 Good morning. Welcome to the 11 a.m. public portion of the closed session of the October 12 21 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. If you would like to comment on a closed session item now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. In this part of the meeting the council will receive public testimony thereafter the public line will be closed and inaccessible. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming. So if you continue to listen on your television or you may miss your opportunity to speak. I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you mayor. Councilmember Watkins. Here. Calentary Johnson. Here. Brown. Here. Here. Councilmember Cummings. Here. Boulder. Here. Vice mayor Brunner. Is currently absent. Mayor Myers. Here. I'm going to look for any members of the public who would like to speak to items listed on our closed session agenda today. I'm not seeing any members in the public at this time. So we will go ahead and adjourn to our closed session. And we will be back following this item around 12 or around one o'clock today to begin our our regularly scheduled items. When you council members when you come back in if you could turn on your camera just so I know you're here. We'll get rolling. We need to have the annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Authority and the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Financing Corporation. City council members serve as board members on these boards which were created for the purpose of providing the city an instrument to issue bond. Annually while the bonds are in existence the board members are legally required to hold a meeting of the. Industrial Development Authority and the Santa Cruz Public Financing Corporation. These meetings are procedural and for the purpose of approving minutes and electing new board members. I would like to call to order the October 12th 2021 annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Development Authority. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you directors Watkins. Here. Calentary Johnson. Brown. Here. Cummings. Here. Boulder. Here. Brunner. Present. In my ears. Now move on to item number three. And I would look for a motion to elect the new officers as set forth in section 3.02 of the Industrial Development Authority bylaws as follows. Executive Director, Interim City Manager, Rosemary Menard, Treasurer, Interim Director of Finance Bobby McGee, Chair Mayor Myers, Vice Chair, Vice Mayor Brunner, and Secretary City Clerk Administrator Bonnie Bush. Look for a motion please. I'll move the recommendation. And I look for a second. Council Member Watkins. I'll second that motion. Okay. We have a motion by Council Member Cummings to move the recommendation. Seconded by Council Member Watkins. All those in favor, please urge, I'm sorry Bonnie, can we do a roll call vote? Yes, Director Watkins. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Brown. Aye. Cummings. Boulder. Brunner. That motion passes unanimously. We'll now move item number 4, which is the minutes of the October 13, 2020 Industrial Development Authority. I would look for a motion to approve the minutes as submitted. Council Member Brown. I'll move approval of the minutes. Thank you. I'll second. We have a motion for item number 4, which is the minutes of the October 13, 2020 IDA. And the motion is by Council Member Brown. Seconded by Council Member Boulder. We have a roll call vote, please. Watkins. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Brown. Boulder. Vice Chair and Chair Myers. That motion passes unanimously. We will now adjourn the meeting of the Industrial Development Authority. Hope I'm doing this right. And we will move into the annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Financing Corporation. All that meeting to order. October 12, 2021 annual meeting of the Board of Directors. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you. Really quick, just for point of order for the city attorney. Do we need to take public comment for the actions taken for these two boards? Technically, we probably should have asked for public comment. Should I go backwards, Donnie? I think it would be appropriate to ask if there's any member of the public that would like to comment on it. And then the council could potentially reconsider the actions that were already taken. If there's anyone, if there's a member of the public who would like to comment on items number three and four on our agenda today, which is under the annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Industrial Development Authority. Item three being the election of officers and item eight minutes of the October 13, 2020 Industrial Development Authority. Please raise your hand by pressing star nine. I'm not seeing anyone raising their hands. So we'll go ahead and we'll re-adjourn. We will adjourn now from the Industrial Development Authority and move into the call to order the October 12, 2021 annual meeting of the Board of Directors of the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Financing Corporation. And I'd like the clerk to please call the roll. Watkins, here. Here. Here. Boulder. Here. Brunner. Present. And Myers. Thank you. We'll move on to item number five, which is the election of officers. This is a motion to elect new officers as set forth in section 3.02, the Santa Cruz Public Improvement Corporation bylaws as follows. The Chief Executive Officer is Interim City Manager Rosarie Minard. Our Chief Financial Officer is Interim Director of Finance Bobby McGee. The President will be Mayor Myers. The Vice President will be Vice Mayor Brunner and the Secretary Treasurer is City Clerk Administrator Bonnie Bush. I'm now looking for a motion on this. Council Member Watkins, move the recommendation. And Vice Mayor Brunner. I will second the recommendation. I have a motion to approve the election of officers as proposed. And I'd like to ask for a roll call vote. Thank you. Watkins. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Brown. Aye. Vice President Brunner. And President Myers. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. We'll move now to item number six, which is the minutes of the October 13, 2020 Santa Cruz Public Improvement Finance Corporation. I'll be looking for a motion to approve those minutes. Council Member Watkins. I'll move approval. And I'll second that. I have a motion on the floor to move the recommendation item number for the meeting minutes. Yeah. That's a good point of order real quick. I'm just wondering, do we have to take this out to public comment as well? Just so that we don't have to go back. Yeah. Do we have to go back out? Yep. I'll take that. If anyone is in our audience today, I would like to speak on items number five and six, which is the election of first to Santa Cruz Public Improvement Finance Corporation. Item number six is the minutes of the October 13th Public Improvement Finance Corporation. If you could please press star nine to raise your hand. We're not seeing any, so I'll go ahead and bring it back. We have a motion on the table for item number minutes of the October 13, 2020 Santa Cruz Public Improvement Finance Corporation. That motion was made by Council Member Watkins, seconded by Mayor Myers. And I go ahead and do a roll call vote please. Thank you. Watkins. Hi. Callentary Johnson. Hi. Vice President Brunner. And President Mechard. That motion passes unanimously. Good afternoon. We're now going into our regular City Council meeting. This is our regular session of the October 12, 2021 meeting of Santa Cruz City Council. I have a few announcements and then we will move on to our meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television Channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, CityofSantaCruise.com. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, call in at the beginning of the item you are wanting to comment on using the instructions on your screen. Please mute your television or streaming device once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming, so if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. But it is time for comment. Please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak during public comment. You will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. And I would like the clerk to please call the roll. Councilmember Watkins? Here. Calentary Johnson? Here. Brown? Here. Cummings? Here. Boulder? Here. Vice Mayor Brunner? Present. And Mayor Myers? Present. Okay. We will now move on to a presentation today. And I am just pulling up proclamation presentation today. We need one minute here. Okay. Item number seven on our presentation agenda today is a mayoral proclamation declaring October as domestic violence for this month. And then an acknowledgement of the 40th anniversary of the committee commission for prevention and violence against women. Go ahead and read the proclamation. And I believe, potentially the chair of the commission is in the audience today. So I want to recognize her and Simon Tins here at the league. Mayor's proclamation, whereas domestic violence awareness month began as a day of unity event in October 1981 under the auspices of the national coalition against domestic violence. And as the annual day of unity soon grew to a week long observance, and since October 1987, it has been observed as domestic violence awareness month, promoting activities at the local, state and national level. And whereas by formal action by the Santa Cruz City Council via ordinance number 881-29 in 1981, the commission for the prevention of violence against women was established. And whereas the CPDAW held its first meeting on January, 1982, and immediately created a direct liaison with the district attorney's office and the Santa Cruz Police Department. Participated in the hiring process for the new police chief and created and distributed a bilingual women's resource card. And whereas the CPDAW has contributed greatly to the Santa Cruz community, since its formation, a sexual assault response team, teaching self defense classes, focusing on its long term planning, producing a film and video series and working with the Santa Cruz Police Department to provide survivors of domestic violence to obtain an emergency protective order at the scene. And whereas the CPDAW's contributions also include a report about the earthquake and its impact against women, improving services for Latina survivors, providing take back the night which attracted 300 attendees, providing self defense classes for hundreds of women, providing support for homeless women, creating the purple ribbon campaign, and responding to the rates of elderly women in the community with teach And whereas the CPDAW developed a dating violence awareness and prevention support group for students, organized and sponsored teams and men day and teen women's day, celebrated its 20th anniversary, recognized the first denim day in Santa Cruz, distributed educational coasters to local and dedicated a tree at Harvey West Park to honor survivors of domestic violence. And whereas this year is the 40th anniversary of the CPDAW. And to mark this occasion, the CPDAW is hosting the cyber abuse and how to stop it event, which invites internationally known panelists to educate the community on how to avoid cyber and their use of revenge porn, TPS tracking, doxing and cyberbullying. Now therefore I, Donna Myers, mayor of the city of Santa Cruz do hereby proclaim the month of October 2021 as a domestic violence awareness month in the city of Santa Cruz and encourage all residents to join me in commending the CPDAW for decades of continued dedication to raise awareness and prevent violence and celebrating its 40th anniversary. Right. So I say an anti you're here and I would be more than thrilled to have you say a few words and we look forward to the event as well next next week and please let everybody know the time of that and how they can how they can find out the information please so welcome. Okay, thank you so much. And thank you for this wonderful proclamation. It's so important. I think the city of Santa Cruz should be very proud of supporting supporting CPDAW, especially because of the 40 years as a commission I honored to be on the commission working as the chair. And this is an extraordinary time in our history. We have an increasing increasing need to prevent male sexual violence, sexual assault and violence continues to be a major health crisis in our community and the world. And it's been exacerbated by the pandemic economic uncertainties that many communities have seen huge increases in the need for domestic violence services. Delphine Burns, one of our former vice chair wrote an eloquent piece in the good times last July on the importance of using the term femicide to distinguish the intentional murder of women by men who are intimate partners or single out women to kill. We hope the council will be pleased with a lot of the work that we've been doing lately. We have posters and we've accomplished a lot this far. And we also hope that you'll be deeply excited about the projects that we have in store for our community. CPDAW is an advocacy and educational commission, and we would love the council to consider finding any small space in the city where we can continue to do our work in a more as it has been in years past. Student interns could work as to keep the doors open. Anyway, next we have Commissioner Roya Paxad, who's been an amazing addition to CPDAW and a tireless organizer for this upcoming event. She's the founder and director of TRAS, a research and advocacy organization, the intersection of technology and human rights. Much gratitude to the whole council for their continued support and welcome, Roya. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for Simonton and Mayor and the council members. I'm very happy to be here and I'm going to share my screen to speak more about that we have been planning for the past three months. So as the mayor and also Chair at Simonton mentioned, October is the Domestic Violence Awareness Month. In addition to the Cyber Security Awareness Month, it has been the 18th anniversary of Cyber Security Awareness Month. I reckon we're to pay more attention to the issues around safety and security in online space, and especially now that we have ever growing reliance and dependence on online platforms. As a result, we at the commission, we decided to organize an event to merge these two issues. And by issues, I mean some of the issues that mentioned by the mayor, including cyber stocking that are facilitated by GPS-enabled apps, phone plans, controlling the smart home devices by intimate partners and domestic partners, malicious software such as the spouseware and stockware, issues that we have all witnessed on social media platforms including harassment, doxing, cyberbullying that is very prevalent, especially against teens. Online revenge pool. Online sexual exploitation that are facilitated by social media platforms and the other online platforms that result in sex trafficking, human trafficking, exploitation, and webcamming, escorting. And last but not least, mobile apps, including dating apps, right-sharing apps, that they had implications on safety and security of women and also their privacy. So what is our event? This is the flyer of our event. It is called Cyber Abuse and How to Stop It. The event will take place on Friday, October 22nd. It's a three-hours event, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. It's free on Zoom, thanks to our partner Monarch Services, we will have live Spanish translation at the event. And the event will be a series of presentations, a panel discussion at the workshop by an organization including Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Polaris Project, Ending the Game, Trans Lifeline, and Cornell University Clinic to End Tech Abuse. And these are all national and international organizations that we have been working on by the speakers from. Many thanks to our community partners and our co-sponsors including Monarch Services. As I mentioned, Monarch is providing free live Spanish translation at their event. While not having a family and women's center, keep power. Sheriff County Sheriff Office, sexual assault response team, we're sorry. And thank you to Santa Cruz Sentinel for publicity support and advertising. So what we want from you is please join us to this event. We will share the link with you. We will share the flyer, both digital and also the physical one. It's free and it's online and with the Spanish translation. And you have the platform. Please share this event on your platform. We will be very grateful. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you, Commissioner Paxott and Chair Simonson. And we certainly will use all of our social media, our facilities as council members to try to get the word out and really looking forward to the event next week. Thank you for all your work. We so appreciate it. And it really is a great thing to celebrate that this little town has had this commission in place for four decades. So thank you for all your work. Thank you all. Thanks. Okay. We can, yeah, I guess council members would love to say a few couple minutes. I'll go just down my line as I see you on the screen. Council Member Golder. Thank you guys for all your work and for your presentation. I really appreciate it. I really like how you mentioned human trafficking. And I think that it's a lot in the states than people acknowledge. And I know there's some cases here in Santa Cruz. And I just wonder if there's, if there's any time or way that you guys can incorporate that into the work that you do because I, you know, it's modern day slavery. It's disgusting. And I, you know, I'd just like to say that what we need is a vice squad and the Santa Cruz Police Department and we haven't had that for years. That's really how you find out about these, these instances. And so that's just a heads up. Hopefully we could get that together. Thank you. Council Member Cummings. Yeah. And I just wanted to thank you and the commissioners for all the amazing work you do and the call out the signage that's been produced by the commission around, you know, it's really going out to a lot of the bars that suggesting like if you're a woman and you're in a bad relationship and you're in a, you know, if you're in an unsafe relationship, here's the number you call. And then also a lot of the flyers that are going out there targeting the men saying, you know, hey, it's, you know, you need to be respectful. You need to gentlemen. I think that those, I've never seen that before, you know, in all the years that I've been going out. You know, places and it's just really reassuring to see that that message is going out. And I think that there's a lot of men out there who appreciate having that message out there too. So we can hold other men accountable and make sure they're being respectful to women. So just wanted to say how much I appreciated all the signage and information you all are putting out there to try to get people help if they are in a bad circumstance. And then also, you know, push that education around men needing to be more respectful to women. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Council Member, Council Member Country Johnson. I would also like to echo my colleagues remarks and thank you for the work that you are doing and continue to do. Sarah Simin and Commissioner Pock bringing this presentation forward to our community where we can see really the intersection of what's happening in the cyber world and prevention of violence against women. I mean, it's so relevant and it's so important. And these are issues that are very challenging to face and talk about. So thank you for your work and the courage that it takes to bring this forward. I know that that Council Member Golder brought up human trafficking. I know similarly commercial sexual exploitation of children is an area that our county in our region is starting to look at more deeply. And although we don't have a great way of tracking it now, we're getting there. So I hope that this will be integrated into some of the work that you do in the coming months and coming years. So just again, thank you for all the incredible work. Great to have you here today. Thank you so much. Vice Mayor Bruder. Thank you, Commissioner Pock. That was a great update and information and presentation. I, my first question is what is doxing? I've never heard that term. Is Roya here? Yeah. Yes, definitely. So doxing name when they share your name and your address in your phone number on social media platforms. People they actually, they can find you physically and harass you and harm you. That is called doxing. Okay, thank you. I'm glad that you brought up all of those examples because I think it's very typical to think of specific instances of violence. And as we see and as you listed, it comes in many forms. And there was also violence against men in domestic relationships. And I'm glad that was all incorporated. And I'd like to call out also on our city website, the commission for the prevention of violence against women page, because there are further links to resources. That has monarch services and some of the information that you brought up. So just for everybody out there, there is on the city of Santa Cruz website link to the page for this commission with further links and information. Thank you so much. Thank you vice chair. Council member walkins and then council member breath. Thank you mayor, I too just want to extend my gratitude and appreciation to the commission and to you both for being here and sharing out with us. I served on the commission for the prevention of violence against women for many years so it holds like a special place in my, it's so great to know that the work is continuing in such a meaningful way that the partnerships are even stronger in terms of the various forms of violence that we are committed to. And to vice mayor Brunner's point and we're evolving as well as as technology comes into play and all of the other forms of violence now take place in different ways than when I first started in 2009. I is a truly remarkable thing that the city has in place that is was voted on at one point by our residents which is unique to our city but also really speak volumes to our commitment to supporting the prevention of violence against women and continuing to maintain that support and all forms as the changes in terms of the different elements of how it is now being harming harming people. Anyhow, thank you very much for your presentation really quickly so it's on the 22nd but remind me the time. 9am to 12pm. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. And council member Brown. I'll just add my appreciation and you know just really impressed with the that you're doing the event looks like it's going to be wonderful. You know, I just I just want to say you know this The service that the volunteer commissioners provide in our community, you know, and all of the time that I've been working on these issues, you know, related issues that our community I've just been so impressed with the body itself, the time that you all put in, you know, it is a it's a special advisory body because you do this you have this education and outreach role that really does involve engaging with the community in in ways that are really challenging and also so critical and I know that work has been further challenged in our somewhat social isolation over the past year and a half now almost two years now. And so and you all just carried on and and found ways to make the work, you know, relevant and get it out there and I just I just really can't thank you enough for for what you're doing and I'm very much looking forward to the event. Now that we're back out as Council Member Cummings suggested seeing the materials out there for that for that people actually see and our reminders for us and and you know resources for us out in the world so really appreciate your work. Thank you. Thank you so much. Member Brown. Great. Well, I think you'll have, I think you have some attendees lining up here for the for the really, really important work that you're going to do next Friday so thank you again we all celebrate with you. Wish it was in person but we'll do it virtual so thank you so much. Have a great event. Thank you. We will move on to the next item on our agenda and I have a few announcements to make and then we will move on to the regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website city of Santa Cruz calm. