some opportunities to explore the development of affordable housing project both facing Pacific Avenue and then with the existing additional city land the small city parking lot and then the recently acquired city owned NIAC insurance building and so we're also looking at the property just south of that as possible expansion so we're pursuing both options we had a considerable community support for looking more closely at this with the understanding that this is a great opportunity to create you know 80 to 100 affordable units 100 affordable units in the downtown the parking recommendations and specifically on the downtown and again earlier today you had a presentation that went into some detail about downtown housing and in the downtown with the loss of redevelopment probably one of the major ways we can help incentivize without actually having to put funding on the table is through looking at parking policy and parking policy considerations at the council level so that's something that we are recommending and I believe that the subcommittee felt really strongly about about these parking policy considerations and then also the direction for us to look more closely at consolidating parking which would free up some of those surface lots so that we could have affordable housing development as well as create opportunities on some of any mixed use projects to include affordable housing as part of those projects as well here it is here's a slide I thought was earlier so this is the proposed site for the affordable housing project downtown and just looking right here here's the city owned NIAC building that we recently purchased with affordable housing bonds here's the city lot and so we're looking both at reconfiguring this is the metro site right now looking at the efficiencies of the metro station to see if potentially we could realign and downsize if they truly need the number of bus bays or if there's some efficiencies to be able to look at taking the bus operations and taking this footprint which would then free up this whole front area for us to do a project that was really activating on Pacific Avenue with some commercial retail on the ground floor and then affordable housing above so that is probably the preferred option however if we're not able to efficiently layout or you know make some changes with the bus bays then we really are sort of our second secondary plan is with these two parcels that we own is to see if we can assemble these parcels right here and do an adjacent to transit right here on these sites so that's the proposed project and as I said we're going forward with Metro right now analyzing those so we are partnering with them with an outside transit consultant to look at the current efficiencies at the metro station thank you so now we're going to have the council do a pop quiz on the content just kidding no we're almost there we appreciate we know this is a whole bunch of information so there were a few additional recommendations that the subcommittee had one is looking at a childcare impact fee we discussed this as a potential to offset housing affordability knowing that it's a balance between sort of the the amount and cost of living we have in terms of our community and the housing prices and there's other ways to meet those kind of affordability constraints the county is in the process of having a nexus study done and we'll be looking at the results of that study and how that could influence policy here we're also and as mentioned earlier looking at a housing legislative program how can we provide regular legislative updates to the council and incorporate that into the city's web page for the housing legislative program and just tracking the bills and the city positions on those bills and then lastly our contract for tenant resources we are asking the council to direct staff to finalize contract awards review and report outcome outcomes for tenant legal services and to con to contract with the city council as soon as possible and i'll turn it back over to you yeah and i think we're now to our implementation timeline so this is not all of the things but these are stretches us out toward for the next few months at least it takes us all the way through till august of 2019 and gives you an outline of where we think things are going to show up in terms of where staff time is and the feasibility of moving these things forward we were really wanting to bring forward action items as soon as possible so we put as many of them on here and have worked with staff to make sure that they are realistic timelines so with council's support of our recommendations tonight then we should be able to move forward with these things as outlined here close with the colors mean i don't know that blue pink yeah they don't they coincide with the report in the report housing protections pink protections green and community vitalities blue got it thank you right on the spot look at that and that concludes our presentation are there any questions initial questions that people want to pose thank god where do we start yeah i just wanted to ask a couple on the first one for the um i know we start a new work plan in may so are you thinking that this is something that that's going to continue uh as regarding you know future but we're going to this seems like an ongoing program that we're developing here in regards to staff and i know that this happened also when we looked at some of the homelessness recommendations in terms of how you cost out some of these things and what the impact is on staff time in terms of the program and what other you know programs does this crowd out so i didn't ask city manager or others how it worked on to how you're going to report back on that with respect to your question about the budget the new work plan and the budget so we'll have to incorporate obviously these recommendations as we set off the the process for next year so we'll have to determine how to go about doing that it'll obviously involve the a new council and the current council members to relook at what we've done and what needs to continue and then reformulate that to your work plan and reevaluate the strategic goals that we have in place i guess i just want to make sure because there's so many recommendations you're thinking that we're i mean is it that's understanding that we're we're accepting the report but maybe these are all gonna like we gave direction they'd go to the planning commission other areas for a future review we're not saying hey go go to work on these um there's money to to to do them well the they vary there are some things that are in progress uh there are others that require uh coming back to council and so we'll we'll work on those but we will have to check check into where we're at you know when we do the the new work plan strategic planning effort to see how they fit in i mean these are consistent with what the plan's been been and so i think we just have to make sure whether we want to continue those or want to modify them and when we do that process obviously we also take into account the workload and resources to be able to accomplish them and and put some timeframes on them councilman matthews throughout the presentation in the report there are many references to waiving fees reducing fees etc etc and in our budget process when our strategies was to the greatest extent possible realize the increase the fees to realize the cost of providing services so that's obviously a tension there so when it comes forward it would be good just to lay out how that fits into the big picture i'd like to respond to that too because we actually because we had crossover members of the committees we actually acknowledged that that was a it's not actually a tension because we held that as a value as well that we wanted to support the full cost recovery of services some of the things that we looked at was are there fees that can be delayed to a later time for instance like at certificate of occupancy so that would still allow for full cost recovery but it would allow some relief of pressure for homeowners for instance wanting to build an ad you that they don't have to pay that fee until the end of the process so we did take that and okay i just wanted to put it out there and looking at like payment plans as well and so having the ability to play pay over a number of years within five years or within three years instead of having to be right at cfo and then also i just wanted to follow up on another question was back in december november december the council gave direction to set up a legislative affairs program to look at legislation not just for housing but also some public safety issues and other kind of city city business so i'm wondering is a expectation that this would just be rolled into that action um because it seems like you're just narrowly saying a legislative affairs program for housing but we've already kind of decided to have just a legislative affairs program just for city so that we get regular updates yeah that would make sense to do it to do it that way yes council member crown just building on that i wanted to put out to that part of that legislative affairs is you know really enforcing or trying to work with the university on the measure you vote so putting aside some money into that legislative affairs and thinking about how do we um you know work pressure uh with the university and maybe organize with other UCs who are having similar issues that we're having so i support that not just housing but you know other issues yeah council member matthews um as you know the league of california cities does have its legislative priorities which pretty much have matched with ours over time um i'm gathering that what you're intending here is not only that we track and comment on legislation that's introduced or in the pipeline but we pro initiate issues to be considered and again the league is a really good venue for that so um at the appropriate time we might work with our our regional league people representative etc and so forth yeah i agree and we we also pay we have consultants that are in sacramento and washington that we use in terms of legislation so it's like knowing what we're giving them direction on and how we're fully utilizing them to support kind of our council priorities both the league and yeah consultants what fun does that come out of except as city managers account it's budgeted in in our budget yes council member narayan so i've heard so many different definitions