 The hour of one o'clock having arrived, we'll call to order the August 8th, 2023 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council following our summer recess. Clerk will call the roll. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Newsom. Present. Brown, here. Watkins, here. Gruner. Present. Calentari-Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder is currently absent and Mayor Culey. Here, quorum having been established, we will, excuse me, we will move a pace here. This would be the opportunity for anyone to comment on the closed session agenda packet and agenda which is publicly shared with you. We will be going into that closed session in a few minutes following any public comment that we may have. So let me first invite anyone who is with us in chambers this afternoon who wishes to comment on the Consent Agenda closed session. Please do so at this time. Seeing and hearing none, let me ask the city clerk, do we have anyone online who would like to comment on our closed session? No one with their hand raised. Thank you very much. Seeing and hearing no one for either of these, either either person or online regarding our closed session agenda, Madam. Thank you, a quick thing. City Attorney Condati, did you have to make an announcement before one of them? Very good. We're good? Very good, thank you. At this point, we will adjourn into closed session. We'll be in there for a while and we will return to open session at three o'clock, but not before that time in so far as it is a notice time to begin our afternoon agenda. Do we stand adjourned into closed session? Recording stopped. The hour of three o'clock having arrived and the city council having completed its working closed session, we are returning to our regular session and the clerk will call the roll to establish. Thank you, Mayor. Council members Newsome. Present. Brown. Here. Watkins. Here. Brunner. Present. Calentari Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder. Here. And Mayor Keely. Here. Having established a quorum, we will move on to item six. This is a presentation by the Central Coast Community Energy Operation and an annual update and we have a couple of good folks. Hi, Catherine Steadman who is with us and the Executive Director CEO is also here. Good afternoon and welcome to the council's meeting. I will offer an unsolicited comment and that is that from my point of view, I think we will maybe as early as 10 or 15 years from now look back at the establishment of the Central Coast Community Energy Project as one of the two or three most significant things that the Monterey Bay Area has done with regard to climate change and to reducing emissions. I think that a thought is that if we did everything else in the climate change space and we did it really well, if we don't change the fuel type for generating electricity and transportation, we will fail and so the CCCE is an important component. No, I take that back. It is a necessary component part to success in climate change and Catherine, thanks to you, thanks to the other officials who are here today and the colleagues who are on the board. This is one of those ideas that was very good, very hard to bring about because it's so compound and complex and yet now the growth and expansion is I think both remarkable and wonderful. So Catherine, welcome. So nice to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mayor. And I really appreciate those kind and thoughtful words. I'm Catherine Steadman. I am the Chief Communications Officer for Central Coast Community Energy and I'm also joined today by our Chief Executive Officer Robert Shum. So to begin, just a brief background on community choice aggregation. This type of agency started in the early 2000s when legislation passed that allowed cities and counties to aggregate their resources and together procure generation. So these agencies called community choice aggregators still rely on investor owned utilities to do the transmission and distribution, the poles and the wires. But it brings the advantage of allowing communities to make greater progress toward renewable energy and also to reinvest revenues back into the communities that we serve. Our agency formed in 2017 and at that time we were the counties of Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey. Then in 2020, we expanded our service to include all of the cities in San Luis Obispo County. And in 2021, we brought on the unincorporated areas of the County of Santa Barbara and many of the cities. Just this year, we actually, the unincorporated parts of San Luis Obispo County voted to join. So we're now really covering that entire five county area. We are currently with the County, 35 member agencies. We serve well over 400,000 customers. That's meters, so it's over a million people. And we've invested more than a billion dollars in new build renewable energy. Our enrollment in the communities we serve because our customers have a choice to have their generation service provided by us or the investor owned utility. We're at 94% across those five counties. We serve 5,000 gigawatt hours of electricity a year. And when we brought on that unincorporated part of Santa Barbara, that was another 45,000 customers increasing our load. So I just wanna go over some of the original commitments that were made to our communities in 2017 when we formed and let you know how we're doing on them. So the first concept was that of local control. We are governed by two boards, a policy board and also an operations board. The policy board is made up of mayors and members of the board of supervisors, our operation board, our county administrators and city managers, and here in Santa Cruz you are represented by Mayor Fred Keely and city manager Matt Huffacre on our boards. Our next promise was that we would provide competitive rates. And this slide shows you how our rates compared to PG and E in 2022. We were 18% less for the average residential customer. That actually grew in 2023. So even additional savings have been seen since that time. Next slide. Third promise was progress toward renewable energy. Today we are at 50% clean and renewable and on track to be at 60% by 2025, which is five years earlier than the goals set by the state of California. Our strategy commits our agency to meet 100% of its demand with clean and renewable resources by the year 2030 with balancing on a monthly basis. And that is a full 15 years ahead of the goals set by the state of California. This shows you the mix of resources that we've procured through long-term power purchase agreements. We have both solar and storage, standalone storage, geothermal power, and wind. Five of the projects that we've entered into these agreements with came online in 2022. So they are currently serving 22% of our load, although just last month we had another solar and storage project come online. So we now have 27% of our load being served by these renewable projects that our board of directors entered into contracts with. So as individuals, the biggest impact that we can make to cut greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality is to replace fossil fuel vehicles with EVs and replace the gas appliances in our homes and businesses. As 3CE works to clean the grid, electric cars and appliances will be emissions-free in their operation, and the electricity that powers them will be 100% clean and renewable. So on to community reinvestment. Over the past three years, 3CE has helped put more than 1,000 new and used vehicles, electric vehicles, on Central Coast roads by distributing more than 2 million in cash rebates paid directly to our customers. By electrifying our transportation sector, these EVs have spared more than 6,000 metric tons of regional CO2 emissions. Additionally, in collaboration with funding partners like the California Energy Commission, 3CE has delivered rebates that will help build more than 1,000 new electric vehicle charging stations for our region. We've also paid to make more than 2,000 new affordable housing units all electric, and that supports our communities. This just shows you briefly some of the programs that we offer to incentivize our residential customers to electrify vehicles and also home appliances. We have special programs for our member agencies, like the City of Santa Cruz, and this includes electrify your fleet, charge your fleet. There's another dimension which is plan your fleet, and then we also have a program to help with reach code adoption. For our non-residential customers, we offer incentives to electrify ag equipment. We offer incentives for developers of affordable housing and farm worker housing, and we also offer incentives to electrify vehicles in the non-residential sector. We have an emphasis as well on making sure that we are serving our underserved communities and reaching disadvantaged communities. This includes workforce development, which we see through a broadband initiative our agency adopted, and also support for helping contractors learn how to install electric equipment. Last month, our board also adopted a new project selection criteria that really emphasizes workforce engagement and fair labor practices. We support farm worker housing and transportation, and then we also provide additional incentives for customers that qualify for the CARE and FERA program or are otherwise deemed to be economically disadvantaged. So specifically looking at the support that we have provided to the City of Santa Cruz through our programs, you can see that it has been well over $3 million, and this is through 2022 or through our last fiscal year, so continuing to grow. But some significant investment in programs for your city, and I really do wanna thank the staff of the city that has been so great to work with and really taken advantage of this opportunity to partner and reach our goals. So for anyone watching that wants to also take advantage of the programs, please just visit our website, it's 3Cenergy.org, and you'll find links to applications and more information about the energy programs. So with the continued support of the City of Santa Cruz staff and community and with the rest of our communities, 3CE will continue to deliver innovative solutions and impactful programs and exemplary service along with clean and renewable energy. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you so much for your time. Captain, thank you very much. Let me see if members would like to ask a question. The Vice Mayor is recognized. Thank you. Thank you, I do appreciate the goals of 3CE, and I think those are pretty common goals amongst our community and those of us on council here. I do have several questions. So some of them have come to me from community members that I'd like to ask. So can you let us know, what's the demand on the grid right now between like six and eight PM in the evenings, approximately? Yeah, I guess I would say I'm more familiar with the stress that's on the grid between the hours of four and nine PM. Okay, that works. Yeah, and the issue is really just that we have, we've been successful as a state in getting solar energy projects online. The problem is when the sun goes down, how do you continue to service the demand during the hours when people are still using energy, but the sun isn't shining? And so that's why when you've seen these flex alerts come out from the Kaizo or from your utility provider, it's really emphasizing reducing usage during those hours. The solution is energy storage. So you might have noticed we've done a lot of investment in battery projects and other technologies to help store that solar energy so that it can be discharged during those evening hours. Yeah, thank you. And so a question I would have if everyone decided today to go out and buy electric cars in Santa Cruz, do you think the grid could handle people charging at night? I really am not so concerned with the grid being able to handle the additional load of electric vehicles. We definitely need more generation. We need more capacity in terms of our distribution network. I think the major challenge is really the infrastructure that is needed in terms of more EV chargers. So EV adoption is up. We're almost at the tipping point, which is really positive. But I think for a lot of people, it's still a matter of is there a charger near my work or my home? And that's an issue that we're continuing to work on. And I think another question that I have kind of to that is how much of the energy that we have here in town that's on our grid is from solar and how much, and like, and how much I saw you that you said like 50% how much of the energy that we're getting here is from the Moss landing power plant. And I know that you're talking about the whole region as a whole, but specifically here locally. Do you have any indication of what that looks like? Yeah, it's, you know, the electrons don't not really, they just travel through the distribution system. And so it's kind of hard to say this area is getting its energy from this source, sort of like water in that way, it's all gonna mix, but we are at 50% renewable now. And so that's gonna be a combination of solar and small hydro and wind and geothermal. The exact percentage of that 50 that comes from solar, I don't know, it is significant though, maybe I'm guessing around 35, but I can get back to you with that information. Do you think that with the new changes with de-incentivizing rooftop solar, that number will go down? Well, no, because that's more about customers powering their individual homes. I think the way the new rules that have come out of the public utilities commission for rooftop solar are really trying to incentivize batteries with individual rooftop solar, because again, that gets to that issue of the hours when the solar energy isn't available. Okay, I'm not trying to be like a super talker, but I do have three more questions. Sure. I think that thinking about moss landing, I know there was a fire in the battery banks down there recently, and I'm just wondering for these, and this is maybe a question for Chief Odie, what kind of hazards would those particular type of fires create, and are there special skills that our firefighters would need to put them out, like what kind of chemicals are released, and what are the current best practices for mitigating fires in batteries if people were gonna put them in their homes or in places like schools or things like that, I think it's something that we should talk about. Absolutely. Good afternoon, Chief. How are you? Mayor, council, great question. Rob Odie, fire chief. In terms of the dangers, I think similar to any emerging technology, there is a lot of catch-up we have to do as an industry. For fire service specifically, we're constantly following the guidance of in the state of California, state fire marshals office, NFPA specifically. The NFPA are federal guidelines. There is a specific code reference, and it's 855, an NFPA that talks about the appropriate installation of these systems to make sure that they're safe, not only for the public, but for the responders. And so what I think you have found, and again with this technology, is that making sure that you maintain the battery storage systems themselves, you prevent thermal runaway, where these things aren't properly releasing heat to their environment, they get really hot, and then of course, if they're installed in series, you have the heat transferred to multiple batteries, and that's when you have those failures. So again, battery monitoring, gas monitoring of these systems, and of course, the appropriate suppression system. And again, that's all gonna be dictated by this NFPA 855. Locally here, we are challenged. I think every fire department's challenged, but while the moss landing incident obviously garnered a lot of attention, and rightfully so, I will say that it's important to note that it was no different when moss landing was utilized as another source of energy, and we had a fire that burned down there for weeks in the actual petroleum tank that stored the fuel for that. And so you're sort of trading one hazard for another in that instance. And so I think again, that required a tremendous amount of manpower. We were actually, not we specifically, but there was a request through Mutual Aid for the state for foam to address that particular hazard. And so we're sort of seeing the same thing now with this electrification, and that comes by way of water, and that's obviously a finite resource that we're finding. And so there are a lot of fire departments, large and small, that are trying to adapt their response to these emergencies by way of adding tanker trucks to their response, because whether it's a large facility or it is a battery-powered vehicle, they have become a challenge for us to extinguish. And I think you also asked about some of the gases that are released. And again, I think they're very similar to those in hydrocarbons. You're seeing carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen, methane, ethan, and of course, those mixed produced hazards to the environment around these areas where these facilities are, but also to the firefighters that respond. And that comes by way of lower explosive limits. And of course, we have to be very mindful when we enter these atmospheres, just like we have to in any fire situation. And so I think, I don't know if I'm answering your question, but that's really what we focus on. And we will take a much more methodical and slow approach to these incidents for both public safety and responder safety. I thank you. I think about it because I know a lot of people are getting, we have the two Tesla power walls at our house, and we just electrified the school that Bayview and put in, I don't think, actually I don't know if there's battery storage, but there's a bunch of new solar panels were supposedly going net zero. And so I just think about that as something that to consider when planning for public safety. Thank you. And I will say, our fire prevention division works with the building department and we're making sure that we keep up locally. But again, I think as an industry, it's again, like any emerging technology, we're trying to keep up with the rapid development and growth. And I think in this case, we've learned a lot of lessons from the past and we'll apply them now in the present and the future. Thank you. Absolutely. I want to make sure you guys are safe. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. For the questions and comments on this. Thank you very much for this. Again, I think that California's over the years experimented with various ways of dealing with the energy sector and specifically the electricity component of our economy and of our energy economy. Certainly in the late 90s, the misadventure with deregulation, which was done in a way that created a fundamental change in how California thinks about the generation transmission distribution of electricity. And I do think that in the wake of the deregulation, when it was clear that the errors in deregulation had nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not we had built enough power plants, it had to do exclusively with market manipulation that in the ensuing 20 years, a lesson learned, I think were two things. One, don't go backwards to the old system of the investor owned utilities being the only ones that could provide any portion of those three activities. Not because it wasn't a viable method, it is, it simply isn't the best method. And if I was PG&E or Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas and Electric, I wouldn't be thrilled being in the pipes and pole business and not in the generation business, but that's a fact of life for them. I think the fact that many places in California have availed themselves of the opportunity on the generation side to get in and pick and choose there as a smart informed consumer and exercising market power in that process was a very, very positive outcome and a continuing positive outcome of that energy crisis in the early 2000s and community choice aggregation is I think one of those very positive outcomes of that crisis. And now we have other challenges with that as we're going to have. If you're in the electricity business in any way, it's a constant challenge going forward, whether that's what do you source with regard to the generation, the electricity, et cetera. I want to thank you again. The person in this community, I think who if you see him walking around, you should thank him and his office where it really got started and that's with Supervisor Bruce McPherson and his staff and specifically with Jenny Johnson there who were like a bulldog and would not let go of this idea. And I think we're very fortunate that they didn't and that other informed enlightened elected officials and staff and so on avail themselves of the very creative notion of community choice aggregation. So thank you both of you very, very much for your fine work and we'll see you at the next board meeting. Thank you. I actually have one question if I may. We do have one question. Here we go. I'm sorry, I have one. No, no, you don't have to be sorry for the question. You asked it and I passed and now I thought of one. It's all good. Oh good, well I'm not alone. Thank you for the presentation. It's nice to see you. I was just, I know you've talked a lot about the uses and the sources, but I'm wondering as we're experiencing more extreme weather and heightened heat and serious winds and et cetera, how are you planning for the infrastructure to be able to evolve with that essentially? Or is that a factor in your planning? Well, you know in terms of the wildfire safety, that is really on the transmission and distribution side. So it's the risk with the power lines, which is going to, for our area, going to be Pacific gas and electric. But I think that the changes that we're seeing in terms of wildfires, extreme temperatures, all of this just underscores how important it is that we do make this switch to renewable energy. So in that way we feel like the work that we're doing is really part of the larger solution. Okay, more on that, and thank you. Thank you. Ms. Brown. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you so much for the presentation. And as a member of the first policy board, when it was Monterey Bay Community Power, I was very privileged to be on that board and I'm thrilled to see how things have been going. The expansion, the great work of the staff and you all as you navigate the, pretty challenging waters of electrification and really navigating PG&E. I just want to say that because we know that's a big part of this. And I remember our first trip to the first meeting and I was with Ginny Johnson and Supervisor McPherson and we were talking about mini-grids and storage and some of the things that you're talking about now being able to really work towards building out as part of this. But we also talked about distributed energy and the ability to have more control over how we use the grid. And there are a lot of impediments to that. And so I just was hoping you could speak to where you see that going, what works happening now. It seems to be the way of the future if we can in the regulatory framework make that happen. So just anything that is on the table that you might be able to speak about there would be great. Yeah, it's a great question and I think it's a very complex issue. But definitely distributed resources are part of the solution. It's all of the above I think solution right now in terms of large-scale, utility-scale renewable resources but also distributed resources, especially in areas where you really need that resiliency and there's vulnerability with the grid challenges. So I think as an agency, we're kind of exploring our opportunities now. We're trying to find where is really our best place to support that type of work because it's an emerging area but one that's very exciting and I think holds a lot of promise. Thank you. Captain, thank you very much. Good to see you. Thank you so much. Yes, thank you. Thank you. We're on item six, presiding officers' announcements. I have none. Statements of disqualification. This would be the opportunity for any council member stated conflict of interest thus disqualifying you from a vote. Any none seen here, none. All right. Additions and deletions. Are there additions and deletions? No, there are not. There are none. City Attorney report on closed session. Mr. Ghandati, good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Mayor Keely and council members. This afternoon the council met in closed session at 1 p.m. in the courtyard conference room to discuss the following items. Item one was a conference with labor negotiators involving the council met with its chief negotiator, Sarah DeLeon, to discuss the following bargaining groups, SEIU temporary employees, SEIU service employees, mid managers, OE3, supervisors, OE3, and executives. Item two was a conference with legal council involving liability claims, the claims of mercury, insurance, Brent, Michael Campagnolo, Anthony Joseph Tosti, Maricela Hernandez-Ramos, and Elaine Rodriguez. Those are also listed for action on your consent agenda this afternoon. Item three was a conference with legal council concerning existing litigation. First, the matter pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court entitled City of Santa Cruz versus the Regents of the University of California et al. Second item, matter pending in the Sixth Appellate District Court of Appeal entitled Regents of the University of California et al. versus City of Santa Cruz. Item four was an item of anticipated litigation. Council received a report from the city attorney's office on one item of significant exposure to litigation. Item five was also an anticipated litigation item. Council received a report from city attorney's office on one item of potential initiation of litigation. And there was no reportable action taken during the closing session. Thank you very much, sir. We are on item seven, the council meeting calendar. I would ask city clerk, would you like to draw our attention to any item? No changes, but a reminder, we have a special meeting next week on Tuesday from 1.30 to 3.30. Thank you. We are on the consent agenda. This is for those of you unfamiliar with it, we will be taking up items eight through 24 on one vote on the consent agenda. This all of these actions, all of these items will be taken up at one time. What we will do is give an opportunity for council members to either comment upon or pull an item from consent. We'll then give you an opportunity if you would like to do the same. So let me start with council members and I'll start with Ms. Brunner. Do you have any items you would like to either comment on or pull? Just a comment on item nine. No pull. Please make your comment. Go ahead. I just wanted to say this is, I've had a couple members of the public reach out and try to understand that this is a new process for the city in our district elections and this is part of what we voted on as is in the agenda report for this item. So there will be a March runoff election and March primary election before the November election. So that's what this item's about. And if anybody would like to comment on that, we welcome your comments. Thank you. Ms. Calendar Johnson, any items? Madam Vice Mayor. I just have a comment on the 14th. Please go ahead. Well, I do appreciate the spirit of the intent on this item. I have to say I'm kind of fundamentally opposed in that you can't tip the mailman against the law. You can't give them more than $20 as a gift even. You can't tip the bus drivers. You don't tip the teachers. There's a lot of people that don't get tips. I think that in terms of like Amazon and other big corporations, I'd rather see us work in advocating that they pay a fair living wage to their employees. I'd like to see us working to make sure they pay their fair share of taxes as well. And so for me, like, I don't want to, I appreciate what they're doing day in and day out. I don't want to have to subsidize a large corporation by offering them tips. And so is it possible to register a no vote for this item without pulling it? Of course it does. And I'd like to register a no vote on item 14. Thank you. You will be so recorded. Ms. Watkins. I'll make a brief comment on item 14. And of course, I, you know, I just talked. I know, I've heard your opinion about it in the past. One of the things that I would say is, you know, Amazon doesn't employ these individuals. Usually they're third party contractors and often they're paid low wages from out of this community. And so one way to support them and to support the work is to allow this as an option. And in many cases, you're provided this option, right? And you can choose not to tip if you don't want to. Whereas if you don't provide the option you're not allowed to. I think some of the other things that I have noted in my notes is that, you know, for example, UPS drivers, they make a higher salary and there are part of a bargaining unit in terms of unions and these drivers are not often with a high turnover rate, often low income minority population. So it's just something to explore. And that's what the ask is at this time is looking into what could be possible. Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor. I'd like to pull item 19. Item 19 will be pulled. And I have a question about item 20. This is the wastewater treatment plant fencing. Let me ask you a question now. Just wondering, we did get some communications about this item. And so I'm hoping you can talk a little bit more about the new fencing, the replacement fencing that's gonna be installed. It sounds like we're looking at fencing that is vulnerable to disruption. And so just kind of wondering how you anticipate that working and how it might play in with the fencing related to the trail, because I think people are worried about camping and the potential conflict there. Yeah, afternoon. Kevin Crossley, City Engineer. I can speak to this item. I think the communication we're referring to is regarding the fence type. Okay, so in the staff report you can see there's about 600 feet of fencing being replaced. A small section of it runs behind the gas digesters at the wastewater facility. So that creates a couple of challenges for us. For starters, you can't weld in the vicinity of the digesters. So that limits the types of fence you can install there. Usually high security fences are welded. So that limits our options. Secondly, the existing fence in the area, it's steep terrain. The fence is mounted on a retaining wall that's of variable heights. So that again limits the types of fencing you can install in that type of location. So the best choice we believe and what we're recommending is for a short section, roughly 80 feet that we go with a mini mesh type, which is harder to vandalize and cut in addition to the replacement of the barbed wire at the top of the fence. Thank you. Any other questions? Thanks. Thank you. I'll do some. Let me make a comment. Let me ask Ms. Nguyen if you could come up for a quick second on item 11, the civil grand jury response. I'm wondering if on page 11.15, that's in our, that's in how we count it in our packet. Let me see what it is in yours. It's a page three of eight in yours. Good go. You're referring to the cyber threat. Say it again. Are you referring to the cyber threat report? Yes, I am referring to item F1 on findings. On page three of eight for you, page 11.15 in our agenda packet. I'm wondering if what could be done here is in response, in the response explanation, if you could add a comment about our recent designation as a pro housing jurisdiction. Last week, the governor's office and the department of housing community development named Santa Cruz, one of 30 jurisdictions out of 450 cities and 58 counties which achieved all of their goals in the current cycle. In fact, exceeding the goals by 1,000 units and hitting every one of the goals in terms of affordable housing in each of the categories established by the state. If you could add that, that would be much appreciated with regard to five of eight. Your response on F13, page five of eight for you, page 11.17 in our agenda packet. This would be a response on F13. I think it may be helpful in here to add a notation. It seems to suggest that somehow transportation and transit is other than when in fact the RTC and Metro are in effect local government entities governed by local government officials. So we do in fact integrate our housing and our transportation and transit work if you could add that without objection. Thank you. Okay, with that, any objection, seeing near and none, such will be the order. Let me ask if there is any member of the public who wishes to make a comment on any item on the consent agenda or have an item on the consent agenda pulled. Good afternoon, sir. Yeah, still after. Good afternoon, my name is James Ewing Whitman. So on the consent agenda, number nine, you guys do not get paid near enough for what you do. The stuff I agree with and the stuff I don't use on the, as far as the elections and how much the city council members get paid, it's not enough by like at least a factor of seven. Really, I mean, oh my goodness. So I don't know the grand jury response about the cybersecurity. We could look at the Patriot Act. I don't know what's really secure. You know, five of you, 11 might laugh when I say that I applied for the civil grand jury. Course they didn't take me. So that's all I have to say. I really wanted to comment on number six and I'm annoyed that I couldn't. Nice to see all of you, thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Hello, council members of Mayor Keely. My name is Laura Booth-Noble. I live in district one with my partner and three-year-old son. I'm here today to comment on the city's five-year strategic plan, which is item number 10 on today's consent agenda. Last month, Lookout Santa Cruz reported on the local early childcare shortage, which was no surprise to any parent of a child under six. Lookout reported that infant and toddler care specifically is a big problem in the county with only 26% of demand being met for children under the age of two. This figure is 78% for three to five-year-olds and 55% for school-age children. To put it another way, only one in four families of kids under the age of two are getting the childcare support they need. Anecdotally, I do believe the issue is even worse within the city of Santa Cruz. When I polled 150 moms, 60% of those who are city residents actually leave our jurisdiction to drop off their kid's childcare. Obviously, the lack of affordable workforce housing is a challenge, leading more teachers to leave childcare for more lucrative careers or to leave the area entirely. While we should get some relief when the new housing needs to become available, it will be many years for that to make a dent in the need. I believe a patchwork of additional solutions and strategies needs to be deployed in the short term to help keep our current childcare centers afloat and create additional capacity for more kids. While many believe that childcare is an individual family's problem, I will remind everyone that reliable childcare is central to economic growth in building vibrant communities. When both parents are able to work if they so choose and they're able to earn more money to afford a high cost of living town and use their own specialized skills to feel wanted and needed by the community. My request today is for item 10 to be pulled off the consent agenda and aligned to be added to the five-year strategic plan to acknowledge and address the childcare shortage in the city of Santa Cruz. Having worked exclusively for organizations that never had enough resources to do everything it wishes to do, I've seen strategic plans be used at the litmus test to determine which issues get staff and resources in which do not. If there is no mention of the childcare shortage in the strategic plan, the council is effectively saying that this is not a policy priority until at least 2029. The three out of four families whose childcare needs are not currently being met cannot wait five more years for help. My suggestion is to add under the strong business communities and a vibrant downtown focus on a new strategy of investment in and support early childhood education centers to create more supply. Thank you for considering this addition. Copy of these comments are in Mayor Keely's inbox and Mrs. Bush's inbox for easy reference. I'm also happy to help offline anyway, I can't. Thank you very much. So I'm going to acknowledge Council Member Watkins. I leaned over and asked if she may want to add language to that effect, is that what you would like to do? I don't think we need to pull it to add that, do we? No, we can go ahead and just, I know youth came up and it's sort of, this is sort of the higher level. First I just, if I may. Please, please. I just want to thank you and I acknowledge where you're coming from. Childcare has been a key priority of the Council's and of mine working in education. And although it's not reflected in this document, there are a lot of things that are happening in terms of a childcare developer impact fee, the children's fund that's looking at early childhood development and other ways that the city is trying to contribute to the issue that's bigger than just the city as you know, statewide and nationally. So youth are a priority population and calling out how to support childcare is absolutely something I know that this Council cares about. And if our community is not seeing that reflected in the strategic plan, it's definitely something we want to make sure that it's seen. So thank you for bringing that to our attention and for speaking today. Let's see if what we can do, I'm gonna check with the city attorney. Am I right? We could add a sentence in here without objection and then adopt as the recommendation. Is that correct? Yes, what I would suggest is that in the motion to approve the consent calendar language be added to reflect the comments made by the speaker. All right. Okay, we'll do that in just a moment. Let me see if there's anyone else. Thank you again. Anyone else who is with us who wishes to make comment on the consent agenda, anyone online? We do. Two people, let's take the first one. Good afternoon. Person online, good afternoon. Three, two, one, we'll go to the second person. Good afternoon. Hi, this is Garrett Phillips. Hey, that took a while to turn on there. Regarding item 21, I have spoken ad nauseam before about how regular numerous and eye-popping fee increases litter this agenda every meeting. The problem, of course, is the longstanding deteriorating city financial structure and what to do about it. I applaud doing something to address this, but the first step is evaluating what's really wrong. To date, the only narrative we are supposed to swallow is the city just hasn't charged enough for service and not overspending or over hiring. Never mind the city sits on a huge revenue mountain that is at least partially inflation protected by both inflationary increases in sales and property tax and surely priority services are covered by that. The voters have been clear. They don't want increases in taxation rates within the feet of measure F and this means the money pie is not unlimited and you must choose spending priorities. This has tended not to happen as structural deficit spending is more so the rule. Of course, you don't need voter approval to jack monopoly utility rates and fees and wow, aren't you always doing that every meeting? In item 21, we see the proposition that labor fees for water services will increase dramatically from around 71 an hour to between 125 and 132 an hour for nearly every service for an estimated total increased jack job of 64%. However, reported inflation in general since 2018 was high but a lot lower at 21%. Most all coming from a few Biden inflation years and the CPI is a little sticky, but it is declining. I'm not sure what math you use to get to a 64% raise jack but my simple take is that though we undercharge or inflation narrative reasons or such an increase are questionable. It suggests either the possibility past city management was so haplessly awful they had no clue what their actual costs were or maybe the public is now being milked like a cash cow in excess of actual costs by a spend happy new monopoly unconsciously raising prices to raise revenue anywhere to allow for more spending. Among many theories I can entertain about the second reason is the many, many grant programs you apply for which may or may not cover administrative expenses such as item 12, which doesn't appear to cover those is money spent on a study which for practical purposes accomplishes low nothing but do set the city down a path committing to projects that have no known funding but I suppose merely hope the grant ferry will come along and fund it. Consider many grants benefit very few people and some are applied for for political reasons like the defective equity concepts of high up. One example of this high up politics at work as well as probably underfunded grant staff time is item number 13 which contemplates installing EV chargers and low income locations for that equity reason ignoring the fact low income people probably aren't gonna buy EV cars. Maybe the socialist equity grant ferry will buy them EV cars but probably not and it's only slightly less likely that you're thinking EV prices will someday be less than gas cars but they sure aren't now. The cost and expenses of grants are hidden by the lure of free money whether the public really wants them or not and sinkhole expenses sure. Or in your strategic five year plan is lean efficient spending a goal or measuring productivity. Thanks. Thank you sir. Anyone, did the other person come back on? Okay, let me see if the person who is online is now available to make comment. Welcome. Hello mayor, I actually had raised my hand for the three C presentation. I never got called on. Could I make some comments on that now? Couldn't hear from what? He wanted to comment on the three C presentation. Go ahead and take a minute and make a comment on that. Go ahead. Thank you, I appreciate the presentation and I'm a definitely supporter of renewable energy and I've received a few rebates from three C so I appreciate all that. I think the speaker did leave out a few important things. First of all, three C doesn't have any generation or storage facilities in Santa Cruz County. So the idea that as a three C customer, we're using electricity generated by three C just isn't accurate. We're just using whatever's on the grid and the grid is actually powered by in California 40% of it is on natural gas. Natural gas conversion rate, the efficiency is only 30 to 35%. So about 70 or 65% of the power embedded natural gas is lost just at the generation and then more is lost in transmission and distribution. So at the present time, because our grid isn't anywhere near renewable and it relies on natural gas, we're really gonna be burning more natural gas if we take out efficient natural gas furnaces and water heaters, which are up to 95% efficient. I know your staff claimed that they were 80% efficient. That is a 30, 40 year old technology. Modern FAU is 95% efficient and it exhausts off the sidewall with PVC because it's so efficient. So while I support the move to renewable energy, I think you really need to examine the facts as they are and not as you wish them to be. And so we don't have renewable grid right now and we should make decisions based on critically examining the reality of what we have now, which means don't grip out or don't mandate ripping out a bunch of very efficient gas appliances because it's gonna have a perverse effect of burning more natural gas at the power plant because it's about loss of efficiency. And these are all numbers that they're not crackpot numbers. They're California Energy Commission, Federal Energy Information Agency. I can provide documentation. It's all there. So just please go a little deeper when you're making your policy because I share the goal of eliminating greenhouse gas emissions. It's very important. It's critical and we can't just do field things. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. Appreciate you calling in. Anyone else? Anyone else online? Right. We are going to take the item in the following order. As to item 10, I believe that council member Watkins has language if you would read that into the record on item 10. Sure. Yes. I think it fits under public safety and community wellbeing and that we also reference youth supports there. And the suggested language and Bonnie, I can send this to you as well, is to identify and create opportunities to support and expand child care and expand child care. That's it. That's it. Good. All right. Without objection, that will be added that will be added on item 10. With regard to what we are going to do is we are going to vote on items eight through 24 with the exception of item 19, which has been pulled. We have added language on item 10 and the vice mayor, when we take this vote on the consent agenda will be recorded as a no vote on item 14. Clerk will call the roll on the consent agenda. I'll move the consent agenda with the... I'll second. Second by Ms. Contarja. Say it again. No? Round seconded. Whoever today is going to be council member Contarja. Okay. Seconding everybody. However today. There we go. Clerk will call the roll. Council member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Vice mayor Golder. Aye. And mayor Cooley. Aye. Consent agenda passes as proposed and amended. We are an item 19. I will refer to Ms. Brown. You are up and acknowledged on item 19. Thank you mayor. So I pulled this item recognizing that members of the community have been writing in and following this item pretty closely. They've been lovingly stewarding our river and serving as activists and the voice of our river. And so I wanted to respond to that and pull this item. It is an item related to the process by which we are going to conduct future work around flood control, vegetation management and flood control on the river for those who are here. I wanna make sure everybody knows what we're talking about. And this item is related to some changes that I think are gonna make the process, really improve the process and prevent some of the very unfortunate challenges that we've had in the past, most recently. And so I don't have a lot, I don't have a lot of questions at the moment on the particulars of the item, but I did wanna give members of the public an opportunity to speak. They have some requests for us, some of which go beyond the scope of this item, but I wanna give them an opportunity to speak about it. And then I have a couple of points that I'd like to make about how we proceed. So, but Mr. Nguyen, if you do wanna come up and say anything about the process thus far, your thoughts, I'd give you an opportunity to do that as well. Thanks. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Councilor Mayer, members of the public. Nathan Nguyen, Director of Public Works. And so, Item 19 before you is a annual vegetation management project. It's something that we perform. And the San Lorenzo River Levy is a part of our operations and maintenance agreement with the Army Corps. We have to perform this work in a time restraint with regards to the California Fish and Wildlife Permit. So, as I occur between September 1st and October 15th, which is a very short window, but we have to get that done before the vegetation clearing before winter starts. Essentially, the staff report today is to change the process from a low bid procurement for a contractor to an RFP process. So, adding qualifications as a part of our reason for choosing a contractor going forward. And then to also try to do this as a multi-year contract. We'll only be issuing a PO every year for it, but we wanna be able to get in partnership with the contractor, have that agreement in place so we can, again, this is an annual work that we always perform. So, we wanna be able to streamline that process going forward. So, that is essentially the motion that we're asking as we proceed for a request for an RFP process. Thank you, sir. This would be the opportunity for anyone who's with us wish to comment on this item. Please do so. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, council members. Barbara. My name is Barbara River Woman. And the limited time, I'd like to bring up what might seem like a very small detail, but sometimes I believe the small details illuminate the bigger situations and also show up the underlying problems with the current approach to vegetation management. I'd like to read you just three lines from a two-page report, very small, from MBK engineers. They're the consulting engineers that served as the liaison between FEMA and our city. And basically, they called the shots on everything that's been happening out there. They're the ones I'm most concerned about and are carrying that out. So, I'm reading the following quote regarding ground squirrel activity because despite of the grandiosity of the issue, it's all about ground squirrels. And I've been thinking a lot about ground squirrels all summer. And here's the quote, initial observations were made in areas where vegetation is not present. This is the quote from MBK engineers. It's on, I was gonna bring it up. It's two pages. That's all. And it is expected that holes may be present in the reaches that have dense understory or ground cover where inspection is difficult to conduct, unquote. This is the full extent, that's it. That's the information that our city was given about the presence of ground squirrels on that levee. The engineer looked at disturbed soil only, soil that does not, that does attract ground squirrels. And he expects from that observation that there are some holes, that the squirrels may, he says, may be located in the dense understory and ground cover. And he didn't wanna look at the dense cover and ground cover, the dense understory and ground cover because that was difficult for him. The truth is that squirrels are deterred by vegetation like manzanita and are attracted to and concentrate in areas of disturbed soil. That's the smoking gun, in my opinion. We did all this because of a really poor naturalistic observation, a conjecture by an engineer about what's out there. I hardly need to point out that this is extremely unscientific. There should have been, the city should have conducted a scientific study of the ground squirrel population, number one. Number two, they should have studied the scientific work of Gary Griggs, explaining the unique hydrology of our river, our river rises quickly, subsides quickly, and giving less possibility of water penetrating into the structure. And thirdly, explore the possibility of using electronic imaging of the inside of the levee, which technology is available. None of these suggestions and others were considered by public works. Our small group begged them to look at these alternatives to seek variances with FEMA and to seek variances with the Army Corps of Engineers. They didn't ever respond with anything except two words. I'm so tired of those words, I'm not gonna say them. We are facing more of the same, exactly the same devastation that happened out there on September 1st, if the city approves the proposal before you. Better solutions are possible if we draw on nature-based solutions, not just in engineers' un-based conjectures. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hello, Mayor Kearley and members of the council. My name's Baccia Kagan, I'm very happy to be here, and thank you for your service. We, as members of this group that are concerned, and I live right next to the river, so this is directly applicable to my life. I hear and know all about what's going on there. I walk it often. So we have come up with a future flood control policy that we've submitted. I believe you should have it in your packets, or if not in your emails. The following five requests, we may not get through all of it in my two minutes, but our priority requests of the Protect Our River Group, they emphasize increased attention to protecting the city's natural environment based on federal nature-based solutions, improved communication between the community and the city, and increased equity in our relationship with non-English-speaking employees of the city. So number one, the city will incorporate into its general plan the commitment to move rapidly towards nature-based solutions in all of its projects. This is a federal guideline that we hope to be in line with. Number two, the city will require the transportation and public works department offer to meet with a wide range of local environmental groups as a group in the early stages of development of all new projects that could possibly have a negative impact on the environment in order to assure that projects are seeking alignment with nature-based solutions. Are seeking alternatives to additional gray solutions and are aware of the special strength of each advocacy group, such as indigenous perspectives, native plants, birds, wildlife habitat, restoration, animal behavior, and climate change. Groups should include but are not limited to the Alma Mutsun California Native Plant Society, Santa Cruz Bird Club, Groundswell, the Sierra Clubs, Coastal Rutter Shed Council, and the Valley Women's Club. Meetings with individual members of these groups would be in addition to this requirement. So number three, we are asking that the city will seek funding for an in-house environmental specialist to work closely with the city's staff and environmental groups to evaluate all city projects in terms of its alignment with nature-based solutions. The environment specialist will cultivate close relationships with independent environmental groups to draw on their knowledge of local conditions to keep them informed of the developments within the city government related to environmental protection. I know this is wordy, but I'm sure you have it somewhere. Number four, the city will establish an easily accessible website, ideally managed by the environmental specialist to keep city council members as well as the community members informed of all projects being evaluated for alignment, again, with nature-based solutions. Number five, regarding the specifics of the RFP, we suggest the following changes. That the TPWD will seriously evaluate the feasibility of obtaining an electronic image of the inside of the levee to determine the extent of the ground squirrel tunneling, as Barbara was talking about, ground squirrels, it's all about ground squirrels, before implementing EP1110 and the visibility and accessibility criteria. This will establish a basis for a more informed decision about the necessity of vegetation removal and cementing of ground squirrel tunnels, which has been done this year. The TPWD will consult with a specialist on ground squirrel behavior to determine when and how and where ground squirrels build tunnels. They will explore the relationship between ground squirrel tunnels and the unique hydrology of the San Lorenzo River, which rises and subsides quickly, lessening the penetration of water into the earth and levee and into possible sewage pathways, because all of this is also being concerned about the breach of the levee. The TPWD will consult with a chemist or other specialists to determine possible toxic consequences of using grout on the ground squirrel tunnels. The TPWD will provide a translator for all trainings of workers on the levee. The TPWD will develop a short, reader-friendly streambed alterations agreement, highlighting the key information with clear dos and don'ts. This will also be translated. Mitigation and habitat loss due to vegetation management and rodent control will be enacted and factored in the cost of a project. The TPWD will work cooperatively with concerned local environmentalists in monitoring the removal of native plants and the cementing of ground squirrel tunnels and former vegetation management specifications on the inboard slope will be continued unless it's direct contradiction with the new FEMA regulations. And I managed to read the whole thing. Thank you for your attention and your time. Thank you. Good luck with that. Kind enough. I suspect you have a copy, but if you would give that to the clerk, that'll keep our record very clear. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Van Allen, good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Mayor Kaley and City Council. Bruce Van Allen, some of you know I've worked on the river for quite a while. And I won't show my age, but I want to just illustrate a point that the last two speakers made about the nature of the flows in the river, because before you locked down a 10-year maintenance plan for the river, I think that we need to have something that we did successfully work out with the Corps of Engineers, and it needs to be applied now with FEMA. And that was the concept of adaptive management, where we didn't say this is the way it's gonna be forever. We said this is the way we think we're gonna try for now, and we're gonna do science and engineering research along the way involving the public for input and adjust what we're doing and how we're doing it over time. And so I made some slides to illustrate the nature of the flow in the San Lorenzo River. So this first slide, this is the Pajaro River at Chittenden, which is about eight to 10 miles upstream from where the breach was in March. This is the period between January 1st and April 1st, and you see those peak flows. Now lower down on that page, if you could scroll down. This is our San Lorenzo River at the gauging station just at the city limits. And I want you to notice how much narrower those spikes of the peak flows are. This is the way the San Lorenzo River behaves in Santa Cruz. It goes up really fast and it comes down really fast. The watershed of the San Lorenzo is 115 square miles. The watershed of the Pajaro River is 1,186 square miles of much larger area in San Benito and Santa Clara and even part of Fresno County. So it's a whole different flow regime. And now if we could turn to the next page with two slides. This is the next slides show those same flows but over just the period from March 8th through March 14th. This is the peak flow when the breach happened. It levels off at the top there right at the time of the breach just in a couple of days. Now lower on that page, you see the exact same time period of the San Lorenzo. Those peak flows are far narrower. It was only above the danger zone for a few minutes as opposed to a few days. The nature of the flows in this river is that we do not have sustained pressure on our levy during our highest flows. It goes up and it comes down really fast. Therefore the danger of a breach is far smaller. I'm not gonna say this is science and engineering. This is just some readouts from some graphs from the USGS. But we need to be monitoring and paying attention to that and adapt our maintenance to that actual reality of the way our river really behaves. That's the only point I wanna make. I want you to move ahead with this. Flood protection is very important, but for the last 40 years this city has had as its policy that habitat for wildlife and integration into the surrounding urban design, urban landscape are equally important with flood protection. And I think we need to remind ourselves of that when we think about this. Thank you very much. Bruce, don't go away. I wanna ask you a question. So when I came to town in 1977, you were already working on this. And I know you were mayor and city council member, you worked on it a lot and you've never not worked on it. So I consider you one of my North stars on what the heck do you do, at least on the lower reaches of the river. When you look at this agenda item, did I understand you correctly to say, go ahead with this, but did you suggest that we do this item as is or was there more to a recommendation from you? Well personally, I would like you to hold off and give us a little time to talk and perhaps council member Brown has some ideas more concretely, but to build into the maintenance plan of ability to review, to do science along the way so that we really know what's actually happening out there and to involve the public and the concerned environmental groups and indigenous groups in thinking about that. So I don't have a specific modification in mind. What the gentle lady said right before you, I would imagine you associate yourself with those comments. I'm in concurrence with the previous speakers, both of them. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Bruce. Good afternoon. Mr. Bosner, good afternoon. Hi, my name is Michael Bosner. I'm representing the Sierra Club today. I'm on the executive committee. The Sierra Club is the oldest and largest grassroots environmental organization in the United States and in the city of Santa Cruz. Members of our conservation committee did site visits. They read all of the documentation about both the road and control measures and the vegetation management work, and we wrote a letter to you that had suggestions for modifications of the RFP, as well as suggestions with how to direct the management as the RFP goes forward. So the letters here, if anyone hasn't seen it yet, I have a paper copy. I'm not gonna review all the changes. They're pretty careful and technical and there's no reason to say I'm on TV, but I have that. Thank you. We'd be glad to accept that. I believe it may already be in the record because you sent it to us, but thank you for the other copy. Would you wish to make any other comments, Mr. Bosner? Good to go. Thank you. Thanks for your care and concern, and we understand the basic issues and the framework you have to deal with. Thank you and thank the Sierra Club. Good afternoon. Good morning, council and mayor. My name's Jane Orvuck. I'm a longtime resident of Santa Cruz and an educator at San Lorenzo Valley High School where we started the Watershed Academy. I'm also a conservation officer with Bird Club and a member of the Sierra Club committee that looked at the river recently and have worked with Bruce Van Allen and others for years and Barbara. And I just wanna mention a couple of things. One, as we all know, the river is the lifeblood of our community and we can't just pass resolutions. We really have to examine what we're doing and why we're doing it. So I advocate a couple solutions that have already been mentioned. I was a member of the San Lorenzo River Caretakers, which was sponsored by the RCD Resource Conservation District and we were a stakeholder group that met at the Trout Farm Inn for years with John Ricker on issues with the San Lorenzo River. And I really advocate that the city in conjunction with the county advocate a stakeholder group again that meets regularly. It can be annually, semi-annually, involving all the groups that have been previously mentioned so that we have a watchdog on the river, we have community input on the river, and we don't have these kinds of problems in the future. And I wanna appreciate the city for dealing with the problems that happened with this first run of the management on the levees because I think you realize a lot of your errors and are now undertaking to solve them. But I think having a stakeholder group meeting regularly would really overcome a lot of the issues you've dealt with. They could also institute citizen monitoring. I was a long time, had a monitoring program where I had high school students monitoring the river. It's, there is very little baseline data on the lower river. We really need to institute studies to look at long-term data gathering so we don't have these problems in the future. We know what we're doing. The Natural History Museum does bioblitzes. We could do those on the river. And finally, I want to advocate, somebody mentioned an environmental manager. I think the city and the county need a biodiversity manager. We have a 30 by 30, we have a climate change manager, but we don't have a biodiversity manager. So we don't have anyone looking at the issues of conserving our county's biodiversity in line with the 30 by 30 policies that the federal government and the state government have looked at. And I don't think we have to have a position that's funded by the city or the county. I think these people, I've worked with people in education who have been grant funded. And if we have someone on staff, we don't have to have an emergency call to find a biologist to get something done. We can avoid these problems and we can have a much more sustainable city and a city that protects and enhances our life through your time. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Here for it. Council, Brad Snyder. I've done a lot of interesting stuff down along that river. I've worked through cab, I've worked taking out beech trees and just getting sweaty and dirty down there and seeing all kinds of salamanders and snakes, various squirrels. A lot of vegetation, of course, which nature certainly appreciates. No snags along the river because of course it's real sandy, there's no beech trees that grow to any appreciable size. In fact, it's kind of like just giving a haircut because it just grows back before you know it. And I don't really understand you're not really getting rid of much volume. So you're not preventing flooding in any way. I just don't really understand why you even bothered to get rid of vegetation down there. It was a really wet winter. We had a lot of rain, of course, duh. And I don't think it's gonna, it's in a normal dry year at the end of summer, the Thalweg, the deepest part of the stream, comes down to the beach and forms just kind of an endorheic pool, which you know, the rangers get really annoyed when you draw a little line with your finger and create a giant torrent. But it's fun, done that before. And yeah, it's funny because not a lot of people know, I took a meteorology class and meteorology is a lot different than climatology. Meteorology is like, here's what happens, here's how and why it happens. And so when you look at those sort of nitty gritty details, you kind of understand the climatology of the central coast, Hadley cells, pressure, the position of the sun in the summer months in the Northern Hemisphere, the lack of a topography that breaks off subpolar lows across the Pacific. So there's lots of factors that make our summers very dry. And it's hard to describe to people in other parts of the country. But anyway, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of life down there. There's a lot of amazing animals that of course rely on the river. I mean, I think there should be signage. Nature needs this water. Please keep this area natural. And yeah, managing it, that sounds a little bit like a Starbucks, I don't know. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Councilor Mayer. I just wanted to add a little information so people can do some homework on the history of the floods in the San Lorenzo River. I'm going to be talking during the San Lorenzo Park issue, but flood control and riparian system destruction on the lower San Lorenzo River by Gary Griggs, 1981, I believe is when that paper was produced. It's only about 10 pages, but it's quite detailed in the way that the whole river alteration and flood control was handled and the results of the inadequate sediment removal that the city was struggling with. And it's got numbers and charts in that and you'll understand it much better and understand what things are going to be useful and what things are going to be useless. And I'd love to see those charts that Bruce Van Allen put up about the flows. That's really important too. And then the other documents, it comes through the library. I got both of these going to Santa Cruz Library. History of floods in the San Lorenzo River in the city. And that goes all the way back to the 1800s and even further back, describing each flood and its effect and give citations of where the information came from and what happened in the city and that. I think it's about 30, 40 pages or something like that. It's well worth looking at if you want to do your homework on the river. Thank you. Thank you very much. We have one person online. Is that correct, Ms. Bush? Thank you. We'll go to that person online now. Good afternoon. Hi, my name is Lori Egan. I'm the executive director of the Coastal Watershed Council. Apologies, I could not make it in person today but I'm calling in to support this item number 19. The Coastal Watershed Council is a local nonprofit organization working to revitalize the lower San Lorenzo River. We work in partnership with the city of Santa Cruz to improve the quality of the river and the Riverwalk Park, to invite youth and families to discover and enjoy their river, as well as educate the community about how the river is our primary drinking water source and home to endangered species. Having a functioning levee is important to protect the thousands of people from being flooded in winter storms, particularly so as we see the increased impacts of climate change. It is equally as important to care for the plants, insects, pollinators, fish and other species that rely on the river. This not only helps our threatened and endangered species but also provides a more beautiful and vibrant riverwalk for all Santa Cruzans to enjoy. We are encouraged to see the city switch from a bid process to a request for proposals process. As we believe this will allow city staff to hire more environmentally responsible contractors to complete the vegetation management work along the levee this fall. And we commend city staff on increasing their communications with environmental groups like CWC and members of the public. Opportunities remain for this project to increase biodiversity along the river by installing mowable native plants, by including a qualified ecologist in the RFP Evaluation Committee and by increasing oversight when the hired contractor begins their work. By working together we can balance the diverse needs of this important river ecosystem. Thank you very much. Ms. Egan, thank you and thanks to the Coastal Watershed Council for all the good work that you do. Let me ask if there's anyone else with us. Do we have anyone else in line? Nobody else. Matters back before the council. Ms. Brown is recognized. Thank you, Mayor. I wanna thank the folks who wrote in and spoke up today about this item and the broader set of issues around our river management. We have a real challenge here. There are a lot of issues that are in play and it is very complex. And so I don't wanna... I'm gonna try to make a motion here to help us keep moving forward but also engage kind of direct engagement with members of the community who are really involved in this in a more formal way I think because going through all of the elements I think would not serve us. But I think they're very important and I think that the people who've raised them shot to, they've recognized the challenges and they've said they wanna be involved in this process so I wanna see that. We have a river that is a river. It's a riparian corridor. It's a habitat. It's also a flood control project that comes with a whole bunch of regulatory burdens really that can seem to contradict our values around the environment. And so I wanna try to find a way forward that allows for this work to get done in the time-sensitive timeframe we have but also include some of the suggestions that were made. So, and this does not include a lot of the things that were raised here today. I wanna say before we go through this, one, the bigger questions around nature-based solutions which we gestured to in a previous item, grant to the Coastal Conservancy that we all supported on our consent agenda. We're not using them here. We're not talking about them here and they have been established as a priority for the Biden administration. They're gonna be moving through the process of rulemaking and they'll be coming to us at the local level at a later date once this RFP is already in place. So given that, I feel that I'd like to, anyway, I'd like to see if this will work. So I wanna ask Mr. Nguyen, my first inclination was to ask that this be continued to our next council meeting. That would get us very close to the September 1st date. So I worry that that is not gonna be feasible. Can you just speak to the timing on this? Yes, we do want to proceed as quickly as possible with procuring a contractor. The goal is to take it out to bid and allow for a three to four week timeframe for advertisement. The goal of having a contractor on board and actually doing the work starting in September. And so if we push it out in there two weeks, we're just getting closer to that timeline of our October 15th requirement to have this work performed. Got it. Okay, so in terms of the issuance of that RFP, would you be amenable to working with members of the community and its development to try to incorporate some of the elements that they have brought up to really move us towards the nature-based solutions, alternative adaptive management principles that we've really used for the river for many years now. I just wanna see how that would work because the reason I ask here is when this initially came up before us, I asked about members of the community being able to meet with public work staff to look at the river, be involved in the conversation and that occurred. And I thought that that might lead to a little bit better outcome. And it didn't, in this last case, I don't wanna go into that, what happened here. But I would like to see some real commitment and some accountability about the folks who are really expressing an interest in being involved, being able to participate, give their feedback and have that taken seriously. It will help us. And your answer is? Yes, we can work on forming a working group around the San Lorenzo River. Okay. And they could be involved in an RFP development to get that RFP out. You could meet with them quickly in order to do that. I would also just, and I don't wanna go too far of a tangent, it is included in the staff report that staff has met with different working groups and lift and stakeholders to develop the RFP. There were comments that were incorporated into the RFP with desired qualifications for a certified ecologist practitioner, as well as a couple of other things. We got a certified artist as a minimum qualification. Those are added as well. So I don't wanna say that staff hasn't met with stakeholder groups. I think the outcome though of the RFP may be not as desirable for everybody, but we are trying to balance the requirements for the Army Corps O&M Operations Maintenance Agreement which we've been doing for part of a better part of a couple of decades now, but we are trying to balance those with the stakeholder group desires. Understood. And yet, if we've been doing it for decades now, but I'm hearing that people who have been following this very closely believe that this is a departure from what we have been doing. So I don't wanna try to adjudicate that or unravel that here, but that's what's going on. And so I guess I believe them that there's more that we could do. And I want to see that addressed in this upcoming project. So I'm just trying to figure out a way to make that happen. But I'm hearing that you're not gonna necessarily be willing to work with the folks who are here today and maybe some others before the RFP is issued. I believe city staff is happy to meet with stakeholder groups before the advertisement of the RFP. We can definitely do that. We of course wanna proceed as quickly as possible with getting it out to bid, but I don't see a reason why we cannot perform that. And I believe the language that is set, is that it allows or the agreement to be in a form acceptable to the city attorney for the city manager's side. So there can be some tweaks that are made prior to the execution of that actual agreement. And council member Brown, if I may just chime in. Nathan and I haven't had an opportunity to talk about the working group idea, but I do think there's a lot of merit to us reestablishing a stakeholder working group around all the work we're collectively doing along the San Lorenzo River. And in fact, as part of the budget hearings, we had also talked about the need for additional funding streams to really, at the standard I think we're all hoping for, put additional investment both into the river and the loving network and public access. And so as kind of a launching point, reforming, reestablishing a working group and in the near term providing an additional opportunity for folks to provide input into the RFP process, I think is reasonable. Thank you. So my motion is up folks have maybe been able to read it. I guess I didn't include working group in this, although I think it's a great idea. I don't wanna get too far afield from the item itself, but if that's something that people are willing to talk about, we can add that. There's a motion and a second, okay. And is that your motion that is on the? This is my motion. Given the interest in a working group, I would, I'd like to include it here if people think it's worth including, because I think that would be a really important step towards not having this happen in the future. What I wanna do as a presiding officer is give you the opportunity to make your motion. Okay, so. I would like to add a number four. Number four. Direct staff to return at, when's a reasonable return date? The 12th of September? Two weeks, I don't think it's gonna do it. By the second meeting in September? Second meeting in September is reasonable. And I think we're talking about two things here. One is an immediate follow-up meeting with the folks in the room here today to provide some additional input into the RFP. And then subsequent to that, we'll be moving forward with bringing back to the council a framework for a working group. Second meeting in September. So, yes, so this, the one through three is as is. And I'd like to see that meeting prior to the RFP being circulated. And then number four, return by the second meeting in September with a proposal for re-establishment of a river working group. Is it agreeable to the second? Is motion and a second under discussion? I imagine, Ms. Brown, you've made your statement about it, all right. Others on this? Excuse me, I'm sorry, Ms. Bruner. I have, thank you. I have, and thank you to everyone who brought up input and suggestions. It's always important to hear from everybody. I do have two questions. One item three, I'm trying to understand how that's different from what