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today instructions are provided on your screen, we will provide these instructions throughout the meeting. Whenever we moved into an agenda item that we will be opened up for public comment. Please note public comment is heard only on items. Council is taking action on and not regular updates and reports. The items that will be opened for public comment today during today's meeting our numbers 10 through 18 on our agenda. Any council members that have any statements of disqualification today and see no hands so I will go ahead and move on to ask the clerk if we have any additions or delay on our agenda. We do not. Thank you. I'll now make an announcement about oral communications oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda. Oral communications will occur immediately after agenda item 17. If you wish to make a comment during oral communications, please call in towards the end of item 17. I'll now ask for the city attorney to provide a report on our closed session today. Tony, are you there? Can you guys hear me? I'm sorry, I was having some trouble navigating back to the worries. There were three items discussed in closed session this morning, which began via zoom at 11am. The first item was relating to the recruitment of the city manager position of public employment. That is the category. The second two items were getting to significant exposure to litigation and the city council received a report from the city attorney's office. There was no reportable action. Thank you, Mr. Kandadi. I'll now move on to our city manager report. The city manager will report and provide updates on the city's business, COVID-19 response and events. I'd like to call on our interim city manager, Rosemary Menard. Thank you. I'm going to get a relatively short report for you today. First, we're going to have Chief Odie. He's going to give us an update on COVID. And second, you're going to hear from Lee Butler, deputy city manager and housing and community development planning director. He's going to introduce to you our new homelessness resources manager. So with that, I'll turn it over to Chief Odie. Hello, Mayor Myers, Vice Mayor Brunner and council members. Good afternoon. I want to start off by apologizing for my presentation two weeks ago. I'm honored by some technical difficulties while I was attending an arson conference down south. The facility had an internet connection. So hopefully today in the comfort of my office with a robust internet connection and a freshly shaving face and mustache. I'll give you guys the update on COVID for the county. So as we know, since the mass mandate was rescinded, the Santa Cruz County Health Officer is looking at our recent results optimistically. For the last 14 days, we've seen a 21% decrease in the number of cases. So we keep seeing double digit decreases every two weeks, which of course has led to the removal of the mass mandate. Transmissibility at this point is moderate. The most cases that we see spreading are person to person and community spread. Second only to person to person and household. That's sort of a flip pandemic. So again, we see that these large events both indoor and outdoor. And of course, as we move into the flu season and holidays, we want to be very mindful of that. And of course, as you can see the next bullet point, the county, while they did rescind the mass mandate, they still strongly recommend it. And I know many of you have been out in the community and seen many businesses that are still asking that we do so. And I think it's a good idea. Most of the cases we're seeing and again, mostly in the white and Latin Latinx population, usually or typically in the 25 to 44 year old category. So it's still a lot of work to do in terms of preventing the spread of the disease. With that, we've seen over 375,000 vaccine doses administered in county. That's up to about 71% of the population have had at least one dose. So we're seeing about 4 to 500 doses administered every day. And of course an increase of 7000 doses administered every week. So we're seeing a small uptick. We still have lots of work to do. And of course, we'll see a significant change once the children by ages 5 to 11 have been finally approved with the murders use authorization to receive the dose. We'll see a significant increase in the number of vaccinations countywide. Most recently, we had two deaths in the county. Oddly enough, they were both vaccinated, but it's important to note that they were both well over 60 with some serious health conditions and co-morbid factors. That lent themselves to unfortunate demise. So next slide. So this is the again provided from the Santa Cruz County Health website. It's the most up to date information. What I've done is tailored this strictly to the Delta surge itself. Selected the date range of July 2 through October 6. And so it sort of shows you how we had that fight. And the orange line helps denote the leveling or flattening of the curve, so to speak. So again, showing that we're in the right direction. And then of course the graph on the right supports the information that I was talking about 61% of the spread is person to person in community acquired situations. Second only two person to person in household at 21% spread. Next slide. So again, as I mentioned, we've continued to see a double digit decrease in new COVID cases every 14 days. And so this graph just shows that we're trending continuing to trend in the right direction, which is downward. And I've seen a decrease in 21% in terms of spreading new COVID cases. Next slide. And again, in terms of transmissibility, this is the graph that sort of shows we want to be below one. You can see currently we're in the green. We're just above 0.75. That was sort of a gold standard that we had in early summer. And we're hoping to get to and of course, one who maintained a number below one in which we are doing at this point and want to continue to do so. Next slide. In terms of vaccinations again, I talked about we're up to about 375,000 doses administered. This graph shows that again, 71% of the population has received at least one dose. And currently the fully vaccinated total is about 65. So in this graph, the light blue is fully vaccinated. And the gray are those that are sort of in that transition of having one shot and are waiting to receive their second. And of course, we'll see a significant surge in overall vaccinations once children ages 5 to 11 are allowed to receive it. Next slide. This was just to point out in terms of the discussion you may or may not have with people in terms of being vaccinated or unvaccinated. This was a slide that I pulled from the California Department of Public Health. And it just basically shows you that during the time period of September 19th, the 25th, unvaccinated people were 7.1 times more likely to get COVID than those that were fully vaccinated. So again, sometimes the picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, this graph sort of shows just that. And I think it's important to note that in terms of during getting vaccinations, the Santa Cruz City Schools will be starting doing drive through vaccination starting November 1st. So again, we're going to see a significant uptake in the number of vaccinations in the county. Next slide. And when we're talking about vaccinations, there's a constant discussion. And of course, with anything in the pandemic, we want to make sure that we're using proper terminology. There's booster dose and some might hear additional dose. There is a distinction between the two. Of course, booster dose is something that you receive six months after receiving the first series. As of right now, Pfizer is the only one that has approval for booster doses. And we're seeing that right now. And we're also seeing that people that are ages 18 to 64 that again are in the public eye in terms of public transit grocery store food service workers, education first responders are eligible for that. I will note that in this county, a lot of the first responders receive Moderna. So we're still awaiting approval emergency use authorization approval from the FDA. And as of right now, they're meeting Thursday for approval for the Moderna booster and Friday for Johnson and Johnson. And of course, there will be discussions in the FDA realm about mixing different vaccinations. And then of course, the distinction between additional dose, if you hear that, that's for people who are severely immunocompromised. Do the cancer organ transplant stem cell transplant or other things. And of course, they are counseled by their personal position and they receive this additional dose, not a booster, 28 days after receiving the two dose series of Pfizer or Moderna. So just want to make that distinction as you're having these discussions out there with people in the public. Next slide. And so again, just want to point you to the standard foods health.org. That's where I get a lot of my information extremely useful and very up to date. That as well as the California Department of Public Health where you can find a bunch of different links about recent state health officer orders. And with that, that's all I have for the COVID update. Unless you have any questions. Are there any questions for Chief Odie? The one thing I'm chief that I learned last week in the, in the mayor's meeting, I'm not, I have to admit, I'm not, I don't think I saw it in your slides. Just wanted the public to know that and Rosemary, you can help me with this. I believe that the Civic Auditorium CalCite in October 15. We're trying to move it to the Depot Park building. Is that correct? Yes, but the Depot Park building had a water leak site. I think right now there's some efforts to look for a mobile testing site, possibly in the Civic parking lot, I think. Okay. Yeah, I just wanted to confirm that. I just learned that last week. I know a lot of people use the Civic for their testing site. So I definitely replaced by something that is will be announced. But I think that that's what they're working on at the moment. So there isn't a gap. Mayor Myers, it's also worth noting that there's still two other sites. You know, we still have the Watsonville site and a Felton site that are served by OptumServe, the same service provider at the Civic, as well as Santa Cruz City Schools. One to put it out there that obviously they're doing testing for their school families and they sort of have made the point of saying they use that term loosely in terms of they have their students, their immediate family. And then of course, there are those that are interact with the family, whether it's a caregiver or extended family. So those are options. Also, the Santa Cruz City Schools website, they also have testing available. And I think many of us in this room probably would qualify for that just by nature of having some children or family that are associated with the schools. Thank you, Chief. Is there any questions at all or? Okay. Thanks. Thanks again. Good to see you, Rob. Okay. So now to Lee Butler. Thank you, Rosemary. And good afternoon, Mayor and council members. Today I am very pleased to introduce to you Larry and Wally. And let's see, here he is. Larry joined us last week as our homelessness response manager. Larry did his undergraduate in political science at UCLA and political science at the University of Arizona and has various other educational backgrounds that are going to help him succeed here in this role. He came to us from the Action Council of Monterey County. He was the executive director there 14 years and they work on a variety of social change initiatives. They're kind of an umbrella organization that incubates smaller nonprofits. And we are very pleased to welcome Larry to the team and build capacity with our homelessness response work. One of the first things that he will be working on is the council direction to get the safe sleeping sites and storage sites up and running. And I spoke with you briefly at the last council meeting and let you know there might be some changes with respect to the armory. I think the council was where we were looking at the armory as the inside there as a location for our safe sleeping sites. And the county was planning to close down their operations at the end of this month inside of that. The county is now looking at continuing that operation. So that's a good thing. They are continuing to serve those individuals and we are working on a partnership with them on various ways in which we can support that effort up there as well as recalibrating the best approach to our safe sleeping now that it will not be on the interior armory building. But I want to welcome Larry and I'd welcome any questions that the council may have. Would you like to say hello and make a few comments? Sure. Good afternoon, Mayor and members of the council. It's a pleasure to meet all of you. And yeah, I'm just excited to be joining the city in this role and I've had a great orientation. I'm starting week two, but it's been great to work with everybody and I look forward to working with all of you on this issue. Well, Larry, yeah, we're really great to have you here as part of the team. Rosemary, do you want to have any comments or questions from council at all? Sure. I mean, if folks would like to say something, I think we have enough time because we're fairly concise today. Yeah. Okay, I've not seen any raised hand. I do have a question, Lee, for we did receive some communications from the public on sort of the wind down of the of the Benchlands and a little bit around what may be happening and how the transitioning may be happening both I think for the Benchlands campus. Some of the folks that are up near the cemetery. So I don't know how that sort of, and maybe you don't have that answer today and that's totally fine. We can get an update next in two weeks, but just curious if there's any update from that at all. That is certainly a important topic of conversation among our team. And we are continuing to assess the rain situation because we know that there are issues with the proximity to the river and the potential for flooding in those areas as well as the availability of place like a safe sleeping opportunity that we are looking to establish. So we have we have some internal meetings scheduled later this month where we will be continuing that conversation. We've had a number of them that are focused on these specific issues, but we are continuing to consider that and the next steps associated with that with the variety of factors that I mentioned. Okay. Okay, great. And then, Mayor Myers, I think finally, I just make a public that today there was an announcement that Andy Mills, our police chief has resigned and he's going to be moving to be the chief of police in Palm Springs, California. So we are going to be I will be making a decision about an interim appointment here shortly and starting to look at, you know, recruitment strategies over time, what have you. So I know that many in the community already aware of this, but I did want to take an opportunity to make that public announcement here. Thank you Rosemary. Are there any questions from Council for city manager today? Not seen any. Okay. Thank you Rosemary. I have a question. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Thank you, Mayor. Rosemary, I'm wondering, I guess, or I won't pose this in the formal question. I'll just make a comment. I'm wondering if there might be a role as you're thinking about the hiring of the next police chief. I'm just wondering there might be a role that the Public Safety Committee can play in that process. And so just wanted to put that out there in case that might be a way for that committee to be engaged in that process. And I know that there's, I've been getting contacted by a number of community members already who are kind of interested in what that process is going to be like and how people, especially those that have. We had negative interactions with law enforcement and might be concerned about, you know, who we bring in if there's any way that we can direct them to opportunities to engage and provide feedback or be a part of that process for hiring a new police chief. I just want to put that out there that many people are interested in being engaged in the process. Thank you. I'll take that under advisement. I think, I think, or even the number of other sort of interim roles that are in the queue to be filled. I suspect we'll have a interim for a little while anyway, but that will give some. Thank you. Okay. We will now move on to the city council meeting calendar. And I'll call on the clerk now to provide in updates to the calendar. There are no updates. Okay. Thank you. Okay. First up today is our consent agenda and these are items 10 through 15 on our agenda for members of the public who are streaming this meeting. Now is the time to call in if you want to call in through 15 instructions are on your screen. Please remember to mute your streaming device press star nine to raise your hand and listen for the queue saying you have been unmuted. All items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion. Are there any council members who wish to comment or pull on any items. We can number Cummings and council member Contari Johnson. Council member Cummings. I'd like to pull item number 10, and I have a comment on item number 13. I have questions. Sorry for item number 13. Okay. And council member Contari Johnson. I had questions on item 10. Question on item 10. Okay. We have had item 10 pulled and we have comments, a comment or excuse me questions on item 10 and 13. So, council member Contari Johnson, you can go ahead and ask your questions as we after it's pulled. If there are any members of the public that would like to speak to any item consent agenda with the exception of items pulled by our council member council member which is item 10 today. Now's the time to raise your hand. I'm going to take a council member Cummings question on item number 13 and then I will take this out for public comment. Council member Cummings, coming to you to question on item number 13. Thank you. The public is, turn the page here, which is the council, city council ad hoc revenue committee. Thank you, mayor. I have a question for the, maybe this is for the city attorney or for the city manager, just out of curiosity around, you know, putting ballot measures, getting ballot measures move forward. I'm just wondering, if we were to put an item on the June or November election ballots, would that require us to declare a fiscal emergency, which my understanding is that that requires seven vote to the city council. Or would it just be a majority vote to put a revenue measure on either of the ballots. So the requirement for declaring a fiscal emergency is if there is a revenue measure that does not coincide with a city council election. So the answer is no for November 2022 and yes for the June primary election. You would need to declare a fiscal emergency to add a revenue measure to the June 2022 ballot. Okay, and then my next question is, I'm wondering about the cost, because so in the last time we had the, we had an ad hoc revenue committee, we, the committee worked with consultants. And I'm just curious about what the costs are because I guess why I'm going with this is that we just, we just want to assess of trying to bring forward a revenue measure that was not, and we were not able to get seven votes for that. And so one of the things I'm concerned with is, you know, if we go through this process again, and then we're unable to put an item on the ballot, you know, are we going to, you know, consistently be spending, you know, potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars working with consultants to then not be able to get something moved forward. And so I just wanted to get a sense of, you know, what those costs are in order for us to work with consultants or if that is anticipated. I'm going to take that question and I'm going to actually ask Schmidt who worked with the ad hoc revenue subcommittee earlier to address that. Thanks, Council Member Cummings. So as far as the potential success of a revenue ballot measure recommendation to Council, that's something that any ad hoc committee will try to get addressed throughout the deliberation, research and recommendation process. And I think any six figure expenditure that the city incurs in potential getting a return on that of potentially millions of dollars to be able to help at last count in May, a one to potentially $5 million deficit per year. I think it's something that we it's a good investment of staff and council member time to do regarding the specific costs related to the last proposed sales tax revenue measure. The six figure number relate to the cost of an election. So the cost of an election in an off cycle council year, where there are also other that don't have a lot on the ballot. We incur those costs working with the county to be able to launch the election. The other cost that we occurred in the last go around was approximately $30,000 or a poll or a community poll. And additionally to that, we had another approximate $30,000 with props and measures to help us do the education and staff education and outreach for the community of what the sales tax measure was not campaigning but just the educational portion that we are allowed to do as a city. Hopefully that answers your questions. Yeah, that did. And I guess the last comment I'll have is that I mean I'm supportive of this. I just am a little I just hope that we when we get to the point of moving something forward that we're able to, you know, get everybody on board. So that we don't we're not in a position where we put all this work into trying to bring a revenue measure forward that then just fall short. I'll now take this out to the public. So this will be for items on our consent agenda today and that will be items 10 through 15 with the exception of items excuse me 11 through 15 item 10 has been pulled and we'll discuss that next. So I see phone number ending in 4844. You could press star six to unmute yourself. You should be able to speak. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, well, it's customary these days to advocate a lot of public power to city council. We see this in the guillotining of much public comment time generally but what I'm requesting here is that item 11 I'm glad item 10 has been already been removed. Thank you by a council member for staff report in public comment. I believe council member Sandy Brown committed herself to removing items of public request at the beginning of her term and I hope she will fulfill her commitment here. The reason that I asked for this to be removed. Well, there's a very significant exclusion from the public of direct and in-person attendance at city council meetings has been requested by many, many members of the public. These items obviously so need full public discussion and but so as to clarify and not to take up time on this. So I'll be able to speak about it when I hope this item is removed. I'm requesting council members really concerned about public comment open up the agenda generally but this item particularly for this particular council meeting. We're talking about the one that involves continued zooming of these meetings instead of essentially public involvement in person. Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have Peter Bichet, a star six. Hello city council. This is Peter Bichet, your community liaison. I just want to speak to the general of the public and mostly the beach flat and lower ocean people about item number 14 and really appreciate that we're moving along on the as the city representative for those neighborhoods in lower ocean and beach flat. The showling of the San Lorenzo really impacts and creates havoc throughout the community. We've had several times floods that have been on basements who have been flooded with water parking lots. Obviously also it affects the boardwalk with I've seen a lot of kids who don't really know exactly what that water is. Parking lot and they play with their barefoot and stick their hands with these waters. So I'm really glad that we're moving along and it's still still to this day. Every time I'm in the neighborhood, which is on a weekly basis, I see this water high up and then I try to go down into the beach flat and lower ocean to see what the impact is. So far things are dry, but that will definitely be very good. And they become the things will be arranged that they're there. They're always rolling their eyes as well. Yeah, right. Well, hopefully so it'll be amazing if that project is approved and that they will make a great difference showing that the city does want to improve the life quality in those neighborhoods. Thanks. Thank you, Peter. Is there anyone else in the meeting attendees today that would like to speak to our consent agenda? This is going to be items 11 through 15 today. Last call. Okay, I will go ahead and bring us back to the city council then and item number 10 has been pulled by council member coming. Mayor, we need to have a vote on the 11. Your right. Okay, let's go ahead and I will look for a motion for items on our consent agenda items 11 through 15 Sandy and then Renee. I'll go ahead and move the consent agenda, but I wanted to get a quick comment to respond to the request from Mr. Norse. I did say that I would pull items from the agenda upon request from the public. And I didn't get any before this meeting and so I and I'm not persuaded that pulling it and having a long discussion is going to change anything in this case. So I'm sorry, Mr. Norse. I just want to register a note from that when the time comes, but I will move the consent agenda and you cannot just text me or send me an email and I will do that in advance. But I don't want to hold us up if no one's here to speak about it. So and you did. Thank you, Robert for. Thank you, Mr. Norse. So I'll go ahead and move the consent agenda with the exception of. Thank you. And Council Member Goldert. Second. Okay. The motion on the table to approve our consent agenda items 11 through 15. And I will go ahead and ask for a roll call vote. Council Member Cummings, did you have a question? Roll call vote please, Bonnie. Council Member Watkins. Callantara Johnson. Shepper, you're muted. Oh, she did. She's having internet issues, so. She's frozen. Come on, circle back to her. Yeah, I will. Brown. I would vote I just register and no vote on item number 11. Cummings. Aye. Boulder. Vice Mayor Brunner. And Mayor Myers. Aye. And. Looks like we lost Shebra. Do you want to quick and register? Well, we'll move forward. We have a. Six. Let's see five in favor and one registered no vote for item number 11. Seeing if she comes back in. I'm not seeing her. Okay. We'll move on to item number 10, which is. A resolution authorizing the city to implement teleconference public meetings pursuant to assembly bill 361. And Council Member Cummings has pulled this item. Thanks, Mayor. So many members of the public have been expressing their desire to have meetings in person again. And although some people have been the access meetings using zoom, there's been a lot of people who have expressed frustration while trying to call in to address the council. And as an elected official, I believe that we should be doing everything we can to allow the public access and participation in our meetings. At the beginning of the pandemic, it was clear that we needed to go to remote meetings due to the uncertainties around COVID. The need to reduce spread and keep our community safe. Today we know how to meet safely. And with the vaccine, many of us are protected from developing life threatening symptoms from COVID-19. In addition to that, many agencies and commissions have been having hybrid meetings and full in person meetings, including the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors. And I believe that we should follow the lead of the County Board of Supervisors and at a minimum for hybrid meetings. And so that's why I pulled this item is that I believe we should, whether it's a discussion and I know this needs to go out to the public for a public comment before we make a motion. But I wanted to bring forward that we move toward hybrid meetings and the suggestion and the consideration that we move toward hybrid meetings and reassess, you know, whether we want to go back to in person, we want to go back to fully remote meetings depending on how the COVID-19 epidemic changes over time. And I'll turn it over to the staff. I just, I do want the public to know that we've actually been talking for several months about when we go, if and how we go to hybrid, the staff has done a lot of work to get us ready for that. Rosemary probably will be able to update on that. So I think that there is, you know, work being done to move us that direction. Certainly I don't know if we need a motion to direct us to do that. But the most important thing right now is to make sure that the facility that we would return to is as safe as possible for any transmission. And so with the type of chamber and the type of environment we have there, our staff has been working really, really hard to assess all of those factors. And I'll turn it over to Rosemary and I saw Ken was also, Ken also on. So maybe an update and that might answer that may address your concerns and I'm not sure emotion would be necessary after you hear from staff. So let me ask Ken to give a quick update. And then I think also it might be worthwhile to hear briefly from Bonnie Bush regarding the sort of clerk side in the house and support. But I think Ken, you also have a couple of photos and maybe it would be great if you could share. Sure. Yeah. So the challenge obviously is when we come back into the chambers that we have three ways. Our stream, we have a community PV. We have our on base agenda management system and then we have zoom. It became much easier when we were out of the chambers. We have microphones in there. We have cameras in there. So as we return to the chambers, we still have to maintain zoom as our primary feed to the community. So we had to figure out how to kind of get the different channels to work together. So from a technology perspective, it's not as innovative as we would have a solution. And it's going to involve all members that are in chambers to have a device with a webcam kind of pointed at them. We would have one at the lectern for the public and for the staff. We've done a couple of tests and it seems to be sufficient. We're hoping that there's some technology in the pipeline that can kind of help meet this challenge. I know a lot of other communities that are out there are facing the same challenge. Some communities are going back to in person but so whatever we choose to do, I believe we'll have a solution that can get us there in the intern. Rosemary mentioned a picture. I think also one of the challenges is the plastic dividers that are in there make it kind of feel like you're in a hockey rink. You can see that the dividers on each side extend out all the way here to kind of protect you from your partner that's sitting next to you. So it definitely has kind of a feel of claustrophobia. And there's a little bit of an echo. Kind of like you're going through the drive through a jack-in-the-box. But I guess the bottom line is this is kind of what we're looking at. Thank you, Ken. And yeah, I think it just to be clear that the item today was not to, was really to also acknowledge the requirements under AB 361, but never an intention to not try to get us back into some kind of hybrid situation. So it's just, as you can see, pretty complicated in that room and we'll be sitting in some interesting quarters as we move forward. Any other questions or comments from council member on item number 10, which is the resolution authorizing the city to implement teleconference public meetings pursuant to assembly bill 361. And Mayor Meyers, I would encourage everyone to drop by. And the chambers, we would, if we do go this route, like to have a test run with council members, but just so that you have an idea on what the configuration looks like and how it feels and any feedback you might have. I think that would be important. Ken, just rosemary for our, maybe for council members kind of knowledge and Ken, thank you for all your work and Bonnie too. I know we have bounced around a few dates. Do we have sort of a timeline on how we would be going back to actual physical being in the chamber? You know, certainly that's up to you to some degree, but I also do want to make a sort of ancillary comment here. As the IT staff and others have been working on getting it set up for the council to go back into this hybrid mode which would allow for in-person participation but also remote participation. It's been clear that we've kind of crossed the ribbon kind of you will from where we used to be and all pro locally in-person to a remote to looking now to provide that continuing remote access for those people who don't want to come in person but still may want to participate in the conversation via some kind of a remote format. Many of the commission which didn't use to be televised or made available through some kind of visual perspective have taken advantage of the Zoom process as well and I think we do have some issues related to how we're going to manage the commission format as we go forward because the requirements of all this technology that was to support a council meeting is really, it's not sustainable with the resource level we have to provide that same level support for the commission that would want to maintain some kind of remote access. We still have a couple of issues there to sort through in terms of the long-range strategy for how we're going to support the commission process and try to keep up with the 21st century reality that we find ourselves in and I know that it's not possible for IT to support that not reasonable in that setting. But we have created, there's a lot of expectations for the people in the community who want to participate remotely wouldn't participate if they had to come in person and it's sort of the opposite side of the same issue that we started talking about here about the people who want to come in person. So I think that for the council meeting, it's really up to you when you're ready to go back to that format I think we would want to set that up in a way that would give us adequate time to make sure that you've had a chance to do a sort of a practice session in the chambers because it's not all straightforward and get the feel of it and then I think we would want to make a decision about a date to start up. Thank you Rosemary. Welcome to member Brown. Thank you Mayor and thank you Rose, Mary and Ken for the updates. I really want to say I'm sure there's a lot of complexity and challenges associated with trying to make this work and as it was when we moved to the remote format and so I just really appreciate all the work that you all are doing don't want to sound like I'm being critical of that as I say that I really do believe that we have a responsibility to move our meetings back into the chambers to allow the public access under safe conditions it will be rocky what we know is that it's super rocky for a whole lot of people out there who try to connect with us in these meetings. I have heard countless stories of people who just could never get in, some of it probably operator error or challenges with the technology at the other end but the reality is there are a whole lot of people who feel like they're being they're not able to participate as fully as they are however we feel about that level of participation and I recognize that it has also brought a lot of new opportunity for people to participate in our meetings that have not traditionally done that so I'm thrilled that we can get to a hybrid place and I think that my concern with this agenda item as written is that it basically says that we're being asked to authorize the use of assembly bill 361 to continue with teleconference meetings and there's that other piece of that where there's a few steps to get there we need to work out the kinks and or there are other considerations just not here and so it feels like ourselves up to do this through potentially 2024 and that is something that I think a lot of people have at least communicated to me they have a discomfort with so I personally we just came up at the regional transportation meeting at our last meeting and there's a lot of commissioners that let's try to move forward and get back into the in-person meetings at least the meeting process as soon as possible and so I'd really like to see something like that indicated here today that we are not just using assembly bill 361 because we can find a way to I think it would be important for the to help the public understand that's not the intention here okay did you want to make a motion to that to that point I will I will I can ask if she wants to make a motion to do that now thank you I am well I could I've got my parliamentary procedure and we can do that if we want I can take it out to public comment but I'm just appreciate it Council Member Brown was stating that I wanted to put a motion on floor I appreciate it I'll wait to hear from the public before we make a motion get to me thank you I appreciate it so I just want to make sure so the item we're bringing out for folks I'll open this up for public comment this is going to be item number 10 on our agenda we have a resolution authorizing legislative bodies and the city of Santa Cruz to continue the use of teleconference meetings pursuant to assembly bill 361 which is which is obviously if we do want to do that we need to pass the solution but I don't know that the intent was to say that teleconference was our only choice moving ahead so but I'll bring it out to see if we have folks from the audience we do have one attendee Mr. Norse go ahead and then we've got a second person I'll call on you next Abina go ahead Mr. Norse can you hear me yep we can hear you okay it was pointed out to me that the county has already ruled that things have moved from severe to moderate and the statement of the the actual AB 361 is that the native emergency continues to directly impact the ability of members to meet safely in person seems to me that there's kind of a potential contradiction here also I mean you have there's a phone capacity that could be set up there's email capacity even when people are meeting in person they generally have to come in person and you have venues where you can do this where we have asked you and I say we because I think many more than I asked you to meet in the auditorium repeatedly and you've refused to do so given me saying different things about why that's the case and perhaps you know perhaps repairs were needed perhaps it wasn't entirely adequate but the Board of Supervisors although it also uses a distance approach allows people or at least it did to meet in person quite recently so I don't and it tends to give one the suspicion we don't want people to attend because people who attend exercise perhaps more of a moral force and more perhaps of a political force than people who you can cut off on the phone I'd also like to point out by the way that I'm not able to get you on the either through Chrome or Firefox and I've sent an email to that effect to Bonnie I guess the Rosemary didn't get it but it's really problematic and I think it can constitute a brown act violation if you're really excluding public in a very haphazard way and you have other options that you are specifically choosing not to use in spite of repeated requests and I ask the community to raise its voice about this issue maybe the council here thank you next I have Sabina I'm Sabina I'm a resident of Santa Cruz I have to say I agree with Mr. Norris that is at least giving the impression that you guys don't people attending these meetings and I've talked with lots of people about this especially like you guys are passing multiple ordinances one after another against the poorest people in our city and you're not really allowing them to speak because they need to have a computer with zoom in order to do it or a phone and it's just my child can go to school and be unvaccinated and be in school every single day you guys can go to a meeting that's what every other week like it's pretty ridiculous what you're asking the community to do on a regular basis versus what you will do on a regular basis and so I'd really like you to think about that if tiny children need to be in person you guys can be in person once in a while and see what your constituents really have to say so please start meeting in person thank you thank you is there any other any other folks in the audience that would like to speak to this we are on item number 10 on our consent agenda I'm not seeing any hands at this point I'll go ahead and bring it back we do have a motion by council member Will council member bound was ready to make a motion I want to call on Bonnie Bush real quick our city clerk she's got her hand up thank you mayor I just want to address something that Mr. Norris said our streaming is down on our website however members of the public can go to community television online the link is on the agenda in order to view the meeting so it is not a brown act violation thank you Bonnie okay I'll bring it back to council member Brown so thanks I actually council member Cummings had his hand up first and we did discuss this before he may be about to do what I would do so I'll just hold off thank you council member Cummings thank you mayor and just again for members of the public I pulled this item so that we could have this discussion and the motion I sent it to Bonnie and I've also amended the motion based on conversations that we've had in the hearing from council members currently but the motion I would like to make would move the resolution authorizing legislative bodies of the city of Santa Cruz to continue the use of teleconference meeting pursuant to assembly bill 361 and that the Santa Cruz city council shift to hybrid meetings and reconsider meeting options dependent upon circumstances of the state of emergency every 30 days until the state of emergency has been lifted and so the consistent with this is trying to align with the staff report and what the staff is recommending and also taking into account community concern around shifting to hybrid meetings and being able to meet in person and my objective with this motion is to try to meet reach that middle ground of you know needing to pass this resolution but also express to move to hybrid meetings second we have a motion on the floor with addition to the staff recommendation as outlined by council member Cummings Bonnie do you want to put that language up there just one more time just so folks understand this would be adding the following to after assembly bill 361 and that the Santa Cruz city council shift to hybrid meetings and reconsider meeting options dependent on the circumstances of the state of emergency every 30 days until the state of emergency has been lifted I see Rosemary Menard has her hand up the question for clarification this explicitly puts the council meetings in the hybrid format it does not address issues related to commissions did you mean to be silent on the commission question I was explicitly trying to address the city council and it sounds like there's some concern around the commission so if we need to provide further direction for staff to consider how we could have the commissions could meet I'd be happy to provide that but I think at this time what we've been hearing well I've been hearing mostly from the members of the public is really this desire to start with the city council and getting the city council meetings public again alright then I'm going to interpret that as the council is the focus and that for the time being that commissions can continue to operate in a remote mode correct okay, Bonnie will do a roll call moat on this looks like Laura has her hand up Laura can I please get the application as far as the council moving to hybrid is that going to be considered 30 days after this particular vote gets done or is it immediate like when is that shift to hybrid those two happen I don't know personally I think that if the city is ready to move I mean it looked like based on the photos that we provided the city has the structure that would allow us to move to in person meetings maybe if the IT director if he has any input on that it seems like if our numbers are trending down with respect to hybrid cases and if the chambers have been to allow us to meet in a safe way that the sooner we can get back I think the community would appreciate that so under the caveat that council is dedicated to coming into the chambers and doing at least a test run to become familiar with the equipment and make sure that the process or for you I would rather not go live on a council meeting on the 26th I think 30 days from now would be fine or at the first meeting in November council member Watkins and then council member commentary Johnson I just want to make sure if I understood mayor was this also the direction that you were essentially saying that the city had been considering moving in is this aligned with what sort of the plans were internally the vice mayor and I had been meeting with the city manager you know the highest you know or I think I won't speak for the vice mayor but my concern was that you know we see all the signs that you know there's also many people in the community that actually enjoy the teleconference being so trying to make sure that we had the safety in the chambers needed for to avoid transmissions and then obviously you know give our staff the time to get ready for that test everything and then but yeah we were we were moving this way so I'm but I don't know if we're going to be ready in 30 days so you know but I was leading it up to the experts primarily our staff to determine when they were ready to go live on the on the chamber and the hybrid approach so could I just add one thing that I think that that what the mayor just said is is absolutely what I understand to be the case as well the one thing that we haven't talked about here is that the the chambers would not necessarily be throw open the door and let as many people as want to come in and so there's a little bit of work that needs well more props more than a little bit but there's some you know work that has to get done to figure out how to let people come in and meet her people in and meet her people out in terms of the public comment so you know this is in all of our minds we should not be thinking this is like going back to the way it was you know two years ago where the chambers could be packed because I don't think anybody thinks that's a good idea for at least the foreseeable future so you know the two sides and then it does appear as though the side for the council function is you know kind of set out we obviously want to do some testing with you and that to make sure but then there's the public expectation side of it which I don't think we've done much in the way of communications about but obviously that's a companion piece that has to work successful not to create even more aprimony I I wonder if maybe the maker of the motion would be open to making it so that it's not based on a timeline that feels rushed but based on a timeline that makes sure that we have these safety standards and all of this thought through prior to going into this model because I you know I think we all share a commitment to not inadvertently show somebody to COVID or have a negative health impact by rushing something that isn't necessarily ready so for me I would feel more comfortable to have it kind of on a timeline that feels more aligned with just all the different checkpoints we want to have in place for safety standards than to have it rushed in 30 days I don't know if that means modifying the motion language but that would be more comfortable for me Is that a friendly amendment offered for a friendly amendment or is that an offer for a friendly amendment to make the motion? I just want to ask the city manager I guess because technically the way the motion stands there's no timeline that was outlined to put forward and part of that was to provide staff with flexibility to work towards moving to the hybrid meeting but explicitly to express to the community our desire to move to hybrid meetings and so I guess with respect to since this was brought up by the assistant city manager what timeline we're thinking about I guess what would be a realistic timeline and I also want to put out there that if I think that it's important that the community understands too that if we find ourselves in a position where conditions are not safe that we are able to move back to this hybrid structure as well so I would like to ask for your variance and having us let's have a couple of weeks where the staff can work together and then part of the city manager report on the 26 I will kind of give you a roadmap to when this could happen and so it was in mind and with the conversation we've heard here we can sort of leave the motion I think the way it is and we can come back at that point and give you sort of a trajectory and where we are that sounds fun to me okay I've got councilmember commentary Johnson I just want to remind folks we are starting to run a little bit late here councilmember commentary Johnson thank you and I just want to apologize that I keep getting kicked off because of my internet connectivity I'm hoping at the break I'll move to different locations it seems like most of my questions and concerns were brought up and addressed but I'm not sure if this was brought up when we do move to in-person hybrid can we consider protocols in terms of vaccine proof of vaccination or rapid testing or taking temperatures I know that some of the commissions and committees I'm on have started to look at that and those are some of the things that they're asking for proof of vaccination and rapid testing and maybe you've already addressed this and I got knocked off and didn't hear it but hopefully we can consider well thank you thank you councilmember city clerk Bonnie Bush go ahead please thank you mayor I just want to address one little thing we do have as part of the setup in chambers to prepare for hybrid we do have no touch thermometers so we have that as far as the proof of vaccine I'm assuming we'll still use the same guidelines that we do for city offices but that'll be a conversation that we have with staff moving forward too thank you Bonnie councilmember coming did you have more I just had one brief comment I think it might be worth considering having an ordinance brought forward to deal with potential anti-vaxxer maskers who want to take their mask off in chambers and potentially expose people as well I know that there's been a number of groups that have been running around Santa Cruz pulling their mask off and going into buildings and making people feel unsafe and so I just thought I'd put that out there as something that we might want to potentially consider as well as we move back to hybrid meetings we have a motion by councilmember coming seconded by councilmember Brown could I ask that the motion be either reposted or restated because there's quite a bit of discussion between the motion and the I believe it's the same so I would interpret this as directing that the council shift immediately to hybrid meetings so if that's not the intent can we get clarification on that we'll begin the transition to hybrid meetings and reconsider meeting options every 30 days and by the way the statute basically requires that in order to continue to have meetings by teleconference you have to make a finding every 30 days is that it Tony I said transition but shift is fine transition is better the maker of the motion and the decision is okay, Bonnie, why don't we do a roll call vote councilmembers Watkins Calentary Johnson Brown Aye Cummings Aye Boulder Aye, sorry I was under Vice Mayor Brunner and Mayor Myers I'm going to go ahead and vote aye again just recognize the work of our staff there is no intention by councilmembers or staff to keep people out of public meetings I think the motion largely is acknowledgement of the resolution that was in the packet and so I think it's really important to clarify that there was no plan to try to prevent going back in person it was just merely a process to make sure everyone was going to be as safe as possible so I'll support it but I do want that