of what a junior adu is could we get could we get what maybe the official definition is sure so state law identifies a number of criteria um and it gives uh cities the opportunity to um include junior adus and what state law identifies is one size limitations uh and um i don't recall off the top of my head what they are but they're they're fairly small um two um there are um limitations on thank you on um drain sizes in kitchenettes um and so there are very specific criteria so but essentially what it is is it's the conversion of an existing part of a house into um a um a mini unit it can share kitchen facilities with the main unit it can share bathroom facilities with the main unit it does have an exterior access but one of the things that's that's really good about this is it's one of the most affordable ways to convert a potentially additional unit in an existing residence so when you're talking about an actual granny unit for you know a mother or a mother-in-law or a father and father-in-law this is an affordable way to potentially provide them some level of independence at a small cost it's essentially adding a kitchenette that the state unfortunately has provided some very specific limitations on um that are not uh as useful as we would like them to be and that that's what stemmed uh that's where where some of the recommendations that we had stemmed from of changing some of those drain size limitations and um the wattage limitations so it says you know you can only have a 120 outlet um a win and that just might mean that there's a less efficient range that's put in okay great thank you for that definition and um you know i was looking at the community engagement part first of all i just have to say congratulations on creating this being part of something similar earlier i know the work that goes into this and the hours and the combing over everything so thank you for um doing that for the community and for the council to make this an easier process um under the community engagement i'm a little concerned that it's over ambitious and that maybe we'll take uh too much staff time i i just wanted to echo those concerns and that um i could see maybe perhaps community partners helping us with that especially with the housing academy um and you know learning sessions which i think are great um but i i don't know i think we need to be careful that you know and we're not taking the time to actually put stuff into action and spending too much time maybe talking so that would be my only concern and that maybe maybe seeking out community partners to um to make that happen and i'm i just um also want folks to consider i don't know i didn't hear it mentioned but under tenant resources there's an organization called echo housing um i've done a bit of reading about them and they provide many to many cities tenant landlord mediation um services so i would like to have that be added as a possibility when we're looking at tenant services i really i they're quite interesting and compelling council member crown i just wanted to could we come back for questions and maybe listen to the public it's been a kind of long but i do want to come back keep it going for some questions from us okay great all right so i'll turn it over now if that's uh we'll go to the public is there any member of the public that would like to speak to this item okay every one i know one person um uh mr longinati you you contact me in advance you have four minutes on this item okay so you can go first i mean your your group presentation go right ahead good evening uh council members thank you so much i i so appreciate that i just i'm filled with a lot of good feelings for staff for the council the council members that served on this committee it just feels like a huge milestone so thank you so much um what i want to propose tonight are um what i think would really benefit uh parking policy uh a small but important addition to what you've already put in into the recommendations and these parking this parking reform measure would reduce housing costs reduce traffic improve walkability and transit and by the way reduce our need for structured parking so uh we you know there's the we're gonna i'm talking about unbundled parking because uh the the the uh practice now is that you go rent an apartment or you buy a condo and you're forced to buy parking right it's part of the unit and this unbundling means that you are you can opt to purchase that parking separately uh so manville uh studied parking in in la that had had been unbundled and he found that um it significantly reduced rental and also purchased price of a condo um we know that the trend is for lower um rates of car ownership among young people there's also people that are like i'm approaching a generation who might uh go without a car as my powers of driving diminish um and so uh we even have the toyota president acknowledging that there's a large constituency of people that are less vehicle ownership right so automated cars the future with ride sharing and automation uh will only reduce the the amount of private car ownership and the need for parking as well there's unbundled parking going on in san francisco and has for years many examples of where uh people there you know in this particular example these are many condos there are only five parking spaces for 98 units um people can get around with in in other words people get around without owning a vehicle uh here's a uh a more high-end condos with 25 the tenants opting out of parking so what we're um for unbundled parking to work you really need to protect neighborhoods from spillover parking if you don't provide a lot of parking in the building people are going to look for parking on the streets right in downtown we already have that protection so downtown is a perfect place to require all new units to all new to them and to unbundle their parking uh and uh well a little little story I spoke to a developer of a very large project downtown who said I would love to unbundle parking in my development but I can't afford it I won't work because it'll I'll have to charge like 200 to 250 a month for that parking space just to break even and the city is is giving spaces for under 40 dollars a month so so what this means is that there needs to be a comprehensive parking reform and a parking strategy downtown and fortunately we have a Nelson Nygard who has been contracted by the city to do a comprehensive strategic parking plan for downtown and I recommend that we get Nelson Nygard here before there are any big decisions made on uh spending money on a new parking garage for example um so here's what Nelson Nygard has told other communities in in Berkeley require unbundled parking uh in Watsonville you know require unbundled parking our own city of Santa Cruz master transportation says we should require unbundled parking thank you thank you next speaker yeah I'm just going to add rick pretty much took most of the powerpoint I just want to add that I appreciate the comments regarding optimizing affordability maximizing affordability councilman chase you you mentioned those two terms in particular and I think unbundled parking parking is a way to do that and to look at parking holistically um as a strategy to um make all parking downtown more um uh integrated and uh make a more comprehensive plan whether it's remote parking whether it is unbundled parking whether it is shared parking something comprehensive thank you thank you so one moment on this particular point as part of the master transportation studies is something that we're already in the works in terms of our policy so we do not specify right now whether um developers bundle or unbundled their parking um they have the option to do so but uh Mr. Launchanati's comments regarding our parking prices are very relevant here in terms of developer return um in comparison to what we charge and we have put in conditions that they can't charge more than what the city does and that um uh does um create concerns among some of the development community about their ability to successfully unbundle but we do have as one of the recommendations and we discussed it briefly earlier today is to bring up the cost of the monthly permits to really equalize them so that people can make choices about whether or not they choose to drive um to downtown versus taking a bus or an alternative mode of transportation but right now uh the costs from monthly permits are so low it's much cheaper to drive downtown than to take the bus but I guess that requirement that the pricing can exceed what the cost of the city price and that's a policy we have on the books now that is something that we've been including as conditions for more recent development proposals okay thanks thanks simply simon you know i'm in favor of these recommendations so i'm just going to make a couple points one is i was going to answer uh christ your question from this afternoon about portland and adu's uh it was a great question and it was whether that for a second maybe if you could repeat the question whether rapid rise in portland's adu production due to policies like the ones being recommended has actually caused uh less increase in rent or stop the increase in rent uh so adus are not the only thing portland builds they build infill apartment buildings as well um and so rent is roughly a third lower in portland than it is here despite more rapid increases in population but um but i i think the following um illustrates the effect this has had uh over the last 12 months in portland the two bedrooms have gone up by four percent three bedrooms for rent have gone up by two percent now that's enviable for us where we're seeing faster increases in that but it's still four percent of years unsustainable you know for people if it goes on a long time but one bedrooms uh in the last year have gone up zero percent and studios have gone down two percent in rent and most adus being produced there are studios or one bedrooms and so you see that difference of rents are going up for larger units and most apartment buildings have more of a mix on average and the adu sizes are are seeing steamer going down i just think that's great validation of that kind of policy the other thing i was there's one other point i was going to correct is i i think you got some incorrect information about sp 831 it does not say the minimum size of an adu is 800 square feet what it says it's trying to prevent cities uh from not allowing adus by setting a really