 The hour of the hour of 12 noon having arrived the Santa Cruz City Council will be called to order in the clerk. We'll call the roll. Thank you. Mayor council members Newsom present Brown here Watkins here runner president elementary Johnson has it vice mayor Golder here here a quorum having been established we are going to move to public comment on any items on our closed session for you unfamiliar with it there is an agenda we will be looking we will be discussing items one through three in closed session today and this would be the opportunity for anyone who is either with us in chambers or online who wishes to comment on any of those closed session items this is your opportunity to do so. So first let me ask if there's anyone with us in chambers who wishes to make comments seeing none miss bush do we have anyone online nobody online no one online last call for comments on closed session seen and hearing none the council will stand I'm sorry miss Brunner please I have a statement of disqualification for under closed session item number three parts four and five real property negotiations for is 110 Cedar Street five is 302 and 326 front street as it relates to my employment. So for clarity sake it is item number three and within item number three there are additional numbers so item three point four and three point five corrects that you would be thank you very much. Are there other statements seeing in here none we will stand adjourned into closed session we will not reconvene here until at least one fifteen it could be later it will certainly not be sooner than that recording stopped following our closed session meeting the Santa Cruz City Council is back in session and the clerk will call the roll. Thank you Mayor Council Member Newsom. Present. Brown. Here. Watkins. Here. Brunner. Present. Elantari Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder. Here. Mayor Cooley. Here. We are on oral communication this would be the opportunity for anyone to address the City Council on a matter under our jurisdiction but not on today's agenda and you can speak up to two minutes and we will take folks one at a time here and what we'll do is we're going to alternate in the event that there are folks online we'll take someone in person then someone online someone in person so please come forward. Good afternoon welcome to the City Council meeting. Good afternoon. Good afternoon esteemed members of the City Council I'm honored to stand before you today to share some significant insights into our community's well-being and the vital services United Way of Santa Cruz has been able to provide. First and foremost I want to draw your attention to an invaluable resource we've established in the 211 phone line in 2023 alone we received 4,480 calls to this channel connecting our residents with vital social and health services. Through these calls we were able to provide a staggering 8,050 referrals ensuring individuals in need received the support they required. In times of crisis our responsiveness was unwavering. During disasters we fielded 772 calls offering critical information on disaster preparedness shelter options and disaster relief efforts. Notably in collaboration with the California Fire Foundation we facilitated the distribution of 400 credit cards to those adversely affected by the storm offering immediate assistance when it was needed most. Understanding the diverse needs of our community is paramount to what we do and this year we found several areas where assistance was most required. Housing, utility assistance, food and meals, legal aid and public safety services emerged as the top needs. Addressing these needs remain central to our mission of serving our community effectively. I'm proud to highlight some invaluable partnerships we forged with key agencies in our region. Community bridges, Catholic Charities of Monterey, St. Vincent de Paul stand out as pillars of support. Through these collaborations we've been able to extend our reach and ensure that those in need receive comprehensive and timely assistance. In conclusion I want to express my gratitude to each member of this council for your unwavering support of our endeavors. Together we've made a tangible difference in the lives of countless individuals embodying a spirit of community and compassion. As we move forward let us continue to work hand in hand ensuring our city remains a beacon of hope and support for all who call at home. Thank you. Well thank you very much for your fine work. Mr. Bush, do we have anyone online? We'll hold for a minute. Good afternoon. Welcome. Good afternoon to the council members. My name is Hector Aspergüeta. We're united here at Local 19. Our unit represents the hotel workers and restaurant workers, especially in the hospitality area. And we represent workers in the central cost. We are here to speak to you about the negotiations to sell the city online through a hotel developer which you just discussed in closed session. Working class people like our members are suffering from these ever-increased housing prices. They can afford to continue living in Santa Cruz based on the fact that the housing prices continue to rise. Even as they make better wages, with better contracts, they cannot afford the ever-increasing housing prices in Santa Cruz. Especially our members who are forced to move further and further away from the cost. We represent the works of the Dreaming and many of them have to move farther and farther away from the cost, looking for a place to rent and they can call home. And part of the problem that this creates is when they move away from the cost, they are going to spend more time on the road, creating more traffic and also creating more problems with contamination because of the greenhouse that they produce. And the other thing that is also problematic for them is that they get to spend less time with their families because they have to spend more time on traffic. They are not going to be able to really spend quality time with their families, their friends and whoever they choose to spend their time with. In the midst of this crisis, it is unacceptable that the city of Santa Cruz is thinking about selling this land for an upscale beauty hotel, which is going to have a star in the rooftop or providing the prioritization of affordable housing for people that live in the city. The city staff has done play the problem by saying that the city building can be finished and I am almost done. If you are almost done, just get done. So this city staff has done play the problem by saying that the city is building lots of affordable housing. Tell that to our members that continue to move away. Thank you very much, sir. Anyone online? Good afternoon, sir. Anyway, I am not buying what the mayor was selling in his latest sentinel letter that there is a housing shortage due to supply and demand, namely a lack of building supply and that building more government funded price fix, so-called affordable housing is the answer. Today, I looked, there are 162 rooms for rent and 500 units for rent on Craigslist. The issue is price. The reality is the main culprit of unaffordability is inflation produced by a corrupt and immoral government spending which now adds a trillion of debt every hundred days exploding the money supply. There are other culprits, first those 20% price fix requirements, have discouraged building by for-profit developers and further the state's housing mandates a new conduit for corruption consisting of non-profit organizations specifically set up and certified by on-board politicians to receive awards and spend harder in public tax dollars to do development, construction ownership, master leasing, and or managing of housing that the state defines as necessary whether it's needed or not. They believe to build it and they will come theory, building shoebox, shrink plated apartments and if they cannot get enough low income tenants, they always have the homeless to fill the gaps at public expense. That's a kind of socialism. It is defective free market interference that could also result in overbuilding which could cross the housing sector and many people's lives with it discourages for-profit solutions because it is a rigged playing field by non-profits who get subsidized and pay no taxes forever hoping to create a state monopoly of housing development and housing where these anti-capitalist forces fix prices and homogenize central planned housing. Of course, price controls don't really fix inflation and have never been a sound economic. Just last week, California legislators proposed free loans undocumented illegals to help them in their owe affordability crisis, unbelievable, shoot me. Of course the government could incentivize the private for-profit builders with a multitude of intelligent approaches but they don't. The socialist subsidized solution has and will limit the ability of for-profit developers to compete actually curtailing building or with reduced tax base and basically everybody else pays and it's socialist. Okay, I'm going to make sure everybody understands how this works. You have two minutes. You don't have two minutes and 10 seconds. You don't have two minutes and 34 seconds. You have two minutes. At the two minute mark, finish your remarks. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, council members, thank you for your time. You have a very soft voice. Will you pull the microphone down so there you go. Good afternoon, council members, thank you for your time. My name is Martha Hernandez. I live in Santa Cruz and I have worked at Dreaming as a housekeeper for 28 years as a resident of Santa Cruz for several decades. I cannot believe the city is planning to sell public land for a fancy new hotel instead of building affordable houses. Housing is not affordable for families like me. There is not enough affordable housing in Santa Cruz and the determination of affordable housing is not accurate based on the cost of living in my neighborhood. I directly see the effects of not having affordable housing. There is crime and drug addiction. People do not have place they can go to the bathroom, let alone take a shower and drug use and vandalism are done openly. This creates a health hazard for my community and having housing that is actually affordable would help alleviate these issues. Selling this land for a hotel development instead of housing would not be fair to the people who call Santa Cruz home. The city and developer needs to think of the consequences of our city, such a homelessness and trash, rather than thinking solely of profit Santa Cruz resident to serve a decent place to live. Please prioritize affordable housing for residents over the profits of hotel developers. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Welcome to City Council meeting. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Celica Valdez. I am an organizer with United Heir Local 19. I live in Salinas. I came to Monterey and Santa Cruz County in 1995, so a long time, so I've been enjoying the coast and the affordability that during these past 30 years I have been receiving. It concerns me that the city is considering selling public land for a hotel development instead of affordable housing. You are sending the message that Santa Cruz is for wealthy visitors and not for working class residents. To me and to our members in United Heir in Monterey and Santa Cruz, there is nowhere like the Monterey Bay and Santa Cruz area. I love loving here, our members love loving here, but they have to leave multiple families in the same house because there is not enough affordable housing. I cannot imagine living somewhere else. Please don't lose sight of the concern of the community. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. Good afternoon. Welcome. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Luis Olip. I'm a union organizer in the Local 19 event. Every single day I drive, I leave for one hour from my house to work and then on the way to work. I cannot afford a house here in Santa Cruz because I'm spending nearly two hours in the way to my yoke to home as in the car is sourcing and at the top of the busy working day, I take away from the time they're called otherwise spent with my family at home. I spend $140 and gas every week. And I live in Hollister with my family and my daughter's family because I have no choice. We need to live together because in Santa Cruz, if I try to live in Santa Cruz, it's going to cost me $5,000. And then we need to afford our houses here in Santa Cruz. I don't make enough to pay that kind of rent. And I respectfully ask to consider to families in Santa Cruz or need to afford housing on use the land on development for the housing for the lease instead of build fancy hotels for the tourist. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, council and staff. You all have a lot to get through and there's another one I'm sure you're aware of about West Cliff becoming a one-way direction. I'm a proponent of two-way. I'm a part of three different non-profits serving the community and beyond Santa Cruz Boardwriters Club, Operation Surf and Veteran Surf Alliance. Besides that, I've lived in 14 different states growing up. So I had a lot of exposure to growth, management, challenges that face community councils. I empathize for what you have to go through to make the best stewardship decisions. In researching this not happening yet, but we do understand there's a lot of stuff that's in motion. We ran our own personal survey through change.org. We're almost 2,000 signatures in a matter of 10 days for proponents of keeping it two-way. Some of the benefits on personal experience that I see at the top having run different events around safety. I see that EMS response would be definitely impacted by reaching out. Personal friends have suffered critical injuries at Steamer's Lane, other places, and it was critical that they would have life-saving measures to get to them. The other thing is traffic congestion. As we all know, we count on tourist revenue dollars for our community to do well. 50%, if not greater, experience and come to utilize Westcliff, and that's also beyond in this room and beyond in our community, this crown jewel that we have. That's going to create a lot of traffic to the nearby neighborhood to break us, exhaustion from cars, excuse me, exhaust from cars. There's a number of items that are going to come, and it's also going to further up congestion, bay, spring, there's spring and summer months also that we already experience on mission or after two o'clock throughout Santa Cruz. This is going to be another measure of that. Thank you for your time. Good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Thank you. My name is Nat Young. I am born and raised here in Santa Cruz. I've grown up my whole life on the lower west side. I'm very fortunate to have been blessed to grow up there, and I am opposed to Westcliff becoming a one-way. Plateau has been one of the streets that's remained open, so I feel like I'm seeing the cause and effects of what is going on right now. It seems like it's turning into somewhat of a highway and definitely not safe for young kids to be out there at the moment. I'm also just alive, spoken to a lot of people, and a lot of people are kind of aware of the progress of this whole proposed project, and I just wanted to come here and voice my concerns and say there's a lot of people that are opposed to it becoming a one-way. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Thank you very much for being here and doing what you guys do. This is amazing. I appreciate all of you. It's hard work. You're so happy to hear that. You're being your guy's shoes doing what you do. I am a member of DEM near everything, and the board writers asked me to come and talk. I prepared a 10-minute speech, and I remembered two minutes. I just started throwing papers, bear with me here. There's basically a couple of surveys in regards to the two-way technology advisory board, I can remember for three-and-a-half-years and all of And they showed the variety of things to do on West Cliff, swim, fish, surf, bike, everything. But they listed these, such as walk and bike, and everything else down there, as if bike and bike are the priority. And they assume and say that that's the basic priority. And I disagree with that. The survey showed the variety of things to do, not the relative true people use of West Cliff, relative to cars. I took a survey, and for the last three and a half years, 80 times, I sat up there in West Cliff for half hour. And I came up with 80% cars, 16% walk, 4% bike. Time and time again, consistent as hell. I guarantee anybody who goes up there spends 15 minutes. You'll see that. I talked to Claire about the other day. I said, go up there the next day after the 50-year plan. She says, OK, we'll go up there. I talked to Matt Stark. I went up there. It wasn't 80%. It was 92% that day. The next six days, I took survey. And it came back to 82% cars. Consider what you're going to do with West Cliff. I think the use is the big thing. Consider 80% cars is a reality. 16% walk is 4%. So if you're going to make a decision, who uses it? I think it's the big thing. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Sir. There was a book here, 1983 survey. And the facts in this thing concur with my survey results. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Very clever. Next person. Good afternoon. Welcome. My name's Anthony Rufo. I'm a longtime resident. I'm born and raised here. I'm 60 years old. And I used to West Cliff pretty much on my daily basis for surfing and a lot of other things. I'm really, really disappointed in the, I go to the meetings that they have for this project. And in my opinion, it's been directed a narrative towards one way without even an option of a two-way proposal. Even in the survey, all the nice pictures they have and pick this, that, whatever, there's not a two-way option. And I'm fully disagree with what they're coming up with. And so we decided to start that petition. And within a short amount of time, we got the numbers we're getting. And I think that speaks a lot, because I think, personally, the community in a whole wasn't aware of what's going on, because usually when the cliff falls in and stuff like that, it gets repaired and business as usual. There's no big issue. There's not even an issue of it's going to be a one-way or two-way. It's just back to what it was. And so we're not opposed to having the bike path that the group that we're forming here is we just want to make sure we still have a two-lane access, because that's important. It's important for everybody. It's important for the tourism. It's important for the community. It's important for access for emergency vehicles. And it's just what people are used to here. It's one of the selling points of Santa Cruz. It's like, it's beautiful. And it's terrible to see a narrative being pushed without even the option of a two-way being pushed at all in these meetings I go to. And so I had to alert my friends and stuff what's going on, because people were kind of sleep at the wheel. People didn't know that these meetings were getting rid of West Cliff as it is. So in this plenty of room as well, you go down there, you can see where they're repairing the cliffs. There's an area that needs attention. But it can all the things they want, it can happen. It can make everybody happy. And I'm just here to voice that opinion. And we're going to definitely try to do our best. Thank you. Sure. Good afternoon. Welcome. Yes, good afternoon. Sure was fun to be in the supervisor's meeting. I left my notebook at a friend's house. I guess maybe too many cocktails. Maybe I'm joking. But fortunately, the sheriff did finally show up. We had a really nice conversation this morning. Almost felt like a job interview. Made it much easier to say what I wanted to say. Today was a great day for the board of supervisors to look really good, because they were giving awards to people in the county that have their hearts in the right place helping the community. So I lost my, I don't have my notebook. You know about the street becoming a one-way? And maybe it should be a three-way street, I'm talking. I'm just trying to be light with conversation. So yesterday marked the first night of Ramadan. And Al Jazeera puts up the names of more than 13,000 Palestinian children murdered by Israel since October 7th. One minute. Well, I took some notes for this thing, but I don't have them with me. But I have a couple photos. This supposedly was shared in 1990. America is a golden calf. We will suck it dry, chop it up, sell it off piece by piece until there is nothing left but the world's biggest welfare state that we will create and control. This is what we do to countries that we hate. We destroy them very slowly. Now there's information to validate this, that this is Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently controlling the Israeli government, 23 seconds. You know, it was nice to explain to Mr. Hart some differences that we had. So there's possibilities of growth. I mean, if I were to run for an office, it would be as a constitutional republic sheriff. Most of the sheriffs we have are constitutional corporate and democratic democide sheriffs. Very clear distinction. Good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. So I just wanted to point out that the server-sized vehicle ordinance, the voting community was pretty much blindsided. We had no outreach. We had no idea that our detached boats were going to immediately get ticketed and have to be pulled out of the city. So the small boats went in driveways, cars went in the street. There was nothing out of that. Some of us who knew people were able to put boats in storage. There's still boats out there that people can't find storage, and there's a two-year waiting list at the harbor. So I think that wasn't very well thought out. I would like to see some changes in that ordinance. I'd like to see occupied detached trailers. I know that it doesn't work 100% of the time. I'd like to see it go back to complaint-based neighbors that are complaining our boat's gone because they're not getting fish and crab from us. I have another suggestion. If you charge $120 a month, that's what I pay the harbor for storage. And you did that to 100 boaters. That's $144,000 a year you could spend on other projects. And I'd be happy to pay it. I'd rather give it to the city than the harbor. So that's my two cents. And nice to see you. Thank you. Anyone else with us who wishes to comment on oral communication? Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? No. No? All right. We're on item four. This is a presentation by Linus Nook, the chair of the sister cities. Excuse me, I'm sorry. Oh, that's at four o'clock. Thank you very much. Thank you. Got ahead of myself on that. We are going to go to item five. And I'm going to recognize Council Member Brunner to make a presentation. Thank you so much, mayor. Item five is a parking for hope presentation. Hope services, as you know, is an important Santa Cruz nonprofit that provides training and support services to adults with developmental disabilities. Their crews have helped to keep downtown streets clean and welcoming for 25 years now. Each holiday season, our parking for hope program in partnership with the Downtown Association donates all the funds collected from downtown parking meters over eight days in December to hope services. This is in support of an appreciation for all that you do. Will you please stand, Hope Services? Today we have with us, Hope Services Program Manager Heather Perez, Employment Coordinator Jessica Goosman, Crew Supervisor Hector Castillo, and the litter abatement crew members, Sarah, raise your hand. Cassie, Eric, Tony, is Tony here? No, and Mark. I am so pleased to present you all with a check from our ninth annual parking for hope program in the amount of $26,670. This brings the total amount collected for hope services in 10 years to over $267,745. We are so grateful for your work and support, and happy that this donation will help it continue. Thank you. Please. I just want to say, on behalf of Hope Services, we are incredibly grateful. This will help our crew continue to beautify downtown Santa Cruz. Did anybody else? Hope everybody, when you see the crew downtown, you wave and say hello and thank you. There's such a positive, wonderful crew out there helping keep downtown clean. Thank you so much. Thank you. We are on item number six. This is a Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship 2023 annual report. We'll be receiving an update from Emma Yusat, who's the Trails Program Manager. Welcome. Thank you for all of your good work. Thank you for having me, and thank you for working with Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship. I've met a lot of you before. My name's Emma again. Hi. Nice to see you. Yay. Also shout out to Bonnie for getting my compressed file with like five minutes ago. So thank you for that. Yeah, so I made this little presentation. It's nothing too fancy, just some nice photos and stuff, but we can keep going along. For those who are new to Santa Cruz Mountains Trail Stewardship, we're a 25-year-old organization, and we've been working with the city for over a decade. We build and maintain trails throughout the Santa Cruz San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. One of our main goals is to connect trail users to open spaces through stewardship, so through caring for trails. And kind of our goal is that everyone who uses trails understands and is educated about what it takes to care for trails. We host free classes and community events. We have about three to four events every week. We're also a licensed California contractor, and our main objectives at all of our events and everything we do is safety, accessibility, and sustainability. So that's a little bit about us, but now I'm just going to jump straight ahead, just for time, into our stats. You can keep going. So this is kind of a snapshot. And again, I know it's already in the middle of March, but we're looking back at 2023 right now. So this is last year, our hours, and kind of just our whole org where we worked. And this is a view of everywhere, not just city parks for this particular side. And I will actually say this is actually a smaller year. The year before, we did 10,000 hours. But this year, we're focusing more on quality of our programming and who we were serving, as opposed to just doing as many events as possible. But I'm pointing out this side because I'm just showing that our volunteers, which are the blue lines, perform most of the maintenance in the parks of the trail work we do. So our volunteers did around 6,000 hours total in parks around the county of trail maintenance and pump tracks. And our trail crew kind of focuses more on our new trail construction projects. And to back up a little more, there's about 25 of us now, half are on the trail crew, half are in the office. So we can go ahead and keep going. OK, focusing more on the city of Santa Cruz and our amazing partnership that we love with our city park staff. Last year, we hosted 57 events in city parks. And this is kind of a breakdown month by month, but we can keep going. And this is not as beautiful a sheet, but just kind of a total tally of what our results look like in city parks alone. So not every park we worked in, but you can see out of our 6,000 total, we spent about 45% of our time in city parks. So we