on the record thank you that motion passes unanimously okay we've gone on through our consent agenda and we now will move to item number 16 which is the Santa Cruz cannabis equity assessment for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the city council we will then take public comment and turn to the council for deliberation and action okay I will turn this over to Allison Cameron and Rebecca unit from the economic development department good afternoon mayor and council as Rebecca unit economic development manager and city Santa Cruz and I am here today with Don Arledge and Dominic Corva from Humboldt State University who are with this cannabis equity assessment so the item before you today is our draft cannabis equity assessment the city was awarded a grant from the state of California governor's office of business and economic development back in March 2020 and our work was a bit delayed by the pandemic but we're excited to be well underway now and so today we have a cannabis equity assessment which was prepared with the help of the California center for rural policy at Humboldt State University and we've had a great team working on this and I also want to give a huge shout out to Allison Cameron who's our economic development coordinator who's been doing a lot of the day to day work on managing this grant for us and helping us keep on track with all this so we'll have a brief presentation for you all and then we'll be answering any questions and so I will share my screen to get our presentation up and turn it over to Don and Dominic Thank you. Thank you for having us I'm Don Arledge I'm the executive director for the California Center for Rural Policy at Humboldt State and I'm here with Dr. Dominic Corva who is our cannabis policy specialist Next slide the California Cannabis Equity Act is essentially aimed at reducing barriers to entry for regulated cannabis and supporting individuals who are adversely impacted by cannabis criminalization and poverty to support them in being able to enter the legal industry Next slide As Rebecca mentioned the City of Santa Cruz received type 1 grant funding that supports jurisdictions in conducting equity assessments and then developing a local equity program Once you've developed an equity assessment and an equity program you're eligible to receive and apply for type 2 funding from the state which will give the jurisdiction funding to direct to individuals who have been impacted by cannabis criminalization and help them enter the legal industry We have done this for several other jurisdictions and we appreciate being able to work with the City on this Next slide This is a very brief overview of the report and the sections in the report talks about the background of the state's work around equity the equity analysis we conducted for the city current conditions in the city we looked at current licenses and applicants barriers to entry that people are facing and then we make recommendations for the cannabis equity program Next slide I'm going to hand it over to Dr. Corva Next slide Thanks Dominic Thank you Don Thank you Council members for having us here today Just a little bit on the outreach that we had We had 18 interviews and meetings with current former elected officials historical figures community members local non-profit stakeholders and a little bit of law enforcement as well and I think that's going to be the next slide Secondary sources So in particular we were assisted by the fact that there's been a fantastic academic book by Dr. Wendy Chapkus who's now at the University of Southern Maine sociologist and was in fact part of what was going on in the 1980s and next to when it happened and the book from 2008 was very helpful in contextualizing this is not just about cannabis but about Santa Cruz as a city and the communities that were acting in it We also drew on substantial oral history interviews from current Santa Cruz Arts Commissioner Christopher Carr We're very grateful to him for a couple of times and Pat Malo and several others but also incredible oral history resources as well over 200 interviews I listened to about 40 hours and some of them over and over again So this helped out with our primary data as well So the key takeaways from the assessments City of Santa Cruz is historically known as a significant cannabis consuming hub of counter-cultural and progressive political communities since the 1970s It is a globally significant center for cannabis breeding and horticulture innovation and we go over that in the assessment as well The city's non-commercial medical cannabis community has been adversely in the state's transition to a tightly regulated commercially oriented adult use markets The city has a strong history of progressive politics that is highly sensitive to equity considerations in all policies and historically supportive of community and medical cannabis organizing Next slide please In addition to the medical cannabis communities which may be struggling to transition of course our interviews with public sector stakeholders consistently identified beach flats and lower ocean as low income neighborhoods that were disproportionately impacted by the drug war beyond and including it probably should say their civilization One of the things we talked about in the assessment is the recognition what happened in Santa Cruz happened in the rest of the state as well that early sort of community and medical cannabis folks were supplemented by a migration of more commercially oriented actors as legalization approached the city was conservative about their licensing as a result they wanted to keep it keep it small and local is what I kept hearing and as a result there is room in the city for equity conditioned expansion that is expansion of licensing and permitting in particular and it will be consistent with the city's health and all policies approach and increase campus revenue funds which then could also go into Santa Cruz's very unique progressive program to use campus funds for early childhood education next slide please and our summaries of the various entry are pretty standard this I was going to hand back over to Dawn and then take slide time great thanks these barriers to entry are common like Dominic said across jurisdictions financial barriers to the high cost of being able to enter the legal regulated market and all new businesses of course face financial requirements when entering a new market and that's true for those trying to enter the cannabis industry as well for banking the barrier to entry there is around limited access to banking for cannabis businesses in part due to federal classifications of cannabis and it forces many businesses to operate with cash only and exposes them to risks associated with needing to operate that way administrative and technical barriers basically obtaining the necessary permits to operate legally are time consuming their resource intensive and it requires a high technical knowledge and skill and for some people that is a significant barrier to entry and then people who are wanting to learn how to run a business how to manage employees accounting inventory controls all the things associated with running a business are barriers to entry that tend to favor well-read and highly educated applicants who have a better chance of being able to operate these barriers next slide talks about the Santa Cruz specific context and I'll dominate take that one yes so as kind of probably indicated in the takeaways it's communitarian medical cannabis community was not necessarily all that commercially oriented and in particular WAM as a nonprofit that's really operated with pretty small margins by contrast with a lot of more commercially oriented actors and so it's those high capital barriers to entry and expertise in running a business which you have to run in order to be able to be part of the legal landscape that are really you know big challenges and there's a lot of room to potentially help help those out and the community of Beach Flat Slower Ocean some of the Santa Cruz's next population has experienced pretty intense policing in a city that progressively decriminalized medical cannabis in particular earlier than most jurisdictions in California and has more in common with other inner cities and other urban areas and so it's home to people and families that you know helped in drug crimes they were impacted by living in you know a state of criminalization with more intense more intense in other areas and of course capital barriers to entry are very strong for those folks too and I'll turn the next slide back over to Don Don, everything we learned in the assessment CCRP is making recommendations to the city for you to consider including in your local equity program which will be the manual and document that follow your equity assessment and bring you full circle to being eligible for type 2 funding so we recommend that the program be aligned with your health and all policies program we suggest licensing looking at equity applicants licensees that facilitate medical product innovation, patient acts data gathering for patients and community service we mentioned the beach flats and lower ocean neighborhoods and assisting stakeholders from those disproportionately impacted areas next slide to create specific services and programs you can use the equity funding to direct to applicants that help them overcome those barriers to entry and we have a whole list of suggestions of those things just didn't want to put it all in the PowerPoint but it's all in the report then in terms of determining eligibility equity program we recommend you look at specific populations with the lens of who was most most impacted by cannabis criminalization and or poverty so that those individuals can get some help to navigate entry you can basically set it up so that individuals if they meet 5 of the 10 criteria they'll score higher application and this is a list of some of the eligibility criteria that we have listed in the report that's given what we've already said next slide the city can consider expanding the adult use cannabis retail cap you can look at allowing cannabis lounges to be attached to a large retail location these are all things that the city can consider as they move toward an equity program and we have seen other jurisdictions explore cannabis event licenses that create business opportunities for residents limited access to capital event licenses have lowest capital barrier to entry for all state licenses since they do not have to be attached to permanent real estate and there's more detail about these things in the report a quick overview next slide then we recommend tracking data the state will require you to do so if you receive type 2 funding that basically you know looks at who the equity program is helping you could collect data about your cannabis workforce and you can do some tracking to help show the city and residents that the program is helping people next slide and then we recommend you think of your equity program as and your manual as a living document so it is your actual equity program the city will have be able to update it as new information becomes available as trends change in the industry learn of areas for course correction and anything you may learn so that you can change course and think of the equity assessment as setting the baseline for the city around the history as well as the current state and then move forward next slide really quick just so you know what others are doing in addition to city of Santa Cruz Trinity County Sonoma County and San Diego County also in type 1 as is the city of Clear Lake in Lake County Humboldt County, Lake County and Mendocino County have all progressed to type 2 so they have received at least one round of type 2 funding we have seen Humboldt's received more than 4 million dollars in type 2 funding Lake has received one round and more than a million and Mendocino has received I think about 3 million in type 2 funding next slide so reasons to have a cannabis program it's funding to assist your equity stakeholders as we've said it can support small legacy cannabis farmers it can support the legal cannabis market and basically an economic driver for the city it supports enforcement and moving people away from illicit operations to legal above-ground regulated operation and it helps to improve trust in the regulatory system for these people who have been operating outside that system all this time next slide so what's next for the city and then I'm going to turn it back over to Rebecca here Rebecca thank you so much for covering all of that so what's next for the city we are going to be continuing to evaluate our program commitment workload and obligations evaluating whether or not to apply for the type 2 grant funding in this round the state just opened the application period for that grant than expected typically they've done it in the spring and they have opened it this fall instead with a deadline of December 13th so we're evaluating our capacity there to be able to finish out the work that we need to do on this grant before applying for that next round we as part of that also consider local funding contribution for the local equity program so the state does require or gives you points if you provide local funding towards your local equity program so looking at what is possible there we're also looking at building program logistics program policies procedures, forms, handouts all of the different local equity program that we need to have in place to be able to operate it and then continuing to partner with all of the community stakeholders and different partners that we've worked on throughout this grant program and creating this cannabis equity assessment and so that's our presentation for you and our staff recommendation this afternoon is to adopt the city of Santa Cruz cannabis equity and we will welcome any questions that you might have on this item right thank you thanks for a great presentation really interesting work really really interesting work I'll go ahead and see if council members have questions I see council member Brown thank you mayor thank you for that great report as I was reading through the document I just kept thinking wow this is a very cool research project to do and I'm glad you got a chance Dominic that you you said that you got to enjoy some of those oral histories we got the benefit of that synthesis and analysis and so it was really fascinating to read I'm glad that we're moving forward on this and appreciate all of your recommendations I guess the question that I have is related to the issue of in the recommendations increasing the cap and doing that through an equity program is something that I think is I mean I certainly I'm really excited about that because it's been something that has been a challenge for us to try to support the pioneers in our community really who are doing this not for wealth accumulation but really to serve our community and to help sick people and so I'm looking for the question I have is kind of in connection with that like so if we raise like so wham I'm specifically thinking of you know when we had they aren't having the challenge that they have I mean I know they have a lot of challenges I won't speak for them but raising the cap in and of itself isn't going to get them where they need to be in order to be able to provide this service so there's a whole lot of other supports and I think some of that is available through this moving forward in this direction but I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that because that's what I'm really interested in you know the logic about that is that the retail cap was about how many retail stores basically that you wanted to handle based upon a per capita calculation but like that calculation is a commercial calculation it's like we're going to serve a general population with five retail caps and WEMP WEMP Phyto Therapies serves a niche population is not oriented towards you know growth and more and more revenue and it's currently occupying one of those retail spaces that otherwise could be generating some tax revenue for the city and so the logic here is that like this to think about this is more like WEMP and they're struggling what you could do is take that pressure off the city by expanding that retail cap for one more for the general use and it would give them some room to stretch without feeling kind of that pressure to open before they can really and then it has been a capital struggle and the equity grant can also help them open and so it's a you know the thought for was both what is the retail cap based on what it would do for the city and I think you know generating tax revenue and serving a general population is the idea but you have a special case and they're already kind of occupying one of those retail spots and this way it would I think release some and some room to move. Thank you I guess just sort of as follow up and maybe it wasn't totally clear so right yes and in terms of the additional supports though I guess I'm trying to to well I'm just really thinking about WEMP that's what I think about when I think about this stuff you know the supports right I mean if they're not they don't behave but yet they have all of these rules and these you know capital constraints and that's not the role of the city to provide capital but I guess I'm just trying to figure out how this program can provide it could help it could help them by helping them pay for the ADA compliance that they've got on their historical building because it costs $90,000 and that's a barrier to end but they found real estate that's a big challenge and as a result it's more expensive and an equity grant program could grant them money to help them pay for that for example thank you that example just really helped crystallize the possibilities thank you appreciate it I have councilmember Cummings yeah thanks so much for the report and presentation really thoughtful and helpful information I kind of going off of what councilmember Brown had kind of started in terms of the kind of the increase of the retail cap I was wondering if you could speak to maybe your experience and other jurisdictions if jurisdictions do something like a market study to kind of get a sense of what is that right amount with not over saturation but not sort of just arbitrarily choosing you know a cap amount like so you know what I mean I think like how do we compile data essentially to help us understand what that kind of could look like in our community and would a market study be something that could work yes I think that's a good idea I think you went off one for 15,000 residents before something like that which was you know kind of a rule of thumb kind of thing at the beginning obviously Santa Cruz is a place that I think is more widely you know I think the rate of cannabis consumption is higher don't cannabis consumption is higher in Santa Cruz and I think that you know maybe finding comparable cities sort of culturally Berkeley and see what their you know per capita retail is you could kind of look for you know sister cities basically as part of your market research so you can look at the averages for your region for where you are you know relationship with the county and so forth but I think that there are several fruitful ways to revisit how many retail shops you had and the recommendation for one more was really based on not having to do that and sticking with your one per 15,000 but I think it's also a good idea because you could possibly accommodate another equity you know retail spot if you know studied matter further great thank you I appreciate that welcome we're coming thank you for your presentation and for all the work that you all have done for this equity assessment the one question I had you know it was it came up in the presentation referring back to the agenda report but in item number seven equity program eligibility factors through focus on specific target population I thought I saw in the presentation it was like there was a one piece of this was that individuals who reside in the city for at least two years between 2008 and 2016 and I thought I saw in the presentation it was like 1970 and 2016 but maybe I was wrong wondering just some clarification on that one that one because I'm not really sure what the difference was I think the 1970 one to 2016 made that sound like I don't know about the 2008 to 2016 yeah I think it's a good catch council member coming I think it's a disconnect between the slide deck and the report and certainly this could be something the city weighs in on the report but we can take a look and clarify the idea there is around criteria that prioritizes people that live in the community and have been in the community for a period of time so we've had different years in different jurisdictions and so that's a good catch on your part and error that we made the slide is not matching the report we'll go back and figure that out my question related to that though is that I'm just curious we're not adopting these criteria like right now these are just recommendations and then at a future time if we want to move forward with whether it's making one more license available or on-site consumption lounges that's when we would kind of take these equity factors is that correct that is absolutely correct I just wanted it to be clear because I think that I would want to revisit that the questions around residents for two years within a set time frame because I think that we should also be considering if it was 2016 what about those people who got convicted in the 80s or 90s who haven't been living in the community but aren't coming back and want to try to establish some kind of business and get their lives on track so that was just where the thinking was coming from me around setting these time frames I concur completely and I believe in 1970 to 2016 was what's in the report that ends my questions and just express my gratitude for all the work that you all did on this so thanks I just wanted to add also to that so this is our cannabis equity assessment so this is the research piece of it and providing the recommendations and then we will be bringing back to you in a couple months here our local equity program which will have more of the details worked out of what to look like and what our plan is and how we would actually operate that so yeah that's more to come more of those details will be forthcoming today's item is a motion to approve the equity assessment report so helpful member Golder so I just have one comment that I do appreciate all the work and I'm in support of everything here I just wanted to say that I think this use and you know connecting it with health and all policies for me is kind of hypocrisy and I understand and support this but that's one piece of a little hard for me to follow Thank you council member council member Contar Johnson Thank you I had a comment I didn't know I should wait till after public comment but I'll just make it here thank you for bringing this report and for all the work it's really really quite fascinating and interesting to see the historical context and where we've been and where we've come I did want to point out the section around youth substance youth and how we have double the rates of regular cannabis use when we come or compared to the state of California numbers and I think that's something that we have to be really acutely aware as we think about the recommendations and how we want to move forward with the recommendations now having said that I've worked really closely with some of the members in the cannabis community in some of the cannabis regulation work I've done with the county and some of these members I'll just call out Valerie Corral and Wham have been real advocates for children and youth worked really closely with county coalitions that worked to address substance use among youth and children they've been very very supportive of the Children's Fund the upcoming measure A so I want to say it's we have to be aware that the prevalence is an issue in our community and that there are members of the county have worked and I hope will continue I know will continue to work with us but that's something that we have to keep at the forefront as we navigate how we want to move forward as a city and as a community but thank you so much for all the work great I'll go ahead and take this out to the public now so I'm looking at in our attendees if you would like to speak to this item please press start on your phone to raise your hand at this time so this will be for item number 16 which is the Santa Cruz cannabis equity assessment I am not seeing anyone raising their hand so I will bring it back to council for looking for a motion on the item and any other comments from council at this time council member Watkins I need to move approval of the cannabis equity assessment report council member Cummings second any other comments or questions before we take the vote seeing any okay we have a motion to approve cannabis equity assessment report by council member Watkins seconded by council member Cummings and Bonnie can we do a roll call vote please council member Watkins I Calentari Johnson Brown I Cummings I Boulder I and Mayor Meyers I that item passes unanimously okay we'll move on to item number 17 which is an ordinance amending Santa Cruz municipal code provisions referring to previously repealed sections in Santa Cruz municipal one for members of the public who are streaming this meeting this if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action to our deputy city attorney Stephanie duck good afternoon mayor city council members we are recommending that city council introduce for publication this ordinance that amends various