high maximum or a really uh really low maximum or high minimum so what it says is if you're allowing an adu you have to allow an 800 square foot adu so you can set a minimum size whatever you want just your minimum size can't be larger than 800 square feet you can set a maximum whatever you want but your maximum can't be under 800 square feet see what i mean so you can still allow 300 square foot adus and you can still allow 1200 if you want to so i just want to make that clear thank you lots of information next speaker please hello my name is jo hall and reading one of your comments i guess i'd be classified as a mom and pop landlord and my wife and i have owned an apartment building for 42 years here in santa cruz and i was struck and i thought it was very common and a good recommendation your 10 cap and your 15 over two years that seems like a fair midway point between people who don't want to do anything and people who want to control everything under the sun because you can't really do it either way there's speed limits and everything else the other thing in these 42 years we lived through three recessions two booms one earthquake and one near flood so you need that flexibility and i thought what you wrote here and i'm sure it'll be made in great detail if the rent control ordinance doesn't pass kind of reflects what we've seen over the years you have to be flexible you have to adjust to what's going to happen and what is happening and right now we're in a boom but the last boom we had we had two tenants lose their job within six months and there was nobody looking and that's when the dot com bus happened so it's just a point that hasn't come out everything seems to be now whether it's a future you're planning for it and i commend you for that and i think this recommendation and my wife and i read it in a sentinel this morning prompted me to come down and say thank you that is a common sense solution without a mass of other unforeseen circumstances so thank you so much thank you next speaker there i'm dearest mostening um yeah i just want to make two two two comments one about the exorbitant rent increase um 10 percent to 15 percent i agree with the last speaker very reasonable i believe i've been um promoting the to you guys through the number of emails and then i've sent you the ordinances about the san liander andro model where they have seven percent annual after 12 percent relocation paid between seven and 12 you're the tenants entitled to a rent review hearing by a rent board uh with echo housing as their um provider of tenant mediation services and to give you an example of of the budget for echo housing last year in a city of 92 thousand people the 50 percent larger than santa cruz it was a whopping budget busting sum of 25 thousand dollars compare that to what a rent board would cost under the proposed ordinance and it works swimmingly in san liandra building is going on new units are being developed nobody spooked by due by coming to san liandra to build new housing units uh second um totally unrelated topic and the the uh i was intrigued by the um uh look acquisition or conversion of some of the city owned properties the nyak building for instance this is an office building and one thing i would encourage you to look at is the model this company the startup called starcity.com they're in san francisco and they're they're um they build or redevelop office warehouse type structures into communal living situations dormitories and the millennials are eating it up the waiting list is thousands of people for these units communal kitchens communal bathrooms in some case you have a 200 square foot room like the one you grew up with at home in your you know your your kid bedroom but again when you look at the demographics of housing and the potential under a thousand dollar dormitory accommodations starcity.com and thank you look at it next speaker please former don lane good evening don lane and tonight i'm here as one of the coordinators of the housing advocacy network and i want to remind you you probably may you might remember that in december 90 of our network participants sent you an email about these very topics and asked you to preserve existing housing units protect and add ad us um move forward with rent stabilization and tenant protection strategies participate in passing a countywide affordable housing bond measure which is a favorite of mine and look at other funding sources encourage and require efficient use of the limited land available for development and redevelopment through zoning density bonus and other means reduce the cost of producing rental housing ensure that every city multi-unit housing development includes affordable units and lastly seek to recruit all community constituents in marshaling support and decision-making for short and long-term housing solutions so i read that because i want to say that i think you've succeeded on all of those points with this blueprint and we really appreciate that very much and especially want to acknowledge that last point that you did do a tremendous amount of work to bring people together from across the community to develop these solutions and i hope you will be able to move forward with them very quickly especially writing that letter to the board of supervisors about the housing bond just started it already all right thank you next speaker please Good evening my name is Deborah Wallace and first we'd like to congratulate you on the detailed report and everyone can plainly see that we have a shortage of affordable housing and i appreciate the effort to tackle the problem from multiple directions I do hope the public understands that the blueprint strategy and tactics does rely on external investment in rental property reasonable laws will be required before people are willing to invest in new ad use new studio apartments and other rental housing for this reason i'm pleased to see alternatives to rent control being explored as a professional property manager i hope that those of us that know the nuts and bolts of managing rentals can help iron out details as we continue affordable housing plans thank you thank you next speaker please gary patin mr. mayor and council members for save Santa Cruz before i begin would it be possible to have more than two minutes since i am speaking for a group generally we ask in advance to have after an hour and a half to two hours it would be nice we've been here for actually nine hours right they're not to not just an hour and a half right um but if you yeah if you'd hold the time we're going to keep it at two let me know in advance it'll be quick but i i'm just afraid i just hate to shout at you all which is what i tend to do when i know that i don't have enough time to make the points three points that i would like to make looking at this one of them is specific to save Santa Cruz as you may remember save Santa Cruz which i think has about 2000 people on our sponsor and support list sent a letter to the council with i think seven different points it was referred by the mayor to this committee there is no mention it was even considered or referred to and we're distressed to see that the quarter's plan not mentioned in this report was what prompted the formation of save Santa Cruz and we've been told various ways by various people that's on the back burner nothing's going to happen and yet one of these recommendations is to proceed with ocean street planning we would like to be involved in community planning for the points that we made in our letter second point and i don't know whether you folks understood this the way i understood it in the audience but this list gun kept talking about how we've got to make certain the developers make money because that's the most important thing and so if you can't have 15 percent well i guess you can't because the key is to make these projects quote unquote pencil out now i would like to suggest to you that just building more housing isn't dealing with the critical affordable housing crisis in our community we need to build affordable housing and that means that you need to put obligations on developers that will probably lower the land costs in the community because people buying land to develop will know that they have to include more money for affordable housing so with respect to those recommendations based on this report which has just been released today was denied to us we asked for it and know you have to make a public records act request etc we would like you to give us some time to look at that report give other members of the public time before you adopt recommendations that call for downgrading our inclusionary housing percentage which is i guess what must brown objected to and and we would join her in objecting to that third thing is you need to wrap it up on you on this third thing is inclusionary housing you call for action and page one or great let's have some action to require builders to build inclusionary housing it ought to be more than 15 percent and there shouldn't be any in lieu fees to let them off the hook your report says your report says thank you sir mr paten that you know i gave you i just want to say mr mayor and council people it really is not good that you don't let the public please excuse me one moment sir if you speak up again i'll give you a warning here the next time we're gonna have to you have to leave okay okay you should be trying to get members of the public who are informed and who represent large constituencies to be able to participate thank you thank you next speaker please i'm back i'm susan caron and we commend all the hard work the subcommittee has done on this difficult and complex challenge as someone who has provided rental housing for almost 40 years i sincerely hope you involve housing providers in the process of advancing the housing blueprint even small details like regulations regarding subleasing can change everyone's housing experience in unintended but negative ways the process of exploring reasonable rent control alternatives should involve those having extensive experience with tenants and tenant situations it would be negligent not to include such accessible and local experts in this process the more simple and clear new housing laws the better we are already seeing many sales of rental properties out of fear of extreme regulations this is happening throughout the city and is clearly noticeable in the diminishing number of available rental units complex and convoluted regulations