already exists on the city website. There's, and maybe you can, I don't know if someone can answer that question, but I did a lot of referring community members to the website and there's all the public works projects and the San Lorenzo River levy accreditation. There's all these links to the Bering rodent mitigation, the bid summaries, the work, the frequently asked questions. I'm just looking at it and I mean, there's so much in the project video that's up. That was really informational as well. And so I'm trying to understand if we can clarify what three is, if that's something different or can we take that out? If I could, I'll just say my purpose was to ensure that members of the community can be present, know when the work is happening, exactly when the work is happening, so they can be present on site to conduct monitoring. This is something that has come up over the years around both the river, the Jesse Street Marsh, when contractors occasionally break the rules. And we're not monitoring it closely. They want to, I'd like for them to be included, acknowledge that they are monitors. And they would need to know the exact timing in order to do that. It's a great website by the way, very informed. Thank you. Yeah, thank you for clarifying that intention. And I think for me reading that, that's so generic. I feel like it already exists, but maybe just a specific call out to the stakeholder groups to make sure that everyone's notified of work is the intention. I don't want to language Ward Smith here, but just understanding that. If I may with regards to having local environmental groups monitor the construction work, as we're doing construction, it is a bit of a challenge I would say with regarding exactly what, when the contractor is gonna be out there and notifying the groups to be out there for that specific timeframe, that happens regularly with all of our construction projects where there is latitude with different working groups or different functions that are happening. And that was part of the challenge that we recently went through this past spring. I do think that we'll have a better working group or monitoring of the work, inspection work on our end, but to be able to do that with also the public, all the different working groups to make sure that they're on top of our construction schedule, is like having them be working at the city daily monitoring the actual progress of the work. So I think that it's a big ask is kind of what I'm saying with regards to having them be involved in the everyday monitoring of the work that's progressing. Do you get a window? I mean, you generally know when the work is happening. Correct, and that's, we did inform the public and stakeholder groups this past spring when that happened. Sometimes the contractor didn't show up and then we would have a guy on our face saying, well, how come that didn't happen right there? They moved to a different location and or they didn't show up that day. And that happens in normal course of construction. So I just want to be cognizant of that. We'll do our best to inform the stakeholder groups and we have by generating that webpage, identifying all these different documents that go with the work, but the daily construction schedule is a task, I have to say, to keep everyone fully up to date. Thank you. Council Member Collin, Tori Johnson is recognized. Thank you for the presentation, turned into a presentation and the comments from the public. I do have concerns about the community members on-site monitoring, both safety concerns, as well as efficiency and effectiveness of how fast the project will move forward. I think as is written, looks fine, but maybe we can discuss that further when it's appropriate. I have major concerns around that. And then with number two, I'm fully in support in meeting with the groups that have spoken today, making sure that some of these key concepts are integrated in the RFP, but I want to make sure that we are able to move forward with the RFP so we can move forward with the important work. So I wonder if you could just comment on the feasibility of making both those things happen. I appreciate that Council Member Collin, Tori Johnson, with regards to the discussion about including adaptive management or nature-based solutions, that is going to be a much more significant lift when we talk about working with the Army Corps, FEMA, MBK, these other stakeholder groups to incorporate what is somewhat still in the, it's not quite defined as what I'm trying to say with regards to nature-based solutions. What are those exactly? How do those get incorporated into our LEVI or other projects that we're doing around the city? And so it is a steep request to assure that it includes adaptive management as well as nature-based solutions. That is the long goal, as we hear with the different funding sources that we want to incorporate those kind of things. We just haven't really put it into defining what those kind of features can be, especially in the San Lorenzo River. If I might, it does seem to me, I appreciate that what you just said, comma, but, and I don't mean it as a verbal eraser, comma, but. Some form of that answer has been around for decades. And so I do think that the council, if this motion passes, is saying something other than what we have always done. And I appreciate your willingness to look at that. I don't suggest for a moment that you haven't already. I imagine that you have. But I do think this is a moment. We're at a moment now. And I think this council is talking about a somewhat different approach to the management of our levy and hearing the other voices that we, that are now being incorporated into this motion. Others on this item. Council Member Golder. If I may, another kind of state older group, I don't know would be something in the parks department in that, and I don't know if we could include that because I've said, and I know where my father-in-law went, but talking about active recreation along the waterway the other day on one of those hot days we were driving by and saw a family actually playing in the river downtown and it was really sweet to see. And so if you're talking to people, maybe incorporating the parks, someone from parks or something as well. Thank you. And I'm sure you already thought of that. I appreciate the comment of Vice Mayor Golder and as I think through what the group could look like, I think it would involve multiple departments, right? From water to parks and rec, to public works, as well as the stakeholder partners that we work closely with. So we'll look forward to working through that and bringing back a proposal to the council. Further on the motion. Seeing it near, none clerk will, I'm sorry. Anyone clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentura-Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mariculio. Aye. Motion passes in this order. Thank you all very much for your participation. We are on item 25. This is Consent Agenda Public Hearing. This item relates to the 2223 Housing and Urban Development Annual Action Plan for substantial amendment for that plan and budget adjustments related there too. Let me ask if there is any comment by members of the council on this item. Seeing and hearing none. Is there anyone with us in chambers today who wishes to comment on this item? Seeing and hearing none. Ms. Bush, do we have anyone online? We do not. No. We do not. Thank you very much. A motion would be in order. I'll move the item. Council Member Brown moves the item. Council Member Brunner seconds the item under discussion. Seeing and hearing none. The clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentura-Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Not here. Mayor Keely. Aye. Passes in this order. We are on item 26. This is an item or a resolution establishing and proposed resource recovery collection rate and increases to begin September 1st, 2023. Let me ask if Mr. Nelson wishes to make a presentation on this or anyone else who is with us. You don't look a bit like Mr. Nelson. But I will acknowledge your presence here. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Pull the microphone nice and close to you. There we go. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. My name is Bella Lopez Sanchez. I'm the Superintendent of Resource Recovery Disposal and Processing. I'll be doing the presentation today. This slide gives some examples of programs and services that are funded through the refuse rate. Food scrap collection, both residential and commercial customers, weekly refuse and recycling collection, street sweeping, bulky item pickup, Christmas trees, illegal disposal cleanup, waste reduction outreach and education, extra service tags, school education, home composting bin program, and household hazardous or household waste collection and drop off. This slide shows the funds, how the funds are allocated. About 20.8 million of this is operations cost and you can see how much goes to personnel cost. This is the budget for the entire refuse fund. The rate increase today is just, the rate increase that we're discussing today only covers collection activities. The refuse fund is a self-sustaining fund, meaning that all costs are covered through rates. It gets no funding from anywhere else in the city. All operations are done by city employees, totaling 103.5 full-time employees with several being temporary workers. So why do we need the increase? Last rate increase was July 1st, 2018. State mandated fleet electrification. State mandated Senate bill 1383, primarily for food scrap collections. Planned city-wide computer software upgrade in 2027. Collection expenses exceeding revenues. Unrealized revenues due to the pandemic, increased liability insurance costs, increased internal service costs, increased material costs for steel, for boxes and vehicles, and increased labor costs. Council last approved in 2015 with a five-tier schedule that last raised rates in 2018. Rates have not increased since July of 2018. You have this table in your report. A later slide will better illustrate the issue of continuing without rate increases. It is important to note that a healthy enterprise fund not only enough, excuse me, healthy enterprise fund needs not only enough revenue to meet annual expenses, but it also needs a fund balance or reserve to operate through an emergency or downturn in revenue. As you can see in the chart, current situation is not sustainable. Between 2015 and 2018, we're able to build an unrestricted fund balance, but with revenue stagnant, we began using the revenue funds to make up the difference between revenue and expenses. Additionally, this year, we finished a major landfill disposal cell project, which also hit our funds. Expenses versus revenues with no rate increase. This graph illustrates the first table showing what happens if we don't raise rates. The green represents the estimated revenue established or estimated out to 2028 using the current rate structure. The orange shows the fund balance and the yellow triangles indicate the estimated expenses. Starting out 2023 with the current fund balance at 12.7 million, we spent 16.5 million, but only took in 15.3 in revenue and spent down the fund balance by $2 million. That means that we start 2024 with the fund balance of 10 million and seven. You can see how this problem continues through the years with expenses rising and revenue stagnant, further eating into our funds at an increasing rate. Finally, in 2027, 2028, when there is a large hit to our fund for the city-wide computer software upgrade, the fund hits the negative territory at around 2.8 million. Without changing anything, we'll start 2029 at a deficit of 2.8 million. This is in your packet as attached table two, which shows the results of on the fund using the proposed five-year plan increase. If you look at the percentage increases, the difference in the commercial percentage is due primarily to the bundling of the state mandatory food scrap collection into a single commercial rate. Years two through five, both sectors rise 4% per year. This graph illustrates the effect of the rate increase. As you see the expenses, the yellow triangles are still at the same level, but the green bars, the revenues rise to meet the expenses. This also builds the fund balance to accommodate the four million city-wide computer software upgrade while allowing us to near our goal of 14 million fund balance to start fiscal year 2829. This unrestricted reserve is meant to keep the operation running in the event of any unforeseen events, either natural disasters, man-made like revenue or expense volatility, or unfunded capital projects. Although previously we targeted six million in revenues in accordance with the prior risk characteristic stress test, estimating the self-sustaining funds like the refuse funds unrestricted reserves should be, should have 26 to 40% of the expenses of their annual operating budget. While six million was 26% of our annual expenses at the time of the last rate increase in 2015, increasing construction, environmental cleanups costs, and the risk of revenue loss, which we saw in the pandemic, make the higher end more realistic for those unrestricted funds. Given those uncertainties of 14 million unrestricted reserve is much more fiscally conservative target and is about six months of our operating expenses. This shows the effect of residential part rates. On September 1st, the increase is 10% and a 4% increase. September 1st, 2024, and each year 4% to 2027. Here's an example of the commercial rates. You have a complete rate list in your package. This shows how the increase works over the next five years. It's 15% on September 1st and the increase is the same as the residential 4% each year from September 1st, 2024 through 27. One major change is that the new rate includes a state mandated Senate Bill 1383 food scrap collection service. The service was previously charged as a separate container charge and is now included in the commercial rates at whatever size container is most appropriate for the business. In comparing local jurisdiction rate structures, we are the only ones who include this service without an additional charge. In summary, without a rate increase, the refuse fund will experience a 2.8 million deficit by the end of 2027. The proposed rate will raise revenues to keep pace with the expenses. The rates are structured to accommodate the fleet electrification. By 2027, the rate will generate the additional funds for the refuse portions of the major city-wide computer software upgrade. And by 2028, we'll be close to our 14 million unrestricted fund balance. The city will be in full compliance with the state mandated SB 1383. The rate structure still encourages customers to reduce waste, helping the city towards the zero waste goal, increase landfill diversion, and thus life of the landfill. This rate, these rates, will only apply to collection. Thank you guys. Well, thank you very much. It was a very thorough presentation. Very much appreciated. Let me ask if there are questions from members of the city council first. Seen in here, let me see if there's anyone with us who, do we have anyone online? Let me check, but I do wanna say that we can still collect protest letters up until the closure of the public hearing. So if anybody has letters to turn in, they would come to me. Okay. So let me, you're going to check and see if there's anyone online. We do have hands raised, yes. Okay, so let me first go again to folks who are with us. Anyone wish to comment or register a protest on this item? This would be your opportunity to address the council, Mr. Posner. Good afternoon again. Hi, I own a triplex downtown and I generally think it's better to pay more for refuge rates because it just serves people from making trash. And I really appreciate the new steps with regard to the kitchen scraps that took a long time, but I'm glad the city's done it. It makes sense to cost a little bit of money. So I firmly support raising my rates. I'll never forget what you had to say. Good afternoon, sir. Yes, I just have a question. I just wanna know if the deficit, the operational deficit for this collection, if you see collections of trash in parks and other places in the city and not regular collections, it's part of that deficit or that's a whole separate financial issue. Be kind enough to provide an answer. Thank you. No, if parks pays their own refuse and so do the other departments. Thank you. We have someone online, Ms. Bush, let's go ahead and go to them. We have five people. Five people, we'll take them one at a time. Here we go. First person, good afternoon. Hey, how's it going? My name is Sean Williamson. I was the one that came in June when we were talking about it. No, if parks pays their own refuse and so do the other departments. Can you hear me? Sorry, I'm getting some feedback from the floor. We have someone online, Ms. Bush, let's go ahead and go to them. Five people, so. Five people, we'll take them one at a time. Here we go. First person, good afternoon. Hey, how's it going? My name is Sean Williamson. Are you guys there now? Yeah, we were here all along. I'm sorry, what's going on is I think we're getting feedback from you having something on that is giving you a delayed feedback on what's being said here. So turn that off and keep your microphone on and we're good to go. Fair enough, how are we doing now? This is Sean Williamson. I was the one that came in June and talked to you guys about resource collections rates increases. I think aside from, I had something written out but I think I wanna take a different tactic and I guess I would just like to make a public request and I'm hoping that I would like to know if it would be possible to put aside some of the revenue that's going to be generated from this rates increase to be put towards researching or implementing alternative strategies to deal with organic material. I think I, from the presentation that we just saw and obviously this SB 1383 is causing some issues. It's adding increased costs and my concern is that the strategy that we're implementing to abide by this SB 1383 is one of the costlier measures. And so I guess that would just be my public comment is hoping to find alternative strategies. Vice Mayor Golder has been super helpful in this regard and trying to work towards alternate solutions but I just foresee kind of unlimited rate increases and hoping to at least know that some funds are going towards researching strategies that might help mitigate those costs in the future and environmental impact. So that's what I'd like to say. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next person online. Welcome, good afternoon. Yes, hello, this is Garrett again. Hey, I really appreciate there's a law that requires you not to raise essential monopoly utility rates such as solid waste disposal beyond actual expenses. Too bad it doesn't also require expenses to be optimized. I see the staff forced many assumptions including inflation on this third party contractor you assigned to study this when estimating future costs which are just guesses given the current inflation environment and they got to all be on the high side because it's more even than 3.8% your future inflation guidance you gave them. Of course, in the end, you decided on jacking next year's rates by 10% than 4% every year they're after which compounded totals an increase of 28.7% of year five which is quite a bit more than the ordinary future of inflation targets so they're trying to get to 2% a year who are aggressively trying to do all they can to get there. The funny part to me was where the H&H consultants mentioned in the limitations report section which ought to be called the plausible deniability section how inaccurate almost all of these assumptions can be and how they relied on staff information that they did not independently verify. It does seem to include one time expenses like a multimillion dollar reserve building for a future one time expense like IT that's got to be some IT system that costs millions of dollars and really is that amount really just going to be used for reference refuse account processing or is it something somewhere else being inappropriately funded also I see costs for this organic waste and food which I for one have never asked for objected to and I composed all my food waste and you can have your can back and take it off my bill and you can tell the state what I think about their mandates while this doesn't specifically mention planned outrageous 2x times higher costs of EV garbage trucks in their infrastructure is reasonable to wonder if that political waste then is in there and since this topic is waste I find that most congruent. Clearly there's an attempt also here to build additional reserves so you can blow the money however you want in the future but lacking specific future projects with estimates one wonders why some of these increases aren't at most temporary in nature until the target reserve balance is reached then plan to reduce those charges. Your charges are supposed to average out normal variations and naturally return to some average fund balance without the need to overcharge to rebuild balances if it was done right. Even when specifics are mentioned like IT needs I don't see rate increases reduced after those scheduled needs are met. This is the balance is going up and up and up and up overcharging model similar to the parking rate increases. Everybody knows that it's a little editorial here everybody knows I should know and really should be really pissed about it that almost all inflation is manmade created by the immoral and corrupt the budget that's spending financed by the money printing unrepayable debt. Thanks. Thank you sir. Thank you sir. Third person online. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Michael. I work with hardcore compost or a local cooperative who collects compostable material in the city. I just want to say that it's frustrating that the city doesn't take compostable plastics or dirty paper and cardboard in the brown buckets. It seems like the city isn't really thinking it's waste policies through very consistently. They even require businesses to offer compostable takeout containers and cups for 25 cents more for customers. But all those containers get land filled at home. We have to put these materials in the trash but our landfill has a finite capacity. We should be keeping everything we can out of it. Santa Cruz should be composting food waste and cardboard and takeout containers locally instead of trucking waste to Santa Clara to be fed with pigs, two pigs. We could actually make good use of all those materials locally. The city says on its website that they're working on compost with local organizations but where is the evidence of that? Thank you all for your time. Thank you. Fourth person online. Good afternoon. ZH, I think that's you. Four, three, two, one. Next one. And this would be Nicola Moore. Good afternoon. Hello, good afternoon. I'm also part of Hardcore Compost, a local worker owned business which has been collecting and composting food scraps from Santa Cruz home since 2019. And before that, I was part of Santa Cruz Community composting company that was operating since 2015. We formed Hardcore Compost to provide well-paid jobs, a supportive work environment and meaningful employment that was good for people and the planet. However, since 2022, when the city started their own food scrap collection program, we have lost close to half of our customers. We have been trying to work with the city to fit composting in alongside their collection program but keep encountering barriers. City staff say they support us but the municipal code severely restricts the customers we can work with. This is especially frustrating because our model could produce huge economic and environmental benefits for the community. Research shows that worker cooperatives last longer and are more productive than conventional businesses. Co-ops also demonstrate better pay equity between higher and lower paid workers. We want the city to recognize our worth and actually work with us to provide and preserve decent jobs and local composting. Thank you. Thank you. One more. All right. And so, ZH again, welcome. Hi there, council. Can you folks hear me now? Here we go. Yes, we can. Great. Sorry about that. My headphones were working. It's all good. So my name is Zove Hirschfield. Some I've worked with. Some of you council members on various issues before but I'm speaking here in my capacity as a worker owner at Hardcore Compost as well. I echo everything my coworker just said and I wanted to speak just on the issue of greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and food waste. So obviously as you all know in 2022, California enacted a law requiring cities to prevent greenhouse gas emissions by keeping food out of landfills. And my position is that Santa Cruz's food scrap program does meet the letter of that law, but not its spirit. It does stop some landfill methane emissions by keeping food from decomposing in landfills but it also pumps carbon into the atmosphere from the trucks that sends to Santa Clara every week because the food and the food on those trucks is made into big feed. This isn't really a climate solution when according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization livestock are responsible for 14% of global greenhouse gas emissions. So I think the city could better manage food scraps through composting. This process produces minimal greenhouse gases. It can lock carbon away in the soil and we and other local composting organizations have been trying to collaborate with the city to expand composting here. But the city's laws do make it extremely difficult for anyone other than the public works department to manage food scraps. And we'd like to see the city more meaningfully engage with local composters so that we can reduce our emissions, we can actually store carbon in local soils and we can make useful compost from the waste that is produced here. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much for your participation. Thank you for your testimony this afternoon. Let me see, is anyone else online? We have now covered that. Anyone else who's here? Covered that, all right. Matters back before the council. Questions or comments by council members? Ms. Brunner. I have a question for staff. If there's a way that we could get some information regarding the municipal codes that were mentioned that are making it difficult for the composting issue that was brought up by three of the public comments. Council members and mayor, my name's Leslie O'Malley. I'm the waste reduction manager. I'm the staff that has been having conversations with those people who have spoken today over the last several years. We have access to the code. I've worked and walked through every line of the code with some of the callers and we're happy to provide to council that city attorney recently met with one of the callers and walked through some of that so we're happy to provide the language of the city ordinance that the city is the exclusive holler. That would be great. And maybe some information around what can be changed and not changed as required. Thank you. Thank you for the questions or comments. Ms. Brown. I will make a comment here on the folks who have called in and spoken. I support the item and so I'm gonna vote yes when the time comes. I do think that we can do better with composting and I recognize there are significant challenges and Ms. O'Malley, I know you are very committed to finding ways to bring sustainability into all of our work and sustainable methods and practices and so I don't doubt that you've been having those conversations and trying to be helpful but I do think that there's some things to be learned from the groups that are doing this in our community and are making compost rather than just managing food scraps in a different way and so I'd like to see us take that conversation up more seriously as we move forward with our efforts. This is very new, I recognize as well and there's all kinds of things that we could talk about there but I just wanted to say that because I would like to see this issue talked about more comprehensively so I'll reach out to you Leslie and see what we can come up with to try to bring it back but are we ready for motion now? You have a comment. Okay, I'll just hold off on the motion. No, I was just gonna say I would be very interested in that conversation as well so whenever that happens let's stay connected. Excellent. All right, so then with that I'll move the staff recommendation. If there's a motion to approve the recommendation including the resolution, Mr. Condati. This under Proposition 218 is technically a rate protest hearing and so I think it would be appropriate to hear from the city clerk if a majority of the members of the public who are subject to the rate increase submit a written protest in opposition then the city would be precluded by Prop 218 from imposing the increased rates. So I'm not sure. I'm not sure we receive that threshold number of protest. I'm not sure what the threshold number is but we received a total of 15. Okay. Suffice it to say that's less than 50% of the customers in the city. Okay, very good, all right. Thank you, thank you. There's a motion and a second under discussion is called to our Johnson. No, I just seconded it. Oh, all right, good. For the debate or discussion seen here, none of the clerk will call the roll. That was Ms. Brown made the motion, Ms. Calentari-Johnson on this. Thank you. Yes. Council member is Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Bruner. Aye. Calentari-Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Cooley. Aye. Motion passes and so ordered. Council members, we need to check in a little time check here. We're at 525. We have an item, we have items 27, 28 and then oral communication. Typically at 505, we would have taken a break for a half an hour, grab a little bite to eat that's available for us. Item 27, I'm going to guess this will be fast. I'm going to guess on item 28 a bit longer. I wonder if what we might do is take a brief break. Let's go, let's take a break. We're at 525. Let's go until 545. Let's take a very brief break and we will come back at 545, take up items 27, 28 and oral communication. None of that having been on the record. We are back in session following the early evening break. The city council is now on item 27. This is a resolution of necessity for regional drought resiliency project and intertie, involving some lands outside boundaries of the city. Let me ask Ms. Thompson if you have any presentation to make on this item. Yes, I have a short presentation that I can make to council summarizing the staff report and the requested action by council today. All right, so this hearing is to discuss the city's adoption of a resolution of necessity that is required to acquire property necessary for construction of the city's regional drought resiliency project specifically in our time one. The water department developed this project and that will construct just under 10,000 lineal feet of water pipeline that connects the water systems of the city and the Scots Valley water district as well as constructing an associated water pump station. And this will increase the emergency and drought resiliency of the city and district by augmenting water supplies, while creating water storage and fire flow. Capacities. This will be used in both emergency and non-emergency water transfers and exchanges. And the pipeline will be built primarily on public right of ways that includes Sims Road and La Madrona Drive, but does require the acquisition of a handful of permanent easements in the acquisition of one property in fee. And this hearing concerns that in fee acquisition. The at-issue property is an undeveloped, unused private dirt road. It's a fairly steep road. It has three owners, a partnership, Robert and Edith Ann Rittenhouse and Mr. and Mrs. O'Loughlin. And the property is required for the project to connect the pipeline from Sims Road to the water district's existing Kite Hill tanks. The city had the property appraised earlier this year and sent a formal offer letter to the owners in March for the full appraised value, which was just over $28,000. The parties have not reached an agreement on the terms of the acquisition because two of the owners, the O'Loughlins, are deceased and their descendants legally cannot accept the city's offer to purchase the property without either probate action or quiet title action by the court, by the civil court. And the owners are amenable to the acquisition, all the owners, but can't do so without this further action by the O'Loughlin descendants. And currently the O'Loughlin descendants have refused to transfer the property via the probate option because the probate costs will likely exceed their share of the purchase price. Again, it's just over $28,000. The parents owned roughly 2% of this property. So because no agreement can be reached here and without either probate direction through the O'Loughlin children or with civil court direction through an eminent domain proceeding and the city can't complete the probate action itself and the descendants refuse to do so, the city unfortunately has to go through this eminent domain route to acquire the property interest. We, in our talks with the property owners, it doesn't appear that any of the owners will challenge the eminent domain proceeding. So this can be done relatively quickly and we have not received any opposition from the owners ahead of this hearing. But of course, city staff will continue to engage with the owners throughout the process to try and get this resolved out of court and more expediously than through the eminent domain legal process. So to go this route, we are requesting that council consider a resolution of necessity to determine that the public interest and necessity require the acquisition of the property by eminent domain. There are four findings that are required for that resolution. One is that necessity and public interest require the project itself, that the proposed project is planned and located in a manner most compatible with the greatest public good and least private injury, that the property itself at issue here is necessary for the project and whether the offer letter and notice have been made to the owner. And I should note that yes, we did send a notice to the property owners, all three property owners, that there would be this hearing today and we sent that early in July. And so happy to answer any questions that you have about those four findings that are required for the resolution. Thank you, Ms. Thompson. Appreciate your presentation. Let me ask if council members have questions of Ms. Thompson on this item. Seeing here, none, this would be the opportunity for any member of the public who wishes to comment on this item. Anyone who is with us in chambers this evening. Do we have anyone online, Ms. Bush? No one with their hands raised. The matter is back before the council. Entertain a motion. I'll move the recommendation. Recommendation is moved by council member Watkins. There is a second by council member Brunner under debated discussion. Seeing and hearing none, the clerk will call the roll. Council member Newsome. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Pellentary Johnson. Aye. Vice mayor Golder. Aye. Mayor Achille. Carries and so order. Ms. Thompson, thank you. City Attorney's office, thank you for your good work on this. We are on item 28. Item 28 is San Lorenzo Park redesign process. We will have a staff presentation. Mr. Elliott, good afternoon or good evening, sir. How are you? Doing well. Thank you, mayor. Good evening, mayor and city council. Appreciate the opportunity to be here to present an update on the San Lorenzo Park redesign project. As Noah and Sarah are getting set over here at the staff computer, they'll give our presentation. Just wanted to quickly acknowledge, excuse me, that this project that we're working on at San Lorenzo Park is actually the city strategic plan in action already that the council just passed today. So as reflecting on a couple of those goals and strategies in the plan, including invest in public and green spaces to create a welcoming, safe and attractive place to spend time, activate city programs and other efforts to enhance and enliven downtown, including along the river, so on and so forth. So kind of a good connection today. I know the strategic plan moved quickly through consent, but already some good work in progress here at San Lorenzo in line with the strategic plan. So my piece of this is very brief. I mainly just want to introduce our parks planner. Noah Downing will run the presentation today. In addition to one of the leads from our consulting partner, Bionic Consulting, Sarah Most Thompson, who will co-lead this presentation. And we'll be happy to answer questions at the end. So thank you again for your time and I'll hand it over to Noah and Sarah. Mr. Elliott, thank you very much. Mr. Downing, Ms. Thompson, is that correct? Yes, thank you. Have that right? Good evening, both of you. Good evening. Please proceed. Good evening to you, Mayor and Council. Thank you. Let's begin with the agenda. We're gonna briefly go over the process, kind of the significance of the park within the city, as well as some characteristics to consider for the redesign, cover the community engagement, and then go over some of the opportunities we see with the park, as well as recommending guiding principles and design goals and some ideas for as well as next steps. In terms of the San Lorenzo Park redesign process, just wanted to talk a little bit about where we've been and where we're going. So if you look at the green, this is a phase one and we're about to conclude this phase. And before I get into it, I just wanna describe that the way we designed the process is that after when we reach certain milestones that we'll have check-ins with the council and or commission before we move on to the next step. And so for this outcome of the first step is we developed a needs assessment, identified opportunities and constraints as well as recommended goals and principles. And that's really from an evaluation of the existing conditions as well as the outreach. In terms of outreach, we engaged numerous stakeholders. We had 17 meetings with various groups. We identified just general themes from that outreach that led to very specific questions at the community meeting. And then that led to even more specific questions through an online survey. And we met with the Parks and Rec Commission. We're able to get some of their feedback. They made a recommendation to us, which we'll describe later. And then we're having the city council meeting. So in terms of the next steps, we move on, we would work with the community on different alternatives that would go into a ultimately a concept plan. We'd return to the Parks and Rec Commission to refine that concept plan. From there, we'd move through even more specific to develop a draft plan. And then we'd go before the commission and council again to review the draft plan. And that would get us through to a point where we could move on to environmental review, which is the next kind of phase beyond this project. And then we would look forward to more of construction drawings and fundraising and trying to implement the project. So this effort just, it really builds upon a lot of past efforts. In 1988, there was a San Lorenzo Park redesign process. It ultimately was not approved just from the minutes at that time in a review of them. It seems like there was concern that there wasn't funding available. There were also parts of the San Lorenzo Urban River Plan touch on kind of activating, providing access, natural restoration and there are some ideas for San Lorenzo Park that are still relevant or may be still relevant. In 2007, there was an ideas to activate the San Lorenzo River. Talks about education, types of events or opportunities. And so definitely that's relevant in San Lorenzo Park. You have the Ocean Street Area Plan, which talks about better connecting Ocean Street to the park through the government center, as well as the downtown plan, which was recently updated, calls for additional growth within downtown. There are some policies as well for San Lorenzo Park. And most recently, the City of Santa Cruz Parks Master Plan, which is adopted in 2020. And it has a recommendation to go through this process. Great, thank you, Noah. And good evening. As Noah mentioned, there have been a lot of previous efforts to reimagine San Lorenzo Park. And we've taken that into consideration as part of developing the needs assessment, as well as with researching and analyzing the existing features and conditions of the park, and then talking with many people in the community, as well as the city to understand what the needs are of the community for San Lorenzo Park in the future. And so we really started at the beginning to understand the significance and the transformation of the park over time. San Lorenzo Park is a neighborhood park located amongst multiple neighborhoods, but it's actually directly adjacent to your downtown. And we heard from people that that wasn't always very clear given the current configuration of the park, but we think it really has an opportunity to be a real asset for your growing and evolving downtown. It's also centrally located in Santa Cruz, halfway from the mountains to the ocean, and so could serve the larger population and needs of the city. Given its location within the region as well, and in the county, it could be a destination for many more people and a real offering for the Bay Area. The area around San Lorenzo Park has had a lot of significance to many people over time, including the native peoples and the indigenous tribes. They're one of the groups that we did meet with as part of the key stakeholder outreach. It served the neighborhood and the community since it was built in 1964, and it has also served the city in times of crisis and need. The park today has many existing features and assets, some of which the community cherish. San Lorenzo the Sea Serpent was recently repainted by the community. There are other assets that are in need of repair. To give a quick orientation to the park, it's located along the San Lorenzo River, Water Street to the north, River Street to the west, Soquel Avenue to the south, and then Dakota Avenue to the east. And the roughly 13 acre park is divided into two areas. For this project, we're using some new terminology. The uplands is the area adjacent to Dakota Street, and then the low lying area between the river and the uplands area in elevation. The low lying area, formerly referred to as the Benchlands, we're referring to that as the Riverlands now. And the Riverlands are quite extensive, and they have actually a really unique riparian habitat along the river edge with an overhanging mature tree canopy. And this area actually serves a much larger ecological purpose for flood management of the river, as you can see from the winter storms this past January. But it's part of this much larger ecosystem. And this reach of the river is actually very unique because it has this mature tree canopy overhanging the river. And so it offers a lot of wildlife potential that you don't see elsewhere along the reach because of these trees and the unique condition of the Riverlands. The mature tree canopy also extends within the park. It's a real asset to not only the park, but to the larger urban forest. And we think something really important to preserve to the greatest extent possible. So to understand how to preserve those trees, we did a mapping of the extent of the trees and where their drip line would be. So we can do improvements outside of the drip line once you get into that root zone, you potentially impact the tree. So the areas you see outlined in kind of a yellowish green, those areas we wanna avoid for major improvements. They can be light improvements there, but we need to protect those areas to protect those trees. So the areas identified in the purple, blue, pink and orange, that's where major transformation improvements can be made. And that starts to define some of the opportunities and constraints we have in thinking about a reimagined park. So along with evaluating the existing conditions and assets, in parallel, we asked the community and the city, what they need for the park and what should it be in the future? We looked at a lot of examples of both regional and national parks that are comparable in size to San Lorenzo Park. And these are serving as real assets for downtowns around the US. We looked at some of the programs and amenities that they have within these parks and asked the Santa Cruz community, what would they like to see? What would draw them to the park? What would be valuable for their city? As Noah mentioned, we met with over 1,500 individuals and part of the engagement, we included a full range of ways to provide input, everything from presentations to conversations one-on-one in small groups. We met with people of all ages and backgrounds. We had both online and in-person meetings and many different activities to engage and offer their ideas. And we actually heard a lot of different ideas, but we also heard a lot of overlapping priorities and interests for the park. So there's a brief summary, I'll go through here. You can see the rest of it in the needs assessment. But people are really interested in both active and passive experiences in the park. We heard their priorities for the park being safe and clean and usable and a real interest in environmental restoration along the river's edge. People want and are excited about having a whole range of amenities. They love the natural scenery and they want a park that they can bring their family to. We learned that most people get there by walking and bicycling and understand their circulation patterns a bit more, which will help to inform the design of the access and circulation for the alternatives. We asked about the riverlands to understand how that should be used. And people are really interested in restoration, but they also care about having events in the park. And so we wondered what kind of events they'd like to see. And they're very excited about events, everything from music and concerts to more specialized events like Earth Day and then even small groups for exercise. And then we wanted to understand what types of programs and uses they'd like to have. And they're interested in seeing a full range with a lot of priorities for playgrounds, areas for recreation, events and trails, but a whole offering that we're gonna assess what's feasible in the park. So we took all of that input to really identify what the opportunities are for the park and then to set the guiding principles and design goals that we'd like your approval on today. We think that the park really offers the city an opportunity to enhance the park to be an asset and a resource for your downtown and really an open space, not only for the neighborhoods, but for your downtown for the growing uses and people that will live there. It'll define the access and circulation and really making it a prominent space where you can promote everything that's unique and people love about Santa Cruz within the park and use that as a way to attract people both locally and regionally. Taking the assets that you currently have and enhancing those and then identifying which ones should be revitalized and which ones maybe should transform into new uses over time. Of course, prioritizing the river and the ecology and finding ways to enhance that and promote that, especially in the face of our climate is changing. Of course, designing a park that's inclusive for everyone, all ages, backgrounds and abilities in all aspects of the park. And then really thinking about strategies and measures that will keep the park safe over time and will allow the city to manage it and operate it on a long-term basis. And lastly, but maybe most importantly, is identifying partnerships and stewardship with community groups, with different agencies, with groups across the board, to help with future fundraising, for future design, for the construction, and then for the maintenance and operations of the park. And so that helped us to identify seven guiding principles that are all founded on an underlying principle that the park needs to be clean, safe, and secure. And so those are making the park uniquely Santa Cruz, reflecting the culture, activating the park, making it both sustainable and a green space, promoting biodiversity, creating a park with a lot of different programs and activities and events that attract the community and visitors, and then increasing the visibility and the access to the park and to the river and connecting it to downtown. As a subset to that, we've defined 12 specific design goals, and these will use these to measure if we're accomplishing the principles within the alternatives. I'm not gonna go through these in detail. You can read them in more specifics in the needs assessment, unless you'd like me to go through them specifically. A lot of these are really best practices in landscape architecture and planning, and we implement these in most projects that we do, but these will be what we'll use to measure the alternatives in stage two and three. And then lastly, we've identified a list of potential programs, and as part of stage two, we'll be going through these and developing them spatially to see what will fit, what works well together, and to really zero in on what's right for San Lorenzo Park in the future. So with that, I'd like to say thank you. I'm here to answer any questions, and I'll hand it back to Noah to conclude. Thank you, Sarah. Yeah, so on May 8th, we met with the Parks and Rec Commission. They had a lot of great comments. And I'll just mention some of them, think bigger and take risks with design and let the commission and council reign in the project. Translate the needs assessment into the executive summary into Spanish. We have completed that. We have sent that out to the public. Incorporate Dark Sky and Public Safety considerations into the design. Provide more details for inclusivity. Yeah, a lot of great feedback. That just brings us to the, they unanimously recommended to the council to accept the guiding principles and design goals. So that's what staff is recommending as well. And then in terms of next steps, we'll take your feedback and on the outcome of the meeting, we anticipate going out to the public around October with some draft alternatives, work through public outreach meeting, try to refine those, then release a survey to ask very specific questions, get a lot of feedback, put together a draft concept plan, which would just be more of a schematic layout with different types of uses. And then have a meeting with the Parks and Rec Commission, hopefully in December. And then on that outcome, likely to be a refined concept plan. And then we would develop a draft plan based off of that for the commission and then council. And with that, that concludes staff's presentation. Questions? Well, thank you very much. And Ms. Thompson, thank you as well. And Mr. Elliott, you and your staff done a fine job on this. Let me ask council members for your comments and questions on this. We'll start with the vice mayor. I don't have questions, but I do have comments. And I just wanted to say, thank you. This is so exciting. And I'm really excited to see all the public outreach and all the comments. And as I was reading through it this weekend, all of them are making me smile. And I was just really excited to see people's ideas. I know council member Watkins and my husband are gonna be really excited. All the people that wanted pickleball. I was trying to tally it. I was glad I was tallyed up there. I had an opportunity to meet with the neighbors over at the Dakota street apartments. There were some senior citizens over there for the national night out last week. And they really expressed to me how pleased they were to see the encampment gone. And they use that park on a daily basis. And so thinking about ways to permanently keep people from living in the park, I think about Depot Park. And I don't know, is my father-in-law still here again? But I know Depot Park, you don't regularly see people camping on the field. I know it's fenced. And