provisions of the Santa Cruz municipal code that currently refer to repealed sections from title one so by way of a little bit of background Santa Cruz municipal code chapters 1.8 10 and 1.12 were all repealed in the year 2000 and replaced by what we currently have as title four of the municipal code which includes our general code enforcement provisions I believe there is some effort at this time to go ahead and go through and replace any reference to those repealed title one sections with the new title four however our officers noted that there are still various sections that still refer to the repealed sections from title one and so this ordinance is simply proposing non-substitutive changes to replace any reference to title one or chapter one whatever to title four so happy to answer any questions if you may have any keeping it short and sweet so if you chime in if you have questions thank you is there any questions for Stephanie on this item and let me take it out to the public if you are if you are member of the public today and you're interested in commenting on ordinance on the ordinance amending Santa Cruz municipal code provisions referring to previously repealed sections in Santa Cruz municipal code title one please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand at this point I am not seeing in the public so I will bring this back to the council and I would look for a motion on this item council member Golder and then council member Contari Johnson I'm happy to move the item as it's written on the agenda and council member Contari Johnson I'll second okay we have a motion on the table to introduce your publication and ordinance amending various sections of the city of Santa Cruz municipal code to replace erroneous references to repealed chapter one point oh eight the current title for general municipal code enforcement other minor internal inconsistencies that motion is by council member Golder seconded by council member Contari Johnson and can we have a roll call vote please council members Watkins aye Contari Johnson aye Brown aye Cummings Vice Mayor Brunner aye Mayor Meyers aye that motion passes unanimously okay we've now come to the end of our general business and we will be going into oral communications now for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if you want to comment during oral communications now is the time to call in are on your screen oral communications oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on today's listed agenda item if you are interested in addressing the council please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand you will have two minutes to speak when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted we request that you clearly and slowly state your name before making your comment so that we can accurately capture it in the meeting minutes however it is not required to provide your name this is the time for the council to hear from the public we are not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public but when we are able we will address the questions raised after oral communications have been completed I'm looking in the audience today if you do want to speak for oral communications today this will be for items not on the agenda please raise your star nine on your phone I am not seeing any hands being raised at this point in time so I am going to go ahead and adjourn our city council meeting we will be back at 4.30 this afternoon and we will be addressing agenda item number 18 which is the 831 water street project so please tune back in at 4.30 we will be back then thank you everyone public just joining us we are now at agenda item number 18 831 water street a public oversight meeting clients with the city's objective standards criteria and accompanying density bonus request for an affordable housing project pursuant to FB 35 for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council we will then break for web based which can be accessed at cityosanacruz.com slash forward slash 831 water after web based comments are received we will proceed with public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action please note public comment will not exceed 90 minutes 45 minutes for the web based public input and 45 minutes for those call in order to hear from as many members of the public as possible the time will be limited to one minute per person I will now turn this over to our staff for their presentation thank you mayor mayors and good evening to you and to the rest of the council I'm Lee Butler I'm deputy city manager and director of planning and community development for the city and I'm going to give a brief introduction to the item back on September 7th we gave an update on SB 35 to the council and as part of that I introduced some of the background information related to the decades long housing production shortfall that was occurring throughout the state that was spurring a whole day state legislation particularly in the last four years that facilitates housing production it was no different this year when the governor in the last month has signed 31 different housing related bills and we'll be back to you before the end of the year talking with you about those but tonight we're going to focus primarily on 35 and the first application that we have received that is seeking to take advantage of SB 35 which provides a streamlined ministerial approval process and SB 35 places significant limitations on the city's review of projects moment I'll invite our city attorney Tony Kandadi up to speak to that we'll also highlight some of the provisions of the housing accountability act and provisions of state density bonus law that we're going to discuss in the next video. Before doing so I wanted to just point out that our city team has done an extensive review of the application that came in including the materials that were submitted late last week and based on that review we have found the project to be consistent with objective standards and we found the project is eligible for SB 35 streamlining and we found that it is eligible for SB 35 streamlining so with that I'll turn it over to our city attorney Tony Kandadi and then he'll be followed by Ryan Bain our senior planner and when our transportation planner and they'll be providing more details on the specifics of the application review. Yes, thank you Mayor Myers, members of the city council and thank you Lee. I've been asked to speak to the limits of the scope of review under SB 35 and the density bonus law. SB 35 allows the city to conduct a design review or a public oversight meeting of this project as part of an objective standard review process. However, the process under the statute must remain ministerial. The role of the council is to focus on compliance with objective standards that are set forth in your being subdivision code and design review regulations. The city council is required to assess compliance with these objective standards to listen to public testimony and to provide direction to the applicant as to the project eligibility for SB 35 streamlined permit processing which includes the granting of a density bonus request. So in this area what we mean is and as defined by SB 35 a ministerial process is a process for development approval that involves little or no personal judgment by the public official as to the wisdom or manner of carrying out the project official merely ensures that the proposed development meets all of the objective zoning standards objective subdivision standards objective design review standards in effect at the time the application is submitted but uses no special discretion or judgment in reaching a decision. Prior to recent changes to the housing accountability act and the enactment of SB 35 city staff and hearing bodies regularly considered such issues as neighborhood compatibility scale potential nuisance factors the size or housing type proposed and weighed those against policies that are adopted as sort of general goals but are not always fully supported by objective regulations. By contrast the building permit process is an example of ministerial review and no public process is associated with building permit review because objective requirements for the public or a hearing body are considered as objective requirements are definitive so in the building permit process staff merely looks at objective standards and approves the permit if the application is consistent with all applicable requirements. Statutory scheme pursuant to SB 35 requires the city to process an SB 35 application similar to a building permit meaning that there is no discretion in the decision and the city is merely tasked with finding whether the development complies with definitive requirements therefore the public oversight process in this context is not the same as the public hearing which in the past provide for council members to hear the concerns of the public by including conditions of approval or requiring changes or even denying a project based on potentially subjective city standards or policies. The council's role in this SB 35 process will be to review the objective standards assessment table that is provided packet to assess compliance with identified objective criteria and to provide direction to staff as to the project's eligibility for permit streamlining under SB 35. Now with respect to the density bonus for projects that include the requisite number of portable housing units and upon the request of an applicant cities are generally required to allow more market rate units to be built than is otherwise allowed by applicable zoning and are provided and are required to provide incentives or concessions such as reduced development standards that result in actual and identifiable costs for the project and to provide waivers or modifications of development standards that would physically preclude the project from being constructed as proposed and also to allow reduced parking requirements. Cities again have very limited discretion in reviewing density bonus applications and are generally obligated to grant a density bonus and incentives, conditions waivers or reductions in development standards to the developer. As long as the proposed development complies with the applicable affordability requirements and the waivers or incentives or concessions meet certain standards. Projects that include a specified amount of affordable housing are entitled to a density bonus even if the density bonus would exceed the maximum density under the city's general plan and zoning code. And then generally the density bonus law requires the granting of these concessions and waivers unless the city can make certain findings that are based on substantial evidence in the record. So for concessions or incentives the city would need to find that the concession or incentive does not result in identifiable and actual cost reductions. The key here is that there must be substantial evidence in the record that those cost reductions or that those concessions or incentives would not result in identifiable and actual cost reductions. And then with respect to concessions incentives and waivers the city would need to be able to find that the project would have specific adverse impact upon public health and safety not only specific adverse impact upon public health and safety but for which there is no feasible method to satisfy or avoid the specific adverse impact without rendering the development unaffordable under the low income and moderate income households. With respect to specific adverse impact and I would just note that there have been a lot of correspondence in your packet that refer to health and safety impacts of the project but the density bonus law to those specific adverse impacts incorporates the definition that is contained in the housing accountability act and it defines specific adverse impact to mean a significant quantifiable direct and unavoidable impact based on objective identified written public health or safety standards, policies or conditions existed on the date the application was deemed complete. So just a general notion of a potential public health and safety impact is not adequate under the density bonus law as the basis for denying a concession incentive or waiver. And then lastly under the housing accountability act the applicant or a person who would be eligible for eligible to apply for residency in the project or a housing organization may bring an action to enforce this section and if in the action the court finds that the city disapproved housing development project that complied with applicable objective general plan not knowing standards in criteria or imposed conditions that the project be developed at a lower density without making adequate findings concerning health and safety and as public health or safety standards in the court is required to issue an order or judgment compelling compliance within 60 days and is also required to award reasonable attorney season costs of suit to the plaintiff or petitioner. That concludes my remarks. I'm happy to answer any questions or respond to comments. Lee did you have another part of your team transportation planner? Yes. At this point Ryan Bain will speak to some of the project specifics and it looks like he's sharing his screen now and then Nathan Nguyen will also chime in as part of that presentation. And then if council is amenable we can take questions after we get the presentations if that's okay with folks. It's a lot to take in I know but... And Ryan we've got your notes pages showing so if you want to switch the screens that you're using. Okay hold on one second. We just one second. Are you able to see that? Yeah we don't see anything yet Ryan. Sorry about that. My presentation is open. Does Bonnie have a copy of it? She does. I can share my screen if you want Ryan. Okay thanks Bonnie. Sorry about that. Okay thank you. This is senior planner Ryan Bain good afternoon and I know that this is a public oversight meeting for the 831 water project and I'll start out with a little bit so that those covered pretty indefinitely at the September 7 study session meeting and then also Tony also covered it as well but I'll just give a brief overview in terms of those who weren't able to attend the study session meeting and just give a little background. So Bonnie I'll have to ask for the next slide. So the state legislature passed SB 35 in 2017 as part of a 15 bill package to address the state's housing shortage and high cost of housing. SB 35 is designed to remove barriers to the development of affordable residential urban infill projects and to limit certain types of discretionary home rule oversight that has prevented the development of an adequate supply of housing within the state. SB 35 requirements apply to the city of Santa Cruz and other urban areas of the state that have failed to make adequate progress toward their regional housing needs allocations as determined by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. So at this time the city is currently short by 123 very low income units but has exceeded all of the other categories. So with the current city currently being short those very low income units we must accept applications for SB 35 and process them in a matter consistent with the state legislation. Thank you. When a short project qualifies for streamlined ministerial approval under SB 35 the city has a limited time to apply for objective standards to the project and is strictly prohibited from applying any discretionary standards or from taking actions for implementing any process that chill, inhibit, or preclude development of affordable housing on a suitable site identified in this general plan. So as part of the review for this SB 35 project the Planning and Community Development Department coordinated with the other city departments to produce a table of objective standards based on the city's municipal code adopted policies, directives, and plans and that's included as part of your staff report. So if our areas where the project is consistent with objective standards the city must provide a written documentation letter to the applicant listing each conflicting objective standard and provide a description of how the project is in conflict. If the city does it fails to provide this written documentation within the limited time frame the project is deemed qualified for a streamlining ministerial processing under SB 35 and under the current timeline the city now has until October 14th or 13th to provide the applicant with written documentation. Next slide. So in terms of the city council's role as mentioned so section 65913.4d1 of the California government code allows jurisdictions to complete a design review or public oversight meeting of the development as part of the SB 35 objective standards review process however the process remain ministerial. So the role of the city council for this project is to focus on compliance with the objective standards and that's mainly it. So the council's role in this process will be to review the objective standards assessment table that's provided, assess compliance with the identified objective criteria and provide direction to staff as to the study for permit streamlining pursuant to granting of the density bonus and compliance with the objective standards. Next slide. So in terms of objective standards I think you guys have probably heard this quite a bit but the HCD provides the following definition and description of objective versus subjective standards. So it means standards that involve no personal or subjective judgment by a public official and are uniformly by reference to an external and uniform benchmark or criterion available and noble by both the applicant or proponent and the public official prior to submittal and includes only such standards as are published and adopted by ordinance or resolution by a local jurisdiction before submission of a development application. It should also be noted that there's been recent cases even just in the last month or so involving city of San Mateo that have narrowed down what objective standards are in that ruling a standard that cannot be applied it's a standard that cannot be applied without personal interpretation or subjective judgment is not objective under the Housing Accountability Act. So just to give a little background with this particular SB 30 application on October 12th last year pre-application was submitted interviewed by our staff for this particular application there was a community meeting held in January of this year that was well attended and on June 3rd the applicant submitted a notice of intent to submit the SB 35 application and then formally submitted in July on July 1st we started the review and there were revised plans submitted July 27th that extended our review time and then on August 12th we did have a community meeting that again was well attended and then on September 9th we scheduled an oversight meeting for the council on September 14th and just prior to that meeting we revised plans and requested that that be continued so we could have some time to review those plans and reschedule it for today's meeting the then last week on Friday we revised plans after this meeting staff reported already gone out and staff did a review and provided a supplemental staff report yesterday and that's kind of where we are up to this point in the next, thank you so in terms of the site location the site is currently made up of three parcels that total are almost 40,000 square feet a little under an acre on the northwest corner of water street and north franciforty avenue parcel currently contains a one-story building and a separate drive-in car wash which are proposed to be demolished as part of this application commercial and residential uses surround the project site is founded by single family homes both to the north and west with commercial and public facilities across water street and north franciforty to the south and east the water street corridor consists of mainly commercial retail uses with north franciforty mostly consisting of single family and multi-family residential the site's fairly level and is at grade with north franciforty with the bordering water street dropping away as it heads west along the southern property line toward ocean street the site is fully paved with the exception of some small landscape strips along the western and northern property lines and gains its access currently from along north franciforty and water street in addition a fire access easement currently exists across the site to provide fire emergency access to the end of Belvedere Terrace which then ends at the western portion of the site so the proposed mixed use project consists of two separate multi-store links over a shared underground parking garage that is proposed to be accessed from water street one additional access is from north franciforty which serves as both a fire access lane to the north of the building as well as a driveway for access to seven at grade commercial parking spaces and the proposed traffic enclosure the existing fire access for Belvedere Terrace is proposed to be reoriented along the southern edge of the property which you can see parallels water street for building A which is the eastern building it's proposed at five stories in height with 2086 square feet of ground floor retail that's facing north franciforty and water street as well as five live work units that are facing water street in a mix of 64 units consisting of studios one bedroom two bedrooms and three bedroom units for building B that's the western building it's proposed at four stories in height with a community room, office, laundry and lobby on the first floor it would contain 71 units consisting of studios one bedroom and two bedrooms the proposed 140 residential units include five live work 64 studios 53 one bedroom 15 two bedroom and three three bedroom units so the zoning for the parcel is CC community commercial the purpose of the CC district as it states in our zoning code is to provide locations throughout the community for a variety of service uses for residents of the city and the region which promotes policies of general plan to encourage a harmonious mixture of a wide variety of commercial and residential activities including limiting limited industrial uses if they are compatible and nuisance free so the CC zone just normally allows for mixed use developments consisting of ground floor commercial and multiple dwellings with the approval of a special use permit which would not be required under this SB-35 application in terms of the CC development standards the project meets all of the zone district standards with the exception of height and private and common open space and with the request for a density bonus the applicant is proposing two concessions and four waivers to the development standards which will be discussed a little bit later the city's zoning ordinance would require a total of 192 parking spaces on site based on the number and type of units this includes guest parking and commercial retail based on density bonus law which allows for a reduction in parking the standards are lower and require a total of 107 on the site however SB-35 prohibits jurisdictions from applying parking requirements to projects that are located within a half mile of public transit for which this project complies so they are not required to provide any parking on site but with that being said the applicants are proposing an underground garage as can be seen here which will provide 136 spaces so including the seven spaces at grade level a total of 143 parking spaces are proposed on the site the upper levels are going to be all residential units with the majority of balconies facing water street and Branson 40 avenue so level 2, level 3 level 4 and 5 are all going to be residential units if you could go through to rooftop decks so rooftop decks are proposed for both buildings providing a shared common open space for residents the two decks share a bridge connection between the buildings and will be shared by residents of both buildings the amenities include community garden beds, lounge seating putting green and outdoor kitchen facilities so this is all common open space for all residents for both buildings also as part of the project the project is currently made up of three parcels so the application includes a lot line adjustment to reduce the number of lots from three to two with a proposed lot line splitting the two buildings so that they are on separate parcels there are a couple of different arrangements discussed for the lot line adjustment so there's a couple of different options but this is what's currently being proposed the intent of separating buildings is to separate the affordable units from the market units so that a de-distriction which is required by the state's low income housing tax credit can be recorded on the parcel with the affordable units in order to receive state local affordable housing grant funds and this separation is required by its financing resources so staff has reviewed the proposed lot line adjustment and it is consistent with the zoning ordinance also the applicants have met with the city building official to discuss the new lot line as it relates to building and fire codes and I've come up with a couple of lot orientation work with a shared underground garage and pedestrian bridge connections that connect the two buildings so as I mentioned if revisions to the lot line adjustment are necessary they can be reviewed at the building permit stage but the key point here is that there are a few changes to the actual project plans and one of our mapping options can be readily accomplished we've looked at a few different options in regards to public a