will only exacerbate our housing crisis we sincerely hope the city council continues to plan thoughtfully carefully and methodically so that a substantial number of rental houses will be preserved thank you thank you next speaker please i'm deba marks from the central park neighborhood where we are like a block from ocean street and block from all the other quarters and um synthia when you were mayor you joined us in the listening tour so i'm sure you can guess that what i'm most concerned about i mean i appreciate all your hard work and and everything but in the selfish sort of way i'm most concerned about your rezoning of ocean street i was involved in that process with the ocean street area plan from the very beginning but all the people are gone who created it and one major concept was neighborhood protection and i'm didn't hear really a word about that in the whole report and that i find that very very disturbing you know there were like you know like parking permits or you know but nothing about um where big buildings could meet single story home neighborhoods like mine and some of you have been to my neighborhood and know what i'm talking about and i um guess i would like to um first of all i have a question it's like when is this rezoning going to start what's the process for community engagement and i would like to be one of those people involved i would like to make that request i've put a huge portion of my life into this and i feel from just the whole tone and everything i feel kind of um a threat you know that all the um you know density bonuses and everything where there were height limits um could be changed from whatever to you know like much much bigger buildings and it's different from downtown where these buildings aren't really bordering the homes um on the properties that you talked about but here we have really small narrow lots and i feel there has to be included in the zoning not just for my neighborhood but the other neighborhoods on ocean street a real conscious thoughtful way of making those things come together so i hope you will include me and thank you for your time thank you next speaker please good evening mr mayor city council people and you guys are doing such a great job for our city thank you i also want to comment on the quality of our speakers this evening i think we've been blessed with some great speakers bringing great information to us um what i'm here to talk about is the mayor's proposed rent cap 10 percent and 15 percent over two years um i think i'm older than most of you i doubt many of you live through the 70s when we had a thing called stagflation but i was a landlord of a single family house during that time and it was a tough time for landlords um i'd like you to think about what's happened during the financial crisis of 2007 to 2009 and what the federal reserve did to lower interest rates create a housing boom which caused rents to become unaffordable i'd like you to think about argentina right now which is going through a severe economic downturn our proposal mr mayor works fine for this economy it's very flexible right now but in the event that we have one of these other things happen again a landlord will not be able to be flexible with his rents and adjust it and a severely impacted economy is it possible to incorporate some kind of a cpi increase along with a rent increase in your cap so that if we get involved in a bad economy the landlord will still be able to afford to rent his house and that's what i wanted to address you all for thank you very much thank you sir next speaker please hi my name is elise casby and i'm going to just go quickly to say what i want to say tonight thank you for the presentation um essentially i want to object to the entire plan so it's not a very um compromising position at this point and obviously i represent a sort of an extreme but on the other hand i am not an unrealistic person and i think that our country in our world is in crisis and it's called catastrophic climate destabilization but another word for that could be really dense and reactive non-planning and non-problem solving by people who are full of preconceptions okay so i'm not specifically talking about this subcommittee report when i say that what i'm saying is that our economy is extremely artificial it is not based on human needs it is based on violence and the violence that's been done in santa cruz is most of the people who used to live here cannot afford to live here they're already gone a lot of the homeless people which in 2014 it was 70 percent indigenous people 70 percent of the homeless were born and raised here so what i'm trying to say is this whole plan which mr patten touched on is a developer friendly plan still and i just want to say that we're at a time in the united states where we need to have different paradigms our paradigms can certainly no longer be appeasing developers and a power block in our city council that's limited and not helping our democracy so when rachel attacks in the notion of community engagement it's for sure because she doesn't want it and she wants us to take actions without that so we need to maximize community engagement especially now because the latest science is 2040 we may all not be here okay so let's get busy thank you thank you lice are there any other members of the public that aren't already standing that wish to speak on this item if you can just so we know as it gets going to move over please next speaker hey my name is evan siroki and i commend uh work being done so far on uh all this and uh and just remind you all that you know santa cruz is growing and uh it's growing faster in population and housing is being produced you know it's like in the last eight years it's like 14 people per additional housing unit so we need more homes we need uh for them to get built and so i like to highlight that uh the great work that's being done on adus and parking and i also like to you know point out that there's a lot of support you know especially at the blueprint committee community meeting for that uh none of the recommendations in there had a majority negative support so these are things that we should be able to do and there are two things though that i do want to point out that you should look at uh first one is to support the ucsc student housing west project this is a big project that is gonna have you know a net gain of 2,200 beds on the campus which i think would really help provide more housing and so i hope you uh you know i'm not sure how since it's you know on the campus but uh you know you're all wanting to support downtime projects i think this one is you know also important uh and also i'd like to point out that it seems like the whole thing that started this blue housing blueprint thing last year was uh you know the corridor rezoning proposal that you know is controversial but i think it's needed and uh what we have out of this rezoning now is just ocean street so i think that you should bring back the corridor plan and you know look at more places than just ocean street for allowing more housing to get built so you know my generation and you know my my daughter who's six months gonna need more homes and so you need to be looking at more places than just ocean street for housing to get built thank you haven't next speaker please hi lin renshaw santa cruz together congratulations on the well-written report and the informative presentation we're glad that the city council recognizes that housing affordability is a supply problem in the blueprint it's clear this strategy is largely dependent on investors even one's as small as a homeowner seeking to build a single adu rental housing requires public confidence and certainty in reasonable city rental laws we appreciate the council and staff's practical focus and hope that as a community you will make sure that any new laws still facilitate new affordable housing we look forward to progress of the housing blueprint and hope there's balanced input into planning including property managers rental owners and homeowners contemplating adus last we're glad to see the council exploring reasonable alternatives to rent control for the blueprint to succeed it must protect investment into new and existing rental properties for those interested in how the rent control initiative will dramatically reduce the rental housing supply please see santa cruz together dot com thank you next speaker please good evening mayor council members today has been a phenomenal day for housing across the entire county i was at the board of supervisors hearing starting at nine a.m. where we heard them consider an enhanced density bonus as well as provisions to increase farm worker housing differ impact fees to the certificate certificate of occupancy and structure the fees based upon square footage rather than number of bedrooms which will hopefully incentivize the creation of smaller denser units near transit and here we are and i've been here for almost the entire nine hours you guys have been here i wasn't here for closed session i'm glad i missed that but i gotta say i applaud everything you guys have brought forward you know i was definitely skeptical at the beginning of what was a long listening tour you know there was a lot of loud voices in many different hearings and many small hearings as well but you guys have taken a huge long list and picked a lot of forward thinking a lot of very targeted and will be hopefully effective policies once implemented that will surely move the needle to improve affordability in santa cruz and while you may encounter some initial resistance as with all new things i think as time paves the way forward we will look back on this as a landmark moment when we made the decision to make a proactive investment in the future of our community and so again i applaud all the hard work i applaud all the work of staff and bringing these forward um and i think it will be well worth it once all these things are adopted and so i hope we can get to them as soon as possible thank you so much thank you next speaker please uh tim will be speaking for affordable housing now and we submitted our comments in writing so i'm just going to highlight a few things um first i'd like to thank the subcommittee for its tremendous work and and the staff for their for their work um as we said in our letter one solution doesn't solve the problem you've presented a lot of solutions and we're just going to be looking forward to seeing the details so thank