had 547 unique volunteers, over 400 staff hours, and 2,300 volunteer hours. And we worked in all of these amazing city parks. These stats, those are the totals that were kind of listed at the bottom there. Our staff went out 96 times, kind of a lot. You want to keep going. And so all of these stats are actually just from a project reporting form that our team fills out every single time they do events. And I'm always happy to share those results, because it shows all of these things per every single event. So for all of those 96 times that we went out, we have a project reporting form that shows exactly what we did, who we worked with, who was out there, and this kind of information. And we share that directly with the park staff. You want to keep going? We're going to talk more about programs. So at the beginning of the year, we actually had to cancel so many events for a few months because of all the crazy storms that happened last year. And we worked really closely with Blake and Travis and Tony and got out there and did a ton of emergency trail response. So basically, we're kind of the eyes on the ground for the city and for all of our agencies locally. And we report and respond to trees that are down, trail hazards, and that's kind of our first response is to go out and do this sort of work. And so there were a few days where our team removed over 20 trees in one single day. So that's just a few before and afters, but we can keep going. Then moving right along into, aside from that emergency response in our regularly scheduled events, we had our summary with Trail Crew. I'm actually not going to talk too much about this, just because I already did a report on this earlier. So we can continue. We worked with our summary of the Trail Crew, 907 hours in city parks. It was awesome. So that's totally separate of our volunteer hours. And that's a partnership with the City of Santa Cruz. You can keep going. Some fun, cute photos. We had a great crew this year. We're actually looking to hire one of the students that went through the program as to help co-lead the program this year for the first time, which would be awesome. And now I'm talking a little bit more about different partnerships we have in city parks. So one is Teens on Trails. It's a program we have obviously for teens, for people 12 to 19. We also work with Earth Stewards, which we kind of umbrella under that. And so it's a partnership with the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History. It's where every single month, we take out kids in alternative education high schools to do trail work with us on different projects in city parks. And keep going. We also launched a new program last year called Hiking Help. It's every single Thursday morning for two hours. It's been amazing because we've really recruited a lot of regulars and that was the goal is to have like five to 10 people regularly joining us every single week. And it's supposed to be a low effort, accessible event that's not such strenuous trail work. And I know in these photos it looks kind of like it, but it is just more of like a hike, trimming, brushing type event. And it's been a huge success and we love it. We don't need to read this, but this is just an example of some of the comments that Mati who is pictured here, she takes a really cute selfie every single volunteer event. She's our trail stewardship coordinator. So she's always there. This is one of her comments that she submitted. And that was last week, Spring Rocks Trail and Pogonet. Do do do, keep moving on. We just launched a new program called Zanderos Park Doros and it is our bilingual trail work event. It's actually not bilingual, it's all in Spanish. It's led by a few of our staff or native Spanish speakers. And it's every fourth Tuesday and we treat all of our volunteers to free drinks afterwards, also in city parks. So we worked in Aruana Gulch and last week we worked, or last month we worked in De La Viga. And then this is a program we've been doing for many years, Pump Track Keepers. It's every second Wednesday and it rotates Pump Track. So it's not always out of city Pump Track, but often it's that Harvey West Pump Track or the West Side Pump Track. So for 2024, right now our crew has been working at Wagner Grove. We're doing a project there in partnership with the city, followed by volunteer-led volunteer events that are kind of finished work on Fridays there. And then we have our hike and help event every Thursday morning, our Pump Track Keepers event every second Wednesday, Zanderos Baratotas every fourth Tuesday, and National Trails Day, our favorite, biggest event ever. It's like over 500 volunteers, I think 620 last year. We work in seven city parks on that one single day, June 1st, along with 20 other project locations around the county. And then we're gonna have a huge party at Woodhouse. We have a DJ. It's gonna be super fun. So I'll send an invite to that. And yeah, I wanted to, I wanna leave room for questions, but also I have one last thing that's more serious I wanna say. So I know a measure just passed, which I'm really excited about, tax measure to get more money. And at SCMTS, we just wanna advocate for the Parks and Rec Department. We love Tony, we love Travis, we love Blake, they're amazing to work with. I personally talk to all of them at least once a week. So do my staff. And you know, the city parks used to have an open spaces, 13 Rangers that were on site and present all the time, kind of creating a presence and open spaces. And now there are zero. And it's really challenging, you know, it's also kind of scary. Like I'm also on the board of the Coastal Watershed Council. And for my staff, the last time we went out to Emma McRae Trail, I was like, okay, we're not, I don't want you guys to come here anymore. And that's really sad. And so I just have to say it. I wanna advocate for some of those funds to be allocated towards supporting that presence again in city parks. You know, a lot of people, they use trails as their, their like place of solace and how they relax. And I actually think it has a more serious impact, you know, like trails, frivolous like recreation, but I think it actually helps make our window of tolerance a lot bigger. And I think it is more of a serious problem. So I just wanted to advocate for that because yeah, I hope that, I hope that more money will be allocated towards that presence. Well, thank you very much. Let me see if, if members have questions or comments and we'll start with Ms. Brunner. Thank you. Thank you so much. Every year we receive an update and I'm always, I just have a brief comment of appreciation to receive the stats and the impact that you and the volunteers and the team makes. It really is appreciated and I know it makes a huge difference. So thank you so much for stewarding our, our trails and open spaces. Thank you so much. Ms. Contari-Johnson. Thank you for the presentation and the great work. I just want to acknowledge and appreciate the work you do with the young people in our community and really bringing forward climate change, climate response and how we can take initiative and take action right here in our community. So thank you so much for cultivating leadership among the young people in our community and all the work that you do. Thank you. Madam Vice-Mairs, recognize. I want to thank you as well. And everyone that knows me knows I'm out there every Saturday and Sunday is the first thing I do is my morning hike. And I really appreciate everything that you do. And I appreciate you acknowledging what's happening on Emma McCrary. It is unfortunate and I myself haven't felt safe to go back there since last time I was there and found a body. So it was not comfortable for me and I won't go back. So I really, it is kind of a call to action at this point. Thank you. Council Member Watkins is recognized. I see. Well, thank you for the work that you do. And it was a great presentation to hear about all the different demographics of our community and how they can access our parks, how they can participate in being stewards and from young to old to everybody in between. So it takes a community to maintain the beautiful Santa Cruz that we have. And we're really appreciative of your organization contributing in such a meaningful way. So thank you for being here. Thank you. Council Member Brown is recognized. I feel the need to also thank you. To also thank you for your work. I've been out, I've met with you, others from your organization and been out on some of the trails on the North Coast, the work you're doing as well. It's not in the city, but the Chutoni Coast area is just incredible. Just so appreciate the investment that you all make. And I really wanna highlight the significance of bringing that many volunteers to projects that can be quite challenging. And all of the benefits that we get out of that, but also people who are involved. And I really think that you make super positive difference in our community. You didn't mention it in the talk. I think in part, this is something that's just outside the city or like right on the edge of the city limits. But I know that you're also involved in conversations about how to address kind of the undesignated mountain biking trails and kind of DIY trails that have emerged. And there are some challenges there. And so I'll just mention that as well. I appreciate your engagement on that issue and we'll be continuing that conversation too. Thank you. Chancellor Member Newsom is recognized. Thank you, Mary-Keeley. And I just wanna thank you for all that you do for our community. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, absolutely. Thank you for all your work. I also want you to know that you get the blue ribbon award for being the first one before the votes are even certified, asking for money. Good work. I think that's quite good on your part. I imagine Mr. Williams's long statue, long shadow is also involved in this. But on a more serious note, thank you for everything you're doing. It's really terrific. I had a previous position that I held. I had the privilege of authoring the two largest park and environmental protection bonds in the nation's history. And a fair amount of that went to acquisition involved in state parks. The easiest thing to do is acquire property. The hardest thing to do is maintain property. And so what you do in our community, in Santa Cruz County, is really terrifically important. To do what you do would cost us millions of dollars a year. And you do this out of the kindness of your heart. And thank you so very much for doing that. Best wishes to you. Thank you all so much. I'll see you next time. Yeah, we will. Absolutely. Very good. We are on presiding officer announcements. And I would like to make three. One is I want to thank the voters for those who chose to participate a week ago. Thank you for doing that. Congratulations to the candidates who prevailed. And also thank you to the candidates who didn't prevail for running and creating an option out there in the public domain. Also, I want to thank all the election workers. And we will include in that Ms. Bush and her staff here as the city clerk, but the folks at the county who conduct the election. So thank you to all of them as well. I want to recognize Council Member Contari Johnson for an announcement and some brief remarks. Thank you so much, Mayor. I just want to take a moment and acknowledge the coming of Noruz, which is the Persian New Year. And Noruz means new day. And it's celebrated on the vernal equinox, the moment the vernal equinox takes place. And it symbolizes renewal and rebirth and the triumph and victory of coming out of the darkness of winter and into light. And it's been celebrated for over 1,000 years by many different people across the world. And as we as a city enter spring and hopefully come out of these storms, I invite everyone to celebrate the vernal equinox and Persian New Year or Noruz, new day. The 19th at 8.06 PM, March 19th, 8.06 PM is the exact time. And so what we traditionally do is we sit around with family and we set a table and we just reflect on what we'd like to accomplish in this new year. I invite you all to do that. So happy Persian New Year to you all. Thank you so much. Wonderful tradition. Last presiding officer announcement, I'd like to thank the folks in our city who deal with those experiencing homelessness. You're doing a really good job in that regard. The reason I want to mention it now is that across the street from where I live, sadly, a homeless person passed away all about 10 days ago. And it's a little park-like setting and kind of got under a bridge and that is not unusual from time to time for that to happen, but it is unusual for someone to pass. The city workers who showed up were the first responders and then public works folks and then the water department folks because of the precise location. The level of compassion and dignity that they showed in that instance was truly remarkable and I want to thank them for all of that work. So thank you all very much. Let me see if there are any statements of disqualification. I'll start on my left with council member Brunner. Disqualification's coming around this way, seeing and hearing none additions and deletions to the agenda. Mr. Condati, do we have any additions on this? Ms. Bush, any additions? Let me go to the city attorney report from closed session, Mr. Condati. Yes, good afternoon, Mayor Keely and members of the city council. This afternoon, the council met at 12 p.m. in the courtyard conference room to discuss items on the closed session agenda. Item one was a conference with legal counsel regarding liability claims. Council received a report on the claims of Robert David Whirl, Sean M. Bergman and Lisa Foster. Those are also item 16 on your consent calendar for action this afternoon. Item two was a conference with legal counsel concerning existing litigation. The council received a report from legal counsel on the pending case entitled Alicia Lopez versus Mary McCoy at all, currently pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court. Item three was a real property negotiations item. Council received a report from its real property negotiator, Economic Development Director Bonnie Lipscomb on the following items. Item one was the real property at 25 municipal wharf. Item two was the real property at 55 municipal wharf, units B, C and D. Item three was the real property at, excuse me, municipal wharf, 55 municipal wharf, B, C and D, and apparently that's a typo on that. Item four was real property at 110 Cedar Street, and item five was real property at 302 and 3206 Front Street. Those last two items, council member Bruner recused herself and excused herself from the closed session meeting due to potential conflict of interest involving her employer, and that concludes my report. Thank you, sir. Council meeting calendar, Ms. Bush, anything to draw to our attention? No, nothing. Thank you so much. We are on the consent agenda for those of you unfamiliar with it, what we'll be doing is taking items eight through 18 inclusive on one vote, one motion, one vote. What we'll do is I'm going to go around the dais here and then we'll go out to the public. If any member of the council wishes to pull an item, comment on an item or ask questions on an item, we will move through that. Then I will give you, the public, the opportunity to comment on an item as well. If you are going to be commenting on, excuse me, on multiple items, you're going to get one opportunity to speak. So you'll get one opportunity to speak on the consent agenda. If you have one item or whether you have six items, you're gonna have the same amount of time to do that. Let me start with Ms. Bruner on the consent agenda. Thank you, mayor. I had a quick comment on item number 10. Please go ahead and make that. Item 10 is authorization for application and acceptance of pro housing incentive program funds. And I just wanted to call this out. The city of Santa Cruz earned pro housing designation of few months back at the end of 2023. In fact, only 30 jurisdictions in the entire state received this designation, which makes us eligible for funds towards affordable housing. And this is such a great example of that designation and the use of this to really assist with our Santa Cruz community residents and to work in partnership with community action board for rental assistance program, emergency eviction program, all of the things that, all the tools and things we need to continue supporting our community. We had several members speak in oral communication about affordable housing. So this is just one more thing I wanted to call out that I'm really happy to see an application for a grant of $500,000 that will go towards helping our community. Thank you to city staff for finding this grant and I'm so glad we're eligible because we are only eligible because we received pro housing designation. It's been a great feat. So thank you. Further on consent? Very good. Ms. Countary-Johnson is recognized. Thank you. Brief comment on item 13, which is the proposed expansion of marine protected areas and removal of a one mile buoy. I want to acknowledge Vice Mayor Goldert for bringing this forward and Mayor Keely for bringing this agenda item forward. We heard from a lot of community members and it's clear that there's a lot more work that needs to be done. This impacts our fishing community. It impacts the safety of those who are out in the water. So I appreciate bringing this forward. The vice mayor is recognized. I had a similar comment and I wanted to thank you mayor and other council members who are interested in diving a little deeper into this and I appreciate the fishing community. I can see out there, we got your emails, we got your letters and I'm happy this is on the consent agenda. Thank you. Very good. Council Member Watkins is recognized. Thank you mayor. I will associate myself with the comments made on item 13. I really appreciate you bringing this forward, raising awareness and certainly from our community members who reached out expressing concern and support for this item. I also just wanted to thank my colleagues for bringing forward item 14, Council Member Brown, Vice Mayor Golder and that's establishing or expressing our support for establishing a regional program for all inclusive care for our elderly and to provide high quality health services for low income seniors. I know age friendly communities is a priority that we have. It's a statement we've made in the city as well as throughout the county. It's been something that Council Member Brown and I have definitely shared an interest in wanting to see move forward and this is what we need in terms of tangible resources for that population. So I appreciate you bringing that forward as well. Council Member Brown is recognized. Thank you. Well, I'm gonna associate my comments with those of Council Member Brunner on item 10. I would just add that and all of these items actually, I would just add that the eviction prevention is such a critical tool. We know that the cost of providing assistance and services to get people housed is significant. Once people lose their housing, that is really where the crisis begins. So to have an opportunity to provide more resources to help people stay in their homes is just so critical and I wanna thank our staff for focusing in this priority area as well under the pro housing designation. Thank you to my colleagues for bringing forward the marine protected area item. I think there is a lot more to be said and this is going through a process. So your early input folks out in the community or early input has been important as well. And then on item 14, absolutely. This is something that I think, this is a proposal to bring significant additional resources into our community. And I wanna thank Alicia Rodriguez, should I get that out in the audience is here and is really instrumental in moving this forward. And I just think that we are, we're so lucky to have your positive intervention here and your work to make this happen. And that's all for consent. Thank you. Council member Newsom is recognized. Thank you, Mayor Keely. I want to quickly just associate myself with the comments of council member Brown and council member Bruner on item number 10. I'm very excited to see this item on our agenda and really happy to see that we are leveraging our pro housing designation to provide $500,000 to the emergency eviction program, which is a great program for our community and much needed. So thank you. On the consent agenda comment on item 13, I'll do this as briefly as I can, but I can't promise it's gonna be terribly brief, but I'll do it as briefly as I can. When I got to legislature in 1996 for 150 years, California had decided that how you manage the marine environment is not to manage it much at all. And as a consequence of that, overfishing and other pressures on the first three miles out along the state of California was in dire, dire straits. So I authored the Marine Life Management Act, Marine Life Protection Act, California Ocean Science Trust Act, which created a whole bunch of things, not limited to the targeted implementation and proposed and then implementation of marine protected areas. Marine protected areas come in a wide variety of flavors. They can be no take zones. They can be limited entry. They can be scientific research areas. They can come in all kinds of forms. And so not too long ago, the question was, should we do that, take a look at that at a pleasure point? And should we take a look at that at natural bridges? And I think taking a look is probably not a bad idea, but as this idea has moved along, it seems that the scientific evidence is really not there at this point to support the establishment or expansion in either one of those areas. And so today's agenda item says, unless there is a lot more good scientific evidence that is proposed by the outstanding Marine Research Institutes here in the Monterey Bay, that we don't support that. And I think that is the right position. I appreciate the opportunity to have met last week with some of the folks who are concerned about that in the fishing community, as well as others divers and others who live, work, and play in the near shore coast of water. So thank you all for that. And thank you for making this item, an item that we can presumably all agree on. With that, let me now go out to the public if you wish to make a comment on an item or items on the consent agenda. This is your opportunity to do so. Good afternoon. Yes, good afternoon. My name is James Yeeling Whitman. So doing up my notebook. Okay. So number nine on the consent agenda, number 13 about the three miles away. But I guess before that, I really have some questions about what is going on with the jurisprudence in this room because it seems to change every time I'm here. Absolutely. I'll be brief. It just almost changes every time I'm here. So we'll start with the good first. The coastal, the, about the, you guys being opposed to the three miles right now and keeping the one mile buoy, you're for that, just like the county is. They want more information. They just don't want to close this down to fishing, swimming and all kinds of stuff. I believe you, anyway, I'm pretty sure that you guys are for caution on that. The county of Santa Cruz is there was a gentleman who spoke, who's been using the water in a abalone diver for over 40 years from here to Arcata. You know, he described the issue being the fact that for whatever reason, the giant starfishes are gone and the purple sea urchins have taken over. So I'm still on that item, but it kind of relates to miss speaking with the minutes before. When I, I misspoke when I said that carbon dioxide is just under, just under a half percent of our climate, of our atmosphere. It's actually one part for every 2,375. So all the people who were talking about sustainability and carbon dioxide, they really don't sound all that intelligent. That's as polite as I can be on that one. Because we're at, we have extinction level carbon dioxide right now. It needs to be higher. So how that relates to what's going on in the ocean, absolutely the kelp turns carbon dioxide into oxygen and we need oxygen. Our atmosphere is what, 17 to 18 percent right now. Enough on that subject. Going back to the minutes, there is a presentation about Black History Month. I found that extremely beguiling that the public was not allowed to make comments. There's a gentleman who wrote a book called Every Black Life Matters. His name is Kevin McGeary. He went into the white supremacy situation going on and we have, how much time do I have, 20 seconds? It's hardly enough. So I'm really questioning why the Black Lives Matter sign is right there. Because it makes sense that you didn't acknowledge that as helping Black people, because that stands for white supremacy. And so does, I had more time. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. I'm going to talk about item 10. I'm not necessarily all that against the good parts of it, but I'll say that, you know, applying for California pro housing grant money, as I've said such things about grants before, that the government has issues and it's government's different from being a private sector capitalist, but it's similar to normal capitalist people and businesses that it should try to provide with other people, meaning the people in your jurisdiction need, want, and are willing to pay for, or is that willing to pay for part is the weak link with government. Again, when you take the big outside money, and total grants administered is big money in this city, from sources outside the city, you are forced to do their bidding, which is not necessarily what the people want. There are strings attached. There are costs attached. It can be and frequently is a competitive process where cities fall all over themselves, making even further commitments. They hope will gain favor from the state, and it doesn't necessarily have to be what their public's will is. The state exacts restrictions, commitments, deliverables, in exchange for the monies. The public never normally reads about any of those strings attached. They're not explained on the agenda. I doubt many of you really know what they are, are asked here to approve the application and submit what I actually see on the application, or what everything behind it. There's a grant program with only a single line referencing the purpose, or you explain or track accountability of it at all, and any public hearings. If required review for public comments are outside this council process, and are probably only attended and commented on by those who benefit from the public monies to be spent, or unknown comments sent directly to the state housing and community development during the comment period within the next 30 days. Again, by who knows what when, or who accepts probably the beneficiaries. There's 37 pages of grant compliance known as approved permanent regulations for pro-housing designation, which reference a great many more regulations, should I say strings attached. No time here to examine all 37 pages, but one such string is that there cannot be local voter approval requirements related to housing production, such as Measure M. Although M appears to have failed, it is precisely an example of where these kinds of grants turn you into quizlings of the state, a very defective left of state at that, to get state monies where the people would want something different or not. I personally like the idea of public votes to change maximum building height zoning, not so much the other part about increasing affordable housing to 25%. But who knows how that would have gone if M was only about building heights? Did, I feel like a question, did being a pro-housing city aka a state-quizzling city taking the big outside money cause you to strongly oppose what the people wanted to vote on? I wonder. And I would say that, you know, the people here, I don't believe they really want a much denser city, a much more crowded city, a city with super high buildings. Yeah, they want super high buildings, but they... Next person in line, good afternoon, welcome. Good afternoon. Hi, city council. To save your time and to really just... I wanna thank you. Show you a pressure. Yeah, look, we just wanted to create awareness and to have a pause on this push for this MPA and we would love to be involved. As the local community, we want our local scientists and experts involved too. And we are so appreciate, appreciative that you've recognized that. So thank you very much that your voice matters too in this process. And anybody else wanna say anything? No one, then yes, I'm talking. Typical, I want to say that I am fortunate enough to have eyes, I'm a resident of Pleasure Point. I'm fortunate enough to have eyes on the water and these activities, fishing, kayaking, boating, are so infrequent out there that I can't imagine our activities as residents are degrading to kelp forests. And I don't believe the science is there to support it. And frankly, I'm offended that it's people that don't live in our community that wanna dictate what we can do in our local waters. So thank you so much for taking all of our comments into consideration. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you all. I would just like to add to that. We represent a broad and diverse array of perspectives on this and so there's members within the local spear fishing community, angling community. I'm coming from the scientific background. I work with many of the preeminent scientists in the fields of kelp forest ecology and MPA science. I think you guys all received my letter last night. So I just wanted to again thank you for taking the time and for hearing our various perspectives. Very good. Thank you all for being here. Thank you. Thank for being good stewards of the ocean. Good work. Any other public comments on our consent agenda? Anyone online? Very good. Consent agenda is, we are on a motion to approve the consent agenda. There's a motion by the vice mayor, a second by member Calantara Johnson. Debate or discussion. Seeing and, okay, seeing and hearing none. The clerk will call the roll. Council member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Vodkent. Aye. Calantara Johnson. Aye. Vice mayor Golder. Aye. Mariculay. Aye. Motion passes. And so ordered. We are on item 19. This is a, and I said, thank you. Thank you all. United States Department of Housing and Urban Development annual action plan and amendment to the citizen participation plan. We are going to receive up to a 10 minute presentation by staff. And I'm imagining that we are going to have the Jessica team with us today. Ms. Mellor, Ms. DeWitt, thank you both so much for being here. We appreciate the opportunity to be able to. As you mentioned, my name is Jess Meller. I'm the Housing Principal Management Analyst. And with me today is Jessica DeWitt, the Housing and Community Development Manager. So as a little background, HUD is the Federal Housing and Urban Development Department. And they grant the City of Santa Cruz Community Development Block grants, which are also called CDBG, and home investment partnership grant funds, which are also called HOD. Since the city is an entitlement jurisdiction, we receive CDBG and home funds annually based on the federal budget allocations to HUD. And HUD determines the amount of each entitlement grant by a formula which uses several objective measures. And the annual action plan is the same proposal for how we spend those funds. As you'll see momentarily, we're currently more than halfway through our action plan timeline. And it started with the release of our notice of funds available in October, with an application period open through mid-December and a review of applications for eligibility and reviewing those against the anticipated available funds for the program year. We then brought those recommendations for funding to the Health and All Policies Committee last month for their input and direction. And today, we're presenting those recommendations to you at this first public hearing. And there will be a second public hearing, which is currently scheduled for April, which will finalize the funding awards. And we'll submit those to HUD in May. So the action before you today is to make an initial funding recommendation for the 2024-25 HUD action plan for both CDBG and home and to amend the citizen participation plan, some normal and routine updates. And you'll see in red, we're suggesting taking no action on item number three in your agenda today, which is the drafting in the middle of a letter to Congressman Panetta regarding funding levels for CDBG and home. And that's because as of today, Congress has passed and President Biden has signed into law a final fiscal year 24 spending package for six appropriation bills, one of which includes transportation, housing, and urban development, which is how HUD gets their CDBG and home funds, among other funding programs as well. So to let you know, I'm sure you're curious, the funding bill maintains the level of CDBG funding at the same level as last year. So they're going to be funding HUD at $3.3 billion for the CDBG program. And it has funded home program at $1.25 billion, which is approximately $250 million below last year. And HUD still needs to determine how much the city is going to be getting for those two programs. So that's still outstanding. Over the past 15 years, the city has seen fluctuations in funding from HUD, both under our CDBG and home programs. In 2015, we had a slight increase after a decline in 2011. And again, we're seeing after a 2021 decline, we're seeing a slight increase, which is encouraging in both our CDBG and home programs. And as I just mentioned, the funding award amounts for these two programs haven't been released by HUD yet. They have about until the 16th of this month to do that so that we can stay on schedule with our submission deadline. And we'll keep you appraised of any funding updates or any schedule changes as necessary. So at a glance, our CDBG funding breakdown is looking like this. We're anticipating that HUD will allocate approximately $568,725, pending their final determination. We're also estimating that we will receive $25,000 in program income, which is income we earn on loans that have been funded from prior CDBG fund years. And there's currently no prior year funding that we have available for reallocation this year. So in total, we're expecting approximately $593,725 for the CDBG program. And HUD does have a set-aside formula for 20% of our grant and program income that we can use for administration of this program. So this would cover the city's cost to directly administer CDBG. And we also have administrative costs with two other city programs that we need to cover, which is the rehab administration item on here, on the line item, and the home security deposit program delivery costs. So that leaves us with $463,980 for our public services and programs that we can allocate. So this year, we received five program applications, one from the teen center, which is run by our Parks and Recreation Department, and provides teen-focused programming in the community, one from Second Harvest Food Bank's food distribution program, which reduces food insecurity to our lower income residents, one from Housing and Economic Rights Advocates Housing and Stability Legal Services program, which would provide legal services to low-income households, one from Gray Bear's Healthy Food Program, which would provide healthy meals to members of the community, and one from Nueva Vista Community Resources, which provides programming to lower income residents at both the Beach Flots Community Center and La Familia Center. Our recommendations here HUD caps the funding that we can spend on public service programs to 15% of our grant. And so we're estimating that that cap will be $85,400. HUD does allow cities that have community-based development organizations, or CBDOs, that operate in a neighborhood revitalization strategy area, or NRSA, to receive funding above the 15% cap. So we're able to go over that $85,000. We currently have one CBDO, which is Nueva Vista, and we've marked with a star on the slide. So we can actually exceed that 15% cap with total funding towards services. So our recommendation is to fund four programs at their full request, the Teen Center, Second Harvest, Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, and Nueva Vista Community Resources for a total of $232,500. And this will allow us to maximize our CBDO funding for programs and public services. We received one project application for this program year from the Boys and Girls Club of Santa Cruz County. And that is to renovate their downtown clubhouse. So these renovations would include addressing a leaking skylight, gutters, downspouts, improvements to storm drains, and replacement of doors inside their pool area. So they requested $246,500. However, we are only estimating that we'll have $230,580 available for programs. So with that in mind, we're recommending to fund that project with the remaining CDBG funds available, $230,580. And in summary, for CDBG, we are recommending our community programs funding at $232,500, our capital projects at $230,580, and administration for city and city programs at $130,645 for a total of $593,725. All right, and now on to our home program. At a glance, we were anticipating Homewood fund us at approximately $499,440. That may be subject to change based on our final allocation. And we're also estimating we'll receive 100,000 in program income. And in fact, in January this year, we received a mighty large loan repayment of over $1 million. So we have that available to allocate to programs and projects this year for a total of $1,890,516. So like the CDBG program, Home also has a set aside for administration and that's 10% of our grant and program income. So that's estimated at $59,944. So we're gonna subtract that of the total we have available. They also have a requirement to set aside 15% for community housing development organizations or CHOTOS and those are non private nonprofits that create affordable housing in the community. And so we have to set aside that funding as well. So we're looking to award that as well to a project. So we have $1,755,656 to allocate. Now we're proposing to do that with the two applications that we received for home funding this year. One is our security deposit program, which we administer in partnership with the Housing Authority of the County of Santa Cruz. And one is for the Downtown Library and Affordable Housing Project. The security deposit program was funded by alternate sources in prior years, also with home and years before that. It's currently being funded by our home funds this year. And it's primarily limited to helping low income households at or under 60% of the area median income. And it provides households with one month's rent as a security deposit. The Downtown Library and Affordable Housing Project, which I'm sure all of you know a lot about at this point, it contains 124 units in the housing project and it ranges in size from studios to three bedroom units. It's 100% affordable and this allocation is targeted at filling the gap in funding for this project. So we're trying to be filling in what they need, the last in, which is one of home's requirements. This project also has other components, such as the library, parking and commercial, and awarding the home funds to the housing part of this project will actually allow other previously awarded funds to be utilized for components other than housing. So we're able to help better fund the project fully. So in summary, we are recommending to fund the security deposit program at $80,000 and the Downtown Library and Affordable Housing Project at $1,750,572, which includes that show dose that aside I mentioned earlier as well. So we've got a total, total big impact for our programs and projects, $1,830,572 to wrap it up our next steps. So after we get your approval today for the budget, we will be drafting the 2024-2025 annual action plan and we'll be updating our citizen participation plan. We'll make those available for review online. We will also hold a second public hearing to finalize the budget for the action plan. We will provide an opportunity for public review and comment again, and then we will submit the final action plan to HUD. And we're expecting that funding for programs will be available as early as July 1st. Project funding will likely be available for fall and winter. And one last thing, we were recommended at the Health and All Policies Committee meeting in February to provide you all with an update on how our programs are faring. So we'd like to share an update on how they're doing. We will be providing updates in the future about projects, but they're currently still underway. So our program highlights include the Home Security Deposit Program, which to date has assisted eight households. The Housing Authority anticipates that we will see an increase in the request throughout the remainder of the program year. So that's through the end of June this year. Our teen center has seen over 160 teens participating in the programs available, including recreational activities like basketball, pool, video games, and special day trips and events. Nueva Vista Community Resources has provided services to over 600 individuals, including the 2023 Summer Fund Series that offered recreation opportunities and collaboration with community partners and organizations. And then Second Harvest Food Bank has provided food resources to over 28,000 community members to help address food insecurity and instability and partnered with over 27 different agencies. So this concludes our presentation. We're available for questions, and we thank you for your time. Well, we thank you for not only your time, but you're very, very good work. Thank you. Let me do this. Let me see if there are first of all, questions or comments from council members. Start around this way. We have questions, questions, comments, questions, comments. Ms. Brown is recognized. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. I have heard these now for many years, so it's really great to see how things have evolved and how some of our commitments have been maintained over time. And so my question is actually two questions. One, here, I really like the idea of using some of these funds for housing legal assistance, and I was just wondering, was that a solicited proposal? I'm not familiar with HERA, but I know that the city supports Tenant Sanctuary and other agencies that are part of the eviction defense collaborative here. So just wondering who they are and do they fit with the kind of local community work that's being done. They weren't a solicited proposal. They are based in Oakland, but they do serve our community and they do work in collaboration with California Rural Legal Assistance who we have funded previously under our CDBG program, but they're not directly affiliated, but they sometimes, they can provide different variety of services, so they often cross refer with CRLA and other legal organizations, but they're focusing primarily on preventing like homelessness and making sure people aren't being evicted unjustly. I'm all for it. So, and my other question is related, good timing on the repayment of the loan, so we do have a significant chunk of funding. Is the home set aside, the CHOTO set aside, that can be used for the library project? Just, I can't totally recall what all of the requirements are there, but I know that there are some. Yeah, the downtown library and affordable housing project is going to be working with a CHOTO organization as part of the housing component, so we're able to award our funds. That's right, thank you. That's right, thanks for the reminder. Thank you very much for this. If I could draw your attention to, I don't know what slide it is for you, for me it's the, this one. Okay, there we go. So this says at the top, home program budget, it's in green. I'll wait until you get there. Okay, good, thank you. On the item of home security deposit program, did I hear you correctly? Didn't have a lot of that, but you expect a lot more all of a sudden. What is that about, expecting more? Yeah, so we- On the demand side. Yes, we've been discussing with the housing authority, and they said there's a bit of a slowdown right now just because people aren't moving as much, but they're anticipating it is gonna grow based on not only some of the trends that they've seen in prior years, but also just like the general increase in folks moving around. So they are anticipating they'll be able to spend their full amount that they have this year, and they're anticipating that this program will be able to sustain that $80,000 next year. Thank you. Your experience with that program so far, when an eligible family or individual said I need some help with my security deposit, I imagine that ranges all over the place, right? From I need a few hundred dollars to I need several thousand dollars. Is that right? It's situational. Yeah, it's dependent on the unit that they're looking at occupying. If you simply did arithmetic around it, we have this much money, we have this many, is that on average $3,000 or $4,000? Help me have a bit of a feel for what an average might be. Yeah, I think the housing authority said they would probably average around 2,000 or a little bit above per unit. They're estimating like 30 to 35 households to be helped per year. Let me ask if the following is possible. This isn't whether or not you like it. This is whether or not it's possible. This is in terms of the fungibility of the funding. If the council said we're gonna be a while on the downtown library, affordable housing parking, et cetera, there's lots of things that come together to make that happen and a lot of sources also to make that happen. So if we said rather than $1,675,000, if we said $1,655,000 for that program, that's gonna be found someplace else as we move along in life, it seems to me. But on the home security deposit program, if we're going to see an increase, I'd at least be interested in moving 20,000 from the affordable housing project to the home security project for this year. In the event that you get even more people coming in and wanting to deal with that, because it seems to me that's an immediate issue for people as opposed to we can find another 20,000 in a multi-million dollar project, we'll find that at some point. So without reference to whether it's a good idea, is that possible for us to do that? If we took an action that adjusted those two, it's okay to spend those dollars that way? Yes, it would be possible if you wanted to adjust the budget recommendation to that today. I will just say it would be worth checking with the housing authority to see if they have capacity to carry out the additional anticipated. I have checked with one director of the housing authority, so I cannot report to you that I have checked with the housing authority in the main, but I've asked one, and the response I got is, it's hard to estimate the level of demand that will be on this, but if we had this much more rather than this much, we got more people we can serve. I'm gonna be very careful to say that's what I heard as opposed to that's the position of the housing authority. Okay, that concludes my question. Let me see if there are members of the public who wish to comment on this item. Anyone who is, do we have anyone online, Ms. Bush? Nobody with their hand right. Last call for anyone to comment on this item. Matter is back before the council. I'll recognize Council Member Watkins. Yeah, thank you, Mayor, and thank you for the presentation. Again, I got to see the first one at the Health and Health Policies Committee. I really appreciate not having to write a letter encouraging support, so that's great news as well. I'm comfortable with what you're proposing, Mayor. I don't know if we could frame a motion to incorporate that 20,000 to take away from the Affordable Housing Project to incorporate it in the security deposit program. And if the housing authority is unable to carry that out, then that could go back to the affordable housing given what you said. Does that feel comfortable? So I'm going to see Ms. Bush. I think the motion would be the staff recommendation. We know what it is. And so the motion would be to amend the staff recommendation on the item relative to the 100% affordable housing project. That item would be in the amount of 1,655,656 dollars and the motion would continue to say that in the item home security deposit program, that line item would be increased to 100,000 dollars. I'm going to make sure Ms. Bush, and then I need to see if the gentle lady has a second. There are multiple seconds. Ms. Contari-Johnson, I'll be right with you to make sure. So I'm going to check with the clerk. Are we okay? We have the item. All right, you may open on your motion. Yeah, I just want to thank you for the work. I think that's a great suggestion. I think you're absolutely right. And that we'll be able to make that money up elsewhere and appreciate the work of our city staff as well as those who are working in this area to ensure that we can have viable programs available and best use of these funding. So that's all I got. Very good. Further on the motion? Yeah, I just want to make sure that as part of that motion that if the housing authority is not able to, right, if we captured that piece of it, if they're not able to utilize or they don't have the capacity to expend those funds, it would be returned to 100% affordable housing. Okay, correct. Okay, and then I did have a comment. I want to make sure that was captured. That I tracked that with you, that how we would make that determination is about a year from now and we would be adjusting some accounts. Next time you come in front of us based on what the actual utilization is, I suspect. Okay, thank you, Ms. Contar Johnson. Great, yeah, thank you. I too saw the first round of this at the health and all policies. Thank you for your work on this. And I just wanted to acknowledge the results of the last set of funds and showing what has happened with those dollars. I think it's really helpful for us as council members and the community to see that and an inquiry as to whether these organizations also track sort of longer-term outcomes and indicators that they connect those numbers to. I'm not asking you that they do more work, but if they do track those, serving this many teens has resulted in an improvement and I don't know, increase activity, I don't know what their indicators are, but if they do track indicators, that would also be great to see for the next round. Thank you. For the questions, comments on the motion. Seeing here, none. Clerk will call the roll. Council member Newton. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkin. Aye. Bruder. Aye. Contar Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Keely. Aye. Motion carries and so ordered. What we are going to do is we are going to take a 10 minute break roughly and we will be, let me check something, the city attorney just walked down, I was gonna check with him on something. Maybe Mr. Butler, maybe you can help me on this real quickly. The appeal, I wanna make sure that we're not hearing this appeal before people thought we were. It says here that we would take it up at approximately 320 and we are early. So I wanna make sure we are not disadvantageing anyone who thought maybe we wouldn't take this up until 320. Thanks for that question. Mayor Keely, I do see that the two appellants are represented in, at two of the appellants I should say are represented in the audience. I could pose the question to them whether they're anticipating others. Let's make sure. I'll repeat that for the members of the public who may not have heard it from the audience. Someone outside is available to comment but the other appellants from disability rights advocates and ACLU are not planning to attend they're being represented unless they could be online but they're not here in person and they're not, okay, they're not even gonna comment. So we're good to go. Should you choose to do so? Let's do this and we'll just take an eight minute break here. We'll be back at three o'clock and we'll take up the appeal at three o'clock. We stand in recess in such time. Okay, here we go, good. After a nap and in recess the Santa Cruz City Council is back in session. We are on item 20. This is an appeal from the Planning Commission's approval of the coastal permit for continued implementation of the oversized vehicle ordinance in the coastal zone. And we will hear first a staff presentation then the appellant Mr. Meisler will have up to 20 minutes to present his appeal. There will then be questions from staff, public comments and Mr. Meisler will then be given five minutes to rebut any items that have been raised and we will then have the matter back before the body for a decision. We will start with Mr. Mayor and with Mr. Butler. Good afternoon gentlemen. Welcome. Good afternoon, Mayor Kaley and members of the City Council. My name is Tim Mayer, Senior Planner with the City. The current agenda item is consideration of an appeal of the Planning Commission's approval of a coastal permit to allow for ongoing implementation of the city's oversized vehicle ordinance within the coastal zone. The application under consideration is an appeal of the Planning Commission's decision made February 1st of this year to approve a coastal permit allowing ongoing implementation of the city's oversized vehicle ordinance for OVO and safe parking program. Approval of the coastal permit was required as follow up to the California Coastal Commission or CCC's one year approval of the existing coastal development permit set to expire on May 11th of 2024. Denial of the appeal would allow the Planning Commission's approval to remain in effect and authorize ongoing implementation of the city's oversized vehicle ordinance as adopted by ordinance number 2021-20 and later amended by ordinance number 2023-08. Among other elements, the existing regulations prohibit parking citywide of oversized vehicles or OVs on city streets between the hours of midnight or 12 a.m. and 5 a.m. We're also prohibit parking of unattached trailers and facilitate the city's safe parking program. The approval of the coastal permit also accommodates potential future minor modifications to the city's safe parking program and oversized vehicle ordinance regulations including, for example, potential revisions to its OV residential parking permit program. The oversized vehicle ordinance applies citywide. Here, the red dashed border you can see on the screen indicates the limits of the city of Santa Cruz and the solid purple line represents the border of the coastal zone, the northerly border that is. The yellow areas of this map show the portions of land within the limits of the city of Santa Cruz which fall within the coastal zone. As visible in this image, many of the street segments available for public parking do allow for direct access to the coast. For over a decade, the city has pursued efforts aimed at attempting to alleviate the sometimes adverse impacts of long-term parking of oversized vehicles. Through the OV and associated programs, the city aims to balance the community concerns expressed regarding the effects of long-term static parking of oversized vehicles with the protection of potentially vulnerable individuals including occupants of oversized vehicles who may have limited access to housing. The actions approved by the Planning Commission on February the 1st include the limitation of parking of oversized vehicles, as I mentioned, between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m., seeking to reduce the impacts of parking of oversized vehicles in public rights away. Oversized vehicles are defined as motor vehicles exceeding 20 feet in length or eight feet in height and seven feet in width. The city's oversized vehicle ordinance is codified in the city's municipal code, primarily in Title 10, Section 4, but also includes the municipal code, Section 1619070. This afternoon's hearing represents the 12th public hearing related to the topic of regulation of parking of oversized vehicles on city rights away, a number which includes 10 city public hearings and two hearings of the California Coastal Commission. The first version of the OVO is adopted in 2015. Since that time, numerous actions have been taken in hearings held, providing ample opportunity for expression and collection of public feedback, which has led to ongoing refinement of regulations leading to today's hearing. The city has invested hundreds, likely thousands of hours of staff time with representatives of all city departments participating in these efforts in an exhaustive campaign to address the needs of those dwelling in oversized vehicles in the process creating a program unique to the city of Santa Cruz. Staff would like to acknowledge the tireless work of the members of the city's oversized vehicle subcommittee, including council members, Brunner, Golder, and Colin Tari Johnson, who have provided guidance instrumental in these efforts. Documents attached to the staff report for this afternoon's item provide detailed background information demonstrating the expansive measures taken by the city aimed at making progress toward resolving the crisis of homelessness and in particular, and addressing the long duration parking of oversized vehicles. At the May 11th, 2023 hearing, the California Coastal Commission stipulated a number of conditions of approval required for renewal of the city's Coastal Development Permit. Although approved in May of 2023, the city made changes to the ordinance to ameliorate concerns of the California Coastal Commission and affect the CCC's intent, and the ordinance in its current form became effective in June of 2023. As part of the one year authorization of the city's Coastal Development Permit, many conditions of approval were imposed by the California Coastal Commission, prompting the city to launch a range of initiatives and prepare and implement a number of programs within this past year. Over the year, city staff are prepared and launch an outreach plan, building on past efforts and tailored to address the needs of dwellers of oversized vehicles. Staff additionally prepared a communication and outreach plan to affect community outreach efforts related to OV regulations and programs. City staff have also implemented an oversized vehicle ordinance signage plan, including all parameters specified in the CDP conditions of approval. Installation of signage began in November of 2023. It was completed prior to the city's first day of enforcement of the OVO on December the 4th of 2023. The city has additionally initiated an OVO operations and management plan, detailing the manner in which the oversized vehicle ordinance would be facilitated and the safe parking program conducted. In accordance with Coastal Development Permit Condition of Approval Number Six, the city has also formed a 10-member stakeholder group with approximately equal representation by members of various unhoused advocates and oversized vehicle parking control advocates tasked with shaping city policy related to the OVO and safe parking program. Through the process of review of the Coastal Permit application, staff have received a range of feedback, both from members of the public and from members of the stakeholder group related to implementation of the OVO. The stakeholder group has convened on five separate occasions, exceeding the minimum of four meetings set by the California Coastal Commission and providing an opportunity for provision of feedback related to the OVO and safe parking program, guide their implementation and affect improvements as necessary. As part of the Coastal Permit, approved by the Planning Commission at the February 1st hearing, city staff have collected feedback expressed by the stakeholder group and members of the public in fashion several conditions of approval. The first new condition of approval entitled by the Planning Commission on February the 1st would provide a mechanism for ongoing collection of public feedback which would be provided to Coastal Commission staff upon request, allowing for ongoing review of success of the safe parking program. In another condition, the city voluntarily imposed a five year limit of time on its Coastal Permit to provide a mechanism for review of program success by the Planning Director and California Coastal Commission Executive Director affording the opportunity for updates as necessary. A separate condition of approval requires that the city conduct an OV count on an annual basis, another that the staff proactively solicit feedback from potential enrollees in the safe parking program. Again, offering an opportunity for them to offer feedback regarding improvements to the parking program and to identify services that would provide assistance. And further that the city collect quantitative as well as qualitative data which will assist in assessment of the effectiveness of the oversized vehicle ordinance and safe parking program and alleviating adverse environmental and health and safety impacts of entrenchment of oversized vehicles. As requested by the appellants during the stakeholder group sessions, the city's OVO website has also been updated to more prominently exhibit the option for requests of reasonable accommodations to the OVO and safe parking program available to those with documented disabilities. On February 9th, the appellants submitted a letter to the city contesting the Planning Commission's decision to approve the Coastal Permit required for removal of the city's one-year, excuse me, renewal of the city's one-year CDP. The letter of appeal submitted by the appellants includes two primary arguments, each with multiple parts. Essentially, the appellants argue that the city's move to extend the OVO pilot program is premature and that the program violates provisions of the city's general plan. In some, the claims made by the appellant contain no new information not previously addressed and or rebutted. The appellants submitted requested conditions of approval on March the 7th, the evening before the publication deadline for the agenda packet. Several of the appellants requests, such as the city's subsidizing of fuel for OV dwellers in allowance of unfettered parking of unattached trailers on city streets, constitutes unreasonable demands which cannot realistically be accommodated. The city's safe parking program supplies parking capacity for oversized vehicles and lots through a supervised environment sponsored and managed by the city, located on city-owned or operated facilities. Six lots are currently open for provision of safe parking, providing adequate availability of parking spaces to meet the present demand. Additional lots can be activated to accommodate potential future capacity needs. The city is affirmatively committed to accommodating safe parking for all participants who request access to emergency overnight and overnight only programs. This parking and the associated trash, restroom, and hand-washing services are provided free of charge to OV dwellers and their vehicles. Further, the city continues to provide its 24-7 safe parking program located at the National Guard Armory and upper Dila Viego Park, affording participants with designated parking spaces available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, along with wraparound or comprehensive support services. Feedback provided from safe parking program participants has cited the challenges associated with paying or fuel necessary for relocation for safe parking program facilities to daytime parking locations. It's notable that thousands of parking locations are available within approximately a mile of safe parking facilities, spaces, many with access to the coast, thereby minimizing travel distances for OV dwellers who relocate during the day. This slide presents information regarding the number of oversized vehicle parking permits and citations for violations of the OVO issue to date. As of two days ago, 297 citations or parking tickets have been issued. Nearly half of those have been reduced to warnings as first-time violations with others having been successfully appealed. According to information provided by enforcement officers, approximately half the citations were issued in the first several days following initiation of enforcement, which began on December 4th of 2023. The overall trend toward declining citation issuance over time indicates a growing public awareness of the program and increasing compliance with overnight parking restrictions. To date, no vehicle in the city has been towed for having accumulated five or more citations resulting from violations of the OVO. This slide shows the location in which citations resulting from violation of the oversized vehicle ordinance have been issued. As demonstrated in this map, citations have been issued equitably throughout the city. Greater numbers of citations have been issued in select locations due to the higher concentration of oversized vehicles which have sited over time in the specific areas of the city. Information available to city staff reveals that the OVO and associated safe parking program implementation have resulted in positive environmental outcomes and public access benefits. City staff have receded feedback from members of the public, including OVO advocate participants of the stakeholder outreach group that overall OV entrenchment has diminished and impacts associated with long-term OV stays in areas such as Delaware Avenue where OV entrenchment was previously common and where environmentally sensitive habitat for 12 documented environmental species is abundant have significantly diminished. Council members of the OVO subcommittee have receded similar reports from their constituents. A reduction in long-term stays by oversized vehicles together with improved access by OV dwellers to proper hygiene and trash disposal facilities via the city's safe parking program has led to observations of decreased trash accumulation and diminished prevalence of outdoor disposal of untreated human waste, among others, including areas in their sensitive habitat such as Antonella Pond. Again, where OV entrenchment and incidents of outdoor restroom use were common prior to OVO implementation. Data collected by homelessness response fuel crews who regularly patrol areas frequented by the unhoused, including dwellers of oversized vehicles indicates a full 48% decline in the amount of trash all the way since the beginning of enforcement of the OVO. Again, corroborating anecdotal reports of the success of enforcement efforts and benefits to environmentally sensitive areas. Those observations represent reasonably-anticipated outcomes of implementation of the city's safe parking program and enforcement of a prohibition and overnight parking of oversized vehicles and public rights away between midnight and 5 a.m. On March the 7th, the appellants sent correspondence including a number of requested revisions and additions to project conditions of approval. The complete list of requested conditions was included as an attachment to staff report. Those requesting conditions, which can be realistically accommodated, are listed on this slide and the next several slides for the council's consideration. So here's the first of several recommended conditions of approval that have been added since the packet was published. Happy to read that if helpful. So the first several recommended conditions of approval. OVO outreach documents, including the city's website regarding the oversized vehicle ordinance. She'll indicate the following. Oversized vehicle ordinance or excuse me, oversized vehicle overnight parking space is available. If oversized vehicle overnight parking space fills up, eligible applicants will be given an on-street permit which will protect the vehicle from being ticketed under SCMC 10.40.120A, which is the prohibition against oversized vehicles on-street parking from midnight to 5 a.m. If I just add one thing, thank you Mayor, Lee Butler, director of planning and community development. One of the things we heard from the stakeholders was that individuals who are unhoused receive a lot of paperwork and aren't always, they might get something about a program and their success rate in finding that program having availability is slim. And so that was a statement that resonated with us and something that we wanted to address as part of this to make it clear that there is space available in these programs so that when they get that flyer, it has a little bit more weight perhaps than some of the things that they have received in the past. So that was part of the intent behind this. The second and third recommended conditions of approval to be added include the following. Continue to maintain an easily access disability grievance slash reasonable accommodation process to consider reasonable accommodations for those with disabilities. Another that motorized vehicles with attached trailers are eligible for participation in the tier two, which is the 30 day overnight safe parking program. And I will just add there that those vehicles are already able to participate in the overnight only and we would actually change that. We've moved away from the tier system, although we accidentally left it on the slide here. And so that should say overnight only parking program. I just wanted to make sure that everyone was aware. We already allow for motorized vehicles with attached trailers and have had participants that are in that position in the overnight only program. A couple of more here. The OVO website and the outreach materials or tickets themselves will include information identifying that payment plans are available for OVO tickets. Also the city shall conduct proactive outreach to those living in oversized vehicles, including number one provision of information regarding the city's safe parking programs and how to register and number two, the manner by which one may submit a disability accommodation request to the city. So overall the claims of the appellants in contesting the planning commission's approval of the city's coastal permit, which is necessary for continued implementation of the OVO and safe parking program lack merit and introduce no substantive arguments not already addressed in prior review and through existing city plans and documents. Staff recommend that the city council deny the appeal and uphold the decision of the planning commission to approve the coastal permit with recommended conditions of approval, including those added here, authorizing the city to continue implementation ordinance number 2021-20 as amended by ordinance 2023-08 and as enumerated in the municipal code, provide for continued operation of the safe parking program and accommodate potential future minor modifications to the city's safe parking program and oversized vehicle regulations such as future revisions to the OV residential parking permit program. Staff are available to answer questions related to any topic discussed and to provide additional information as needed. Thank you very much. This concludes staff presentation. Well, thank you very much, sir. Now give the opportunity to the appellant to make a presentation and Mr. Meisler is recognized. Joy and I actually gonna split this a little bit. The right additional information is needed. Thank you very much. This concludes staff presentation. Well, thank you very much, sir. Now give the opportunity to the appellant to make a presentation and Mr. Meisler is recognized. I think that's coming from me. It's not me. Joy and I actually gonna split this a little bit. The right additional information is needed. Thank you very much. This concludes staff presentation. Thank you very much, sir. Well, give us a second here to get some of it. Sure, no problem. All right. We good to go? Okay. The appellant, your time will start now. Good afternoon, Mayor Keely, council members and staff. Thank you for hearing our appeal today. Give us a second here to get some of it. Sure, no problem. All right. We good to go? Okay. The appellant, your time will start now. Okay. All right, thank you. Santa Cruz Cares, the American Civil Liberties Union and disability rights advocates have been collaborating on monitoring the rollout of the oversized vehicle and ordinance enforcement and have participated in good faith in the stakeholder meetings. Additionally, we have spent hours of our own time and coordinated other volunteers to conduct point-in-time counts of vehicles likely to be affected by OVO and canvassing vehicular residents in the coastal zone. We are not just two people here today to appeal this new five-year OVO permit. We have the backing of hundreds of local residents, including people with lived experience of vehicular dwelling and houselessness. The ACLU and disability rights advocates are nationally respected organizations with legal expertise and thousands of their own members. OVO proponents continue to overstate the harm done by vehicular dwellers in general while minimizing pragmatic and affordable solutions supported by advocates, those with lived experience and research-backed best practices. Instead of working productively and inclusively to resolve conflict, the entire populace and visitors to our town have been restricted. We continue to oppose the oversized vehicle ordinance because we believe that it has been fundamentally flawed from the start and that this new permit with minor modifications remains fundamentally flawed. It violates civil rights and disability rights and disproportionately impacts a frontline community, one that our city has committed to protecting in other resolutions and policies. We believe that it is our ethical duty to fight with and for those who have the least and are most discriminated against. That's why we're here today. In the agenda item, there should be the Appalachian Permit Conditions and we don't need to pull those up right now, but if we could have them ready to pull up, that would be great. And I will pass it back to Regi now. We'll be alternating. All right. So I think it's worth noting through this process that we had 10 OVO stakeholders in the stakeholder committee, but actually only one of those stakeholders was a person living in a vehicle who was made vulnerable to citation by OVO. The other person living in a vehicle was in tier three. And so no one else was really negatively impacted by OVO and therefore there was a really imbalanced sort of set of interest groups. That stakeholder's name, by the way, is Jamie. She wrote a lengthy letter about her experience of the stakeholder process and OVO. A letter, which as far as I can tell was omitted from your packet tonight. Jamie had felt silenced and intimidated by the stakeholder process. For this reason, I would like to center some of what she said for a bit so you can hear, in her own words, what she felt she experienced. I am exhausted all the time. Life for people who are working and trying to better their situation is made harder by the OVO. You can't sleep well for fear of oversleeping and getting more tickets. You can't enjoy a late night out or a night away because the RV has to be moved. Panic sets in at any sign of a maintenance problem. Twice a day, everything has to be secured for the move. One of the RVs in tier two safe parking belongs to a single father with a baby. He told me he received a ticket the morning after staying there because he didn't relocate from the tier two lot before the morning deadline. He said it was just after 8 a.m. and his son was still sleeping in bed. He told this to the parking enforcer and the parking enforcer told him he needed to move now and did not even give him time to get his baby into a car seat. He told him just drive slowly. The parking enforcer then started counting how many parking spaces he was taking up, threatening to ticket him for each parking space that if he did not move, he was at risk of getting kicked out of the safe parking program. He told me he received four parking tickets since he started using tier two. And he fears that the success of ticketing will result in his RV being towed. In just the past few months, I have witnessed numerous RVs being towed away, leaving people on the side of the road with their belongings, often in tears and losing hope. The behavior of some police officers was unprofessional and malicious. I witnessed officers standing around laughing and making jokes as people's homes were getting towed away. I have yet to hear of anyone being given information about available resources. This process has lift many in difficult situations. So city staff responded to Jamie's letter, but unfortunately their response did not show concern or interest in an investigation. They simply directed Jamie how to go online and submit formal complaints about these various departments, which you can't do online. You have to do it by mail. You have to do it in person. These are not easy complaints to submit. What Jamie was effectively providing city staff was an on the ground report by an OVO stakeholder of how people living in vehicles were experiencing the OVO and tier two safe parking. This again, it was the only stakeholder who actually was negatively impacted by the OVO. And yet not one word of what Jamie wrote was echoed during the planning commission public hearing by the commissioners and not by city staff. And yet the permit conditions and the permit was approved. It was as if she never wrote this letter at all. Jamie was right to feel dismissed and ignored by this process. It's hard to imagine responding in a more disempowering, uncaring way toward what frankly should have been a shocking set of stories of abuse directed at people who are just trying to participate in good faith in tier two safe parking. So with that added context, can we bring up the permit conditions that the appellants or we're trying to offer here? Yes, just one second, please. I'm not gonna like go through each one. Just push, can we stop the clock for a second here for the gentleman? We're not gonna take this out of your time, Mr. Meissner. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know how clearly you guys can see that. You can see that. Yeah, so. We'll restart the clock. Thank you. So we appreciate that some of these permit conditions were mentioned today by city staff and brought into their recommendations. We think that there are a few on here that are worth calling out that were not sort of brought in. One was the permit condition number two, which is that tier two is a registration-based safe parking service. But the registration phone number is only available nine to five on weekdays. So if I call five p.m. any given weekday, it's already too late. I'm gonna get ticketed later that night. If I call five p.m. on Friday, I could get ticketed three days in a row and accrue $150 in fines by the time I get registered. We think that permit condition number two is very important for ensuring that tier two is implemented fairly and within the interests of people who are living in vehicles. Now, the permit condition number three is particularly important because of the history of this struggle. The city manager, as you might remember, as we challenged the unpermitted and no overnight parking signs on the far west side, attempted to use an old permit from 2016 to restripe all of the parking spaces unlike Delaware Avenue, Natural Bridges, Mission Street Extension, to be too small for oversized vehicles. We don't want to have to deal with that problem, particularly when we're already asking people to relocate. We don't wanna take away their daytime parking. So we think that this is a non-negotiable permit condition. And permit condition number four may seem a little excessive. Safe parking program vehicles who get a breakdown in the process of participating have a grace period, but one of the primary issues that gets people towed is that frequent relocation causes vehicle breakdowns. And so if this is produced in people who are participating in Good Faith in the tier two program, a lot of people who have breakdowns, they do their own maintenance, they can fix their vehicle within like a week, two weeks to at least be able to relocate once or twice. And so this may feel a little excessive, maybe we can play with the timeline, but because of how tier two causes constant relocation every day, it does seem fairly important as a safety net for folks. So for number five, that was added, we appreciate that. Number six, no timeline for participants, time limit. I think, I don't know if that was the case, it seemed like we still have that 30 day window, but I think that like 30 days is, these people are chronically living in their vehicle. I don't think 30 days really makes sense. So I think item number six is really important if we can scroll down to some of the later conditions here. I think seven was somewhat addressed but I think some of these details are pretty important to us if we can go down to eight. So the thing with eight is that when we originally came up with OVO, part of what mitigated environmental impacts was the idea that people had a way to do mobile dumping. And if we don't have that, then you're really kind of sacrificing what OVO is supposed to be about in the first place. So it seems like this would be pretty helpful just from your guys' perspective, honestly. Number nine, I definitely didn't see number nine in the conditions that are recommended. I think that if somebody has a disability placard and disability license plate, this is really important. Can we keep going down here? Now, number 11, the city explicitly said, city staff said they did not want to do this. What we're talking about right now in terms of the raw number of people is we have what, 30 participants? $200 a month, that's less than $100,000. I think that like to help people to make this a truly cost-free program, which is what the permit conditions suggest is necessary for OVO, this is not a big expense to sort of fulfill that burden. And people spend probably more than $200 a month. So it's, I would say like, this isn't as scary and as big a deal as maybe city staff is making it out to be. It's a somewhat reasonable condition, I would say. Now, number 12, this I think is very important. And to me, this is non-negotiable as well. If we're gonna be doing OVO and displacing people during the night, we cannot also engage in this discriminatory street sweeping, which seems redundant, honestly. Like hundreds of emails are saying that there is no debris problem on Delaware Avenue, Natural Bridges, Mission Street Extension, now that OVO is enforced. And yet Transportation Public Works Commission is implementing this discriminatory street sweeping with tow away signs that are permanently installed in these coastal areas. So we need to call this what it is. This is like adding anti-houselessness on top of OVO and this is non-negotiable. And so I think I've gone through sort of what I wanna go through. And I just want to sort of make it clear that we're trying to do this in good faith. These permit conditions are what we consider collectively enough such that we will not appeal to the Coastal Commission. And I think that that's like a pretty big offering. Like we could appeal to the Coastal Commission and then we could appeal street sweeping to the Coastal Commission. And then we could appeal the sort of restriping of Natural Bridges and the bike lane or whatever to the Coastal Commission. This is gonna save you guys a lot of time, buddy, if you can just agree to this here. And we can call it kind of a truce. So, would you have anything else you wanna say? Let me check time on this. Ms. Bush or Ms. Wood, do we have a, how much time has the gentleman got remaining? Four minutes just to help you out on that. Yeah, I think I've said basically what I wanna say. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. Let me see if council members have questions of staff. Anybody? Okay, I'll start over here, Ms. Brunner. Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, Sandy. Thank you to staff and the appellants for bringing up some of the conditions. And I just wanted to ask staff on the conditions that the appellant called out if you could speak to two, three, four, six, eight, nine, 11, and 12. Thank you for that opportunity, Council Member Brunner. I have flagged each one of those. So, I like those conditions as I am speaking to them. Number two, the first one was the phone number and the voicemail Monday through Friday, nine to five. Got it. So, we talked about this and we have established mechanisms in place right now to inform people where they can go. If someone were to receive a ticket, then they have the information on the ticket with respect to the safe parking registration. That first ticket is also waived as the council is aware. And right now, very few tickets are being issued. But I think most importantly, we did confirm that the voicemail with the phone number is being checked on the weekends. And so, the individual is actually responding to people on the weekends if they're getting those calls. And so, we believe we have adequately addressed that through our current operational approach. And we can continue to assess how best to address that as additional needs arise. But we think that we're addressing it through our current process. On number three. Can I ask a question about that? Yeah, yeah, please. So, if someone's looking for a safe parking overnight, tier two, and they call that number and it goes to voicemail, does the voicemail instruct to leave a message and someone will check, leave your information? And how will they know that they won't get a ticket or where to go? It all explains that in the voicemail. I'll have to, I'll have to, on the voicemail, it just asks for a message. Okay. And if you're leaving that message, then that message is getting returned, including on weekends, the individual who monitors who's voicemail that is did indicate that she is checking it on weekends and responding on weekends. Okay, that's good to know. I just, I wonder if we could add to the voicemail that please make it very clear that here's the process. You leave your information, voicemail will be checked after hours, weekends, and you will not be subject to a ticket in this circumstance or how to register. We would update the voicemail to identify that how folks can register and that they can leave a voicemail and that that will be monitored so that the directions for going to the correct safe parking location can be provided as part of that return call. That's an easy fix. Thank you. Of course. Number three, this is, as is the case with number 12. So if you wanna scroll to both of those, number three and number 12 are both issues that are subject to separate postal permits and such postal permits will be evaluated on their merits when they, if and when they proceed. The permit in front of you should not preclude any future actions and that's what the request of the appellant is. It's, it would preclude future actions that may or may not be related at all to oversized vehicles that is a separate coastal permit and they would be evaluated through that separate coastal permit. So we're not recommending any conditions related to that. The next one on the list was number four. Number four. So this is related to a six month grace period for anyone who has a breakdown. We have a provision in the code that allows for a 24 hour period and I will say that is a minimum in terms of how that has been addressed. There is at least one instance where the, where a breakdown has occurred and the police were in contact with that individual and offered, they had a week to get their vehicle. The police were very flexible, they were understanding and the police are the ones that are out there giving the tickets. And so I think the way that we approach the situation is with flexibility. So that those specific situations can be addressed and that the individual's circumstances can be taken into account. The next one on the list was number six and that is no time limit for overnight parking. I wanted to point out that we have been running this program for over two years and we have never denied an extension nor have we kicked anyone out of this program. That said, we can't anticipate changes in the future and we're not recommending an indefinite timeline at this point given those long-term uncertainties. But I think our record stands for itself that in the two years we've been able to accommodate everyone and we have not had to implement any type of time restrictions on the program. Remind me, is it 30 days? It's 30 days and then it's renewed every 30 days and so every renewal request has been accommodated. And how many renewal requests have we received? Okay, I was gonna venture a guess but our team is pulling that information and we'll go back to that in just a few minutes. And I would just note, Gavin, if you're pulling that information from your team, there were also extended periods of time before parking was handling that, that the homelessness response team was addressing those renewals. So, Larry, you might have an idea on that and then you can add that to Gavin's data. Sorry, coordination, live coordination. Okay, let's see, that was number six. Next up is number eight. Number eight was the- Mobile dumping. Mobile dumping station. So, we are working on a location for a mobile dumping. We are still looking at where that can be. We do have some money that we are anticipating, dedicating towards that but we're still working on the siting of that. It is something that is of interest to us. We also do not believe it should be a condition of approval as requiring of this, of this Oversize Vehicle Ordnance Implementation and the Coastal Permit that's associated. Thank you, Larry. Mr. Molley is recognized. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. So, according to our data, there's been 32 renewals for the Overnight Safe Parking Program and that formalized process began after enforcement began in December. So, the first set of renewals for the 30-day period was actually 45-day periods. It was the middle of January. It was the first round of renewals for participants in the program. So, that's been happening for now two plus, almost three months. Thank you so much. And just so we're 100% clear, that does not include the first 20 months of implementation. And we did have individuals that had renewed continuously during that time or for various periods during that time. So, that's the stat just for post-OVO implementation. Okay, we were on number eight and we are on to number nine. The... Can I go back to eight, really quick? Yes, please, yeah, go for it. I know it's in, as part of the overall OVO with this mobile, can you, is there, what is in that process that you can speak to in terms of the process of finding a location, the funding? I know we briefly touched on it but ran out of time. Yes, so there are several things that are taken into account, nearby uses and the right-of-way and how the right-of-way can accommodate the circulation of both the oversized vehicle that would be stopping and utilizing the dump station as well as any potential queuing that may be necessary for that oversized vehicle and ensuring that that does not impact circulation. And so those are some of the key things that the team is looking at right now in terms of where the location of the dumping station could be. Thank you. Of course. On to number nine. Number nine was related to accessibility and those with disabled placards. And I wanna point out here that when parking outside of a safe parking lot, the ADA placard is valid at metered spaces or permit required areas with no exceptions. So areas where there's a parking permit required, for example, those with an accessible placard can park in those areas and there are no costs to that. So you don't need to have a permit to park in a hourly parking area if it says no parking except by permit for a specific area. People with disabled placards can park in those areas. And so that is already accommodated and that is a part of the California Vehicle Code. See number 11 was next, the monthly gas cards and the subsidization of fuel bills to private parties is outside of the scope of the safe parking program. We do not have the funding for this. The appellant mentioned that is $100,000 per year and that is a substantial expense. We, as you know, spend about $620,000 per year on our various safe parking programs and that would be a significant expense above and beyond that. So that, we already covered number 12. We lumped that in with, I think it was number two. So I wanted to just note that we took these comments very, very seriously and as you can tell, we talked about every single one of them. We gave them all very careful consideration as we have with all of the feedback that we've received from the stakeholder group and others. And we did incorporate conditions that stemmed from these comments and suggested conditions. We did not include all of them. We did not think that all of them were the right fit for this particular coastal permit. And it is within the council's purview to add it or to add any of these conditions or to modify the conditions that we added in response to this. But we have included only those conditions that we feel address the comments that are pertinent to the operation. And if it pleases the mayor, I would like to respond to one other comment that the appellants made with respect to the member of the stakeholder group that provided feedback at the planning commission. I wanted to note two things. One, a link to the planning commission packet was provided to the council. We did not reiterate all of those materials back over, but we did provide that link and noted that information was available and that information is posted as part of the planning commission packet. And specifically, the appellant referred to the city's response to that. I wanted to note that we did take that letter very seriously just as we did others. In fact, we took it so seriously that we wrote an entire response directly related to it and posted that as part of the planning commission packet. So I just wanted to make sure that all those listening are aware that we are taking that feedback seriously. We are looking to accommodate changes to the program where we can and we're looking to implement something that works for a broad range of stakeholders. Council member. That's it for now. Thank you. Thank you. Ms. Collin-Darry Johnson is recognized. Thank you for going over those conditions. I had questions about some of them you've answered, but I just want to confirm that what I heard is that these are either already in place have been incorporated or working on it or a couple of them are unfeasible. That's sort of the synthesis of what I got from your responses to each of those conditions. That's correct. We do have some where we modified the language, right? We said, this is addressing what they identified but not in the same manner and other things, like it's not six months of a person at the table, but our police department and enforcing the regulations is applying flexibility and how they handle their work. Thank you. Now, the stakeholder group, which met more than the number of times that was required by the Coastal Commission, have they seen these conditions of approval that are for by the appellant and have they weighed in the members of the stakeholder group? The conditions that were suggested by the appellant came last Wednesday evening. And so the stakeholder group the last meeting was two weeks ago. So the stakeholder group as a whole has not weighed in on those conditions. We did post to them, I didn't see any members of the stakeholder group that specifically commented on them as part of the public comment. I think that's an important piece of information that the larger group that's been really engaged and involved over the last year has not had the opportunity to weigh in. I see that, yeah. I would just add one thing, which is that some of the things, for example, the first thing that I mentioned when we were talking about the added conditions of approval where we said we will add. I have to go back to it. Thanks. Yeah, it was putting on the materials that there is space available. That was a conversation, thanks for sharing that. That was a conversation that took place in the stakeholder group meeting. And so I don't want to say that none of these things were discussed but the specific wording of the language and the proposed conditions that was provided just last week. Sure, one last question for now. I see that staff recommendation is for the continuation of the stakeholder group. I believe it was twice a year over the next couple of years. I can't remember the details right now, which is great. I'm glad to see that we are committing or there's a recommendation to commit to continue this level of engagement. The question is, will the make up of this, is the proposal of the make up of the stakeholder group remain the same in terms of sort of the representation of those seats, not the exact people because I know that could shift. That's a great question. And yes, we are anticipating that the representation will remain generally the same and we do expect that the individuals may shift. And we have a provision in a condition of approval before you that allows for us to go to the Coastal Commission Executive Director who has approved our outreach and stakeholder plans. And if we want to, for example, tweak the membership, then there's a process by which we can do that. But at this point, we're just anticipating that the individuals would shift, but we have the flexibility to make that shift in the future. Great, those are my questions for now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Council Member Brown is recognized. Thank you. Let's see, I, well, I have a bunch of questions, but I'm gonna try to consolidate them so as not to labor this. So I guess I'll start by saying, I understand the city is lining up the steps to ensure timely renewal. And so in the two areas of concern in the appeal, the timeliness question, you've responded to that. However, I also see some merit in the appellants and they really make a fair point, I guess, that the concern that the city has not really meaningfully reviewed the impacts of the OVO on unhoused people. And so I'm thinking in particular about things like no toes, right? So I guess things that have not yet happened. We're hearing there's flexibility and we're giving people extra time. If they need it to move their vehicles, it's not, that's not codified, that's not required. We don't know how often police officers are not offering that amount of time versus are offering that amount of time. It feels to me like if there's a problem there that that should be further analyzed and there should be some way to address that, I'm just not comfortable with promoting selective enforcement ever, in any kind of government function, regulatory function. So just kind of, I think there's some real merit there. And I guess I would ask how you see, because being nimble can provide an opportunity, but it can also foreclose an opportunity. And so how you see, I guess that flexibility is just totally contingent. And so why wouldn't we wanna put some kind of safeguard in there about the, one, the amount of time that people have to address concerns with their vehicle? I mean, I think 24 hours is just, and I've said this before, is not enough time. I'd like to see more time there. If the council rejects that additional condition at a minimum, it feels like it would be helpful to have some time, a week, I don't know what would be more reasonable. I mean, under-resourced people, that challenge isn't gonna go away, but at least giving people time when they're in crisis feels like it would be compassionate and based on what I'm hearing, codify current practice, because you're telling us that the police do give more time. So I'd like to see a week. What do you, is that, in your perspective, how would that work for you all to codify that? So a couple of things. It's certainly within the council's authority to add a condition that would extend that code required 24 hours to a longer period of time for vehicles that are inoperable. And the, I wanna also address the issue of towing. That's my next question, so go for it. Yeah, because you mentioned that as part of this in terms of like a potential concern about towing. The city's even ability to tow based just on the oversized vehicle ordinance is limited. We would have to go and get, if you had five tickets, it used to be that once you had more than five tickets, that vehicle could be towed. Now, if you get more than five tickets that can't automatically trigger a tow, it would have to come with a judge's order. And so the threat of tow is separate from just the timing of getting another ticket. And I think the PD could correct me if I'm wrong. We've indicated that we, I know that we have not towed anyone. I also don't believe that we have pursued any judge's orders for that. And I believe that's the case. Yeah, I'm seeing at least one affirmative yes there. That's at least the understanding from myself and some others. So thank you for that. My follow-up question there is related to the intention of the city to seek judge's orders for such tows because it seems to me that the purpose of this is largely to get RVs off the street. At least that's what I've heard my colleagues say they wanna do. And so if vehicles can't be towed and that we're just amassing, they're just amassing tickets. It just, again, it's one more bucket for tickets for unhoused people or vehicularly housed people to contend with or not contend with as the case may be. And so that's sort of a, there's my side comment with my question. Will the city pursue judge's orders to tow? And at what point would that decision be made? I think that's best. There's our police chief. Chief Escalante is recognized. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. We are currently working on, we have to write a search warrant to seize any vehicle, whether it's related to the oversized vehicle ordinance or a collection of five unpaid tickets or more for any violation. New law requires us to write a search warrant and we are working with our judges to figure out what that really looks like because we have an obligation outside of even the oversized vehicle ordinance to address those that collect that bucket of citations that you talked about. So we are working on that to give us that option. Thank you. So I would just say, there's more. I'll stop. No, I just meant I was gonna say, make a comment. Thank you, Chief Escalante. So I think I guess I would just say it's disingenuous to suggest, well, that's not happening so let's not worry about it given that the intention is for that to occur. I just have to point that out. I'm not sure there's much to be done about it. It'll be, we'll see how it goes, but I would argue all the more reason for continued community oversight as stakeholder group that is it really actually involved in these kinds of steps as the decision gets made to take those steps, there should be oversight of that. I think we should hold ourselves to the same standards that we expect of other our contractors and our human service providers that they provide some analysis and evaluation and metrics. And I think that's the case for kind of all, I have a lot of questions related to how many toes, how many tickets and I'm not asking that you answer those questions now, but that is information that I believe should be publicly available. Can you tell us about how it is that that information will be made publicly available? Just as an aside, you said we're gonna give qualitative and quantitative information, but the paper, the documents we have, quantitative information where feasible. So that could mean a lot or it could mean almost nothing. What are we gonna get? Yeah, so the number of tickets is definitely a quantitative set of information and that is, as you can see, whoops, it just moved. As you can see on the slide here, this is how many we've had since the December 4th implementation with most of those happening and in the first week, we will continue to keep track of that. The other quantitative information that we have at this point is the number of trash bags collected and we still do have issues there, but I think it was a 46% reduction or 48% reduction and the number of trash bags collected in the 11 months prior to the average of the 11 months prior and then the three months, December, January and February leading up to now, so another quantitative. We'd also be looking at any other quantitative data that we can collect. The quantitative is challenging and that's why we put both of those in there, the both the qualitative and quantitative, but certainly those two are readily available in things that we're currently tracking and we continue to look at things. The stakeholder group, for example, suggested when we brought this question to them that maybe we could also look at number of service calls unrelated to oversized vehicles, but service recalls related to aggressive behavior or fights or things of that sort that they get called out to in these areas to also have another quantitative metric. That is something that we would continue to work with the stakeholder group on with those ideas. And if I could just one last thing, I just wanted to point out that the towing of vehicles is the last resort, right? It's not the step that anyone wants to take and so that's really if we have to, there's no other option, really. Last question, thank you. And I really want to appreciate Council Member Bruner for raising the question around the conditions because I was going to ask about some of those. That was much more efficient. The last question, you are going to make information available according to the agenda report to the Coastal Commission Executive Director upon request. Is there a reason we wouldn't be just submitting information to them annually just because they've have a role to play in approval of this permit. They demonstrated that. I think the commissioners are going to be interested not to monitor on the ground realities day to day, but to at least have a sense of what's going on. That's certainly something that could be conditioned and the Coastal Commission may actually request it on a more frequent basis as well. And so certainly as they requested and one of the things that we've talked about as a team is just that we are going to need to stay on top of tracking this information so that we're not at the end of the year and I'm trying to recall something that happened 11 months earlier, right? And so that is something that we would be able to do should the Executive Director request it and if it pleases the council and then that condition could be updated so that it is an annual report, for example, and that gives an overview of how we've been implementing the program, the outreach that we've done, the feedback from the stakeholder group as you all could see from the materials that were provided to you. We take very detailed notes as part of those stakeholder group conversations and that allows for both you all and other members of the public and also other bodies like the Coastal Commission to really get the flavor for how those conversations have gone. Thank you. Take a moment, Mr. Meisler. Mr. Meisler, let me get your attention here. What we're going to do is at 4.20, we've got a group of folks who are going to be going to Japan on a sister city program and they're gonna come in here, we're gonna do some nice things together. So if what we can do is in a couple of minutes, we'll suspend this, we'll do that, then we'll come back to your item, all right? That's how we're gonna handle this. So, but before we get there, and because we're not at 4.20, hours that we're living in for me, we'll, I had a couple of questions or a couple of comments. One is we have gotten as a city incredibly focused on this item and not without reason, I understand that. And I think we should. We're incredibly, in my view, very compassionate community. You get to Santa Cruz, we wanna make sure your life works out as best that it can. And we have, as the city, certain responsibilities, county has certain responsibilities, state and federal government has certain responsibilities. We do not have every responsibility for everybody who comes into the city of Santa Cruz. People who come in in an oversized vehicle are not automatically wards of the city of Santa Cruz. There are certain things we should do that a compassionate community would do. I don't know that it is our responsibility to provide gas or insurance or repairs or registration or whatever for a vehicle. I'm not sure, in my mind anyway, I think that's a vast expansion of the responsibility of city of Santa Cruz and I don't believe it's ours. I think that this item, with regard to the way that it has been processed with stakeholders, with numerous interactions with the Coastal Commission, that from my point of view, I think that what is coming forward to us makes an awful lot of good sense. So what I will do at this point is we will simply suspend this item for a few minutes while we hear another item and then we will come back to this. So let's take a couple of minute break and we're gonna let folks come in. Santa Cruz City Council is back in session, the hour of 4.23 having arrived. We are very happy to see a bunch of mildly faces over here and in our chambers and we welcome you here this afternoon. Glad to see you, Ms. Snook. We understand that you are going to be making a presentation and we welcome you here to the City Council and so