southbound north branch of 40 avenue right turn lane has been included on the plans this improvement is required to be implemented as part of the capital improvement program previously approved by the city council public work staff has worked with the applicants to develop a plan for the right turn lane whereby the applicants grant a 4 foot sidewalk easement along a portion of the eastern property line to accommodate the right turn lane as well as an 8 foot sidewalk so the eastern facing first floor retail wall has been recessed approximately 4 feet to accommodate for this sidewalk easement also the project is proposing a new driveway along water street which accesses the underground parking garage members of the community have expressed some concerns with the location of the driveway and city staff has analyzed the site for alternative locations based on the initial analysis staff has concluded that the proposed location is the best location for the driveway access given the various factors associated with the site such as shape and proximity to a signalized intersection so the city has initiated a traffic study to address concerns surrounding the driveway location as it relates to the slope of the street the bike lane, the bus stop and site distance recommendations proposed as part of that traffic study that's being prepared will be included as conditions of approval for the project which could include such things as incorporation of vehicle warning devices at the driveway to warn cyclists and pedestrians of vehicles exiting or potentially relocating the bus stop so all of those things will be looked at as part of that traffic study especially new curb gutter in sidewalks proposed along the front edge of the site in regards to density bonus so as you're well aware to address California's need for affordable housing the state enacted density bonus law back in 1979 to encourage the provision of affordable housing units by offering a combination of benefits to developers so for projects that include the requisite number of affordable housing units and upon the request of an applicant these are required to allow units to be built and otherwise allowed by the applicable zoning designations to provide incentives or concessions such as reduced development standards that result in actual and identifiable cost savings for the project and also waivers or modifications of development standards that would physically preclude the project from being constructed as well as allowed reduced parking requirements so cities have pretty limited discretion when reviewing density bonus applications and are generally obligated to grant them and as well the incentives, concessions and waivers to development standards so projects that include a specified amount of affordable housing are entitled to density bonus even if the density bonus would allow a project to exceed the maximum density so to determine whether a project qualifies for density bonus the percentage of affordable units is based on the maximum number of units that will be permitted under the city's zoning code so this is the the project so in this particular case it's 109 units in areas where there's no density range the zoning ordinance requires an applicant to submit base plans or plans showing a project that fully conforms to objective standards in order to determine the number of units that could be constructed on the site thus establishing the base density of 109 units so that's basically taking setbacks and height and everything and determining how many units could be included within those parameters the applicant has provided plans for a base project that meets all of those standards as I mentioned is going height, setbacks, open space, etc market rate projects providing certain percentage of affordable units at deeper levels of affordability are entitled to increase in density up to 50% of that total number of units that are allowed under the city's zoning ordinance or the base density so the additional units basically help offset the increased costs associated with the increased number of increased number of or more deeply affordable units and by law the percentages of affordable units that qualify a project for the density bonus are based on the project only and not the base project plus the density bonus so in this particular case with the base density of 109 units a minimum of 55 affordable units would be required to be provided for the project to be eligible for SB 35 streamlining the applicants are proposing 71 affordable units at 80% AMI or lower which is well exceeding the density bonus requirements and for a 50% density bonus which would also permit actually up to 164 units but the applicants are proposing 140 in this particular case which falls within that allowed number additionally the project meets all of the affordable housing requirements including the 20% of base units at 80% AMI that's required by our city inclusionary and in terms of the density bonus there are various ways to meet the density bonus affordability requirements but the final breakdown will really be largely based on the funding source requirement so those will be required to be met and then written into the affordable housing agreement once that's determined so as we discussed there's concessions and waivers in this particular case there are two concessions that are being proposed and based on actually I should mention that the project is entitled up to three concessions based on the identical based on what they're proposing so that's one to locate all affordable units in a single building and the other to not provide the required number of electric vehicle charging stations on site so the city zoning code requires that inclusionary units shall be dispersed throughout the residential development to prevent the creation of a concentration of affordable units within so the applicant is requesting an incentive for locating all the affordable units together in a single building due to financing requirements for state affordable housing tax credits the California Code of Regulations requires projects that receive state and federal affordable housing funds record a regulatory agreement against the property awarded to tax credits so the affordable rental project cannot be de-restricted unless at least one part is for all of the affordable units against which the regulatory agreement can be recorded so evenly dispersing units throughout the two buildings would render the project ineligible for one of its major sources of funding and without these tax credits the project would be unable to obtain financing sufficient to allow the project to move forward for concession two the zoning code specifies that there's to be 12% of the provided parking as electric vehicle charging stations so based on 143 spaces provided on state 18 spaces would be required the project is proposing six so the applicant has requested a concession and incentive to reduce the number of of EV stations by 12 so given that there's really no evidence that these concessions and incentives would violate state or federal law or create a specific adverse impact on health and safety or the physical environment that cannot be medicated or adversely impact real property on the California registered historical resources the city is required to grant these concessions and sentences as required by state law so for waivers the project is allowed to request as many waivers from development standards as development standards would preclude the density bonus project from being built at the allowed density so the applicant has requested four waivers of development standards all of which are required to be waived if they preclude project development the city must grant these waivers unless they violate state or federal law or create a specific adverse impact on health and safety or adversely affect a listing of California registered historical resources so there's no evidence that these waivers that are being requested should not be granted as required by state law so going through the waivers the first one is from project proposals to exceed the height exceed the maximum height of three stories and 40 feet as a CC project they're proposing a four-story building at approximately 48 feet and a five-story building at approximately 59 feet so complying with the three-story and 40-foot standard would require the building to reduce the number of floors and eliminate a substantial number of residential units so this would physically preclude the construction of the project that would include the number of residential units allowed under the state density bonus law the second waiver is a reduction of private open space so the project proposes that reduction the zoning code normally requires 100 square feet of private open space for each unit so with 140 units that's 14,000 square feet of private open space that's required and the applicant is proposing 6,510 so based on setbacks and easing areas which prohibit the encroachment of balconies and limit the amount of space for providing private open space for each unit the constraint site physically precludes the inclusion of the required open space which would require reducing the size and or number of the residential units similarly waiver 3 is a reduction of common open space our zoning code requires 150 square feet of common open space for each unit so with 140 units that would require 21,000 square feet of common open space providing 19,830 which is actually very close to the requirement so common open space has been maximized on the site by taking advantage of the roof decks and accurate areas and as I mentioned it's pretty close to meeting that requirement just under waiver 4 is the project proposes to exceed the maximum 1.75 FAR as outlined in with a 2.28 FAR the project proposes an FAR in excess of the allowable maximum prescribed in the general plan but obviously reducing the floor area to meet the 1.75 would require reducing the unit count and physically preclude the number of residential units that are allowed under the state density bonus so as described the applicant submitted revised plans that have addressed the remaining minor items that were identified in the original council report and staff has determined that the project is consistent with all objective standards so therefore staff is recommending that the city council review those objective standards the table and find the project consistent with the standards necessary for granting of the density bonus and with all objective standards that are applicable for any questions okay thank you Ryan are we not we're not going to hear from Nathan Lee or are we sorry Ryan covered Nathan slides and Nathan he's available if there are questions okay but Nathan you're here for questions okay I'll bring this back to council for questions and look for any hands raised just for the public I'm going to go ahead and have council make any questions that they'd like to the staff just for clarification on the presentation that was just done and then I will bring it out to public comment and I believe we're going to do our 45 minute virtual comment process first and then our regular in-person oral comments and then we'll bring it back to council for deliberation after those and I do have three groups that are have requested requested extra time today and I'll queue you up for that okay so I've got let's see I've got council member walk-ins council member brown council member council member council member thank you mayor and thank you Ryan for the presentation it's a lot to wrap your head around there's a lot of moving parts and obviously areas where we're all learning I guess my question is in regards to the two parcels and how we're able to allow for him to have two parcels and then have it be approved as one project but yet sort of set up for potential separate kind of units I guess for a future sale I mean I'm trying to understand how that all fits together personally Ryan you want to take that or I can take it I mean we you know we approve projects with multiple parcels regularly it happens both in commercial and residential developments you know if you look at for example you know projects any project that involves subdivision that has a tentative map comes to the council and sometimes that's done as condominium units oftentimes in these larger projects you'll see that condominium units but we'll also see the provision of individual parcels as well as you saw with say the Eric Circle project with individual units on individual subdivisions this one we're looking at a number of approaches to how that subdivision could occur whether that is through if there's a vertical lot line that bypasses as as Ryan said that's their first choice there and that could involve some building code requirements at the building code stage or the building permit stage they would have to meet those or they could involve actually horizontal and vertical property lines or it could be condominiums I think the key point there is that there are multiple ways in which that can be done the applicant has a preference for how that can be done but there are multiple ways in which it can be done and it is you know when we've got a map involved it typically goes to the council here because it's associated with SB 35 it is ministerial review so I think I caught most of that but one of the kind of questions I think more for the layperson is they're using sort of this SB 35 to have these two parcels work off each other to increase kind of all of the different concessions associated with SB 35 and the density vote is but yet in the future could they sell them separately I mean they could split out the two parcels and then sell them individually is that accurate or not? So if they're two parcels they could sell them individually I understand that one of the reasons why they're trying to do that is because they're looking to finance them separately with one of them as a 100% affordable project that some of the the requested grant applications require a separate parcel so that's why they're looking at doing those one of them would be more traditional financing and then the 100% affordable would have some of those grants that would also that would contribute to the financing question in regards to the really segregated housing proposal essentially which is sort of essentially saying you're going to put all people who are going to qualify for affordable in one building and those in market rate in the other which I personally by the sense that doesn't really apply to this context nonetheless that could have a negative public health impact on the residents of the affordable unit on that parcel has that been considered as one question and then two has that ever happened in previous housing developments where you allow a developer to essentially sort of segregate the affordable units from the market rate so blatantly. So a couple things first off with the public health and safety impact it has to be a written, quantified and so measurable impact that's been identified when the application was submitted we don't have such a such written impact. That said I recognize that concern and in fact our ordinance calls for the units to be evenly distributed and that's why as part of their density bonus requests they have included the concession or incentive to be that they are not distributed evenly throughout the project and with a with an application that would require the financing applications that would require those units to be on an individual parcel so that it can be financed separately and there are other reasons for that as well that others can supplement if you guys want to go more into the weeds about that in terms of the long-term maintenance and such but essentially having those if there is a downturn and the market rate portion actually defaults then the 100% affordable portion would not be affected and so there are some benefits in that respect as well and so while there are those concerns out you know sort of a segregated population there are there are reasons for doing it in this instance and they have gone through the right process by utilizing one of the available concessions or incentives for that and I'll just note that we did receive some correspondence related to this earlier today and one thing that was pointed out was in the HCD's guidelines they actually for SB 35 the HCD's guidelines for SB 35 they actually point out that the units should be integrated and distributed as well unless it's otherwise necessary for state or local funding programs and so it specifically recognizes that in certain instances that needs to be the case and I think your final question was whether or not that's been done elsewhere we've allowed that and actually our ordinance does actually allow for that in some respects when it allows for things like dedication of land so in lieu of providing the inclusionary units on site and integrating them that you can have dedication of proper you know I think I'm familiar with that in terms of the data but not on the same sort of housing project parcel as far as I can recollect but I guess one follow-up question to one of the points that you made was in order for it to qualify for some of the housing but if there were modifications to the plan could they still qualify to reach some of the affordable housing benefits I mean do they have to have two bedrooms one bedroom I mean like how could they thinker with that in terms of how they designed it that wouldn't necessarily put it in the category where they can do this or we're now presented with having to do this a couple of things one I do want to go back to your last question just briefly because I will say that there are some questions out there and in response to some of those I don't see that there's an issue with us conditioning the project such that the units will be distributed the affordable units will be distributed unless a funding source dictates that they need to be consolidated so I just wanted to go back to for a second and then with respect to the one bedrooms versus two bedrooms or multiple units there are some funding sources Jessica DeWitter others can speak to that in more detail if you want to get into the weeds about it there are some funding sources and in fact we've modified for example our Pacific Station South project to include greater numbers of two and three bedroom units so that we call those funding sources but we don't have an ability to mandate that there have to include multiple bedrooms I think that that some of the funding sources might dictate that for them and I think you said if there are changes down the road what could happen SB 35 allows for a certain percentage of changes to occur and still have the project proceed so at the building permit stage if they for example achieve some funding but they needed to have more two bedroom units they could continue with the project so as long as it did not exceed the thresholds assuming everything moves forward with the SB 35 eligibility and the project approval proceeding I'm going to let my colleagues ask their questions I have one last question in regards to what I think I saw the presentation with the driveway on Water Street and that's going to be studied I don't know if anybody has a street on your bike but even the picture looks like there was a car coming out and a biker coming at the same time in the image on the on the PowerPoint I have real hesitation around potentially having a driveway coming out in the middle of that speed pill when people were riding their bikes on even if you do have like a noise machine do you have any thoughts on that or is that I mean I'm assuming the area and seeing people biking really fast down the hill I've biked on that many times as well and I will I'll say a couple of things and I'll turn it over to our transportation engineer who I'm sure can speak to you on a much more technical level but again one of the things that it gets back to is those quantifiable objective standards and then with respect to the locations you know when we talk about the locations of driveways we really want to make sure and you know Nathan will speak to this I'm sure but you know in all my experience the traffic engineers typically want to move them as far away from the intersections as possible and that's one of the things that this project has done is it does have them as far away as possible on the on the parcel so you know there are limitations with respect to the parcel dimensions but they have been located far from that intersection to minimize conflicts right there at the intersection and Nathan I'm sure can speak to that much more eloquently. Yeah, hi, I'm Nathan Wynne, Transportation Manager City of Santa Cruz. So the site is a challenging site for us in evaluating the driveway locations. When the project first was submitted we definitely have concerns with the driveway locations both on Water Street and on Brampton Forty and the part of the project and the developer required to submit a traffic study because we didn't have an objective standard stating such that it was going to be required for this type of development. So we've taken it upon ourselves to hire consultant Kimmy Horn initial evaluation of those driveway locations. I don't have the traffic study yet but based on our discussions with our consultant team there the driveway locations are you know for for better or worse located in the most optimal locations is given the constraints of the again the site. They are going to do the site distance evaluation and from what I can tell that it looks like it's probably going to meet the site difficulty. In addition to that though we are going to be looking at proposing mitigation measures to help you know, improve again some site or or highlight the cars coming out of that driveway. That's yet to be determined but those things will be posed as conditions to approval during the building permit phase. I think I'll leave my questions at there for now. Thank you. Next up I have council member Brown. Thank you mayor and thank you to staff for the review of the project and the role of the council in this process. I'm hearing a lot of feedback. I'm hearing a council meeting and I couldn't figure out what it is my neighbor is listening to it really loudly. That's too funny. Thank you council member. I thought it wouldn't come through. It sounded like Nathan again. Yeah it is. I'm hearing him. My neighbor has it covered. A question that I have I have a couple and I don't want to take up too much time because I recognize the public has been waiting for quite some time here and they're I can still hear it. You don't have your TV on or something? I just don't have a very let me try another spot. Sorry I don't have very many quiet places and my windows aren't double painted here. I'm going to try this. Is that can you hear me now? That's much better. Thank you Sandy. I have a question related to the density bonus. I know we're talking about objective standards primarily but given that the application has included this I just want to ask if I could get some information about that I didn't see in the official application document the table of affordable units and what percentage of AMI the rents for those units will be set on and I know some of those are unknown because they're project based vouchers but I don't see that table that's referenced but I'm just wondering did I miss that? Where is that? So that's one question I think I think council member Watkins questions that answered a lot of my questions I may have some follow-up related to the segregation of housing but I'm going to wait on those I'd like to let the public get their chance to speak but that's that one table and how do we I'll invite Ryan up for that one Yeah my understanding of that is that the applicants are proposing the 71 units at 80% AMI which meet the requirements of SB35 as well as the city inclusionary ordinance and as I kind of mentioned in my presentation for density bonus my my rely on Jessica in housing to help me with this she's more of the housing expert but the due to the funding and depending upon the funding for this project that will determine what level of affordability will be required and there's my understanding is there's numerous off that requirement for density bonus based on number of units at a certain affordability level so that has yet to be determined and we had that discussion with the applicants and so what we basically were planning to do in that particular case is there will be an agree housing agreement that will be required to be recorded part of this project and once the funding is determined then we determine what those percentages and what levels of affordability there will be based on that funding that will be written into the agreement. I think I would just add that the conditions of approval noting that they have they have applied for both the density bonus as well as SB35 application as well as having the inclusionary the city standard inclusionary requirements there are overlaps between those and the conditions of approval the staff report goes into some detail about that and the conditions of approval will specify that each of those needs to be met and while there can be overlap each of those does need to be met given that they have requested affordable housing density bonus and the SB35 application so thank you I just have a quick follow-up so as long as they meet the overall standard or they can say that we are going to have X number of units at a minimum of affordability level that is at the maximum 80% of AMI is fine is that they don't do the breakdown until later we are required to give them that opportunity to tell us later is that what I'm hearing that's my understanding yes Jessica did you have any I