you so much and move this thing forward thank you you next speaker please and um before you begin are there any other speakers that haven't already spoken that would like to speak on this item if you'd stand up you'll be the last speaker um or there's two more anybody else please stand now okay thank you please go ahead good evening mayor terazas and council members my name is mark mesidi miller i'm about 35 year resident of the city and a professional engineer i submitted my personal remarks to you earlier in writing i hope you consider them and make more than one motion tonight but i'm here representing the chamber of commerce i'm the chair of the board of the santa cruz area chamber of commerce the chamber of commerce represents 600 more than 600 large medium and small businesses in our community and i'm here tonight to tell you those businesses are hurting they're hurting because they're having trouble recruiting employees and at first glance you might think it's just the low wage earners it's not it's the doctors it's the engineers it's the people at the top the people in the middle and the people at the bottom and the reason we're having trouble recruiting people is because there is no housing there's not enough housing in our community so i applaud the work that you've done but i fear that it's not enough the chamber would like to see you building all kinds of housing uh there's uh it seems like there's a lot of emphasis on ad use we think that's great we need more we need more housing of all types i'm we're excited to see the city looking at their own land in the downtown area for development we wish you well in that regard if you need help in that regard we stand here ready to help you look at those more carefully lastly as business people when you look at these possible actions when you come back we would love to see some kind of business analysis what's the likelihood that these things are going to work what's your pro forma for these policies as you roll them out to the public thank you thank you speaker please buenas noches uh my name is daniel lejandres barrios unidos mayor city council you know i was sitting back there and i wasn't going to speak but i said there's no people of color here and there's nobody speaking so let me speak for myself and and those that are out there in the community that don't show up at these places or are afraid to show up the dishwashers the car washing guys uh all those folks that are out there the strawberry pickers that are living in situations that are inhumane and i want to just say that this plan uh it has a lot of potential and uh as an organization of artisanals been here over 40 years um we have a little piece of Santa Cruz and we're we want to work with the city and the community to see how we can maintain some of those those community uh young people our young people our artists our elders um i just want to relay the story the the other day uh an elder that's given so much to the community here came in and she wanted to speak and i listened to her and she started crying because she no longer had a place to live and i'm going like and you know it's like how can we do that to our elders they're given so much to our community and and now that our young people are going to be fazed that was added our grandchildren so i just want to say i want to support what we could do and continue to build within what we can do we're not developers but we're community people and i thank you for your work thank you relations speaker please my name is brian schulman i'm the producer of the bts present show currently producing shows about santa cruz county in silken valley real estate behind the scenes i've had the pleasure of having a few of you on the panel uh on the show in the past few years thank you mayor for being on the most recent episode that was just released earlier today and i just want to let you know that in in listening to and watching the show myself having been the producer and the director and the editor i've watched and listened to people talk from santa cruz together and from the housing advocacy groups and the people who wrote the ordinance and different city council members speak in careful detail about the positions of what's going on in the housing situation the things that have been left forefront of my mind from hearing the details of what people have been saying are two significant pieces one is that i have family who lives in seattle so i visited seattle quite a few times in these last few years and one of the things that i've seen is an extraordinarily huge large high density growth in the area and i believe that what's possible for santa cruz is a high density growth aspect of housing that would satisfy a lot of the concerns the other thing that stands out for me is a very significant issue is the difference between the 19 000 new students that are expected to come to the university and the 5000 housing units that are planned to be available and i think the discrepancy between those two issues causes a significant housing consideration that needs to be addressed in the city of santa cruz thank you thank you okay are there any other speakers that wish to speak to this item okay you'll be our last speaker tonight thank you thank you um well this has been a really long process for everybody and and certainly i've been sort of living this myself personally for three years i've been with the community for over 40 years and um well first of all i do want to acknowledge all the work that everybody's done i know that you guys work night and day on these kind of things and i know especially the city council members are working really hard so i really appreciate that the thing i just want to say is that um when i look at this plan i try to put it in more practical terms and i try to ask myself how many families will be served you know how many students will be served um how many you know they talk about cooks and people downtown that don't have housing how many of those will be served um when we talk about junior ad us that's already happening those are the unpermitted garages or attached you know rooms that have exit um they're already happening but then when you try to restrain them by saying they're unpermitted um i know situations maybe you say people aren't being evicted but i know situations where once the rent ordinance is imposed with all the code enforcement the rents might go up 25 40 percent and those people are gone and those kind of statistics are not really tracked so you know in my view there's a lot of practical considerations and i think with more community involvement you might hear more of those stories but i would like to see this proposal mapped with the housing element and to see how those numbers really tie together and if you can make any kind of modeling that can tie that because most of the high density development that i see um for studios and one bedrooms um it doesn't include anything for families it doesn't include any players for families or open space for families and we constantly ask where the family is going to live you know where's the next generation going to live i know that robert talks a lot about millennials but you know in many cases they can't afford uh their own kitchen in their own bathroom so a communal space might be more appropriate and they seem anyway um again i wanted to thank you for this and i'll look forward to the next version thank you hey thank you okay at this point we'll bring it back to council for further questions i think councilmember crone and i did and so some of you might as well and uh deliberation and then um action so councilmember crone do you want to kick it off um yeah i was i was wondering about the um the adu uh provision where the the owner does not have to live on premises um how how would that work um is it because i don't see who it's going to be favorable i i don't see it creating community i see it you know further breaking down community i i think you're referring to the um the three if you rent your adu out as a affordable unit you can you don't have to it doesn't have to be owner occupied was that a recommendation or just part of the garden regarding the legislation um which way you are referring to yeah so right now um we do require that owner occupancy with the exception that i talked about before the there's a state bill sp8 31 that would preclude the ability of cities to require owner occupancy and so one of the things that was discussed without a specific recommendation really is but we may at some point in the future may want to consider uh uh having the ability for uh a affordability restriction to allow non-owner occupancy and this state law would preclude us from doing that and so the recommendation is that the uh the state law not include the provision that prohibits us from including an owner occupancy requirement and then that provides us with the flexibility to consider policies like that in the future and as far as the um the ocean street plan is that a continuation of the corridors or is this something different i would say it is uh taking a fresh look at what was included with the ocean street plan and evaluating how we can together with the community craft a set of regulations that responds to their concerns and it makes for better projects that are moving forward more expeditiously through our processes because we've already vetted many of those concerns and address them through the standards that we put in place bonnie i was wondering is there any more movement with pacific station with talking with the metro and stuff how is there anything new to report um it was it was great seeing the area if we could work together on it yeah we're actually we'll have the consultant um dam boil and associates has been working on this analysis and we're supposed to have a draft the end of this month um so that will come back i think first to metro and then to council um in august so i'm really excited to see it too and that's that's on the possible layout reconfiguration that's right and when we say the a b five 1505 it will require uh to provide options for developers and paying in loufis is this is a b five 1505 actually saying a percentage or what's the formula they're using for in loufis if that's providing an option it's saying that we need to provide alternatives to in loufis and we're still in the process of analyzing it so we'll come back with a little more specificity and detail um on that but that we um and and in some cases we we