I'm not suggesting fences, but soccer fields are in short supply. I don't know if there's space looking at that other map, but any kind of soccer field, pickleball, I think are such great ideas to encourage active recreation down there and getting families and making it a draw, like you said. The other thing that I saw when I read through all of the online surveys was people really don't want it overrun with drug use. I was surprised to see how much people loved the duck pond. I loved Council Member Bruner's idea about the roller skating and the opportunity for weddings. I think that that would be really cool if we had it cleaned up for that. Clean bathrooms. I saw that as a huge important part for families and for people wanting to access the park. And then again, I'm gonna talk about if there's a way we could incorporate access for people to stand up paddle or kayak or canoe along the river. That seasonal dam idea that somebody said, I thought that was a great idea. Again, I don't know if that's possible with the quality of the water at that part of the river. And then the think big idea, I love that from the Parks Commission and someone who had the biggest slide idea. I used to slap my kids all the way over to Ocean View to use the slides over there or something that would be a draw for folks from other neighborhoods. And then the festivals, this sounds awful, but the nighttime irrigation to prevent people from camping was another thing that one of the commenters put on the survey. And then free yoga or exercise classes that people from the neighborhood or community members could join that would encourage people to come weekly, daily to just be there. And then from the 1988 plan, I loved the idea of the stage where the amphitheater could be like where people sit on the floodplains with chairs. I think that would draw people from downtown if we could have evening concerts or movies or things like that to bring people in in the evenings during the summer or whenever and just keeping the floodplain as needed but having it so that it could be there. And then the final comment is when redesigning the playground, just be thinking about an opportunity for people with different mobilities. So there's definitely people in our community that can't use traditional playgrounds. And so if there's things that we can incorporate so that, and I'm sorry, such a long list. I know you've been doing such great work. And again, I'm just really, really excited that this is happening. So thank you for all your great work, Mr. Elliott and staff. And I just really appreciate everything that's gone into this so far. Other comments? Ms. Calantari-Johnson, then I'm sorry I was looking at the Ms. Brown, are you? I was just gonna say I'll make comments after but I do have one question. Good enough, so Ms. Calantari-Johnson. Sure, I smear Golder like took sort of all the words out of my mouth. But I'll just, no, it was perfect but I also wanna thank everyone who put so much work into this and all the community members who engaged in the various ways. So everything. And I am curious to hear a little bit more about staff's thoughts on the inclusivity, clarity and specificity on inclusivity. And I imagine it's a lot has to do with what you just mentioned, Vice Mayor Golder in allowing for people with different abilities to be active and participate in the park. So if anyone could comment on that. And then just the more active participation the less we have to kind of think about safety because people will be there and it'll be used for those uses. So just to reiterate that point but if you can just comment on the inclusivity piece. Yeah, definitely. There are a lot of great examples of inclusive parks and playgrounds in the area and so we use those as precedents but it is it's people that of all ages and abilities. So the mobility concerns making sure that there's equal access for play opportunities and that people of all abilities can have similar play experiences incorporated into the playground as well as just all aspects of the park. We did speak with some user groups that are concerned about accessing the bench lands because there are no trails for wheelchairs to get down there and to actually attend events. And so everything I would say from really accessing all of the different venues that whether you walk or in a wheelchair or you get there by any means that you have the ability to do that. I would say the inclusivity also ranges not only from physical access and ability but also to language. And so interpretation and wayfinding will be an important element and so making that accessible in languages for the community that you have here. I would take that into the inclusivity definition as well. And then in regards to the activation that is one of the reasons we've really prioritized that is that the more you can keep people present and using different uses that'll just bring life that eliminates some of the uses that you would like to not see there. Thank you so much. Council Member Brown. Thank you. A lot of work, a lot of information, a lot of really cool thinking and collaborative work is really obvious here. So thank you. I have kind of two bigger questions. I'll save comments for later. One, I just wanted to, since it's in our materials, Noah, you mentioned it, the previous plan which was quite some time ago was kind of disallowed or whatever it was called, but it wasn't pursued in part due to concerns about costs. There's obviously gonna be a lot of costs associated with whatever we do. And I know that's in the arrow, it's much later on, but it is something that I think we wanna be thinking about in terms of positioning ourselves. And as we plan, what we choose to do there will in some sense be driven by how we can fund it, right? So I'm just wondering if you could talk about that a little bit. And the other question is really a bigger one. And I think we're gonna probably hear from members of the public about this, but it's an amazing asset, this park. And I think of it as two parks. One, the Benchlands, the Riverlands, and where the ecological and habitat questions and goals come into play and then the wreck piece being kind of separate. But this is one plan and it's the guiding principles that are attached to all of it. And so I'd like to hear a little bit about how you're thinking about the differences as well in terms of what we do with the Benchlands versus the uplands. Yeah, great questions. I thank you, Council Member Brown. I think on the first question, as far as costs, obviously we don't know the cost at this point, but I think what we hope to achieve and I welcome Noah and Sarah to chime in on this as well is really craft a vision that's compelling. And I think is really, as Vice Mayor Golder mentioned, really exciting and intriguing to the community. And that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to do it in one big phase that would likely cost several million dollars or really identify and the way I think about it is what is the most deferred maintenance in that park? What are the most critical assets that we might need to improve in the near term? I think restrooms are right up there. I think the playground is one, both the Totlot and the five to 12 playground are areas that we wanna make investment. I think the Riverlands is another area as well after a lot of use and change down there and the floods that we saw this winter, I think a lot of need. So that's something that we could do over time to really prioritize and figure out how to phase those different aspects of the park. But our hope from a Parks and Rec purist standpoint would be to get a large chunk through a grant or budget to do it in one fell swoop and really do kind of a big project as a result of this. But what we hope to do with this is create really a vision that we could implement through steps if need be over time to make sure we can fund it. On the second question, I would welcome Noah and Sarah to weigh in on that. But in terms of the project and the visioning that we've gone through on this redesign, really thinking of the uplands and the Riverlands really together. They do operate as two different places and I think we've really acknowledged that. And I just want to commend and really show a lot of acknowledgement and respect and appreciation to Sarah and the team at Bionic for really acknowledging the difference of these two areas of the park. We've also acknowledged how people come into the park and we asked the question about where is the entry to the park and everybody gave every answer you could possibly imagine. So there's no gateway into the park and are the Bench lands or Riverlands, is that the park or is it the uplands? I think really through this vision, I think what we've tried to craft is something that connects all of it and really defines those entry points and really welcomes people in. So for example on Water Street, sort of feels like you're going to the county building. It sort of feels like you're walking into the river area. You're not sure where you're going but you're actually coming into a park. So how do we really define that and connect it to and really develop recreation and programming in both of those areas that complement each other as well? I welcome Noah and Sarah to add to that as well. I think the Riverlands itself is in a flood zone, it's in the levy, it's very heavily regulated. So it concerns about activating it with large facilities or infrastructure. It's not something that's going to be really explored. I think the bigger question is the use of the Riverlands for events, which seems to be still in need, seems to be on the five-year plan, like creating opportunities for events downtown. So I think what we heard from the community when we asked that pretty pointed question, like how should we use the Riverlands? It seems like the majority, I think around 65%, at least from the survey, felt that a combination of both. And so it's a large area. There's definitely room for improvements to create more habitat. And I would also say in terms of the uplands, I think policies for sustainability and green building design, all those things, water conservation, those are policies that will be in place as well. So. Yeah, I would just add maybe a couple of points to the first question. Part of developing the alternatives and the preferred plan, we will be developing costs to go along with that to help the staff and the commission and council understand what the cost implications are of the alternatives. And a big part of that too, is identifying not only the individual elements, but also the co-benefits that you will receive from the different programs. And that actually helps a lot with going back out for funding and grants, co-benefits, if you can identify as those are really a big sell in the receiving significant grants to support the project. And the way that we've worked closely with the staff to develop the list of deliverables is such that ultimately the Parks and Rec Department will have some really valuable assets at the end of this, including visualizations of the park and a vision that hopefully the community is very supportive of, which we think will really help with the fundraising as you move forward to hopefully be successful for, as Tony said, a larger project, but could also be phased as part of the plan. And then to answer your second question, while there are these two very distinct areas, we do see a lot of opportunities to connect them. And I think having relationships between them is gonna be critical, so that they really function as best as they can, that they stay active and that you have the right uses throughout the year that you'd like to see there. And so a lot of that is, as Tony said, creating those moments, those entry points, it's clear that you are entering the park, that it has this identity and it has maybe multiple identities within the larger maybe outline, but that there are defined areas for these different purposes and goals. And so all of that will start to play out in the alternatives. And I think we're excited to see some of the different configurations and frameworks that ultimately lead to the final vision. Thank you, sir. I'm just sorry for jumping between the two questions, but the last thing about the funding is, as downtown grows, we do collect the parks facilities tax. And so as revenues grow from that, we could look at, it wouldn't cover all the improvements, but it could cover matches for grants. And so we'll continue to seek out those types of opportunities. Council member White. Great, thank you. Yeah, I think a lot of my thoughts and comments have been made. I will just sort of pick up where you stopped in terms of the downtown growth. I think that will be a recreation in place for a lot of our individuals who'll be living downtown. So we want to definitely consider that, thinking about as we're planning for growth. You know, in terms of age friendly, it's definitely a stance that this council has taken to be an age friendly city. And so how we're thinking about all people of all ages is really important. And you mentioned like pickleball and skating and skate parks as a potential way for that to be accessible to all different people with different interests. I want to just echo and highlight the importance of inclusion and thinking about how we're really being thoughtful about planning for people with all abilities and how we can access some of our nonprofits, particularly shared adventures and others who are really dedicated to inclusion, efforts within our community, Leo's Haven, et cetera. You know, I know, Tony, I brought up to the splash park idea. I think as we're experiencing a hotter environment, although we might not be experiencing it this summer so far, we don't want to lose sight of the bigger picture around climate change and just the warming of our environment and people are looking for opportunities to cool down. And so how we're being mindful of predicting what those needs might be for future environments. So like a splash park or a cooling space that I think would be really something to think about. I think disc golf is a really great concept. Disc golf is always really busy up at De La Viega. People are really looking for opportunities to do that. It's a growing sport, you know, I know people who do it and I think it's always really crowded and there's complaints about that. But nonetheless, I think it's a beautiful space. So however, we're thinking about creating recreation for people who have these interests. Spanish, absolutely thinking about how we're making sure that we're advertising that. I appreciated your question about the balance of that environmental component with recreation and the entry points and the various approaches to the entry points. I think that actually, I think that covers all of my comments. So I just appreciate your work. I appreciate our commission's work and the department's work and this is really exciting. I did have one question actually, in terms of the timeline. So I know we're doing this and then when do you anticipate the EIR potentially having that? Come back to council and that would be to accept the plan pending environmental review. Anderson. EIR is written there but it's really gonna be based on the kind of final plan is. We just anticipate it'll be in EIR but it could be kind of, there's not a lot of significant change to the park. Okay. Okay. That's helpful to hear. Thank you. I just saw it in the timeline. I just wanted to make sure. Okay, thank you. Council Member Newsom. Thank you, Mayor Keely. And my comments will mostly echo most of the comments that we've heard or mostly same. I just want to thank Director Elliott and the staff for doing such a wonderful job up to this point on the redesign process. This is really wonderful to see and to read through and I just want to echo making the park as inclusive as can be as well. Ms. Bruner. Thank you. Thank you for the updates thus far in this process. I agree it's been very exciting and some of my comments are in the report from one of the stakeholder meetings. It was really great to see all the other input because I wasn't in any of those other stakeholder meetings. And so this process is really exciting because it really takes into account how everybody uses the park. And so I echo all of those points that have been made about the abilities. And I know we spoke of not just signage with Spanish, English, but maybe Braille and ADA accessible and everything that we can think of to make it a park for the whole community. And I recently met with members of the Pride Committee, the LGBTQ plus community and it came up in conversation about the park and they had some input. There's kind of word going around about this and people want to know how they can input still and at what point and where they input when will that input stop? And so they really wanted to and I encourage them to email their input and I directed them to Tony Elliott, our Parks and Rec director about some kind of memorial there. They have some history there with the park as well that they would love to have considered. And the entrance ways to the park, the pedestrian versus vehicle, I think what was clear and what has come out of all of this is that we will have those two different entry ways, pedestrian and vehicle. And I loved all the input, but with the roller skating that was my personal, for me it's roller skate dance and not roller skating a track. It's a multi, I've been working with Tony Elliott on multi-use smooth surface space that can be used for salsa dancing, roller skate dance, whatever people can think of. But when we think of parks, we think of green spaces and we think our beautiful, mature tree canopies and the urban forest, the wildlife, but there has to be a smooth surface cement area for roller skate dancing. I drive all the way to San Francisco to Golden Gate Park for their roller skate dance area at the park and it's a lot bigger. But there's a big need and cry for that as well as all the other activities that have been mentioned, but I hope that we can come up with a template that can accommodate all the different programming needs, but the structure, the foundation, the elements are there that are multi-use and if we keep that in mind, we can get the maximum use out of the park. So I'm excited to see what comes next, but I am curious at what point do you stop accepting input? It's a public process, so we elect and consider input throughout the whole process. It's just at different phases. Input looks a little different, so this next one is gonna be more focused on design alternatives and concepts and I think that's a great opportunity to think about where to place certain art installations and what those could look like. Yeah, I would say definitely throughout all of stage two as we're developing the alternatives and getting to a point that we refine into the final plan and so even into stage three as we're refining the final plan, I think we'll be accepting input to incorporate into that final plan and as part of the process, even if input comes in that is as we're finalizing, there's always documenting of that input going forward that'll inform how the final design actually gets designed into construction documents and built and so I would say we've been directing everything to know it to help people to continue with their great ideas and we'd love to hear those as we continue to develop throughout the whole process. Thank you so much. Other questions or comments by board members? Let me invite the public to provide testimony. Mr. Posner, good evening. Hi, my name is Mike Caposner. I'm representing the Sierra Club. Although full disclosure, I also live one block from the park and I'm a member although not a leader of Friends of St. Lawrence Park. The Sierra Club's mission is to explore, enjoy and protect the planet and that's what my comments refer to on a much smaller scale. So first of all, we do think that the bench lands, the river lands should be restored to native habitat. As we discussed earlier, the rest of the river is not native habitat. It's a levee and native habitat is something that people in Santa Cruz don't really get a chance to see in the urban environment. Also native habitat is lumpy. It involves a lot of riparian small trees and bushes like alder and willow. It's not a particularly good place to sleep. Secondly, we remember our mission is also to explore and enjoy the planet. So we do support the idea of having a path or more than one path that go through that native habitat and obviously those aren't gonna be entirely natural. They could be boardwalks or what have you but the Sierra Club does support that. We want people to be able to enjoy that space and then when they get to the river, we also support some kind of improvement on the river to help people interact with the river more like some kind of improved beach, essentially or other amenities down at the river itself. So in our vision, you would wander from the upper area down through the native habitat and then you'd hang out at the river and enjoy the river itself. Lastly, we noticed over the years and it only happened a couple of three years before COVID that there were some events that actually cut off the bike pedestrian path, mostly events involving alcohol and that's really not cool. That bike pedestrian path is one of the primary ways and it's in our general pan that people do explore the river as well as have transportation. So of course we enjoy events and we know events are gonna happen but please ensure that events do not cut off the bike pedestrian path even for a few days. So that's all for the official Sierra Club input. As to date, it's a big park and we imagine all kinds of wonderful things happening and we also look forward to seeing how it unfolds. Thank you. Oh, I'm gonna go, my wife just said dinner's ready so but I apologize because I'd love to hear what everyone else has to say and maybe I'll look at the recording and I can't imagine or maybe I can imagine a little bit of the kind of patience it takes for all of everyone else to be here and I appreciate you all for it, thank you. Thank you, sir. Good evening. Hi there, my name's Andy Crachey. Been living in Santa Cruz since 1975 and I'm also the vice president of the local chapter of the International Dark Sky Association which confusingly enough is changing its name to Dark Sky International. But yeah, just bringing awareness about the dangers of light pollution which is running rampant in the world over and having adverse effects on all species that have been studied including humans. So, but I'm not gonna go on a screed about light pollution but I've been invited to both the environmental meetings with environmental groups about this project and I've attended community events and I'm just very impressed with all the work that's gone into this and I made kind of an offhand comment at the Parks and Rec Commission meeting in May that these guys have a really easy job, they're just like you, you have to please everybody, right, but yeah, I just wanna make the point that we have a park where people are going to interact, we have the river and we've run into this when we've dealt with public works about projects, them saying, well, the river is an urban area. So I would just really like to emphasize that the river should be a natural area and some of our work was getting street lights to stay on the street and not on the river because Noah got involved because that's endangering the species in the river. So there is a way of doing lighting that's both safe and environmentally friendly and in my experience Parks and Rec staff has been very receptive, very curious and interested in fulfilling that. So my hats off to them for the job they're doing so far. Thank you, sir. Good evening. Hi, Brett Snyder. Let's see, I remember when Depot Park was kind of wasteland. If you go back far enough, it was still rail access and it was just dirty gravel and broken 40s and sleeping chronic anibrians, I think is the technical term. And there's actually on Google Earth, there's still the images of the 345 shanties, you know, blue tarps down there in the river lands at the bench lands, the river lands. And yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with Micah, it's not a good place to sleep, it's a flood plain. You know, I know in about a month and a half the students are coming back. There's 19,000 of them now. Back when I was talking about Depot Park, way back when where you could sleep, like literally over there and kind of be mistaken for a drunk, there were probably 12,000 students. So that bubble has just expanded and you're seeing homeless people going, I've got to be on the other side of the river. Now the SF gate, they did that study about how there's a mistaken perception that homeless people are from out of state or from somewhere else. But a lot of the times they're from right, right, you know, right here. So am I, I mean, I moved here when I was seven from halfway between where Edison was born and Neil Armstrong was born in Northwest Ohio. But yeah, one thing I think they did when they designed that park in 62, they said, oh, let's have a blank slate, let's just make it kind of a generic part. Design goal eight, restrooms, drinking fountains, waste receptacles, seating. That was probably their primary thought. Pickleball, dog park, pardon me, skating, like dance skating. These are highly vertical specialized, like these are things I'm not thinking, you want to like section out the park just those people, you know, the skate park area and the pump track area and the disc golf area and this and that. I mean, I did one time on the lawn bowling, I got in there with a putter and I hit a putt all the way diagonal from one side to the other and it just hit perfectly on the other. Which you can do because it's just perfectly flat. But anyway, yeah, the bathrooms, you know, conveniently located between downtown and jack in the box and Starbucks. I don't know if we need the pickleball. That's my feeling. Basically, I think a better access and design goal eight much more important than the pickleball, thank you. Thank you, sir. Good evening. Okay, I know now to put it close to my mouth, thank you. Yes, this is really fun. I really want to go down and watch you dance skate. I'm so excited. That's what's gonna draw me down there and other people for an old lady 85 would be fun to watch. So first of all, I really want to thank knowing Downing and your team because I have wanted for so long for Parks and Rec as you could tell from the previous item to talk to the environmental groups in our community and on your website is now posted. I discovered an interview with California Native Plant Society with Sierra Club, with the Bird Club leader and this has made me really almost cry. You interviewed Valentin Lopez from the Amon Woodsmen and you also had it on your slide. So yes, this is what I love to see and so you can imagine that my dream, Renee is not your dream of the bench as a river lands. I dream of a beautiful river. Beautiful woodland or a Perian river that's really quiet, it has trails where people from our really busy bustling city can cross the Chinese bridge and just take a wonderful walk in nature. There aren't very many places in our community where you can in town take a wonderful walk in nature and I'm thinking of older people like myself who can't access Pogonap, who can't access Sycamore Grove, these beautiful places that I used to love to go to. Now it's harder for me as an 85-year-old and I want a beautiful place in the country in trees to walk and this goes, this aligns perfectly with natural-based solutions and wetlands protection, climate change, biodiversity, so that's my dream for the river lands. I'm not willing to split it, I want the whole thing. And in fact, one of my big fears is that we're gonna have a ferris wheel next to a native garden and that's gonna satisfy the guidelines. So my request really is to split this into two proposals, one which would be principles that pertain to a natural wetland, critical wetland protected and then the other principles would apply to the uplands. I'm glad we have language for this now and would, my mind is blanking, this happens senior moments anyway. So I don't want my fear to come to or I don't want to see token native gardens. I want us to really protect the huge natural resource we have. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Van Hellen, good walk again to you, sir. Mr. Mayor and City Council, so I really appreciate this process and it's wonderful to feel everyone's enthusiasm for the river. I do have one minor correction from the consultant report, which is that actually there is wheelchair access to the Bench Lands or Riverlands and I know because in here I'm gonna age myself, in 1973 I was on a city committee that pushed for accessibility and we got the ramp put in that goes from the bike path down to the river kind of in the middle of the section of the Bench Lands. So that has been there. Now I'm here on behalf of the argument or using the Bench Lands or Riverlands as wildlife habitat and I wanna just remind you that this river is actually heavily protected in its entire length for habitat and natural areas. Its head borders are in Castle Rock Park. It's fed by tributaries in Fall Creek Park and in Big Basin Park. It runs through Henry Cow Park where it is celebrated as its major feature. It comes down through, comes out of the gorge and goes through Sycamore Grove which is part of the city's Pogonip area. A lot of the watershed is protected under the city watershed management efforts and of course it comes down through the city and it empties out into the Monterey Bay natural national marine sanctuary. So it is heavily protected with habitat and wildlife being part of the priority and I wanna argue here not to break the process because I think you're doing a great job and should continue it but the priority really be on the Riverlands or Bench Lands be restored over time to natural vegetation using scientific and indigenous knowledge and allowed to go back to becoming part of the actual wildlife habitat. I think it would take some time habitat restoration which is sort of a misnomer but it's better to call it habitat enhancement because we're not really gonna restore a heavily modified urbanized area to natural but it would take some time to transition the non-native species of plants out and to transition native species in and so perhaps that the Bench Lands Riverlands could be designated as a protected zone transitioning to natural habitat. It could be educational, it could have tours, it could have signage and definitely bilingual and I like the Braille concept too. The upper lands should be a major city park and I support all the ideas for that and I wish there were more room. And let me mention one more thing about recreation. This river has a large number of world-class recreational sites along it. We have a world-class skate park, a world-class lawn-bowing park and many other parks around. So thank you very much and please emphasize wildlife habitat. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Van Allen. Good evening, sir. My name is Shanda Nupukin. I'm a member of the Santa Cruz Bird Club and also of Watsonville Wetlands Watch and as a member of both, I have led bird guides, bird walks along San Lorenzo River and also in Watsonville. I was really very pleased to see that you guys recognize the value of the row of cottonwoods and you thought about the replines and not interfering with the root zones. I am in agreement with Bruce Van Allen and Barbara River Woman about maintaining the lower part of the park, the riverlands as a natural habitat and enhancing it as the riparian zone that it has been and wants to become every year in the winter. And so I'm glad that you recognize the value of the canopy but a functioning riparian zone needs a middle story and an understory as well. So I think that maybe this is getting a little too far into the specifics of the restoration but I think we should have some plantings of things like coffee berries, ceanothus, coyote brush to create an upper and lower story for the riparian, for a functioning riparian zone. Then the second part of what I wanted to say is a little bit of a quibble. It's a quibble with the designation of active and passive recreation. This has bothered me all day today and I've been trying to think about why this dichotomy is bothering me. It's bothering me because to designate something like walking, simply walking or birding as passive really is a very pejorative way of understanding walking or birding. I know that when I go birding I have to hone all of my senses. I have to train them to be honed. I have to not only use the field guide but have that knowledge at my fingertips to use quickly. And then to use, to put all of that knowledge to use with kids who I'm taking on a birding walk. There's nothing passive about any of that. That is all extremely active learning and teaching that is going on. And the terminology that we use, I think we will all agree in this day and age inclines us or biases us against or towards something. So I would encourage you not to use active and passive recreation. I would suggest something like reflective entertainment or natural based entertainment. One more quick thing. The so-called passive use of birding can actually be turned into a very active presence of school kids. So the National History Museum organizes bird walks and so does Wetlands Watch and we can put the restored riparian areas of the Riverlands to use by taking school kids out there and teaching them plant identification, bird and identification things like that. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Good evening. Council members and Mayor Keely. I'm Susan Cavalieri. I want to express my concern about the current level of unprecedented climate heating and the important role of natural lands to mitigate the crisis. July, as you know, has been the warmest month in human existence and temperatures on earth were higher than any measured in the past 120,000 years. Extreme heat has impacted land and oceans as greenhouse gases continue to rise and remain in the atmosphere for many hundreds of years is necessary to use open land in the city to absorb carbon. Natural nature-based solutions for sequestration and mitigation need to drive land use decisions. The Riverlands could be maintained as natural areas so I definitely agree with the previous speakers with native trees and plants to permit floodwaters to spread out and also allow these areas to absorb carbon. Hathways through the riparian forest of the Riverlands would offer residents and visitors a nature park which could have instructional signs or QR codes to provide information about plants and birds and also about flooding mitigation. The important role of biodiversity and natural land to purify and cool the air in addition to absorbing carbon. In this truly frightening time with constant worldwide reports of extreme heat, wildfires, flooding, hot oceans, and species loss, I hope the city will prioritize a park to help lessen the future losses we know we will be facing. Use the uplands areas between Dakota Avenue and the Riverwalk for gathering spaces and play areas, keep food waste away from the levee by keeping those more active areas and areas where food would be away from the destructive ground squirrels and design a park for the present and the future. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good evening. Hi, thanks for everybody's stamina. Still be here. I'm Leslie Wooding. I'm with San Lorenzo Park Neighbors Co-Director. And as mentioned, we have done a lot of activities in the park, including most recently working with Coastal Watershed Council and also Santa Cruz City Arts Council to restore, repaint the, what we call Lorenzo the Serpent in the Children's Playground. We started three years ago because the park became basically unusable for most of the public. And it's just incredible now to see people coming back into the park. I would say we're huge advocates of the redesign and the redesign process because it's, you can see how as the park has become run down like the serpent. You know, it just brings in more undesirable behavior. And so it's important. San Lorenzo Park, as everybody agrees here, is a critical open space in urban Santa Cruz. Real estate is becoming less and less available. And you know, this is a space where everybody has their own vision and image of how to use it. You can just see and feel how exciting and popular it is, the idea of having a really beautiful space to use. I don't have a strong feeling of exactly how the design should work. I really love that feedback came from the total community, but I do want to really advocate for using the park, you know, making the park as good as we can with hopefully natural parts along the riparian quarter and lots of recreational parks for everybody. So I love this conversation. I'm really happy to be here tonight. And in closing, I would like to say that we would like to invite you last Saturday of this month to the inauguration celebration for Lorenzo the serpent, which is freshly painted. And we have Peter Weiss and the Earth Rangers will be there playing. He's called the singing scientist. They do children's songs and it should be really wonderful. I hope we're gonna have 50 to 100 people in the children's playground. So if you want to just see the beautiful energy that brings back into the park, we're really happy to be working on those projects. So let's please go ahead with the redesign. Santa Cruz is so vocal in so many ways. Everybody wants everything there. I can hear how many different ideas. That's gonna be hard to figure that out. I'll let you guys do that, but I'm just really want to advocate for going ahead with the redesign of San Lorenzo Park. Make it a great common space for Santa Cruz. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Wooding, would you be kind enough to give that the document to the clerk's office so that can be distributed among us? Thank you very much. Good evening, sir. I'll go over again. Just from the California State Constitution, Article 10, Section 4, Water, Access to Navigable Waters. No individual partnership or corporation, cities and municipal corporation, claiming or possessing the frontage or tidal lands of a harbor, bay, inlet, estuary, which is what the water is right there, or other navigable waters in the state shall be permitted to exclude the right of way to such water whenever that's required for any public purpose, in order to destroy or obstruct the free navigation of such water. And then, in this provision, the state legislature shall an access laws will give the most liberal construction to this provision so that access to navigable waters of this state shall be always attainable for the people that are up. It's the oldest law in the world, navigable water access, okay? I defended, I did the legal research when this city was writing tickets to surfers walking across Cal Beach, and that incident was caused because the old surfers didn't want more students in the water. And we won in the state circuit court. We won hands down. Now, I'm gonna look in this room, who here has been on the water, either floating, swimming, wading, or boatings? In the San Lorenzo, how many times, sir? Yeah, more than, okay. Okay, all right. Well, I've been from the mile below all the way up to Glen Arbor Road on that river. I found a maze, I rescued a lady in the middle of the night that was, you've been robbed and was on one of the islands and Ty was coming in, and she was scared, she might've drowned, I had a cold. I caught the San Lorenzo High School. I had their pool overflowing into the river with chlorinated water. Nobody else noticed, it was in the middle of the summer. Here's the thing, you're talking about a connection to the river. And I'd like to add the name Riverside to the San Lorenzo Park, San Lorenzo Riverside Park. And the use is active recreation as I've been an active recreation for decades here, ever since I came in 78. You can't see the river and monitor the river from standing on the bank, or from reading the sign or an iconic kiosk. You need to be on the river, and you can pick up, you can solve a lot of these problems and catch them if you're in a boat, and I've got, I'm gonna give you this paper, you already got a copy of it back in May, and I never got any response, but I wrote a little resolution there, what I'm proposing would take up less than 2% of the park, a pathway to the river, from the county parking lot, and a little seasonal dock, and wouldn't cost much money. Okay, so I'm gonna give this to... The city clerk, thank you. Thank you, sir. Welcome to come talk to me about it any time. Thank you, sir. Anyone else? Is there anyone online? How many folks? I didn't agree. Okay, let's go with the first one. Good evening. Lori, I think you're up, here you go. Good evening, Lori. You can hear Executive Director of the Coastal Watershed Council. Like many others have pointed out, I've been really impressed by not only the breadth, but also the diversity of the park staff efforts to engage the public. It's been these really large community meetings, individual stakeholder interviews, two visioning sessions held entirely in Spanish. The park staff have just done a tremendous job of seeking input from members of the community. And when I think about the redesign of San Lorenzo Park, I think about the San Lorenzo River as a whole, this lower stretch that runs through our city. And I believe there are three things that we need to regularly balance. Flood protection, native habitat, and human access, recreation. And recreation has really been the forefront of this planning process. And I'm so hopeful that we'll see these really innovative designs that will draw community members and visitors alike to this park. And that we really can have that central park and Santa Cruz that we can be proud of. And as many others have pointed out as density increases downtown, parks like San Lorenzo Park and the River Walk become increasingly important to our community. In regards to habitat, I'm grateful to see so many folks speaking about and putting attention on the Riverlands. And I'd like to uplift the feedback provided by Chairman Lopez of the Almametson Tribal Band to continue to restore the Riverlands area and bring native plants back as much as possible to restore the biodiversity. And then on that third piece on flood protection, that hasn't been brought up much here. And I really wanna stress how important that is as we consider the redesign of San Lorenzo Park and how we can actually improve flood protection as part of this park's redesign. I see this as missing from the current design plan and its guiding principles. And I think it's something that we deeply consider. The Benchlands serve an important purpose to increase our flood conveyance in downtown Santa Cruz and prevent the levees from overtopping. You saw that in the photos that shown just now of the flooded Benchlands. And earlier today, Bruce Van Allen showed how quickly the river rises and falls in his graphs. And as we face the threats of climate change, we really need to consider all the ways in which we can actually increase the flood conveyance through our downtown corridor. Also, as Sarah pointed out, by including things like climate resiliency and our design principles, the project will ultimately become more competitive for funding when we get to that stage. So therefore I'd advocate that we add flood protection to the list of guiding principles for this project. Overall, I've just been so impressed by all the work on this. Thank you to the park staff, to Bionic for that. And the Coastal Watershed Council looks forward to participating in the next phase of this process to bring this project to life. Thank you, Ms. Egan. Next person up online, Mr. Wensler. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Mark Wensler. I'm with Leslie and the San Lorenzo Park neighbors. And I think she did a fabulous job kind of talking about what we've been doing with the park and just really appreciate everything that Parks and Rec has done. We've been partnering with them for three years doing volunteer events and concerts in the park to help activate it. Also just really appreciate the city and the work done to clear the encampment and made such an improvement. We live across the street in Dakota. It's interesting with Lori talking, I do, we pay flood insurance. So I think that is very important to consider in the redesign. I love the idea of the lower lands being restored, but I also just wonder that flood piece this year was the first time every year I was frustrated paying flood insurance, but this year I was afraid. And I was really thankful that there was nobody living there as well. So I just am really impressed with the work of NOAA and Tony and Bionic. And I just strongly advocate. I mean, I think I'd like to just see what the next phases come. And they've been really good about getting input from us and the other neighbors. So, and I encourage everybody to come to our event on the 26th to check out the newly painted sea serpent. So thank you very much everybody. Thank you, Mr. Wensler. Ms. Bush, one more, is that correct? Mr. Phillip, good evening, sir. No, hi. I wasn't really going to speak to this, but I would say I really appreciate the naturalist comments about keeping a lot of the park very natural and there aren't so many places like that. But on the downside, I just, I really have to make a comment that this, maybe I don't understand how government works, but, and I know everybody loves to spend money. They all have different ideas, how they want to spend it. They all sound like good ideas. They all sound wonderful. God, I'd love to have all that stuff that everybody wants. But I just kind of wonder, isn't this typical of everything you do where you spend money, you've already spent money, I'm sure, on staff time, coming up with ideas and just backing ideas around and then, and you don't have any funding for it. And so you kind of commit to things without knowing where the money's coming from. Is that normal government operation? And if somebody comes up with the money, do they have their own ideas, what they want? And then would you say, oh, well, okay, I guess so, then you do it that way. And so, you know, I just wonder how this will turn out. I look forward to it being wonderful, but we'll see. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Ms. Bush, is that all of the folks online? That's it. All right, the matter is back before the council if I might ask a couple of, make a couple of comments, which will I suspect lead to some kind of response from you. A concept, a thought. When we kind of move back up from looking only at San Lorenzo Park, and we don't have to go very far back up to see that fairly quickly, what we're going to see is that all kinds of things are going to change with adjacency to the river. Mr. Van Allen has been saying for decades, stop turning your back on the river. That relates largely to buildings where we had one in two-story buildings with the back to the river and the face to somewhere else. And we understand there's a debate in the community about how much development and so on, but I think what we could all agree on is whatever level of development there is going to be south of Laurel, there is going to be substantial development over what is there now. And we're already seeing some projects that have been approved by the city council that are under construction right now, immediately adjacent to the river. And those plans that have been approved talk about a different way of relating to the river on that side of the river. And I think a way to look at that is that it takes essentially the top of the levee and treats that as if that is the edge of the public space. A way to think about it. So you go from the levee back towards the private property which many of them are then saying, we will incorporate that and extend that space into our private property design. So there's a cafe here and a pull-out there and something. So there's a very different treatment of the river, it seems to me in terms of our stop turning our back to the river, which is a wise thing to do. On this side of the river though, am I right? No, on the other side of the river, I live on the other side of the river. On the other side of the river, I think it's somewhat different in the following regard that it is a levee on both sides of the river until you get right to San Lorenzo Park. And then the levee disappears on one side of the river, only to daylight again at the end of the park, essentially where Brant's Forty Creek comes in, it seems to me. The reason I go through that torture discussion is to say that for me, the bench lands, it'll always be the bench lands to me, the bench lands to me is not fair game for a park. To me, that is part of the flood control structure by design, not by accident. And that when you put, if I were to put this in the bench lands, that's now going to literally reduce the flood capacity, carrying capacity of the bench lands. If I put this entire desk in, it now offsets even more. And that's going to make it easier for either A, the river to overtop, or to flood into either county building, the park, the whatever. So from my point of view, for decades, the bench lands is part of the flood control project. So a way to look at it, I think is this. And I think I'm associated myself with a number of the comments that were being made by members of the public, perhaps we approach it slightly differently, but I think we may come to the same conclusion. And that is, for me, no permanent structures in the bench lands should be a guiding principle here. That I don't care if it's even, God love you, if it's a dance space for roller skaters. Right, yeah, you're thinking up above. So in effect, no structures in that space. All the other things have been said about interpretation of that space and getting more into the river space and appreciating it, how it's a wetland and so on, all of that's good. But I hope a guiding principle that this council would articulate is no permanent structures, even if it's this thing stuck over there in the bench lands because of the effect that that directly has from a civil engineering point of view as if I knew anything about civil engineering, which I don't. The other notion is that I think it's wonderful. I'm the old guy that has my packet printed out as opposed to the young ones around here while looking at it on their phone and everything. This was stunningly informative about how many people to whom you have reached out and gotten more than just some superficial, you had kind of like that or that. I mean, you really dug in on this very deeply. God love you, thank you for that. It's quite a good piece. One of the things that does come through, even with my bias reading of, I have a bias when I read it was that I don't think I'm out on the skinny branches talking about this. I think that a number of people get there from different paths, but I think it's the same thing. Think about a park over here and a riparian corridor over here. And with that path as our dividing line, it's a very clear, easy to understand. I think piece of infrastructure, I haven't seen anything in here that would call for a rerouting of that pathway that goes through. I didn't see that if there is somebody suggesting I just didn't see it. But if that's a permanent feature, if you will, that would be a nice, nice, that would be a rather simple way or elegant way to say this belongs to this and this belongs to that. Last comment would be the degree to which, let me tell you what I think part of what you got out of this 500 pages. My sentence, this is what I got out of it, might not be what you got, but what I got is I use this as a substitute for every damn park desire people have in the city of Santa Cruz. There's a lot of things people wanna do. And since you're asking about them at this park, they're gonna say, well, I want this, I want this. I'm not sure, well, I am pretty sure we can't do everything that's been suggested in here. The thing would just be an impossible mix. So how it is we pick what is appropriate at this spot versus what is being commented upon, which is a deficiency in parks overall, I think is worth paying some attention to. It might not be the only place we