noticed you popped up I didn't know if you had any comment on that I just wanted to add in that the applicant has submitted both the application to the California tax credit allocation committee as well as state which is housing and community development IIG which is infrastructure infill grant so they're going to be going after multiple funding sources to try to piece together a 100% affordable project TCAC we know is an average affordability level of 60% of AMI and below for 100% of the unit so at the very least they will be at that threshold which is already what this minimum is that we're discussing right now the problem is they're tail wagging the dog they need to show that they have a committed project that has it's shovel ready to go in order to get financing and so they're chasing these funding sources each NOFA around each that they go out for a notice of funding issuance these regulations can change and what the regulator asks for in terms of affordability levels changes so it's hard for them to say right now this is exactly what we're going in for but at the very least we can say that they're going they would be meeting an average affordability level of 60% of AMI and below based on tax credit standards which is over half of the funding that would be applied to this affordable project okay is that yeah thanks okay next I've got council member Golder and then council member called Tari Johnson many of my questions have already been asked but I just have a question and I didn't really dawn on me until you said that the applicant was requesting a waiver for the the EV charging stations how many EV charging stations will they have or what percentage of the parking lot will be EV okay I think they're required 12% of the parking spaces to be EV which I think we count to be 18 and they're providing 6 12 less than what would normally be required by our zoning ordinance and the state moving to all EV vehicles in less than 10 years how is that not an impact to like public health given the California emissions and you know the extensive work that's been done to reduce that statewide and work towards climate change not aware of any health and safety standards that specifically address that climate change statement there I can't say that I'm aware of that and I think that gets back to what Tony was saying earlier is that we would have to have written a standard that is written in objective specifically calls out as it recalls something out as a health and safety standard that's being violated do you have something you wanted to add Tony yeah just to refer back to the statute it refers to a significant quant direct and unavoidable impact based on objective identified written public health or safety standards and so if there was a standard that specified a minimum number based on specific health and safety policies then we could rely on that but we don't have a standard that establishes a public health and safety standard for a minimum number of charging stations I just I guess it just just seems like it must be written somewhere it seems like common sense we're moving towards you know free of fossil fuels in the next decade that's the goal of the state I can't imagine building a building that's meant to have 30 50 100 years and not planning for that significant infrastructure I think that's a good point but just like all of the concessions and waivers that are being requested you know there are good reasons why we have all of our existing zoning criteria and regulations and to make a decision on these concessions and waivers we have to really be able to point to something specific all right thank you I can just add to that if I could just add to that real quick all of the lists will be EV ready EVSE is a really specific service parking space but all of the lists will be will be EV ready 100% and by that Sam you mean that the conduit will be in place such that the wiring can be easily run to accommodate future future charging stations yeah Council Member Golder was that it on your question? yeah everyone kind of touched on my other question thank you okay next I have Council Member Collin Todd Johnson and then Vice Mayor Bruner will be after that thank you that was actually one of my questions so I'll pick it up maybe where Council Member Golder left is defining health and safety and having something quantifiable I wonder if we can actually ask our Climate Action Manager those folks in the city who are working on our climate action response and who worked on Vision Zero it seems that I can't point to it right now but it seems to have some measure that shows that working towards 100% electric vehicles is what we want to do and how it would impact our emissions and how it would impact sustainability in the long run so I guess that's a question if we can dive a little bit deeper into that specific confession sort of along those lines one other okay let me back up I guess I would like some clarity on how we define minor deficiencies I saw that one of those were sufficient bike parking spaces so it kind of goes along with this conversation that we're having to move away from regular vehicles and support EV and bicycling so that was a minor deficiency that was noted as not meeting the objective standard so that's just a specific example but how do we define what's a minor deficiency and what's not so I'll ask all my questions maybe and then pause if that's okay the other question I have and I don't know if we can answer this is the 123 that we're short of in our arena goals for the very low income do we have information in our community that identifies who is our low income in this community and what are their housing needs the majority of the units in the 71 affordable housing building our studios and one bedroom not all of them but the majority so is that going to meet the needs of the very low income what are their demographics what are their needs again I don't know if we have the answer to that question but will this project will the 71 units meet those needs so those are kind of my my bigger questions I have some other specific ones but I'll just pause there sir I think Nathan you want to I wanted to jump in with regards to the bike parking and kind of comment on what maybe is considered a minor deficiency when we're evaluating the applicants project here the bike parking is considered a minor deficiency because at the time right now it doesn't show exact type of bike parking that's going to be provided it is something that we felt that they can do quite easily before their deadline so they'll incorporate the correct type of bike parking and the correct number it's something that we can easily work with them on some of the larger things that we had some issues with over you know with regards to that self found right turn and getting an easement things like that those were kind of considered more of a major use for us that we need to just solve before that we could say that they're complying with the application so those would be the small differences between us two thanks Nathan and you had a couple other questions slash comments the first one was related to talking with Tiffany Wise West and others who were working on the upcoming climate action plan and I think that's a great point with respect to considering what future objective quantifiable health and safety standards we include as part of that plan I'm happy to talk with Tiffany about that for our future regulations I will I'll comment I'll do a quick comment on the VLI you so the very low income units you asked if that meets the needs of this community and one of the things that we had in our general plan is an acknowledgement that we need a wide variety of units and unit types and I do know that Jessica DeWitt to speak to this in a moment but I do know that the Pacific Station South and Pacific Station North are exploring those different grant requirements or grants applications that would require a higher percentage of two and three bedroom units and so you know there are some larger units that are anticipated to come online and we do need units I think just speaking really broadly California population is aging and as that happens there is more demand and people are generally waiting longer to have children and so that grouping of larger units is smaller in relative terms to the whole overall population means that's a broad statement about all of California specifically at the Santa Cruz to tell you the specifics related to that but Jessica can speak to some of the other projects that we have coming online as well as the just VLI needs in general Jessica do you have something to add to that? Jessica DeWitt to ditto what Lee is saying but yes Pacific Station South and North are anticipating family style housing which the funding that we're going after which is affordable housing tax credits there's different buckets of types of housing for that you can apply for tax credits and so the family grouping there's 50% two and three bedroom units so with pack south and pack north those will both have 50% two and three bedroom units in addition that cedar street is also looking at a family housing project so that would be another project that is looking at having 50% two and three bedroom units the cedar street is currently 65 units anticipated pack south is 70 and pack north is 95 units so it's quite a few two and three bedroom units coming on as they relate to the VLI we don't have that specific data but we do know that there's a need for all bedroom types across the board water street apartment has a waitlist for one bedroom and two bedrooms and three bedrooms so does riverwalks currently they basically all have waitlist right now what I can speak to on this project in particular 831 is that the developer is looking to go into a different bucket in the actual world that is more focused on special needs and so therefore it does require having this predominantly studios one bedrooms associated with it that's why you're seeing more of those in this type so they're more of a special needs type so that would include transitioning age homeless and the PDVs are associated with it the developer can speak more to this later but they're looking at more of a special needs focus versus family thank you can I just ask one quick question I see live work spaces in the project who that's for like what's when you say who that's for like are those do we know if those are designated as affordable units or are you just speaking generally what live work spaces are for well both I guess are they affordable units and are they for any specific type of tenant I don't believe they're designated as affordable as those are mainly for the building B but generally those are for anyone from you know a real estate agent or attorney or it can even be anyone that provides any type of retail business or what have you that just basically lives above that space there's a connection between the residential and the commercial space where they live above the commercial space thanks for clarifying the design of the the height and the glazing is such that it can function well as a commercial space and gives that opportunity for individuals to run the business is that is that all council member I'm good for now thank you thank you I've got council member Cummings and then I'm sorry Vice Mayor Bruner and then council member Cummings thank you you Ryan for your presentation and thank you council members for all the questions which several I had asked at this point my question is for understanding regarding the concerns that have been brought forward such as the driveway traffic study the the slope conditions is is it that they will be addressed at a future process during condition improvement for a building permit by the ministerial process the city does with building permits can answer that question so as a part of the traffic study we'll be asking for mitigation measures to provide it and so the plan is to you know essentially the guideways are located in the bus location but then with the traffic study we'll apply some mitigation measures for the conditions approval one to go for the building permit okay is that your only question at this point council member yeah thank you council member Cummings excuse me vice mayor council member Cummings thank you mayor and I want to start by thanking staff for the presentation for all the questions that my colleagues have posed I just have one question because I think we have a lot of questions that are addressed the one question I had around the concessions and waivers I'm just wondering if you could speak to what you know if the applicant asking for concessions and waivers to what extent does the city council or what authority does the city council have to either accept or reject those concessions policies or climate action policies and so I'm just wondering to what extent we're required to approve concessions and waivers and Lee you're muted I'd like to think that we've got good reasons for all of our policies and requirements and I would say that I expect that most of them we do and certainly with the ones called out as councilmember Watkins did there are very good reasons for integrating affordable housing units in with the rest of the project for example with respect to our ability to do not need to be based on a quantifiable health and safety standards that cannot be mitigated and I will say there are a couple of other bars that need to be met for concessions and incentives they need to identify a cost reduction they need to make it more affordable to build and so if they put all the affordable units into a single building and that gets them I think they were looking at a $23 million tax credit so if that gets in the $23 million that's making it more affordable so that's one bar that's being met and then we would just need to establish that there isn't a quantifiable health and safety standard that they are that they're violating the waivers it's slightly different it just needs the first bar is that it physically precludes the development from occurring so and that includes the additional units so with the waivers it's typical for height or setbacks you might not increase the height but you might have no setbacks throughout the building but you would expect that with a project particularly if they're using the 50% density bonus as this one is even though they're not utilizing that whole 50% they're qualifying for the 50% density bonus and we saw that regularly with the 35% density bonus prior maximum amount that you could increase we saw the need to go higher and so they for waivers need to establish the first bar it's physically precluding them from the standard is physically precluding them and then the second bar is the same the health and safety standards is that all council member coming if I could just follow up on that a little bit I think that if you look at the waivers and concessions that you're requiring I mean council members have made comments about the EV charging stations and the entry and and other issues but if you look at the waivers that you're requiring they're really good read for all of the zoning code standards that we have in our code such as the height limit you know and the record is rife with very good reasons why a height limit is important in this particular case as well as reductions in private open space requirements I mean they're really good we require open space in connection with private development in common open space areas as well and then there are good reasons why we have maximum floor area ratios and density requirements they're valid but in order to in order to deny a requested concession we have to be able to make those findings based on objective health and safety standards and so you know you can argue that all of these are important requirements of our code that are being asked you know that the developer is requesting waivers or concessions with respect to and our task is to try to identify objective health and safety standards that that waving those would run afoul of Thanks Tony and yeah my questions really most of my questions have been asked as well I just want to clarify it's just been a lot of information I wrote down that the applicant had not committed to the turn lane that was going to be required is that true no they have committed to that they have committed to that okay and Tony you sort of picked up on I mean really we've rolled back we're not rolled back but the waivers that we're providing are basically the things that make this proposal not really amenable to the neighbors and the community at this point and to your point Tony you know those are the things you know maximum height reduction you know having private and common open space and then having a floor area ratio and density that fits with the community kind of feel and you know so those are the things that we're sort of you know those are the things we're losing in a sense control of right now and that's kind of what SB35 unfortunately is doing to the community right now and anyways that's a comment I won't go too far down that but my other question revolved around the so we are 123 units short on arena goals and I know for a fact that we are I believe I'm sure one of many public agencies that are trying to with within our own ownership pattern of properties that we do own I guess Jessica I'm just curious are we competing against folks who are trying to build affordable housing are we all in the same pot or are folks actually going after different sources so I'm just curious about that because if we're able to for example finish off Pacific Station South that's 170 units so I'm just curious about what the relationship there is do we get a different pot because of a public agency or are we all competing for the same fund there's no different pot we're all competing for the same funds there are certain funding programs that the city can for that a developer they're few and far between but there are a few like the local housing trust fund is one where the city did apply last year and we apply again this year so we're we're trying everything we can to get as much funding you know to port towards affordable housing projects in the city and the more that we can help subsidize those projects the more we can request for affordability to be able to offset the cost of having that very low income unit thank you Jessica my other question was really around more the kind of the impact fees does SB 35 rollback impact fees and any other fees that would be charged to the developer that might provide you know public benefit so I'm thinking our childcare fee doesn't apply to affordable projects I'm just curious Lee is there any is there any incentive or anything like that that we give in terms of those impact fees or do we collect those typical fees based on the development for footage and things like that good question the zoning ordinance actually has and a process whereby a developer can request the waiving or deferral of certain fees and that's just for the affordable units the zoning ordinance doesn't specify that it has to be a hundred percent affordable project but I will say that in my years here it's only been hundred percent affordable projects that has been granted for but there is a process whereby that can be requested and that process goes to the city council and I will say that I am not aware of requirements through SB 35 or otherwise in state law that requires us to waive any impact fees or fees, service fees like the cost of our building permit or the cost of our time in reviewing the planning application and so forth. I guess I just want to confirm what I think I heard which is under the density bonus law there could have been zero parking spaces provided. Is that correct? Yes. Go ahead Brian. Yeah you're correct. SB 35 if you're within a transit it's exact wording exactly but then you qualify and you don't have to provide any parking on site and that is they qualify in this particular case so they are not required to provide parking on site that being said they are providing I think 143 spaces. Okay. Okay great that's it on my question. So I'm sorry we're trying to keep this as efficient as possible but we are now going to turn this over I'm just checking to see that there's no further questions from council at this time and I'm not seeing any hands up. Okay. So if there are no further questions from the council we are going to move into public interest in this project we want to make sure that everyone has a chance to share their feedback to facilitate that we are taking public comment in two ways tonight first we're going to take a 45 minute recess at which time that just the council will be recessing at which time the public is invited to comment via a web based collaboration tool this the comments will be closed and a summary will be shared with the council. The next the full text of your comments will also be shared with planning staff for their review for this and future projects. Following the summary we will open up the traditional public comment period for 45 minutes and I have approved three groups for extra time and they will be given two minutes and everyone else will receive a minute. I'm going to invite I just want to just give the folks who have extra time and a little bit of heads up the extra time groups are 831 responsible development and the last year we are going to speak for that Santa Cruz tomorrow Lira, Filipini and then housing Santa Cruz County and that will be Don Lane. I will now invite our communications manager Elizabeth Smith to walk us through how the public can engage via the web based collaboration tool. Thanks Donna. I'm going to share my screen. There's one more thing to do. Publish this. So you can reach the web based tool by go into this using the QR code on your phone if you're viewing this on a computer and want to access on your phone you can use the QR code the URL to reach the website where we'll be doing it's called Padlet is b-i-t dot l-y slash 831 water or you can go into the project page cityofsantacrews.com slash 831 water and when you get there this is what it's going to look like and again here's the information for anyone who's tuning in here's the emit here's the URL there are different categories that you can use to provide your feedback if you have ideas about or comments around the affordable housing the building design objective standards you'll go into the Padlet click the plus sign and up will come a topic and you can write in test I'll write in test just to show you what happens and then once you finish writing your comment you can publish as you can see the topics go from left to right so you'll scroll on your computer or you will scroll with your fingers on a phone or a tablet and then if you like someone's comment you can part it or you can respond to a comment by typing in the box a little bit so we'll leave this open for 45 minutes we're asking for folks respectful any comments that are profane or include personal attacks I'll be sitting here watching and so we'll probably take those off but we do want to robust conversation and I want to give you an opportunity to provide your feedback so I'll also be around and so I'll be monitoring my if you have a problem you can email me at eSmith at cityofsantacrews.com all right we look forward to your feedback thank you so the council will adjourn and we will come back in at 6.50 and then we will have the one minute public comment period first before that we're three extra time and then we'll go into 45 minute comment period so thank you everyone if you can get your comments done on this you don't have to say for public comment in the evening you can watch and take a relax and not stand in line we're just trying to give folks enough different ways to get the news to us that they feel appropriate so thank you everyone if council members can turn on their cameras when they get back we will start up this are you feeling like we're good to go once we come back in my collaborators are still writing and so just want to make sure that they are that my collaborators Rosemary being one of my collaborators is ready to get up I'm ready Elizabeth I think great okay great we'll come back into session it looks like all the council members are here and yeah I'll turn it over to Elizabeth and Rosemary yeah Elizabeth's got to take this okay so we tried to go through and at least as a highest level get capture what we were hearing from folks in the digital engagement as a side note I'd love to hear from the public who did engage in this process how it went and whether it was a positive addition to our council meeting on the side of affordable housing lots of concerns around segregating the affordable housing we set that throughout the category honestly I think people saw that as a consistent question mark about this particular project lots of resounding yes more affordable housing please and then concerns about there being too many studios and too few family sized units so really wanting this affordable housing components of this project to meet the needs of families who live in Santa Cruz and then you see the opposite that our demographics are shifting and we need more smaller units as they are proposed in this development so it seems like on every issue there's a point to the counterpoint and so we'll go through those on the building design again some people like the feature some think people think that it should be reserved for solar to make it a more sustainable building concerns about lack of setbacks and the impacts on the surrounding houses from shade people looking into their yards concerns about the impact of unbundled parking on the surrounding neighborhood and just a bit on that that folks won't want to pay for the parking and instead will be dispersing