actually do want that in most cases we prefer for inclusionary to be integrated in projects we like to see them disperse throughout projects throughout the city but there can be some circumstances under which it's actually is better to provide in loufis or a dedication of land or as other examples did the committee talk much about um because i saw that the figure of two million dollars and i guess it was 2013 we were using from redevelopment funds and then it's sort of like petered out in 2015 so two million would be about two percent raised in tot was was a disgust of what the percentage might might yield and what we would need i mean of course the need is probably um endless but would a two to three percent tot was that realistic in bringing back the same money that we were we're getting during redevelopment we didn't talk about the specific percentage because we're also we just wanted to make sure that that was considered as part of one of the things that we looked at but we're also in support of the regional measure housing measure and then we're also looking at state funding so we're hoping that all of those things would come through and then that would give us the ability to actually really make a huge dent in our affordable housing needs and with respect for unbundling the parking or not even that but thirty nine dollars for a parking fee are we is it envisioned i mean i know you know ucsc is what 800 over 800 a year to park up there do we have a percentage that's sustainable that we can say hey you know people can afford this who needed the thing that i can weigh in on something that we've been looking at closely and that is the cost of our monthly permits specifically and trying to bring those more in line so that people actually are making a choice of whether or not they drive or take an alternative mode of transportation well it's i think it's like 68 i think is is the cost of a bus pass right now and right now i think we're charging 30 39 somewhere in that range for monthly passes so we're basically subsidizing people to park right now which we're we're definitely recommending those changes part of the policy changes so we'd go up to equal a bus passes over time i think we we didn't want to have that impact um on a lot of employees that work downtown right right away and we're hoping to use some of the tdm funding that can come available through increasing some of the parking rates to create some programs to offset um financial offset for those um employees that that need it in the downtown so we're looking at what other tdm programs we can that can address some employees that have need so providing bus passes is an idea also yes thanks thanks mayor okay and any questions on the side no comments what do you want well there was questions that were held over because we went over so if you have questions first and then we'll kind of go into no questions no questions council member chase i have a couple questions um well first of all i'm i have a couple on regarding student housing there was i was really appreciative of the letter that we received from affordable housing now one of the bullet points they had was proactively encourage school district development and housing for employees and students um and i'd just like to ask i was up on campus recently one of the students isabella told me that she had trouble finding a room finding a place to stay and i was wondering are there ways that we can prioritize student housing zoning so that you look at specific zoning districts where student was housing is because one it will help to kind of free up some of our residential housing stock for families and maybe prioritize student housing in different parts of the city was that discussed or considered in any way so one of the key considerations was identifying ways in which units of different sizes and different types could be promoted and so we didn't we do have the recommendation in the the report here that speaks to the accessory dwelling units junior ad use efficiency units um sros and s i used the small ownership in the which isn't as applicable but the single room occupancy which very well could be applicable to students so that's one way i think what you're referring to would be a either an overlay district that could apply to an area and maybe it facilitates or perhaps it's alternative zoning regulations for as one of the speakers was referring to a co-housing type of option and we do have the ability to to do that in fact we've got one that's coming in into the downtown here that is currently under consideration but it isn't as readily available as an option or or it's a little bit more restricted in part because of the parking way the parking regulations are set up outside of the downtown but an evaluation of the parking regulations is one way that that could facilitate that with say a larger single family residence in a communal kitchen um i guess what i'm thinking of a particular areas that you might have zoning for kind of these higher density student appropriate house and like public private dormitories like you see in some cities galeta i was in uh rena recently i saw one unit that family members rent and where they actually rent out different portions of the actual dormitories so you can have you know separate units in there that are communal but it's also includes bedroom space plus um plus kitchens and so i mean we have an opportunity in our downtown perhaps to free up some of our residential family housing so that we have student housing um you know in in our downtown so that would be one thing i'd be interested in us exploring maybe referring to the planning commission or someone to look at maybe an overlay or separate zoning district that identifies maybe student zoning or student housing district as an overlay and that um that's something you know we we talked about that a little bit in terms of the promoting the variety of housing types but it wasn't something that specific that came to the the forefront in terms of these recommendations so certainly if that's something the council is interested in doing we could evaluate options related to that okay thank you then we also heard from um mr patin regarding the correspondence from safe santa cruise that was referred to the committee and i just want to ask if the committee did look at that and come up with any sort of thoughts um i mean one of my my thoughts is i mean i i believe that the city should be a research scenario for um higher density but without impacting existing neighborhoods looking at ways where we can do that so um is that something where there is any sort of formal recommendation that came out or how was it discussed or considered so that was considered so um all the feedback that we received um was considered by the uh the committee and one of the things in terms of the protections for the neighborhoods um when we talked about the state density bonus um the enhancement to the state density bonus for example that was something that was of concern to the subcommittee members of if we are allowing additional density how do we do that in a manner that's sensitive to the surrounding neighborhoods and as as well as with the ocean street plan that's something that we're going to need to consider when um we are developing a zoning district is how is that going to affect the surrounding properties particularly the ones that are immediately adjacent okay then the others i mean i do want to say that i think the city should not only get behind these in terms of policy but also financially in terms of like that let's say we have a proposal for um the school district looking at ways to have housing for teachers and uh you know employees of school districts that are working on it was there any sort of discussion about how we might support that so there can be some immediate action to kind of see some of the production in those areas because i think there's active work taking place by some of those just jurisdictions we would certainly be supportive of the the school district if they were coming forward with um proposals and we you know would work with them on those i think one of the big challenges that um we all recognized as part of the discussions was the funding and there are some provisions that we've talked about that would hopefully provide opportunities for additional funding yeah and i would just add to that we have a working group um that includes representatives from the school district county and other other entities and we've been talking about these issues and how we could support each other and also looking at that crosses jurisdictional lines it's more of a countywide effort of where the land is and where the opportunities are and often that's something that the schools and the school districts can bring to the table is actually land whereas the city of santa cruz is largely built out we have to look at denser and denser opportunities where some of the school districts they have the land so there's some interesting opportunities for housing development there yes i know it's one of the correspondents receive about bringing back the zoning amendments because i think there's a lot of things in work that's already been taken place through our planning processes that's there maybe there's issues regarding some of the recommendations in terms of the density that could be reviewed either at that time or recommendation um to maybe revisit the the housing density or height um in some of the some of the parts of the cities where those recommendations were but how are we going to get back to looking at those zoning amendments so that we can take action is it something that the uh subcommittee looked at or that you are considering as part of your work plan that we're going to hear so that we can have some formal action taken so i would say two things that the committee considered one um with the ocean street a plan um it there is an area plan in place and it was recently adopted and so there are um criteria that can help guide the um a rezoning um in that area and the other thing there was a substantial amount of discussion about what would be the fate of the rest of the corridors and um really because of the the area plan that's in place for ocean street the committee members felt that that step helps provide more guidance and um that can be put in place in terms of looking at rezonings that are compatible with the surrounding area and then see how that goes and re-evaluate how to um look at those areas