happy to have you. Thank you very much, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council. I am Linda Snook, I'm the current Chair of the Santa Cruz Sister Cities Committee and also of the Shingu Subcommittee and I'm here with my fellow subcommittee member and chaperone, Adrienne Harrell. Chandra Donahue, who couldn't be here today but she's also a chaperone. I always like to quote our mission which is to promote peace through mutual respect, understanding and cooperation, one individual and one community at a time. And we work with our members to play an essential part in creating a more peaceful world through people-to-people exchanges and initiatives. And I can't think of a better way to do that than through a homestay-based youth delegation. So I'm really happy and proud that we are resuming this youth delegation. I'm delighted to present to you the 14 youth delegates and two interns who have been selected from a large group of wonderful applicants this year to represent the City of Santa Cruz in our sister city of Shingu, Japan. After getting to know them a bit better during the language and culture classes we've been holding for them, I'm quite sure they will all do a fine job of representing our city and of hosting the incoming high school delegation which we'll be visiting from Shingu this summer. And shout out and thank you to the Parks and Rec Department for all their help with the logistics, all the activities that we do with the children and adults. Following the incoming high school delegation this fall begins the 50th anniversary of our friendship with Shingu. And in honor of that, that we have invited the mayor of Shingu, their city council and some honored business people to come visit Santa Cruz. And I'm very happy to say that they have accepted a Mayor Taoka Sensei and others will be here October 2nd through 9th, 2024, this fall. And I know you will all want to help welcome them. And they in turn invite all of you to visit Shingu as a mayoral delegation for the 50th anniversary in fall of 2025. And I hope many of you will take advantage of that opportunity. As these young folks are about to find out, Shingu is a remarkable place for its natural beauty and mostly for its very kind citizens who have many times in the last 50 years gone way above and beyond to welcome Santa Cruz citizens and show them an amazing experience of a lifetime. And I thank you all for promoting or supporting our mission to promote peace by cultivating individual friendships across all kinds of borders. Not only across country borders, but within our community. We have five different schools represented here in this group of young people. And I'd like to present now our youth delegates, intern Aidan Bingham and Naomi Gerhardt who's not here today. And the youth delegation, Amara Anderson, Avery Schrum, Daisy Harlin, Daphne Bingham, Eliza McGinnis, Gillian Hall, Ninja Maxfield, Rene McKee, Joaquin Cervantes Brewer, Logan Franks, Marina Tucker, Naomi Duria, and Matthew Salas could not be here today. Well, thank you. Before we invite the students up to stand here and we'll take a picture and so on, I know that we want to make a couple of remarks and thank you for everything. My colleague, Ms. Brown, I'm gonna see if I can bring her to tears here because as we were getting ready for this, she said to me that this is gonna change your life, that she has been to Japan and this is gonna change your life. But Ms. Brown, see if I can make you cry. I've never been able to cry on cue, but I do feel it. I really feel the emotion. It's an incredible place. The people that you will meet and engage with will, they really will open up new ways of thinking about the world. I'm just, I'm so incredibly stoked for you all that you're gonna do this. Close. Ms. Joaquin, just recognize. I just wanna congratulate every one of you as my colleagues share, this is gonna be an incredible experience for you. I had the opportunity of going in 2019 and the level of care and welcoming that the people of Shingu provide us when we visit is overwhelming and truly to the mission of promoting peace and interconnected worlds and people, it feels like that in 50 years is something to be so proud of. I wanna thank you both for all of the things that you do in terms of volunteering to make this happen for our city and our community and along with our city parks and rec department. It's a really outstanding relationship that we have and I think you're all gonna have an incredible experience and I can't wait to hear about it after. So have fun and enjoy. Now let me, for a couple of minutes here, we're going to recess the council meeting so that you can have an opportunity to come up here and get behind us with a couple of pictures. Council's back in session. We are now resuming our work on item number 20 and council members, I wanna make sure have you had an opportunity to ask your initial set of questions? All right, good. This is the opportunity for the public to comment on this appeal. So if provided you're not an appellant, we're gonna hear from them one more time but if you are here to speak on this item, this is the opportunity to do so. Let me ask if you would like, just come on up. Come on up. Good afternoon, welcome to the council. Good afternoon. Good afternoon and thank you city council. My name is Margaret Gannon and I live at 2395 Delaware Avenue, DeAnne's a mobile home park, a senior MoMA home park. We have about 200 mobile home spaces and around 300 plus residents, the majority of them are seniors. The park and all of its residents want to thank you the city council, Bernie Escalani and the Santa Cruz city de police department, Evan Morrison, the director of the safe parking program for enforcing the oversized vehicle ordinance and giving back seniors and all others their peace of mind regarding their health and safety on the city streets of Santa Cruz. It's working, let's keep it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon mayor, city council members, city staff, city attorney. My name is Carl James Fox, lived in Santa Cruz 55 years. I'm disabled, my mother's disabled, she's 90 in a wheelchair. She lives at 1010 Pacific Avenue. The last two years I've been parking the handicapped vehicle that I have outside her apartment. It's a school bus, it's exactly 20 feet long, it has decals of wheelchairs on it, it has a wheelchair on the license plate, and it has a placard that I put in the window. I received the first ticket on December 4th. It's parked in the handicapped spot in front of five guys across the street from 1010 Pacific. I sent the ticket for review, I didn't want it dismissed. I requested an official measurement. Within a week, I had two more tickets, I took those for review. The tickets were sent for review back to the officer who wrote them. He's not a parking control officer, so maybe it's the first tickets he ever wrote, I don't know. He sent back saying your vehicle is 20 feet six inches, your reviews denied. It came back from San Jose, it was already past due by the time I received it. So I said, can I send it for further review? They said, no, you've missed that window now. I said, well where's the official measurement station? That's the question I have for the city attorney, for the chief of police, for anyone else that's responsible for writing these tickets. If you have an ordinance based on measurement, doesn't there need to be a mechanism for the people that have vehicles to be measured? What if my vehicle's proven to me to be 20 feet one inch? Well then I know I can modify it one inch because I know the official measurement. So these tickets, I'm being told, cannot be reviewed. I was told by the manager over there at the parking control office. ADA law does not supersede the city ordinance. Now this is having an effect on my life and my mother's life. We're both disabled, we've been in Santa Cruz 65 years. I'm her sole caregiver. I parked that van there to give us a sense of relief knowing in case of emergency, we could transport. Those are my questions. I need relief from this issue right now. Thank you. I just bought a new tape measure. My vehicle's parked right outside, Mayor. I want an official measurement. Okay, fair enough. Thank you, sir. Thank you. What we're going to do is there's a person online. We'll take them and then we'll take you. Person online, good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Person online, good afternoon. Three, two, one. Amy Chen Mills, welcome to the council meeting. Good to have you here. No, we'll hear you after Ms. Mills. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for being here, for being our council members. I didn't think I was going to say anything. I was really interested to hear how this issue has developed from all sides and it sounds like there's been a lot of really good communication and working together on some of these issues. Thanks to everyone and the stakeholders. I think that's great. And I'm glad for that, given that I was on the committee on homelessness. I just want to speak a little bit to my own personal experience. I had a friend who was working for me from time to time at my house who became unhoused. She had nowhere to go. The first thing she did was take all of her savings and buy the most rundown. Ridiculous RV that she could find and ended up down on Delaware. At that time, I was trying to help her talk to her on the phone. Her hair was falling out. She was losing weight by the day, losing pounds daily. She was so stressed out. She could barely operate the vehicle. It was a huge vehicle for her to try to operate on her own. And at one point I said, why don't you come, we're going to go out of town and you can house it, park the RV in front of our house. Within probably 10 minutes of her getting in front of our house, this was before the OVO, we had two neighbors come to our house and start calling the police about her vehicle. And I know that people get alarmed and concerned. I told them that she's house sitting for us, but it's a sort of a tale, I think of two different realities, those who are housed and how fearful they become and those who are actually living in fear for their lives, which she was. Finally, I was able to get her to a church that I'm a part of and to actually park her RV there. My husband had to drive it for her because she could not drive it. And it's taken probably nine months for her to start to regain her mental health. So the fact that we can provide people with stability, which I don't know that tier two really does, but I know that the armory does. And so I sort of recommend that the comments that the appellants have made be incorporated as much as possible. I really like what Sandy said about codifying things because otherwise, what are the rules? It's just up to individual officers, is it up to individual staff members, the person who's answering phones on the weekends, is that a rule that we have that they have to do that or they're just willing to do that or what is that? So I think that codification is important and I'm glad I was here and thank you so much. Thank you. We're gonna go back to the person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the city council meeting. Hi, good afternoon. This is Serge Cagno, Recovery Cafe, stepping up Santa Cruz. I really wanna state my appreciation for all of the time staff have put into this. I appreciate services and I appreciate compassionate structured services. I'd like to say that there should be some data as we look at the permit. Data that should be accepted should be quantified effects and one of the specific bits within the permit was the lack of quantified effects on the unhoused. Data that should not be accepted should be qualitative or anecdotal evidence. Data that should not be accepted should be calls for service, which we know can be high percentage of frivolous and non-lawbreaking calls for service. I'd also like to appreciate that staff are working on having a dumping site. I think that would make a huge difference in this entire conversation for the community, but within the discussion that we had, maybe I missed it, but I didn't hear Lee talk about the length of time to find such a site or the fact that that actually got started back in 2018 during the catch when I first asked about that. So to every one of these kind of meetings and appeals and all that stuff, there's always the city is working on it and it never seems to be happening. So an actual timeline would be great. In the permit documents that went to the planning committee for them to vote on, one of the comments was the County of Santa Cruz has an ordinance like this. There was no comment that the Coastal Commission actually told them that they never actually applied to the Coastal Commission and the Coastal Commission staff actually told them that they were breaking the Coastal Act and they've still gone on with it. I think that's a valid piece of information as you make your decisions. But I do want to say I appreciate the compassionate services where they fit into this process. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? We'll take the next person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Can you hear me? Yes. This is Robert Norris of Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom. The OVO is itself a law like the camping ban, which does not fairly serve the majority of homeless folks in their vehicles as a camping ban, really appears to, but does makes no attempt to serve the majority of people who are outside. It simply plays a whack-a-mole. And in this case with the OVO, it is serving the city staff's purpose, which is to essentially as Police Chief Escalante as reportedly said, make the city as uncomfortable as possible for those who are outside without appearing to do so. This happens when you run folks out of town and out of sight. This has got to be shoehorned into a liberal fantasy that meets the Coastal Commission's guidelines. And that's what this is all about. Those are coastal access, justice requirements, adequate vehicatures, storage. I have some familiarity with this because I appealed it way back in 2015. The issue is not to be compassionate as Fred so piously intoned or even reasonable. Otherwise, the city will have in this last year with its many grants already established waste disposal stations, which would meet neighborhoods concerns as well as those folks in their vehicles and set up truly workable tier three programs. They have not done this. You have an overloaded program which doesn't serve. It serves some people well, but a very small number. Just as the shelter program serves some people but has nothing to do with simply dismisses the majority of homeless folks who are outside with not even sanitary stations and toilets and being provided for them. Forcing those whose only home is their vehicle here is for enforcing them to move twice a day here is cruel and unusual punishment and should not be done. Let's do something about it. Thank you. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? One more hand. One more hand. Person online, good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, I live on the lower west side and I wanna thank the council and city staff for having worked on the oversized vehicle ordinance. It's been many, many years and we can see the results in our neighborhoods where our homes are. I want to thank you very much. I particularly wanna point out Mr. Keely's comments, Mayor Keely's comments a few minutes ago, I wholeheartedly agree with that. Also, I want to say that those of us who I believe the city is really bending over backwards to accommodate these folks. Those of us who pay property tax, some of us a lot of property tax are funding this operation and I think it's a good thing to do. But I find item number 11 on the proposed changes for the $200 gas to be an absolute insult to those of us who are working hard to pay our mortgages, to pay our property tax and to pay our bills. So again, thank you. Please deny this appeal. Thank you. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? Anyone else wish to make comment on this last opportunity? Thank you. Mr. Meisler, it is now your opportunity to take up to five minutes or the appellant, take up to five minutes to provide any additional rebuttal or response that you wish to provide. Thank you. First, I wanna respond, before I respond to the sort of point by point things, I just wanna say something, a personal note about my own participation in the stakeholder group. Reggie and I shared attendance because sometimes we just couldn't make it. The first stakeholder meeting that I went to, I was truly shocked at the palpable hostility in the room that I felt as a housed community member. There was one other stakeholder who was critical of OVO and they were on Zoom and every other stakeholder in the room was a supporter of OVO. Neither one of the unhoused or vehicular dwelling stakeholders were there and it was shocking. And it took me a couple of days to get over it and for all the wonderful effort that staff has put into it, this was not a trauma-informed process. And people who have lived experience of houselessness, along with so many of the rest of us in our society, in our communities, need trauma-informed processes. I am not surprised that Jamie didn't come back. I was very happily surprised that the Tier 3, the 24-7 stakeholder was there. The next time I attended, I was very glad to hear his thoughts. I think that he was incredibly important to the process. I also wanna say that my perception is that we spoke about most of these things in the meetings. And I'm not trying to throw shade on anybody, but my perception was that the suggestions of people who were in favor of OVO were taken percentage-wise more than our suggestions. And that may be because our suggestions aren't seen as viable or not supported by as many of the letters that you're getting, but these are justice-based. They're based on what we hear from people with lived experience and they're based on the participation of ACLU and disability rights advocates. And these are experts, these are legal experts. They spend their professional lives and much of their free time working on these issues. So I think it's unfortunate that some of what we suggested, that's one reason why we're bringing it to you here because we need to be heard. We have a duty to be heard, okay? So I just wanna do a couple of quick points. Thank you, Council Member Sandy, for bringing up the inconsistency of the application of the law. Flexibility is great. It can also be harmful, incredibly harmful to people. Many, many people, when you get the data, we can even send it to you because we filed FOIAs to get it. Many people have multiple tickets and you've heard a little bit about the stress that this can cause people. Some people get left alone. Some people get multiple tickets. Some people get harassed. Some people don't. This is uneven and fundamentally unfair and yes, one of the reasons why we're pursuing this is because it's not codified and we don't know what could happen in one year, three years, five years. So again, we feel that this is our responsibility. We also see with the, there's no honeypot truck. There's an enforcement before services. So I know that this is very challenging and the city is working on it, but there are sort of like, up at the UCSC trailer parks, they have external tanks. There are things that are less expensive and less infrastructure. We have documented two vehicles with the ADH tags that have gotten multiple tickets. You heard from one person, again, inconsistency and in terms of gas offsets, community charity is not an adequate substitute for systemic solutions to what is a systemic problem of houselessness and a cost of living crisis. So I think that covered everything for me. Sorry to like rush, rush, rush. We are disappointed that we're not hearing as much positive indication about our list as we would like and I would really urge you all to really go for it. Listen to us, listen to our stakeholders. We're the people affected. Thank you. Matters back before the council. Council Member Caldwell Johnson is recognized. Thank you. I'd like to move to deny the appeal and uphold the planning commission's acknowledgement of environmental determination and approval of the coastal permit based on the findings listed in the draft resolution and the conditions of approval attached as exhibit A. I have a second portion to my motion. I emailed it to you, Bonnie, is to direct staff to report back to the OVO subcommittee and the stakeholder group regarding the actions that are in process such as a detailed outgoing message for overnight parking program regarding where individuals can park on an emergency basis, calling during non-business hours such as progress on mobile dumping station. There's a motion. Is there a second? There's a second by the vice mayor. Madam, excuse me, Ms. Caldwell Johnson may open on your motion. Unless others need to see it. I'm sorry, excuse me. Who's asking if she wanted to, if we needed to see the motion? Okay. If you could, that'd be just fine, put that up there. Sure. Yeah, I just, you know, this has been an issue in our community for over a decade. I know Vice Mayor Golder has worked on it. I think that's what I don't want to speak for you, but maybe inspired you to seek elected office. I know a lot of community members have worked on this and it's been a long road. It's been a contentious road. It's both brought our community together and pulled us apart at some times. And I think that we've landed in a really exceptional place. I don't think I'm hearing and seeing from others in the community that we've landed in an exceptional place. We as a city have gone above and beyond in addressing this public health, public safety issue. And let me just say it's a public health and public safety issue for those who are housed and those who are unhoused. We're connecting people to services. We're connecting people to long-term housing. And the numbers are there in a short amount of time. We've connected, I know the whole, the whole homeless action response plan, we've connected around 200 people to permanent housing. This is being noticed by our community members. It's being noticed by other communities around the nation. And I think that, sure, there are things that we can do to improve. There are always things that we can do to improve. So let's continue on this path. Let's continue to work together and let's continue to learn from each other. There is always more need. There will always be more need. And as Mayor Keely mentioned, this is outside of our scope what we're doing. Health and Human Services really belongs in the county. We are working closely with the county. We have commitment from our county supervisors, including supervisor comings, to work on this issue with us. We've been in touch with him. We've been in touch with his office. So there's lots happening at the county level. Mayor Keely and I now serve on the Housing for Health Policy Board. This came up as a discussion point in the last policy board that providing more safe parking for oversized vehicles and vehicles should be a priority that all jurisdictions take up. So that the burden isn't just on the city of Santa Cruz to address the needs that we have in our city and county-wide. So I'm really grateful for the work that staff has done. I'm grateful for the work of the stakeholder group, every single person that served on the stakeholder group and the community at large that again has worked on this for over a decade now. So I'll leave it there. Thank you. For the debate over discussion. Ms. Brown is recognized. I'll just make a couple of brief comments. I am not gonna, this is mostly for the appellants. I'm not gonna try to include these conditions here. I absolutely understand why you presented them. I appreciate the work you've done, the thoughtfulness of your participation and your recommendations. But like you, I'm concerned about the hostility that I may encounter in trying to move this forward and it really seems futile. So I would just say that I support, I think your points are really well taken and I support you. I'm not gonna try to wordsmith conditions here because I just don't see any percentage in it. But I do think that, and I will speak to my colleagues on the council that it would behoove you and city leadership to think about the concerns that were expressed by the Coastal Commissioners, in particular Commissioner Nothoff and that these are potentially gonna be looked at by another body that has to approve this. So I'm just gonna encourage you to think seriously about that as things proceed. I think it's really critical that community engagement continue and kind of disappointed to see the limited role or the limited time that maybe spent engaging with the stakeholder group moving forward. I think that it would behoove us as a city to really reconsider that and work more closely. So that we don't have situation, we don't need to have situations like what Mr. Fox, did I get that right? Explain where we clearly have some misinformation and we have people who are now in struggling with that. So as an aside, please can somebody follow up with this gentleman to try to work out what is happening because if our parking enforcement is saying that the OVO supersedes disability placards, that is just not the case. And so that's just a plea. I think I'll leave it there because I don't wanna just keep carrying on with my concerns. City manager is recognized. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to provide an opportunity for Mr. Butler to respond with a proposed condition regarding one of the concerns that Council Member Brown raised earlier. Mr. Butler. Thank you, Mayor. So in response to some of the concerns that we heard from the community members, during the deliberation here, we were coordinating with both the police chief and our parking programs manager to understand how from a perspective of implementation, we might be able to address one of those concerns. And so I'll read this condition and then would welcome any questions. So it says, the city shall recommend that engineering officer overseeing parking ticket appeals should waive any OVO parking tickets received within a 72-hour period, during which time the appellant provides evidence that their vehicle was disabled and unable to relocate. What this would mean is if they have, so we have the 24-hour provision right now. And if we had something where they provided a receipt to the hearing officer saying, here's where I had my vehicle fixed. It was inoperable at the time. Here's where I purchased a new alternator or whatever part it may be. And it was inoperable at the time. This would be one way. And the reason why we've worded it this way is because it would be challenging for our police officers who are providing tickets to know, for example, if no one was at the vehicle that it is disabled, or if there's a different officer that's coming out, they may not recognize that. So if it's the will of the council, this is a way that that could be addressed while also not adversely affecting how we would implement the program. Thank you. Thank you for offering that. Yes, I'll include that in the motion. It's okay by the seconder. I wanna make sure, know what's now going to be included in the motion. What is it we're putting in the motion? What is it you want in the motion? To add this additional condition of approval. It's on the screen. So it would be. Go to that. I have a question. Okay. The vice mayor is recognized. I have a question specifically about this. My understanding is you're not allowed to work on vehicles on our streets already under existing codes. No matter, you know, wouldn't you have to have it towed to a garage to work? I mean, am I wrong? Don't think you wanna go there. So then I would say someone's, then I would say the opposite is true. Someone, if it is, some people are getting special treatment being allowed to work on their vehicles. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, council members. So the California Gavin Hussey parking program manager for the city, the California vehicle code does specify that disabled vehicles should be parked off street and either in a driveway or parking garage. So there is language in there about working on disabled vehicles in the right-of-way and operable vehicles are supposed to be removed to sub-side streets or off-street locations. But I think what we're trying to do here is make sure there's an accommodation. We're not sure if the vehicle is disabled. We would be willing to work with the individual to allow them to try to make accommodations for their parking on the street. If I might ask, thank you. I'll ask you some questions, Mr. I understand. So Coastal Commission approves our ordinance at some point and now we're in this one-year review period. We're moving along. As I understand it, stakeholder group meets, public outreach took place, Planning Commission has a hearing. So from when the Coastal Commission approved the contents of our measure as we are in the review period to go back to them at the stakeholder level where there are changes recommended that are reflected in what you are now proposing. In other words, were any of the stakeholder recommendations included in what you now want to bring forward to the Coastal Commission? In this, what you've got on the screen right now? I don't know about what's on the screen right now. In general, yes, in fact, lots from the balance. In addition to the stakeholder meetings, there were other public outreach efforts, is that correct? Above and beyond the stakeholder meeting? We have heard from many members of the public surrounding this, both through the public hearing process and separate. And in the public hearing process and outside of it, any of the recommendations that people have made, are any of those recommendations included in what you've brought forward? Yes. The Planning Commission held a hearing on this matter and did they make any changes? They accepted recommended changes that staff made at the time of the hearing in response to the feedback that we received. Okay, now the reason I do that is because what I want to be certain of is that as we've gotten closer and closer and closer to this meeting, outreach has resulted in changes, changes, and changes. In fact, one more is being recommended right here right now as part of this motion, if I understand it. The reason I do that is that I understand the appellant's arguments. What I don't accept is that somehow from when the Coastal Commission approved this to now going back to the Coastal Commission, nobody got heard, no changes were made, et cetera. Because it seems to me that lots of people were heard, lots of changes have been made. They aren't every change that everybody wanted, but there are quite a number of changes. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. That helps me understand what I thought was in front of us. I'm going to take just a moment with my colleague, Ms. Brown, who knows because we've had a very, very longstanding relationship that preceded this, our appearance together, our joint service on the city council. I hope that at least insofar as the time that I've been mayor, I hope that you have never felt that either my comportment of these meetings or that these meetings are hostile to you. Because if you feel that, I extend my apology to you and I will do my best going forward to not make you feel that way. As you made a reference to hostility here, and I, again, I extend my apology if you feel that way as a result of anything I've done. It is, I think, a testimony to this group of people who are on here right now that we can disagree without being disagreeable and it's one of the things I've really enjoyed about being mayor, but if our feelings are our feelings, we can't debate them. So if that feeling occurred to you, I apologize. For the debate or discussion, Ms. Bruner is recognized. Thank you. Good discussion. Thank you for all the follow-up information. I think what I'd like to just make sure is call out a point to be discussed at future stakeholder meetings so that we can get clearer on the California vehicle code has a provision of a 24-hour period for breakdown of vehicles and Director Butler cited an instance of where one vehicle was given a week so that, you know, we approach it with flexibility, which I think is great, but I think we need to know for certain like a range. Like you have a minimum of 24 hours up to one week for those types of instances. I think that stability of knowing is huge and I don't know what that time is. We aren't here to make that decision now, but I would really like to see that solidified a little more. So coming back to us. Happy to have that continued discussion. Through the debate or discussion. No debate or discussion, but clarification. Who was the second? Okay. And then, sorry, I asked you, but I didn't hear what your answer was. Your motion said resolution as presented at the point had edits to the conditions of approval aside from this one. What is the recommended? The conditions that we read through, that Tim read through. So I can include, I can give you a moment on each of these slides if you'd like to read them. So what I refer to in my motion is as it's written on the agenda and it refers to the conditions of approval attached as exhibit A. So there were additions to that exhibit A. That's correct. So we just need to change that language, I think. To also include the recommendations. You're okay with the recommended addition. Yes. Yes. That's all I wanted to clarify. Correct. So however we capture that. Is that sufficient? Bonnie, did you see it? As presented. There you go. Thank you. So attached as exhibit A, just conditions of approval as presented instead of attached at exhibit A. Thank you. Thank you for that, Ms. Bush. No further debate or discussion. The clerk will call the roll. Council member is Nusa. Brown? No. Aye. Brunner? Aye. Eilentary Johnson? Aye. Grace Marigold? Aye. And Mary Keely? Aye. Motion passes and so ordered. We are on item 21. Item 21 is an ordinance amending Santa Cruz Municipal Code chapter 13.12 use of skateboards and bicycles at city-owned parks and recreational facilities. We will give an opportunity here for a changing of the guard for a moment. That's right. The changing of the guard has occurred. I'll recognize Ms. Duck. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, mayor and city council members. Stephanie Duck with the city attorney's office. Here to present to you today with director of parks and recreation, Tony Elliott on proposed amendments to Santa Cruz Municipal Code chapter 13.12. I prepared a very, very brief slide show for everyone so they had everything up in front of them. And Bonnie has graciously agreed to help me move through the slide. So thank you. So the city adopted Santa Cruz Municipal Code chapter 13.12 to comply with requirements in the health and safety code. The health and safety code previously prohibited an operator of a skate park from allowing a person to ride a skateboard in that facility unless that person was wearing a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads. A local public agency that owned or operated a skateboard park could, that was not supervised on a regular basis, satisfy those requirements by adopting an ordinance requiring that a person riding a skateboard in that skate park wear a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads. And by posting signage, affording notice that the person was required to wear that safety gear and could be subject to citation or failing to do so. Next slide, please. So these proposed amendments, health and safety code section 115-800 was amended in 2020 to incorporate reference to skateboards and other wheeled recreational devices. So those are defined as non-motorized bicycles, scooters, inline skates, roller skates or wheelchairs being used for recreational purposes. These proposed amendments before the council today update chapter 13.12 to incorporate reference to wheeled recreational devices. And so as written now chapter 13.12 would prohibit a person from riding a skateboard or other wheeled recreational device in a city park or recreational facility that is designed for such use of those devices unless that person is wearing a helmet, elbow pad and knee pads. Next slide, please. And finally, and just very quickly, I think it's worth noting that the health and safety code explicitly deems the riding of a skateboard or other wheeled recreational device at a city owned or operated facility, a hazardous recreational activity in certain circumstances. And so that would be when the person is riding, the device is 12 years of age or older. The type of riding was a stunt trick, lunge or stunt trick or loose riding that caused the injury. And the city had adopted an ordinance and posted signage in compliance with health and safety code section 115800. So as the council is aware, under the government code, a public entity is not liable to a person who participates in a hazardous recreational activity. And so by adopting these amendments, the city will not only be ensuring compliance with the health and safety code, but will also afford the city immunity in some circumstances. That is all, very straightforward and quick, but we are here for questions if you have any. Council members, questions? Questions? Questions? It just sounds like an update, a state-required update, helmets, knee pads, safety, at skate parks. And wheeled recreational devices. Okay, fairly straightforward. Thank you. For the questions or comments, be glad to entertain a motion. I'm sorry, excuse me. Public, anyone with us wish to comment on this item? Anybody online want to comment on this item? Seeing and hearing none, the matter is back before the council. There's a motion by Ms. Contar Johnson. Second by Ms. Brown. And under debate and discussion, seeing and hearing none, like we'll call the roll. Council members Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watson. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentari-Johnson. Aye. Vice-Miracle. Aye. Mayor Culey. Aye. Motion carries in so ordered. Thank you for your good work. We are on item 22, Parks and Recreation Fiscal Year 2023 annual update in 2024 progress update. Mr. Elliott, thank you for all of your good work on so many fronts and for a wonderful Saturday morning out at Harvey West Park for the first pitch of Little League season. If you have not seen what the photos from Mr. Elliott in the Parks Department, it is the cutest thing in the history of cute things. You should have out yourself with that. Mr. Director, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor. Thank you very much for that. There was an excellent summary of opening day on Saturday. I appreciate that. It got cuter as it went along too because it was majors and then T-ball by the end. So it got a little less organized as things went along. Thank you so much for the opportunity today to present our 2023, this is fiscal year 2023 annual report and a brief progress update on fiscal year 2024. I'm joined with our principal management analyst, Lindsay Bass. I will do a lot of talking. So bear with me and I'll try to be efficient as we go through this, but appreciate the opportunity to provide updates and we will jump into it here. So as far as context on our annual report. Sorry to interrupt, so you're not screen sharing yet. Oh, is it not up there? Thank you for that. I'm assuming that the audience is all online for this. So I mean, not too many folks here, but I know. Thank you. All right, perfect. Okay, thanks Lindsay. All right, so wanted to give our annual report a little bit of context. This is actually our fourth year as a department doing an annual report. And this is really about performance measurement, telling the story of what we accomplished as a department in service to the city of Santa Cruz over the last year. So for some context, Parks and Rec is guided by the city's general plan, by our parks master plan for 2030, a whole range of property specific plans like the Pogan and master plan to different management plans that we have. And then down to a strategic plan, a departmental strategic plan that's really complimentary of the city's strategic plan. And then each year, of course, through the budget, we submit our goals and achievements through the budget that are reflective of that strategic plan. So there's a whole series of plans, guiding documents that really guide what we do and why we do it. And so the annual report that we're presenting today is really a look back. It's a retrospective that in some ways will feel like a really long time ago, fiscal year 2023, but sort of a performance assessment and summary of the work done in fiscal year 23. So in many ways, Santa Cruz is Parks and Recreation. I won't belabor these points, but I think a lot of what we really love, the quality of life aspects, the health and wellness, the conservation, climate resiliency, the economy, property values, visitor spending, really Parks and Rec is at the heart of so much in our town. By the numbers, this is reflected in the annual report. So 2 million plus people visited the wharf in 23, nearly 100,000 participants in our programs and classes, over 120,000 rounds of golf and disc golf played up at De La Viega in 2023 and then values of trees, values of the acreage that we maintain. So a lot of data, a lot of these points throughout the annual report. In terms of economic impact, just a brief illustration here. So this is the visitation at the wharf over fiscal year 2023 and you see this spike sometime in late June of 2023. And that really is reflective of one of our key events out at the wharf, what he's on the wharf, really drives that tourism, drives that economic impact. So really right at the heart of what we do in Parks and Rec. If you look at Visit Santa Cruz County's annual reports as well, they reflect on what are the drivers of tourism, what are the drivers of our local economy. A lot of those are reflected through Parks and Rec. So our beaches, our trails, surf spots, cultural attractions as well, the wharf surf museum, not to mention our top 10 world ranked disc golf course. So a lot of things drawing people here as well as serving people who live and work here as well. In terms of our mission delivery, wanted to reflect on, wanted to reflect on, oh yes, there's an image here. We'll talk about in a moment. So in our annual report, we reflect on the three themes of our mission in Parks and Recreation. And so that mission is rooted in providing quality public spaces and experiences, fostering equity and bettering the environment. So just a couple of highlights I'll go over that again are reflected in the plan, but just to call out. So in terms of providing quality public spaces and experiences, we completed the Garfield Park and Playground renovation, I believe Vice Mayor Golder helped us cut the ribbon on that one in 23. In that year, a record clam chowder event and for fiscal year 24, we'll have a new record that we'll report on about a year from now. Civic Auditorium attracted some of its biggest shows and events in a long time from Bob Dylan to Modest Mouse, Bonnie Raitt. Bonnie Raitt ran with no power on backup generators during storms. So it was a tremendous year at the Civic Auditorium. In terms of fostering equity, a lot of things, but just a quick highlight. We had some antiquated rules in our softball leagues about related to gender that we've really updated and modernized and really broke down a lot of barriers as it relates to gender in our different leagues. Partnered with the Juneteenth Committee on the Juneteenth Celebration, included a march and parade. We partnered with Shared Adventures and Day on the Beach to expand access to Cal Beach and expand opportunities for people with disabilities to enjoy the ocean and the beach. In terms of bettering the environment a lot there as well, we leveraged research with UCSC and grant funding to see really a huge sort of explosion of tar plant regrowth out at Arana Gulch. As successful as we've seen in many years, a lot of invasive removal funded through another grant out in Moor Creek and Pogonip. A lot of water conservation measures out of the golf course in our parks as well. So just a lot of tremendous work in 2023. And then in the center photo, I'm pretty sure Council Member Bruner came back and won that race. So we'll have to look back at the record on that one. So a few key lessons that we learned just wanted to reflect on, and this is part of the reason we do these annual reports is to reflect on where we've been, what we went through, what we learned. And so I just wanted to call out a couple of these. And this is in the report as well. But 2023 fiscal year 2023 was really the end of the bench land in Camp Med. And so that was a huge cap, 240 plus people who were living in that camp at the time really just grew out of control and was a really dangerous place to be bad for the people living there, bad for the community members living in the area, the park users, et cetera. And so, but I think that the Bench Lines in Camp Med was also a great example of the collaboration among different departments in the city. So this is really, if I can recall, the city manager was down there helping clean up and take out trash one day. But the collaboration among departments from police, fire, city manager's office, public works, parks and rec, it was really a great example of that cross departmental collaboration coming together to address that camp, offer everybody shelter. Not everybody took shelter, but it was offered and we were able to abate that camp, get the site cleaned up. And then a few months after that, we had Earth Day. Mayor Keely joined us there on the Duck Island stage. And it felt like there was never a camp there in the first place. So a huge transition from early fiscal year 23 to Earth Day in April, that should say Earth Day 2023. And then the, where we are now is the San Lorenzo Park redesign, where we've had more than 2000 community members engaged in this process to think about the future of the park moving forward. So kind of tough times collaborating with city partners and working toward a kind of a brighter path ahead. So just an example that we called out in the report. And building on this too, I just wanted to reflect on our community partnerships as well. And so there's some amazing human beings up on the screen. Once again, Jane Mio and the best, the Bench Lands Environmental Stewardship Team really made sort of lemonade out of lemons in many ways with the Bench Lands and Camp Met, but really creating a stewardship team in that riparian corridor. So just brilliant work. Jane won a state award for her work with this group, all the camp was going on. River cleanup events as well. You see save the waves in the picture here, save our shores, Coastal Watershed Council, incredible partnerships there. And then San Lorenzo Park neighbors and many amazing organizations that really just partnered together through again tough times while the encampment was in the park, but really did some great work and in fact award-winning work. So some good stuff. So that is a quick run through of our fiscal year 23 annual report. This is the cover sheet for the community or for the council. This report will be found on the city's website under Santa Cruz Parks and Rec.com. It's not up yet. Pending council direction today will make final edits to the report. We'll get that posted in the next week or two up on the website. So that I'll transition over to our 2024 progress update. And this was my view from opening day, this past Saturday with all the kids. And so just wanted to reflect on a few items here related to 2024. So we're nearing the end of fiscal year 2024. Again, this is guided, our work in 2024 is guided by our strategic plan and the city's strategic plan just to sort of orient. What are we doing and why are we doing it? A lot of really positive things happening this year. The San Lorenzo Park redesign I mentioned is ongoing. The council has heard about the master plan on aging and age friendly designation through AARP that's been before the city council. A lot of open space invasive removal is ongoing, grant funding, the council heard from Santa Cruz Mountain Trail Stewardship earlier about the great work that they're doing. So a lot of things ongoing event grant program, it's collaboration with the city manager's office that we just announced a week or so ago, getting grants out to event organizers in the community. A lot of internal assessment as well. We're doing a facility condition assessment to look at the condition of all of our 70 facilities that we oversee through Parks and Recreation. What is their condition? What investment are we making and should we make into the future? We are looking at a fee study in partnership with the planning department to look at our Quimby and Park tax, our impact fees, looking to update those. So doing that work as well. And one that we're excited about and reference back to this image is a Harvey West Park redesign and rethinking the Harvey West pool as well. So we'll launch that this year and we'll look forward to going through a robust community process, thinking about the future of Harvey West Park. A few challenges I just wanted to highlight in the midst of fiscal year 24. And these are kind of ongoing and these could be talking points probably for most departments within the city, but we continue to be very challenged with just insufficient system investment. We have around $100 million in deferred maintenance across the system. A lot of just failures of our facilities. Some new ones in the past week, including the roof at London Nelson Community Center, the roof and the structure at the grill, the golf lodge up at De La Viega Park. So continuing to kind of see and feel the lack of investment over years in trying to find ways to invest in that and make those improvements. Anyway, we can lean staff. Again, a theme that could be for many department in the city, but I had a chance anecdotally to work with our medians crew, which is a subset of our neighborhood parks team. We have two guys, many and Joaquin are their names that maintain 13 miles of our city's median. So we were out there on Friday as the Metro buses are zipping by and it's a little bit of terrifying work, but incredible work that these teams do. Our urban forestry division is a division of one, Leslie Keady that the council knows well. So really trying to figure out how do we do this? How do we sustain this? How do we make these investments into the future with the lean teams that we have? And last thing I wanted to mention on this slide related to Harvey West, I think that when we think of a progress update or the state of parks and recreation in some ways, it really varies a lot. So if you are a baseball player on opening day and you go to Harvey West Park, you may say, hey, these are the best fields in Santa Cruz County, city parks and rec, they're doing great. Parks are looking good. My experience is wonderful. So that can be that unique experience, but a hundred yards further into the park, we have an active encampment. We have a public health crisis, a Shigella outbreak. We have a lot of people suffering in that space. The park is getting trashed. And so if you are venturing into the park back in Friendship Garden, your experience of the parks is they're failing, that we're doing a terrible job. This isn't a safe place to go. People are struggling here. So the experience can be vastly different even within a matter of a hundred yards or so in a given park. And so in between both of those, I'll build on this a little bit more. In between those, we have a pool. And that pool is our second most highly demanded asset according to the parks master plan, but the pool is also failing. And we don't have the budget to keep the pool up and running. We don't have the staff or the really operators to run the pool. So just in this small area, this is sort of a case in point of what the parks and rec staff are sort of grappling with is providing the experience on a ball field. That could be great. Challenged with the large encampment and the public health outbreak a few hundred yards away. And then trying to meet the demand of the community in the pool. How do we fund this? How do we come up with creative partnerships or solutions? But the staff just in this one park are pulled many different directions just with those three pieces. So that's kind of the state of parks and rec. We can't really say what that is. It depends. It depends where you are. It depends what your experience is. So it's nuanced. And we just wanted to share that context and perspective from staff with the city council and with the community. Again, big picture, what we are really grappling with. Again, this could apply to any department in the city as this balance these trade-offs within our department. So on one hand, the budget, the staffing, the resources that we have balanced with our service offerings. So the portfolio that we have, which is almost 2000 acres and 50 parks and all of these facilities that we talk about. And then the service levels. And so this next slide. So as our budgets across the city and what we've seen recently with the status quo budgets, but with inflation, the sort of power of the dollar is reduced. And again, this is for all departments. But in Parks and Recreation, what that means is the power of that dollar is less and our service offerings are staying the same if not increasing. So for example, the rail trail is wonderful, but it's new scope. It's new portfolio for Parks and Rec to manage. So that's staying the same if not growing. So the result of this is our service levels are diminishing. So the quality of that median, the quality of the park, the quality of the experience that folks may have is steadily sort of decreasing. And so what we're trying to do is really sort of evaluate these three different pieces and evaluate these trade-offs and over time really be tough and think about the priorities that we have to set to try to utilize the resources we have to do the best we can with the portfolio that we have. So on that, almost done here. Thanks for bearing with me, but what we're really asking of the city council in many ways and really departments across the city is managing these trade-offs. So we want to make sure in all cases that we remain mission focused, that we don't get a scope creep or off mission in any areas. We want to really take a hard look at needs versus wants. So what are the core things that our community needs and really focus on those? We're going to maximize public good. As we talked about in the example of the San Lorenzo Park when a leverage partners both externally and internally, meaning partner with those nonprofit organizations in the community, for example, and then internally with