can put what my predecessor in interest as mayor thought was a good idea. That could go maybe some other place. Or you get my point though about, I think this is a good proxy for asking the public, what do you want in parks overall in the city of Santa Cruz? Lastly, thank you. Enormous amount of public outreach. This is what our community is about. And I think this opportunity was, it's quite opportune that we went from, in effect, an unpermitted use to a flood, to this is our moment. I keep saying that today that we have moments, but I think this is an appropriate time and place for that re-examination of what that park can be and what it can do. And thank you all so very, very much for your very fine work in that regard. Matters back before the council for an action. Council Member Calantari-Johnston is recognized. Great, I'll make a motion and then I have some questions and comments. I'd like to move, I'll look at it. The staff recommendation to receive an update. I don't know if you need further direction to receive and accept this draft San Lorenzo Park redesign process. There's a motion. There's a second. May I ask under discussion, I need to ask this to you folks and then it may color whether I offer an amendment. Is it a guiding principle in here that we are essentially dealing with two fundamental elements, one as a park and one as part of a flood control structure. We should be careful about that distinction because if it isn't in there, I'd like to see if we can fashion language that would make it clear, which is which. I think it's a great question. And Noah and Sarah, I don't know if you wanna bring up the slides again on the guiding principles of reference to those. I think at this point, the one thing I just wanna be sure to flag is in terms of the community response that we've received on the bench lens in particular, it was really pretty split in terms of, I think the number was 65%. I just wanted to be sure to reference really this desire to consider that area for the special events, no built structures but the special events. I had no trouble with special events. So how we balance those, I just wanted to reference that point in terms of the use of the bench lands as we reference the design principles but I wanna look to Noah and Sarah on those design principles. I think that nothing should jeopardize the flood control aspects because my concern and I'm not a specialist in this but even planting trees in there could obstruct the flow, right? And that would have to be studied if we wanted to head down that direction. I agree. So I think just emphasizing the critical nature of the flood control because the levy itself acts as recreation and the bench land for different uses, the bench lands too has historically for events and that sort of thing. There could be ways to add pathways. In terms of ADA access, we do have the ramp down there but what we heard when we spoke to Shirt Adventures is it's very difficult to get a wheelchair across. So is there a way to do that and provide that access without jeopardizing the flood control aspect? That's something where I think through a process we could evaluate that and anything that goes down there would have to have the blessing of the Public Works Department, the Army Corps of Engineers. If what is up right now, if that constitutes the guiding principles then with respect to activate the park, might it be all right to say activate that area of the park which is on the upland side of the existing pathway? And minimize, I'm not sure of this. I might be getting too restrictive. I think that that might work is that the activate part is really relative to the park side if you will of the pathway and the bench land side should be reserved for those activities which do not involve building structures. That would at this point satisfy my need if that works for others. Certainly you may. Let me go with Ms. Bruner and then we'll go. The draft guiding principles and design goals. So there's eight guiding principles and 12 design goals. Yeah, and then there's a sheet that I'm looking at in the packet that just kind of lists them rather than the bubbles. And I think I just wanted to, there were a couple of comments about incorporating, making sure that in our guiding principles and design goals that there was flood control incorporated in that. And so I'd like to make sure that's represented in here. I really appreciate all the support for the natural habitat. It was throughout a lot of the input and comments and I know even in the group and some of the comments that I heard about the differences in the upper park and the lower park, there's kind of this natural different use. And I think at this point, accepting the draft guiding principles and design goals, it's all in there except we need to add that flood control piece. And then I think it incorporates all of that as we continue down this path of next steps. Yeah, to make sure that the flood control element to add that to the draft guiding principles and design goals. Okay, so let me see if you and I, I think we're on the same page here. Let me see if Ms. Bush can help us with that, with this amendment to Ms. Contari-Johnson's motion. Do you have something up for us on that? For both of the amendments, yeah. Yeah, let's see what that looks like. Let's see, let's take a look. Let's just take a look. Let me see if, would you like to add yours, the appropriate language into my amendment? So we don't have a disagreement. Do we activate the area of the park, which is on the upland side of the existing pathway? And then you want to, as I understand it, reflect that the other portion is a flood control structure. No, did I get that right? Just to that related to flood control consideration, with your amendment activate that area of the park, again, we go back to one of the previous comments about active and passive. I think the whole area is activated in different ways. So, I'm not- And I'm gonna have it, okay, then I- But I understand your intent of no built structure in the lower. So my part is fine as it has my intent. My amendment has my intent. And your intent is what? So I can hear it, because I'm not clear from related to- That flood control is considered in our guiding principles and design goals as an element to be considered in how we move forward. Like, so we have promoting biodiversity in the natural habitat, increasing visibility and accessibility of the park and river, ensuring that consideration of flood control in the lower park area is- It has to be a guiding principle in how we move forward with next steps and design goals. Would you be okay with this? What if we tried to put ours together here? Let me offer some language. So Mayor Keighley requested to amend the guiding principles to activate the area of the park, just on the upland side of the existing pathway, semicolon and comma. Recognize the flood control nature of the, what do you call them, riverlands? Riverlands. No, no, I didn't mean to be facetious. No, no, that's fine. The riverlands. Okay, riverlands. Tell me if you're, I wanna make- I'd like to hear from the other council members. I still, the word activate to me is where I'm, I think we could tweak that, but I know that other people have suggestions by hands raised. I see where you're going. We can maybe hear from our colleagues. I wonder if a guiding principle, what if it might help if rather than activate if we say something to the effect that permanent structures and permanent parks, permanent structures shall be limited to the upland side of the existing pathway. That's more where I'm going rather than activate because I see what you're saying. You could activate the bench lands with a birding, right? So that could be activated. So you make a good point. Is my language better for you on this? Does that work better for you? I know that there's, I'd like to hear from city staff, yeah. Make sure that you and I've got our thing before we- Yes. Before I start thinking about other. We're good with this. It's better. I think it, to me, it speaks more to your intent and to the comments we heard from people. Good. For the comments. Oh my God. Yeah. I get to council members. Martian. Okay. Do you want to get to the staff first? I do. Okay. Ready to go? Okay. I'll just mention one thing. So just when I read some of the phrasing, like if I were to think out, what's there that exists now? Like the 80 ramp shouldn't be there like based on kind of this design goal. So just. Yeah. And if I could chime in and kind of add to Noah's comments on that, I think structures take many forms. So we've talked about potential for ADA improvements, potential additional pathways that would at the same time still protect the flood protection role that the riverlands provides. And I think there's a way for us as we've worked through this process to be very intentional. And I hear you mayor about ensuring that we're not jeopardizing the role that the riverlands play when it comes to flood protection and prioritizing that both in the design guidelines as well as the guiding principles and appreciate the comments about wanting to have that more front and center and both of those elements. And we can certainly do that. I would also just share that when it comes to activating I think activation takes many forms. We've used. I gave that up. Yeah. We've used that area for special events and concerts and all those things. And I would, I think we'd like to preserve that ability to do so. Yeah. No, no, I don't need to argue against something I already gave up. Don't worry about it. Did you have a comment? Who else had comments? I just had one thought along the lines because I think really your intent if I understand is to ensure that we're not reducing the volume for flood management of the river by putting in something where you reduce the volume. We want to preserve the preserve or increase the total volume for flood management of the San Lorenzo River in this portion of the park. And so I wonder if we can craft the language around that that the focus is on the flood management and the volume. I like your point. Go ahead and do it. No, no, I'm serious. I'm not being flippant. I want you to help. You're here to help. So help with some language then because I don't want to, I don't want this item to pass until we got this part right. So if it takes us five more minutes, it's going to take us five more minutes. Take your time. If I could, if I could, mayor. Mr. City attorney. Going back to council member Bruno's requested amendment to incorporate language in the guiding principles and design goals to preserve and enhance the flood control components of the park redesign process. I'm pretty good with that. I'm good with that. Yeah, that works for me. That works for me. You okay? That's great. You okay? That's great. Thank you. Okay. Taking away that. Let's make sure Ms. Bush got that. Components of the park redesign process of the park redesign process or as part of the park redesign process. I think, I think you maybe only need to say of the park because it's the park that's doing the flood control. So you can just end it at and to use more words than are necessary. Okay. Okay, wait. From Mr. Kandadi only. As part of the park period, delete redesign. Good. Accepted. Good. Wonderful. You good? So I just want to be clear that the motion is now, motion I made with that second friendly amendment, not that middle part. That is correct. Yes. Then I would accept that. That is correct. Thank you for your help on that. Thank you for your help on that for the discussion. I have a quick comment. I appreciate the change. I'm going to support the motion as amended. And I'm not going to try to add an additional component here. But I am going to say that my interest is really in, as we think about the riverlands and the flood control component of that work, we really want to be thinking about this Ezraiparian corridor. And because flood control and habitat can take very different forms. And so I don't see it fully reflected in a way that satisfies me, but I am going to support this anyway. And continue to advocate for that through this process. And invite the community to join me in that. Please. I too appreciate the discussion. I just sort of felt like that was implied. So I appreciate the specificity around making sure that we're really clear about our intentions in that way. And not to be sort of doom and gloom. I think we have to think of years or decades of severe drought, as well as understanding that we'll have extreme weather events that will require flood control. So being mindful of how we're planning for that in terms of infrastructure, preservation, et cetera, makes a lot of sense. And I just wanted to thank my colleagues for that discussion because I kind of just sort of implied that, but I think we need to state that. So thank you. For the debate. Ms. Collin Tari Johnson. Good comment. Yeah, thank you for enhancing the motion and adding that specificity. But I do want to just go back to Mr. Elliot's point that the community, the robust community engagement process showed a diverse use of the river lands. And that's, I think, important for us to keep in mind and consider as we have this as a leading design goal, the flood control piece and the preservation of the riparian corridor. What I read and what I heard is that community members do want different uses, including community events that won't require permanent structures. For the debate or discussion, sitting here and none of the clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watson. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Eulentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. Mayor Achilles. Aye. Motion passes and it's awarded. Thank you all very, very much. Thank you members of the public who are here. We're on oral communication. This would be an opportunity for anyone to address the council on a matter under our jurisdiction, but not on tonight's or today's agenda. Do we have anyone online? We do. Sir, are you here to do that? Please come forward. We'll hear from you first. Good evening. Thank you, Mayor, council members. So I want to propose a new agenda item. My name is Dustin Gray. I live on Golf Club Drive, which is just up as you're going up at nine. You take that left there. It's kind of a rowdy area. And in short, there's just a lot of people kind of camping out in their cars on my street and it's created a public nuisance for my neighbors and myself. We've got a lot of seniors living there. There's children that live there and they have to kind of like walk through this. I'm sure you're very familiar with all this, just dealing with San Lorenzo, Lavey, all this stuff anyway. My proposal is quite simple. All I want to do is put up signs on the street that say no overnight camping or worst case, no parking 10 p.m. to 6 a.m., something of this nature, that it just kind of dissuades people from camping and parking on my street and using it as kind of a carnival place at two in the morning to do drugs and get rowdy on the street. That's my proposal. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. And I don't know what any next steps are. Here's how this works is that under oral communication, we can't take an action because it's not on our agenda. This is your opportunity to do just what you did. However, you've also sent us communication. At least you sent it to me. I suspect everybody got it. It was pretty straightforward, pretty clear, just like your presentation was. I think without violating our rules on oral communication, what I can tell you is you're going to get a response from the city. Oh, brilliant. All right? And that's via email. Say it again, sir. Yeah, yes. Yeah, and maybe a call may invite you to come into a meeting, but your issue has landed. Let me say that. Brilliant, thanks for your time. Thank you, sir. Thank you very much. Anyone else under oral communication? We have someone online? We do. We'll take the next person online. We'll alternate in-person online. We'll now hear the person online. Good evening. Good evening. Good evening, Mayor. This is Eric Radberg. I'd like to say I appreciate the hard work staff does for the city, but sometimes they make mistakes. I'm speaking specifically of a newly implemented permit parking program on the 100 Block of May Avenue. I've heard a letter with greater detail, which I hope you will have a chance to read. Mr. Nadadi is also aware of the situation. Staff implemented this program in complete disregard to the municipal code, which requires, and I quote, permit parking shall generally reflect on-street parking occupancies of 75% or more when out of the area parking demand is highest. Staff made no attempt to verify this. In fact, they did not have been able to because there never is a problem of parking on that block. And staff was unaware of this requirement as well. This came about because there's a proposed residential project on Soquel Avenue that doesn't have approval, hasn't even been before planning commission yet. And if it is built, it wouldn't be for another couple of years before it's occupied. But that went ahead and implemented this program in any case, and it's not in compliance with the law. Furthermore, if this project is built, it's very clear from the municipal code that the occupants of this new project would have the right to get a permit to park on the avenue on the 100 block. Also a big problem with this is that there's no parking allowed whatsoever after 6 p.m. without a permit. That's very early. And it effectively, this is a dead-end street. It makes it, it privatizes a street for the residents. And I don't think it's not good for my tenants who live in the house because they can't have guests over after 6 p.m. They can't even park there for five minutes. It's also really bad public policy to effectively create a gated community. Finally, because we raise these issues, it's staff in the parking office actually try to take retribution against my tenants, which is obviously completely inappropriate. So I had four real, I can finish up real quick here, specific requests that council direct staff to remove the signs. And number one, number two, direct staff in the future to adhere to the city code when implementing a parking program. Number three, except for exceptional circumstances, they should never allow a program where at six o'clock at night, you have no parking allowed at all for non-permit holders in a residential zone. And finally, direct staff never take retribution against residents or citizens for bringing up legitimate issues. That's completely unacceptable. And like I said, I have more detail in the letter that I've sent you. And I would look forward to hearing from you as well. I've raised this at numerous staff and commission levels already. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. I want to talk about almost three years ago. A week from now, there was a big electrical storm and that we had the CZU conflagration. About four days, five days later, we were evacuated about three, four days after that, my neighbors had a baby. And the day after that, I had my 50th birthday here in the civic auditorium at the Red Cross shelter. Good times. Aside from people buying toilet paper with Bitcoin and things. But yeah, we learned a lot about, yeah, nature, this winner. This, yeah, we had terrible floods. And it's still on my mind. I know it's already been talked about. It's not about the recommendations. It's about the flood flooding. I did a walk along the levee in Watsonville. Their levee is much shallower and the watershed's much different. And I'm not too terribly concerned if there's, I don't know, some kind of a bench in the lower, the bench land, like literal bench. Nevermind, just kidding. What else do I have to say? Oh, Batman Day. Batman Day is September 16th. Day before the October 24th meeting of this body is Weird Al's birthday. He's gonna be 64. I'll let these guys talk. Okay, see you later. Thank you, Batman. Someone else online? No one else? Good evening, sir. Yeah, good evening. My name is James Ewing Whitman. You guys really are impressive to do and spend the time doing everything that you do. You know, I was kind of dealing with work with the city, with Code Compliance and Mr. Condati's office years before I ever came in here. Been dealing with the county clerks in this county. More than 28 years, and I really appreciate that you guys handle things the way they do. I've turned in some things on time and relinquished my time and I've turned in some things late and lost my time. So I kind of have some questions that I just need to do further research and they have to do with your guidelines about point of order. That's all I wanna discuss right now. I need to do my own research. Fair enough. Now, I know before when I've come in the afternoon that people have been able to speak after the presentation and I would stand in there for a couple minutes wanting to speak. And I took notes. I mean, I think I wrote down 25 different point lines. At least 14 of them I categorically disagree with and it's really leading not just the city, not this county, but it's leading the world in a very sad place. So I'm kind of frustrated because during the public comments, the person that called on the phone, you let him talk for three minutes during the consent agenda on item number six. So that's all in the past. I really would have liked to have said what I said to the two people who gave the presentation. So I don't know. Yesterday has already happened. Let's try to be present. There are things going on right now. It seems like all the Western world, but particularly the United States is in free fall. And like Humpty Dumpty didn't fall off a wall. Humpty Dumpty's falling from a 50-story building. And I'm just kind of concerned for my fellow citizens. That's it, thank you. Stay here for a second. Sure. Did I miss calling on you today? Is that what happened? Were you standing someplace and I didn't call on you? I was the only one. I am sorry. Hey, I totally accept that. It's in the past. But hey, you know what? It's totally OK. It's totally in the past. But I thought I'd bring it up, and I have some other questions. And I know that there have been some issues where I've made mistakes, not intentionally. And let's say I was chastised for those things. But later on, some questions were asked by council members. And Mr. Kundadi was talking about our First Amendment free speech rights. So I mean, I do agree with decorum, but I see things that are far beyond any four-letter words, but could be absolutely explained with many four-letter words. So thank you very much. OK. And please accept my apology. I would not do that with any intention. I didn't see you. I accept that. Well, can I? Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. And it adds something that's related to what we were discussing before, but it's much broader. When Greg Larson retired as planning director for the city of Santa Cruz, he had a farewell speech done at the Boardwalk Casino. And I went to that. And as he gave a really wonderful talk on, you can't manage what you can't measure. And I see the city struggling with all kinds of debates and issues where they haven't really gone out and done the homework, and gotten the facts, and laid it out. And we hired, for the general plan, hired Evans McDonnell in 06, did a 600-call, random-call survey of city residents. And there's a lot of questions. This is question number 53. And a very important question that's at the center of almost every debate we have on parks. And the question was whether a person agreed with or how they felt about having sports fields, playgrounds, and other park amenities in the Greenbelt. And this debate does not, and a lot of it has to do on definitions. But the bottom line is that 66% of the respondents wanted to have more. And 32% didn't really like the idea. But for younger folks, it was 77%. Now, why didn't the city follow up on that to know what the people want and what to build? That's when you can pick up. It was dropped. It's when you can pick up. All right? Thank you. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. My name is Greg Benson, registered voter, Santa Cruz, living on the streets again. I was in the Pathways program, which put us in hotels for three months, which was great. But it's pretty harsh to be back out of the street. And I didn't spend any of the $16,000, except for to have them buy me a tent and a sleeping bag. And it had good intentions, the program did. And it worked for a few people. And that's not what I'm here to talk about. I just came to show up. I appreciate the council and the accessibility of everybody in this town. And I appreciate the police. I mean, I don't like to see them rolling up on us. But usually, my friends are, we're doing something naughty. And they're always quite overwhelmingly polite, so I wish we could behave better. I'm trying to work on that. But 10 people said they'd show up tonight of my friends. But you're my friend, but we didn't have this planned. We didn't have this planned. I guess the one thing I just saw the thing about the San Lorenzo Park redesign. And actually, the friends of San Lorenzo Park actually let me be on their mission statement team, which shocked some people, but that was pretty cool. But I've lost touch with them. But I had an idea of trying to get some sort of small, even like a six by eight foot small memorial garden, just something to the people that a lot of my friends died there, most of them overdosed. But it doesn't have to be a political statement. Just doesn't have to have their names. I want my more friends to chime in on this to try to give you input. So it's not just my thing. But I'll come up with more ideas on that and talk about more. And I'll get some more sleep next time before meeting. It's just hard sleeping out there. Thank you, everybody. Thank you very much. Very much appreciate. Anyone else who wishes to address us, Ms. Bush, anyone else on the line? Any further business to come before the council? Seeing and hearing none to motion to adjourn and be in order. The vice mayor moves. Ms. Brown seconds. Non-debatable. Those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. And so are we. We stand adjourned.