and uh you know we've got a general plan designation that supports higher density development along all of the corridors that development can occur right now it just occurs through a plan development zoning district oftentimes so what that can do is it provides less certainty for both the developers and the community and if we can show that we can successfully um provide standards that address the community's needs on ocean street there there may be a path forward to um identify how um we can use a similar approach to work with the neighborhood and um and in the future have a zoning district that also um anticipate that also aligns with the general plan so there's no timeline to bring back the zoning amendments there's not a specific timeline for those outside of ocean street it was just the ocean street plan that are rezoning that the um subcommittee recommended moving forward with now now that is also a later point um you'll see on the slide here that the um outreach would begin um in sort of the the uh late winter early spring of next year and then we would be looking at bringing zoning amendments in kind of late summer timeframe and so even that we we recognize and as part of the discussion that um projects can move forward now through an alternative process and while this does help provide that that certainty there are a lot of other things that were identified as higher priorities and and the other areas of the city were not identified as those highest priorities and that's why they didn't make the cut in this round okay and just two other quick things um for the state legislation I mean they have a bundle of of kind of recommendations that those are you know really um kind of there's discrete issues in there that aren't easily kind of responded to in a kind of a global council discussion I don't necessarily support um elimination of owner-occupied requirements for ADUs and so I mean I think Councilman McCrone brought that up I mean if that's something that you know you are recommending um I think those are areas where I'd like to hear more as far as what that means and also um generally if you're looking at a specific area I might be interested in knowing that if you're targeting a particular part of the city to look at that as a potential um policy like an overlay um that would be one thing but not uh eliminating it on a city-wide basis and let me let me just make sure that I'm clear as part of um the recommendation that came forward from the subcommittee the state bill would say that this is SB 831 would say that we cannot put in owner-occupancy requirements and we are opposing that portion of it so we're saying let the local jurisdiction decide whether or not to implement a owner-occupancy requirement. Then the last um point was in regards to kind of that broad issue about you know the um outreach and speaker series I think before we do work on that I'd like to see that come back as a as a program where you cost out what that is um because I know in the past um these are like global discussion but it's not necessarily direction as far as you know what the cost is and so for each of these I think it's important to kind of say well what is the the cost and impact um of these as a as a count formal direction rather than just something that we're kind of discussing informally about hey these are some ideas that you consider during the uh during your deliberations. Okay we can do them. Hey those are all the questions I have council member Matthews. We're getting into comments now. I think we're are we uh yeah go. Um just very briefly commendations to everybody this is really spectacular and it is a heavy duty workload but obviously it's a community priority so um that's an ambitious year ahead of us um I'm I feel comfortable advancing all of this um for future work um and the details will work themselves out um I do want to add my voice to those who have concerns about um a possible prohibition on um uh restrictions against am I doing a double negative there the owner occupancy for the the ad use uh and that may be a shared feeling here but that's directed at state legislation that's working its way through the legislature correct so we can get our letters we can speak with our legislators um and I've mentioned before um whether it be a staff um a presentation I know it's it's rapidly moving uh territory but doing more systematic updates on um the status of housing legislation specifically in the pipeline it's a priority for this community it's obviously a priority for the state legislature it's rapidly moving what do we want to really support what what of our local impacts do we want to make sure it gets on the radar screen so however that gets fixed quick question on that because you're so active in the uh league don't they have a housing committee have a housing committee it meets probably every other quarterly court it meets quarterly probably every other month um the league did set some general priorities at beginning of the year and I think they were housing homelessness and water or infrastructure yeah um and those those are the big picture um but we all we all get updates from the league but even more than that I think some kind of a focused presentation I wanted to ask you do you think that committee is a way for us to get with our colleagues and be more proactive as opposed to just reacting to bills that are being proposed is that a mechanism a way but I think um tracking in real time and meeting particularly meeting with our local electives and saying this is what really really really matters to us is important and we do have um some um uh lobby assistance in state capital and dc and they're they're terrific frankly so um communicating with them regularly as well all of those that's one thing um uh in terms of the speakers I do like that idea but I also really liked rachel's idea of seeking partners because I think that's a sort of an activity uh I think it'd be better if the initiative did not come solely from the city but if we engaged business and education groups on those topics and and bring in some speakers um I'm I'm one of those that remembers back to the post earthquake phase when we had speakers coming and talking on urban design and housing and what makes a successful business district and um it was really informative for the community not not for anyone particular agenda but just let's learn and let's learn collectively and so I like that idea I think it can be not a city project specifically um other than that I'll just look forward to um moving through the program here by smart walkings thank you thank you all for coming tonight and for your feedback um I just really want to acknowledge that you know in the recommendations although not necessarily highlighted is a um suggestion that the staff return to us on a regular basis on our progress knowing that we want to be in action and we want to be accountable to the policies that we're proposing and hopeful that we're seeing the outcomes that we want to see and if not then how can we be mindful of that and data driven to change strategy so I do um want to just sort of highlight that in sort of light of um the comments that were brought up in terms of how we're going to really track the impact um and then I'll leave it at that unless there's other comments I'm prepared to move the recommendation I'll wait I'll let someone else and let's just I'll second that okay you guys deserve it absolutely um Vice Mayor Walken second by and Councilmember Chase and I just want to make sure that we're what we're doing is we're kind of just accepting the report right and looking at this so we'll have these recommendations either go to the planning commission or have some other kind of feedback as far as what the cost is on this we're not just saying go out and do them is that correct it varies per recommendation but many of them are direction to go and update our ordinances and bring or bring back an analysis with that because some of these do not have uh fully vetted analyses yet the the parking recommendations for example lowering parking standards well what are we lowering them to so we need to go off and do that analysis we need to do that community outreach but it is providing direction to staff to go and complete this analysis and to come back some of the things it may have cost implications you know when we're talking about the properties downtown and pursuing the the metro project for example obviously those would have decision points um the council needs to consider before um monies are expended but there is a good deal of the recommendations that are saying proceed and um complete that analysis bring and oftentimes it's bring it to planning commission um as required and then to the city council the motion is basically saying accept and adopt actually it's adopt recommendations between pages six and seventeen ask a quick question on process so um for instance you know my suggestion about looking into echo housing is that something i i don't need to include that that's a recommendation and i can work with staff to follow up or i mean how do we just incorporate that yeah so would that be in addition to the like the budget protection yeah budget considerations for tenant resources to add the possibility or just analyzing echo housing i mean for those types of ideas can those be things that we just follow up on or should we include it right now well so that one in specific was one that had already come to the council and the council had allocated the fifteen thousand in the previous budget cycle actually that didn't get expended in that budget cycle so it got moved into this budget with us and it already went to rfp and we awarded it to the tenant organization that submitted an rfp for that so i think that we already have an existing recommendation in a selected tenant group but i don't know that there's anything that precludes us from looking at echo housing for other things i'm just not sure at this point we can replace the one that we already awarded okay i just yeah i would just like to see staff look into that as a possibility because i think they're a great resource for future so does the subcommittee sunset after this right it's you're you're done work's done okay well they're gonna have their eyes on it yeah right council member crown could you ever again what we're voting on exactly what this a vote would do i'll i'll ask the planning director i would say the the vote is to accept the recommendations of the