the city manager's office with public works, police, fire, et cetera. That's where the sort of magic happens is when we're able to collaborate and partner across departments. And then find creative ways, of course, to grow our resources. Oops. So the, here's the crew. So this group right here, I just wanted to reflect on quickly, this crew is not satisfied with the status quo. This is a group of folks who live here, who work here and are not content with doing the best we can. They really want to make this a better place for the next generation. So just wanted to give a shout out to the crew here. And again, the passionate group really want to do it for the right reasons and make sure that we're not just managing, that we're not just maintaining, but we're really investing for the future. So the recommendation for the council today is to accept the fiscal year 2023, Parks and Rec annual report and direct the staff to continue evaluation of service levels, service offerings and associated resources in the delivery of our fiscal year 2024 goals. I'm happy to answer any questions. Mr. Director, thank you very much. Let me, actually I'm going to start over here for once. There we go. Yep. Ms. Brown. I don't have many questions, but it's that time of year for me to, first of all, it really is that time of year for me to ask the question. But I first I want to say once again, incredible work, the report you put together is phenomenal in terms of really demonstrating the breadth and depth of what you all do. Always want to find ways to provide more resources to your department because we see the benefits in our community across generations. All walks of life, it's just, it's really incredible and your ability to maintain the Cadillac, I think you said it was a Porsche at one time when we were talking Ferrari, it was a Ferrari, this Ferrari with such limited resources. It's just, it's really incredible. I have a question because anytime I see you here, I want to find out about what's happening with Neri Lagoon with the trails there. The fencing's done, things look good. On the other side, segment seven B is almost there. And I know that there's some areas where some additional repairs are warranted. Just wondering if that's programmed where you're at in terms of being able to make that happen. It's a great question, appreciate that. There's a lot of work going on at Neri Lagoon with the fencing and improvements there. I don't have an update on trail work specifically in Neri Lagoon, but I can get that information and follow up. Just on the recent grant that we got through the Habitat Conservation Fund that is wrapping up and so the new decking is in place and the new interpretive signs will be going in in the coming weeks. So that is one thing that is very nearly tied up in a bow. Great. I thought you were gonna ask, what about the pool? Which is gonna be my question. I'm gonna wait on that, I'll end with that question. I just wanna say first and foremost, there's no question that your division department, staff, the individuals care so deeply about the work they do and it doesn't go unnoticed by us or by our community. And 100% recognize the challenges as you clearly articulate with the experiences just within one of our facilities and one of our spaces, right? And so certainly wanting to have that conversation with my colleagues around how to move forward with more investment and resources. And I know I've talked to the city manager about that, specifically for this valued attribute of our community that makes it so exceptional. And I wanted to see about the pool. And I'm just, I didn't hear, I heard it but I didn't see it in the goals. And I'm wondering if there's an interest in wanting to have that as an explicit goal, given it's been a priority for so long to have the pool running, we're an ocean community, there's been more issues that have come before our public safety committee around ocean safety, having a community pool is so essential. And it's sad to be so underutilized for so many years. And I know we've talked about wanting to have it but I feel like however we can start to move that forward and I know we're doing assessments, et cetera, but I was hoping to see it in the goals. And I'm wondering if that's something you either wanna speak to that I may have missed or we might not consider adding potentially. Yeah, great question. We could certainly add it to the list here. Happy to do that. Just an update on everything that's happening related to the pool and I'll try to be brief on this. So we did initiate a pool feasibility study. We've actually just completed that in the past week or two to look at the condition of the pool and to evaluate the market. What are the aquatics needs in our city and in our county and then to look more broadly at our region in terms of what's the sort of state of the art in terms of aquatics facilities and what range of options might we have here in Santa Cruz to provide that service. So, and we haven't shared that document yet with the council, we need to get that out soon but in summary, it's a range from a roughly say a four to $5 million investment in the existing pool to bring it up to a safe operational standards to there are a lot of pools over the hill. There are 30, 35, $40 million of aquatics complexes. So that's kind of that Cadillac or Ferrari end of that. So everywhere in between. So these are decisions that we will bring in a more formal way and we can have discussion over time what that might look like. As far as the pool currently, so we are looking for a partner. So we do not have staff to have the experience or training to maintain a pool nor the capacity to maintain a pool. So we had a tentative partnership with Santa Cruz County Parks and Rec last year that didn't work out. We're looking to work with a group called Quicksilver to be our operator. So they would do both the maintenance and operations of the pool under contract which would be great to get to that point. We have to fix the pool. So we spent about $150,000 on the pool this summer. We thought it was up and ready to go. We got all of our permits from County Environmental Health. It continues to fail. So we have a variety of valves in our main pump that continue to fail in the pool. So we were using all the resources and duct tape we can to try to get it up and running in a safe way. So we wanna make sure that we can get it permitted through County Environmental Health to be safe. But that's where we are. So our goal right now is to fix the pool. And to get our operating agreement with Quicksilver and ideally open the pool by June this summer. So it could be a sort of modified schedule. There's a lot of what ifs there but we hope to open by June this summer. That's really wonderful to hear. And I appreciate your response to that. And it would be great even just to see that so that we can also share that with our community. I just feel like you can pay for lessons, right? And then there's so many that just don't know how to swim or learn how to swim. And I was talking to a colleague recently and they were saying there's not a lot of people who can get into the conservation and science who do diving and because of exposure and diversity. And so we don't have the answer to all of that but we certainly can play a part. And that's what a community pool can do as well as diversify our students that can go into our junior lifeguards program, right? And so I think it's a really important asset to see and if it could be reflected in the goals that would be something I'd be interested in moving forward if my colleagues are as well. And I do know this, I recognize the struggle, I certainly do. And I think if there's anything that we can do as a governing body to support that goal move forward, I'm certainly open to that. I also hear what you're saying in terms of the spectrum of options, right? Like, and I don't know, I know the schools have, I'm all over the place with my kid at this moment with a lot of the swimming stuff and the pools are at capacity. So there's certainly a need in terms of wanting to have more pool time, right? So, I don't know, we can just continue the conversation but just to see that, just to share that, I hope that you feel supported as you move forward with that goal and we can try to find the resources to make it happen. Anyways, thank you, Mayor. You took one of my questions and ideas. Next second, so you'll keep me more brief. So somebody, one question I have, the trail steward group mentioned was the rangers. Is that something that you guys would want or is that something that was taken away not just because of budgets because it was too much to manage? Cause I know it was ultimately in the police departments when it did get taken away, it was taken away from PD, not from you. Is he the city manager? I'm happy to chime in on that one. I'm sure Mr. Elliott will have some follow up comments but we're an active discussion around how we can ensure that our parks and open space are safe for our community members as well as our staff. So Tony and I and Chief Escalante actually have a meeting, follow up meeting next week with Coastal Watershed Council on this very topic. Yeah, we recently had a meeting with Santa Cruz Mountain Trails Stewardship, also with regards to the M.M. Recruity Trail that you were referencing earlier today, Council Member Golder, to explore what those options could be. That may not be a return of the ranger program as it existed traditionally, but it could be some form of a parks and open space safety division that would allow us to have an increased presence in those areas to try to mitigate some of the impacts that we're experiencing. There needs to be resources on budget to come with that but it is something that we're exploring. Okay, my next question was in terms of paying for repairs and maintenance, what budget do you use for that? And I didn't know if I saw it in there and I missed it. I missed it when we talked last night. For general repairs and maintenance, we do have services and supplies budget across the department that's broken out by activity. When we talked about the budget last year, about 80% of that services and supplies budget kind of goes to like the basic, keeping the lights on, paying electricity bills, paying water bills. And so there's about 20% of that budget that is for use to do things like improve landscapes, take care of turf maintenance, those types of things. So I believe across the entire budget we have about six to seven million and that services and supplies. But when it comes down to it, like what we have to work with is closer to around two million a year. And so then like in terms of capital improvement, deferred maintenance and things like that, I'm just, I know there's a lot and I know we talked about this at Public Safety in terms of the developments that are coming through planning and we've so far kind of exempted affordable housing. Is this the same case from developer fees for parks? Is that the same for you? Do they have to pay developer fees regardless of? Sorry, that's a great question. Yeah, regardless if they're affordable or not. Yeah, it depends. So we have a couple of tools when it comes to generating our own revenue to fund CIP work across the system. It is driven by development. So that makes it a little unpredictable in terms of how and when that comes in. Quimby fees provide a portion of that and our park tax provides a larger majority of that. The park tax developers are exempt if they are building ADUs. And that's a state law. So any ADU under 750 feet, those first 750 feet are exempt from fees but then we have generally been able to apply fees beyond that and on most developments. We have been approached and been asked to waive fees for affordable housing developments. And up to this point, we've tried to make the case for continuing to build the parks and recreation impact fees into that so that we can make sure that everybody who is moving in and going to enjoy different parts of our community are going to have thriving, well-maintained parks. Okay, thank you. And I just wanna say, you didn't give yourself enough credit with your teamwork and solving complex problems like beach street vending and West Cliff and closing the bench lens encampment and collaborating with the schools in ways that also bring equity to our community. So thank you for that. Yeah, thank you. Ditto, ditto, ditto. Thank you for all of the incredible work and I was also gonna bring Harvey West pull up. So my colleagues brought that up. I was also gonna bring Neri Lagoon up. I know there's been a lot of work that's been put into Neri Lagoon and I've started to dive into the Neri Lagoon master plan and I think there's more that can be done there for activation and I don't know that it needs to be called out specifically in here. If it can, that would be great. I was specifically thinking about just accessibility. I mean, that's such a, that goal under the goal accessibility. It's such a place where people of all ages can use but it's under accessed. So maybe a question, maybe a suggestion of specifically calling out Neri Lagoon activation and then, so I guess these aren't questions. These are just comments. The other is under partnership. I was so glad to see the increase engagement with the Youth Action Network and I wanted to ask that we add and the city youth liaison to that bullet point and then I did have a question looking at how much is brought in through grant funds as with my grant writing had on, it seems actually kind of low. I haven't written specifically a parks and rec grant for a city or jurisdiction but the question is, are we working with, do we still have the grant consultants? Are we working with those grant consultants and have we considered partnering with other community organizations so that we could increase those funds? I think it was like 700,000 a year. Like we, I'm sure we could get like five million, maybe that's shooting high but it seems like there should be more funds out there and sometimes you just have to think creatively like the trail stores, like that's building youth assets and that's keeping youth from a pathway to the justice system. I mean, there's so many opportunities that if you think outside the box and you partner with the right partners we can bring in additional funds. So that's a question and a comment about grant funds. Yeah, great question. Thank you for that. On grant funding, I agree. We've got opportunities to grow our grant funding. Historically, where we've been a little bit challenged in terms of being really competitive on grants is that we are a, what I'll describe as a sort of parks rich town. We have a lot of parks. We've got a lot of acreage. We've got 96% of our communities within a 10 minute walk of a park, which we're in the top in the nation in that respect. So a lot of grants are oriented toward communities that have park deserts or lower income communities or under resource communities. And so on paper, we in a lot of cases don't meet those marks but totally agree with the point about being creative. And so where we have found success working with partners like Coastal Watershed Council, for example, we've got partner grants with the Museum of Natural History and so forth. So leveraging like AARP for example, so some opportunities there that we can leverage. So, but I agree there's more work to do there. Need to be more creative there. There's a philanthropic side of this as well that we want to tap into. And we've found some philanthropic support through the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County. But we sort of within the city are friends of Parks and Recreation. There's a lot of opportunity there to really grow the philanthropic side of this as well. And so currently FOPAR does not generate annual revenue to invest in city parks and rec. And so that's part of a healthy parks and rec department both on the grant side but on that philanthropic side as well. Just that first question, do we, are we still engaged with our grant consultants? Yeah. We are engaged with our, excuse me, outside grant consultants. All of our departments are working very closely with them on several fronts. And I know that Tony's team does from time to time as well. And I think there's more opportunity there. One of the areas that we've also not focused on much today when it comes to budget and resources. One of our areas of focus as we move into FY 24 and 25 is sustainable funding for Parks and Rec. The work on the sales tax really took center stage and attention over the course of this last year. But there's some really great work that the Land for Public Trust put together over the course of the last couple of years that we're gonna be dusting off and looking at those opportunities as we move forward in addition to the grants as well. Thank you. Thank you so much for all the amazing work. Yeah, just a couple of additional comments on grants. It does ebb and flow. So this fiscal year we'll be able to report a million dollar community urban forestry grant. We've been successful in gathering and looking to leverage that grant to go after additional CAL FIRE aligned grants and directing those funds to aligned with our incredible Santa Cruz Street Tree Master Plan. Our urban forestry team, as Tony mentioned, is under resourced. They are a small but mighty team. So being able to direct the grant resources specifically to gaps outlined in this plan just kind of speaks to the importance of doing these types of efforts so that when we have those opportunities, we can deploy them strategically as a department. So just an example, but I think there's a lot of desire to grow that and work with amazing people in the city like Dr. Weiswest. Council Member Brunner. Thank you. I won't repeat a lot of the comments. Just thank you so much. It's always amazing to me the multifaceted department that Parks and Rec is and the roles that you play in our community. And so this report, you know, really outlines the values, the mission and the impact and many of the highlights. And I know it's not, it's a small part of what you do, but for me, I just wanna thank you really for the equity component. We've made a lot of strides in that since I've joined council in 2020 and that looks many different ways in our systems, in our access. You've worked with community members and stakeholders. We've gotten at some really good progress in that area and partnerships and around youth and seniors and just so many ways that you've really addressed that through Parks and Rec and programs and permits and thank you. I just wanted to call that out really because that is huge. And I hope to see under goals some roller skating surfaces. I will continue to talk about that. Multi-use courts, smooth roller skating surfaces and equity in that area. And I have joke, but I'm half serious about, you know, just really you've done a great job in that area and I know that the work will continue and I hope to continue finding ways to support your department and your staff and they're out there in so many ways working really hard. So thank you. Thank you so much for the questions or comments. Anybody with us wish to make comment on the item? Matters back for the body. Someone online. There is someone online. Chris online. Good afternoon. Welcome. Good afternoon Council. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. This is Eric Rodberg and I want to also speak about the Hollywood pool. I'm actually missing my swim right now. I'm forced to swim at UCSC which is often closed and inconvenient to get to. We really, really, really need a pool. It's disgraceful that I can be the, like ours doesn't have one. And I've spoken before council on this topic before. I think the last time only council members, Watkins and that Brown were on council. So, and I know the Masters from club which I'm not a part of also showed up in force one evening. So this is a long standing issue and there are so many things that come before council that are, but just say it, they're kind of crazy. They don't always have much to do with Santa Cruz. And this is really a core thing. A city needs a public pool. It's really a core function. And I think as politicians, you guys would be a lot more popular if you get this done. And I realize there are a lot of challenges. He just looks like measures can now are passing. I don't know if you can take any of that extra money but whatever it is you need to really make it a priority. I mean, one year, I know it's a state grant. We've got $14 million for homeless issues. And I know that's a real problem and a difficult one, but you also need to provide basic things for the everyday ordinary person. And so I can't agree with council member Watkins and us. And I know other we wanted to repeat what she said. So just figure out how to get it done, prioritize it, please also in the interim, make an agreement with the high school so that city residents can use the high school pool when high school is not in session. Santa Rosa Valley does it. There's no reason we can't do it. It's a perfect centralized location. And it's not a perfect solution, but it would be a good interim solution. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your thoughtful input. Anyone else online? Matters back for the body. I recognize the council member for a motion. There's a motion by Ms. Brown. Thank you, mayor. I would move to accept the fiscal year 2023 Parks and Recreation Annual Report and direct department staff to continue their evaluation of service levels, service offerings and associated resources in the delivery of fiscal year 2024 goals. I would like to add inclusion of continued work towards fiscal year 2023. I'm not sure how we would say this, continuing to work on the pool master plan, get that in there. And I always want to put nary Lagoon in the goals. And so if other council members, I heard council member Callentary Johnson was- Make sure we get a motion. Oh, I'm sorry. Let's keep going. Sorry, I, I, it's ingrained in me. Okay. So to also include act efforts to activate nary Lagoon in the goals. There is a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. And I have a question. Second and real quick. Absolutely. Real quick. Do we need to specify that adding the youth city youth liaison as part of the motion or you got that and not necessary? You got that. Okay. All right. You may open on your motion, Ms. Brown. Well, I already did. So I really want to appreciate council member Watkins. You know, I know that the feasibility study is happening and things are in process, but to really call that out, I think is important. And love to hear nary Lagoon is getting some love from its council member as well. I just have a couple of things. And I don't know if they need to be added to the motion or if they can just be just some additional direction, but I think to the extent possible, working with other departments in coordination, breaking up encampments when they get to a certain threshold. And I don't know what that is. I'll leave that up to you guys as the experts. But it seems to me that when they get to a capacity where there's an outbreak like the one in friendship garden or the benchlands that we're wasting valuable resources that could be used on other things to clean those up. And so using every tool in your tool belt and working together would be something I would like to see. I don't, do you need additional direction or can that just be? I'll chime in on that one. That's currently the process of the stands now. We have a, what we refer to as the encampment assessment team that meets on a weekly basis. It's cross departmental, Tony's staff and our parks team are working very closely with public works and our homelessness response team. And of course, with all that collective support, we're also resource constrained at times through addresses and cabinets, but we'll continue that collaboration. They're working together in ways that we've not seen before and really making progress on addressing and really working to avoid those large encampments from forming friendships garden is one of those areas that's on the radar. As soon as we move through the current situation related to the outbreak, but we will eventually address that area as well. Okay, thank you. And then I know that the resources, there's a push and a pull throughout the city, but I think the way you've collaborated with outside partners, I think Eric had a great idea of reaching out to the schools and seeing if there's a way we can make an MOU to make those schools available for the public to have swim hours. That would be awesome. And then I guess my, my, yeah, my final, I don't, that's it. That's all my final things, but thank you. Thank you. Further? Council Member Watkins is recognized. Thank you, Mayor. I certainly agree with the direction and appreciate the motion. I wonder if, and this is partially just so that I'm not badgering you guys, if we could have an update in about, I don't know, like four months or so on, just so we keep the conversation about the pool going because we have questions that come to us and we're like, well, we heard this and there's that and we don't really know and I know it's fluid in terms of changing, but at least we'll be aware. And if there's an opportunity or a need for us to intervene with any kind of policy direction for support and that feels good, like we'll know, but I feel like when it's a year and then there's just, there's just like sort of a gap, right? And so if we can get an update on the progress of that goal as well as others in the next four to six months. Council Member Brown. Just to add, it feels, I know it's sooner than that, but maybe at budget time, we might think about how we're gonna support those efforts if there's a match or if there's something that we need, that we could help with to try to demonstrate that commitment, so maybe that would be a good time. Yeah. If I could just add to that, Tony and I haven't had a chance to talk about this, but I think if the timing alliance, perhaps what Tony's team could do is bring forward the economic feasibility work that's been done around the pool and hopefully by that time, we'll have more certainty around whether or not this partnership with Quicksilver is going to materialize with the goal of us opening the pool right around that same time as well. So we can work towards bringing those updates. And just quickly, as far as communication, we can make a commitment to update the city website as well on what's going on with the pool just so that we've got that ongoing sort of information available for the public. Thank you. For the questions, comments, observations, wish list for budget hearings. All right, I've seen hearing none. The clerk will call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Nussbaum? Aye. Brown? Aye. What's yours? Aye. Brunner? Aye. Calentary Johnson? Aye. Vice Mayor Golder? Aye. Mayor Keely? Aye. Motion passes and is ordered. Mr. Director, very final thing on page five of your report, the council is concerned about a particular, I'll just go with you, talk to you about it right afterwards. All right, is there for the business to come before the body? Seeing and hearing none, Ms. Bush, no more business. Mr. Condati, no more business. Motion to adjourn. Vice Mayor makes motion to adjourn. Council Member Nussbaum with deep, deep re-elections. Seconds of motion, non-invadeable. Those in favor, signify by saying aye, opposed, motion carries. So are we standing adjourned?