housing blueprint subcommittee and have and direct staff to proceed accordingly and implementing those recommendations okay i mean one one of the things i'd like to see is looking at specific designated zoning or overlays to for student housing to free up some of our residential housing that wasn't in the recommendations and i'd like to see something like that incorporated i'd like to see us you know one private opportunity to free up some of our existing residential housing by creating specific zoning overlay districts so that we kind of find places where we for housing or to encourage student housing i'm not crazy about that i don't know what that means yeah it means like and if you look in other places like galeta or other towns you have student housing that's developed for dormitory style housing so that like right now we have about 20 percent of our house uh residential housing stock is is taking up by student rentals it's freeing up the residential housing stocks you can get people into appropriate dormitory style housing perhaps in the downtown where it it kind of reduces some of the impacts we have when we have student residential housing in neighborhoods i can respond to that and say that we address this issue many times over the last year when we've talked about this at any time that we're adding a variety of types of housing that we are freeing up single family homes for single families and so every time we're producing smaller denser units those are those tend to be things that are more attractive to younger people millennials including students and that allows for families to then move into single family homes so that is embedded in the recommendations that are here in the work that we've been doing for the last year i'm just not familiar with the overlay idea so i know that everything that we recommended here is in support of that concept yeah okay i used to so it's not precluded it's just zoning so you create areas where there's student housing was prioritized facilitate the development of it in those areas that's all i'm suggesting the other was the concept of having for the community engagement before you initiate it have a comeback with a formal program and budget that's there so it's not just going hey go do it we find out what the cost is on this and if it displaces other existing planning department activities so that is incorporated into the action i would support that if there is um protection for neighborhoods how do you deal how does galeta deal with um you know houses being turned into dormitories which is like the west side is full of of dormitory houses that that can be a challenge the university towns face and um you know if if there is encouragement of that type of development within neighborhoods then we would have to have a very robust program in coordination with the police on the enforcement of the the noise ordinances and so forth and i think we've we've done a pretty good job and we've been fairly successful at addressing those issues but certainly if if we were to promote the the densification of neighborhoods i'll call it you know through some kind of student housing program or allowances then we would need to make sure that we're considering that um through the development of those criteria i was i spoke to you in advance i was also suggesting conjunction with that to research areas for higher density without impacting existing neighborhoods so that's where it's looking where there might be a way to kind of zone areas for that student housing so that it's not impacting existing neighborhoods right there may be opportunities to look at that on peripheral areas where there's a lower impact on neighborhoods so we have a motion and the motion is to proceed with everything in those pages now are we adding our own idea i i don't like that idea frankly where's the land i mean you know we got expensive land where are we going to be be building big apartment dorms i don't see it um but are we all now just adding our favorite ideas asking earlier i i think there's a great big work program right here that they're that the committee vetted thoroughly based on the community input and um they went through with their criteria and established which on several different measures were the most promising the most realistic etc and i think there's plenty to work on right here and that's how i'd like to look forward that's more crime this is about something different um the affordable housing academy versus affordable housing um i think of affordable housing commission especially one that might better define what affordable housing is because i just hear so many different ideas of what affordable affordability is and so that bothers me did the group talk about the subcommittee talk about um an affordable housing commission i'm trying to remember back to all the different things that we heard we heard a lot of things i don't know that we talked about an affordable housing commission in specific we talked about the academy really being a group of community members that would weigh in on it and become sort of experts on the issue of affordability and then how it impacted our community and how it's playing out in our community so it could have similar functions i guess it would depend on how you defined the role of the commission i think if i may also add i think part of what the conversation that took place was how can we um knowing that we don't have all the solutions we don't have all the answers some of these are going to be exploratory how can we be in action knowing that we can also be fine over time and that's i think where my earlier point about we want to be mindful of tracking progress and making modifications and exploring other opportunities if what we're doing isn't working or if there's better ways we could do it so just sort of knowing that that this is sort of a first step and hopefully a series of continuous improvement but we'll ultimately make a dent in terms of really relieving some of the burdens of housing that we're experiencing in Santa Cruz it's perfect or as imperfect as they may be on that on that topic specifically i like the idea of the affordable housing academy i think it probably could even be improved by referring it to it as a housing academy many have talked about the interplay between housing supply overall and affordability this seems to me an area that could really benefit from having some partners engaged in it and i think the idea of this over time it's kind of like leadership Santa Cruz but for housing that we would have a group that was diverse that and their experience their shared experience would elevate both the community's knowledge and communication among people several people spoke about well let's have some property managers involved in these discussion i mean all the different segments so i think that's a good idea yeah it can be massaged i i think there's a lot of potential tbd yeah on that on that point so then these are just general recommendations we're not we're not saying these are fully formed we're just saying okay these are things we're moving forward on and i appreciate that clarification so there's 42 recommendations and i know we were talking like maybe boiling that down to a few that are doable and realizable and so i yeah i it's it's hard to really wrap around all of these okay so i'm we have a motion on the floor in a second and i think based on the discussion and comments you received i mean i i assume that's incorporated into the general direction regarding the recommendations so councilmember crone just a couple comments chum please and i probably am uh you know i have to think about all the folks that aren't here and um who i'm a part of um and who wanted me to be here um so it might sound because i really appreciate the housing subcommittee and all the work that you've you've been doing and have done and to bring this to us um and i just appreciate council taking on the the the task of housing doesn't pencil out how often we have heard that line i for one believe all housing is not equal the next city council will hopefully say no to developers who will not build inclusionary units market rate housing does not currently pencil out for our dishwashers or our baristas or even nurses the next council will hopefully learn how to say no to developers who want who do not want to pay in lieu fees or at least charge them the same amount that it takes to build a unit of housing the unit that they're going to sell it for i take my hat off to this council for protecting housing by passing a rent freeze and adjust cause eviction ordinance but i do not see either of those two accomplishments listed in this housing report under what we have already been doing sections i cannot support the removal of owner-occupied requirement for ad use i cannot support uh moving the moving target of 10 percent or less for inclusionary i cannot support an affordable housing academy instead of a whole affordable housing commission that empowers our um residents and that meets regularly it sounded like in the conversation that the house the academy is like well it'll meet once in a while um i cannot support a plan that props up the disfavored and unpopular corridors plan i cannot support a developer-heavy plan that will yield few affordable units for the people who live in santa cruz right now what i do support is a 25 inclusionary i support getting up to speed and investing city resources and gaining affordable units i support the creation of an affordable housing commission i support looking at the tot to build the affordable build up an affordable housing fund and i support the idea of unbundling parking i support the concepts here that place housing near transit options and i support involving the public more in housing decisions i'm not so comfortable being a canary in the coal mine but it seems to me if these recommendations go forward you all are throwing down the gauntlet in the next election and i for one say okay you know looking forward to november thank you is there any further discussion i think um there's a motion on the floor it was council our vice mayor wotkin second by um council member chase and again these are you heard a lot of comments on different aspects of this and um i wanted also express my thanks to council member brown who's not here vice mayor wotkins and council member chase for the um the time in outreach to kind of come up with these recommendations i really do feel we need to increase the the supply