throughout the neighborhood the difficulty of parking in the neighborhood concerns about drainage and geologic features on the site I think the drainage issue has come up both in the comments that came before the council meeting and then also we saw that in the digital in the padlet on the sides shading on neighboring houses that the building is too big for the number of units that we're getting from the project or that it's too small and it needs to provide more housing that it doesn't fit the surrounding community feel and that the building is too tall takes up too much of the site again this goes to the setbacks it makes it impossible for delivery vehicles it's just sort of a foreboding structure there on the corner concerns about that on the transportation side concerns again that there's not enough parking for the units and the impact that that will have on the surrounding neighborhood some folks wanted there to be less parking so that we're encouraging people to take public transit lots of comments on bike safety and ideas around how to solve with the current design how to maybe solve within the roadway protecting bicyclists garage egress so again safety for bikes parts of pedestrians making sure that we're doing everything we can to take that into account and then thinking about deliveries service vehicles kind of backing out into branch authority on the objective standard side we had folks who said this process is too subjective and then we add other folks who said you know it really seems like the objective concerns about health and safety in particular around vision zero of wondering if that is a state of health and safety issue that could could be used to talk with the developer the parcels should not be allowed to be separated later there was concerns about it was this being for the project that one half of it could be sold for a different use that is inconsistent with many city policies the vision zero is one climate action health and all policies over and over we're hearing about the segregation of low income housing so that's a true community concern that continues to come up and then in the other bucket just there were a few comments across the tablet that had some concerns about NOVN as a developer and then again concerns about red lines about segregation concept okay thank you Elizabeth for doing that and yeah please send Elizabeth a note for those folks in the audience tonight we're trying out and testing out new ways to get public comment and look at you know trying to make our meetings a little more efficient please send a note to any of us on your experience on that okay my understanding now is that I would like to go ahead and to if you're interested in participating in the oral commuting period I'd like you to now press 9 to raise your hand and that way we can see who's queued and wanting to do that the other thing that we'll do is we will have extra time for three groups for those individuals you'll have one minute and the groups will have two minutes I learned during the break that actually I had asked for a period of time for making some comments and based on our sort of schedule I'm going to go ahead and have the developer come forward now and address the council and let me let's see hang on one second I want to make sure I got the right folks who will be coming forward one sec sorry okay my understanding it'll be Amon Novin from Novin Development Amara Morrison, Wendell Rosen LLP and that's the applicant's attorney and Amon is the applicant and Mark Donahue Lowney architecture he's the project architect so I'd like to welcome those three folks to come on and turn on your cameras and we'll go ahead and give you 10 minutes good evening Amon good evening I'm not sure if the other members of my team are on here yet but I'm happy to kick us off I'm with you Amon there we go and Amara I also promoted to panelist but I'm not seeing her pop up she just came on good evening Mark and Amara Amon kick it off thank you Mayor Meyers and members of the council for spending your evening here with us today my name is Amon Novin I'm president of Novin Development Corporation and I want to make a few comments about our project before I hand it off to our architect and my new attorney so you know 831 Water Street is about increasing the supply of affordable housing helping the environment and making sure that generations of Santa Cruzians that want to continue to call it home can afford to live here with 140 units we have 71 units it restricted for 55 years to low and very low income residents Amon could you I'm sorry could you speak a little bit closer to your speaker I think that might be helpful we're just a little hard to hear that's better yeah thank you and then in addition to the 71 low and very low income restricted units or 69 units targeting middle income households this mixed income approach addresses a broad range of housing needs from the most vulnerable hard to serve populations to the critical workforce 831 Water Street is about moving past politics to make sure people can continue to live here and that future generations don't struggle with affordability because that's what really matters I don't see a 4 and 5 story building in high-rise I don't think it's unreasonable to build it along a major transit corridor where we desperately need housing as well as ground level community serving retail to liven the pedestrian experience including the artist live work loss we need to be doing everything we can to make Santa Cruz more inclusive and accessible for current workers who commute too far to be here and for future generations the only way to do this is to build more homes to address our chronic housing shortage the one thing that we can be doing to address greenhouse gas emissions is build more in-sill housing near transit this project is literally taking a 100% paved car centric commercial strip center with a car wash and building sustainable homes for individuals and families who are right now searching on craigslist saying I cannot find a home affordable that I could live in the city I can't find a home near my job I can't find a home to live close to my family so I really applaud city staff and council on taking this major step to address our housing shortage if we're serious about tackling poverty and homelessness and having diverse communities we should be creatively finding ways to provide more housing in small parts of the city it's also about equity we have historically focused our growth in a few small parts of the city we need to have housing everywhere people in this neighborhood also need more housing polling shows that despite some very loud voices that don't want change who spend 10 hours at planning commission hearings and may seem like they're the majority they're not the majority of folks understand we need more housing without the future of the city and want to make sure that their kids have a place to live and are willing to accept more housing in their neighborhoods to make room for others again I want to thank staff who's worked diligently to help us get here as well as organizations like Monterey Bay Economic Partnership the Chamber Business Council and grassroots Santa Cruz UMB movement who want to make sure that we have more sustainable and attainable housing with that I'll hand it off to Marc Donahue to answer some questions around the EV chargers and the project integration and I know Amra wants to make some comments as well so thank you Thank you Mon I'm going to focus on three primary issues there seem to be a question about the infrastructure for the EV parking and I know it's somewhat mysterious especially when you look at the mechanical stackers as part of the mix but of the 136 stalls that we have designated for the parking garage 130 of them will be either EV equipped or EV ready and so we recognize as both as our client and as the architecture firm that by 2030 there will be no more cars sold in the state that are gasoline fuel which is fantastic news ready for the infrastructure to accept this influx especially since the lifetime of the building I think somebody pointed out earlier is going to be probably around 50 years or more and so even though we know the technology is going to change hopefully what happens is that cars will charge while they're running in the sun but for the meantime we definitely have designed that infrastructure to handle the current need. On that same theme of environmentally friendly I think I'm going to reiterate something that Dimon said the most environmentally sustainable thing that you can do when it comes to housing is build dense housing single family homes are the least environmentally friendly way to house people they take up a lot of land they use a lot of energy and so it's simply a good way to fulfill the need for housing in the city so we definitely have the density which is I know the topic of concern the building utilizes passive solar technology so we're using shading in coordination with sun angles to shade the building from the summer heat and then to provide shine during the winter when the sun is lower in the sky the buildings are all electric so there's no use of gas at all and so therefore with California is increasingly sustainable grid we're able to deliver sustainable energy to the building and use it and then I think there was a question about using the roof for solar one of the things one of the emerging trends that individual solar panels on buildings are difficult because they require a great deal of maintenance and also it's inefficient the best way to do it is to add sustainable energy to the grid and so you're actually able to purchase green power credits off of the grid and what that does it helps to subsidize grid-wide improvements so that all electricity becomes more sustainable and then finally I think one of the biggest questions that came up I was also reading the comments as they came up is this notion of segregation and I'm just once more going to reiterate which you've heard a few times this is simply a function of the way these buildings are financed our firm specializes in supportive and affordable housing and what we have working on several projects where you have a market rate component and you have an affordable component and they are often on the same lot but in different buildings or there's lots that are de-restricted within say four-parcel development and just because of the tax finance structure which is the main source of finance for the affordable projects that's just a natural outcome of the way that our state laws are written and the way that tax credits are done so the other thing I want to point out if I may share my screen for just a moment should I get the right one is that even though we talk the conversation has been about segregation it's actually not a segregated building if you look at the plan A which is the one on the right is what all characterizes more as workforce housing than market rate and the building on the left is the affordable component what you'll notice is that circulation is tied together and so we've actually designed the building in such a way that interaction between the two sides of the building is not only available but required you can see that there's an elevator located in the center and the plan there is to make it available to people who are going in and out through this passageway but it's entered from both sides we've also designed the exiting system I'm sorry I'm going to ask you to wrap up because we've got a ton of people waiting and you're coming out so I just want to make sure if there's any other things you guys want to present I think I will just defer to Amra I think this the diagram speaks for itself thank you I'm sorry to interrupt just now lots of time constraints thank you Amra go ahead please Hang on just one moment please Mark if you wouldn't mind thank you I don't know my members of the council my name is Amra Marston and I and I do represent Nova Development Company in connection with the SB-35 application before you tonight we did submit a letter to you earlier today in response to the letter which you received yesterday from the Whitworth Perkin firm and I know a lot of attention has been devoted today to the issue of segregation which I think Mark has just addressed from a design standpoint but I would like to to just sort of underscore some of the legal reasons why this requested concession is appropriate. Number one state density bonus law specifically allows the affordable units to be in a location other than where the market rate or bonus units are located and it really state law does not mandate the dispersal of affordable units. Number two the SB-35 implementing guidelines which are published by the department of housing and community development also specifically allow for the non-dispersal of the affordable units citing limitations which are imposed by state and local financing in which we have I think articulated in our density bonus statement and as your city attorney explained earlier this afternoon the city's discretion to deny this requested concession is really quite limited and can only be based upon substantial evidence that the requested concession is not going to result in actual cost savings in order to provide for the production of affordable housing and you'll note in our density bonus statement that we have identified projects tax credit funding for the affordable units will result in a cost reduction of nearly 18 million. It just a couple of other points that came up during council's questions following the staff report. One more minute if you don't mind. We would like to just refocus council attention on the purpose of today's public oversight meeting and that really is to review the objective standards matrix and determine the project's consistency with these objective standards and second the extent that the city wishes to further study conditions like the driveway placement or traffic which is generated by the project SB 35 guidelines are clear that a project which is approved pursuant to SB 35 can't be conditioned on something other than your standard conditions of approval and those are standards which are noble to the public and the applicant of the time of the SB 35 application and I would refer the council to an email that was received by HCD yesterday in which we forwarded to staff yesterday and if you want to thank you very much for your time and attention I know that this is a difficult matter and we really appreciate your hard work on this issue. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you Amon and Mark and Amara. I'm going to go ahead and turn back to our oral public comments now and the first group I have up is going to be represented is 831 Responsible Development and it's Iggy Lavniere and I hope I didn't pronounce your name incorrectly. I see I hope you're on and Hi. Yeah we can great you're here yeah go ahead and you have two minutes and you'll hear a timer if you're going over. Okay great thanks very much Mayor a little bit but that's okay. Tonight on behalf of 831 Responsible Development and the nearly 600 community members who signed our petition against this they'll concede and haphazardly submitted project. To be clear we think affordable housing on the small lot at 831 Water Street is a worthy idea but the current proposal is a careless overreach not compatible with the neighborhood the city or community values and I did get a I did see a great deal of sensitivity over some of our main issues tonight with the responses from the noven development. There are too many issues to list in the allotted time so I'll speak generally of our office on bad public policy as elected stewards of Santa Cruz and its environment. You have the responsibility to ensure that developments in our city not only meet local and state requirements but are maintained and are protected of public health and safety. Please exercise that authority as it's clear that the current noven development project would seriously impair the health and safety of many in our community. This is the project to be the first in Santa Cruz to be fast tracked. It is wrong because it lowers standards to an unacceptable level for other significant projects expected in the future. It proposes to segregate low income tenants in a separate building and the law of dispersal of affordable units is a requirement for the ministerial screenlining set forth by the state. The city's own mandate that affordable units may not be segregated from market rate units. The proposed density scale and design create serious public safety impacts on heavily trafficked streets close to a school creating substantial risk for pedestrians, cyclists, drivers and in particular students. We are to design the project as currently proposed on the grounds that the separation of affordable units from market rate units is against SB 35 regulations and no consent waivers or incentives can be given at this time because the density bonus application is not complete. We want more affordable housing. We want responsible development and a process that is up front and on us. We believe we can work together in an open public process to create safe and responsible development for Santa Cruz and its citizens. Thank you. Thank you. Next up we have Santa Cruz tomorrow and it will be Lira Filipini. Is she in? Yes. Go ahead, Lira, you should be able to speak. Lira, we can't hear you. Try pressing star six. Are you on an iPad or computer? There we go. Go ahead, please. Hi, Lira Filipini speaking for Santa Cruz tomorrow. We urge the city council to deny the current application on the grounds that the density bonus application is incomplete and non-compliant to city code and that the SB 35 application violates HCD regulations. Their regulations require distribution of the affordable units throughout the development. The regulations for California tax credit funding mentioned do not say that one parcel containing deed restricted affordable units can't also include market rate units in the development. Additionally, two of our city's ordinances also require dispersal the units throughout the development. In fact, it is one of the city's regulatory standards for affordable units to qualify a development for a density bonus. Per city code, the density bonus application is also incomplete. The various income brackets by AMI are required to be included in the table. They are nowhere in the application. Additionally, the required location of the density bonus units are not included in the site plan. These omissions make the density bonus application incomplete and what has been submitted shows the proposal for density bonus due to segregation. Without a density bonus, the SB 35 application may not be assessed at the size and density proposed and no waivers or objective standards or confessions may be granted. Approving the project would promote segregation of the lower income residents from the higher income residents, which is bad public policy and arguably detrimental to public health. Both state and jurisdictional code clearly contend that segregated development practices are to be avoided. We know that an affordable housing project can be built on the site that is safe and equitable for those living in it as well as for the surrounding community. We look forward to seeing a development proposal for this location, that is. We are relying on council to protect the community and our city standards and to deny the current proposal. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your piece of your statement. Next I have Housing Santa Cruz County and Don Lane I believe is going to be the speaker. Thank you. Am I coming through? You are. Great. Thank you so much. My name is Don Lane. I'm speaking on behalf of Housing Santa Cruz County. We're a diverse coalition that includes more than 30 community organizations. We work for a thriving equitable community through our advocacy for more affordable housing. I want to acknowledge right up front that this project presents a difficult challenge for many neighborhood residents and for youth city council members. I think the reason is quite simple. The project has come forward under the relatively new state law, SB 35. Obviously there are other issues and other issues. If not for the new SB 35 process, which mandates a lot less local discretion, this debate would be much easier for you as city council members to navigate. The SB 35 process was created because local opposition to creating new apartments has been one contributor to the state and Santa Cruz's severe housing shortage. As a result of this crisis, we needed a change so that opposition by adjacent property owners and homeowners would not be the primary factor in determining how many affordable housing units we will have in our community. The state legislature has been completely clear on this. For an active community like ours, this is a big change and it's one that is very hard for some of us to swallow. However, many lower income people have had to swallow the affordable apartment shortage and housing insecurity and even homelessness which those past practices delivered. In this time of rising understanding of the need to address past inequities, I believe we're called upon to make some difficult and uncomfortable changes. You have the opportunity to do that today with this project. We urge you to appropriately step out of the way to homes for essential workers, lower income families and vulnerable people and become a reality. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next we're going to go into our public comment time. Folks will have a minute and I'm just going to go right down here. If you do want to speak to this item, I'd appreciate if you could raise your hand by pressing star nine so I get a sense of how many folks are planning to talk tonight. Okay, next will be Kyle Kelly and you'll need to press star six to unmute yourself and then you'll be able to speak. Thank you so much and thank you Don Lane for the great comments. I'm in big support of this project and I'm really glad we're starting to think about segregation and where market rate housing is and where affordable housing is even allowed. Most of the area around where this project is currently does not allow affordable housing. It only allows single family homes and has no inclusionary requirement or affordable housing allotment. So if the people tonight speaking in this manner really believe this, I expect them to show up for later discussions of ensuring that we have affordable housing city-wide. So for this project in this moment please approve the project use objective standards to say anything tonight which makes the city council look like a subjective body and follow the law as best you can. Good luck. Thank you Mr. Kelly. Next I have phone number ending in eight four eight zero. Hi this is Doug Angfer. Can you hear me? Yes we can. All right. Thank you. My wife Robin and I ask you to please reject the current application based on its non-compliance with the city's objective standards. The design is non-compliant with the clearly objective 270 foot line of sight requirement at the posted 30 mile per hour speed limit on Water Street. There can be no intellectually honest suggestion that this is anything but an objective standard. Also please reject concessions regarding forced segregated housing. Right is right, wrong is wrong and there's a clear workaround for this segregation. If however council feels compelled to approve the current design please refuse consideration of any fee waivers. The developer has not earned any such consideration from the city and the city is not obligated to offer them as Tony is outlined. Remember as well that the liability adhering to the city and building owners of the previously unsafe conditions around this project would warrant any possible costs associated with any potential litigation over SB35. Please do the right thing for our town. Thank you for your service. Thank you. Next up I have Simon Corvani. Hi. I'm a resident of Belvedere Terrace and I'm a powerless in terms of the objective standards so I'm actually just going to voice and a request. When I met Mr. Novin when he visited our street he said it was vulgar to talk about how much profit was being made and he compared himself to be a teacher who does a job and gets paid a fair wage but as a state employee I have to publish my salary. It has to be known because there's government money going into it and the project is using so much in terms of money but I think it would be only fair that we know how much profit has been made by noted because as far as I can see he's trying to gouge a piece of social legislation that is intended to stop people rejecting the presence of low income housing in order to build as much as he can to make as much profit as possible. The spirit of this legislation was not to say build high buildings as much as possible it would say you cannot reject low income housing in your area. Everybody on our street is all the stories of low income housing. Thank you. Thank you. Next I have Rafa's phone himself. Yes, thank you. I think it's no secret that I'm supportive of this project with 71 units including many which will have project based vouchers for people who may have been experiencing homelessness or transition age youth all of those are really admirable qualities of the project. Unfortunately in what everyone else thinks shouldn't really come into the equation tonight it's really just about following the law following the objective standards that are required it seems pretty obvious that you're obligated to approve the project tonight and even if this wasn't an SB 35 project it would still be required to be approved under the housing accountability act. So there's really no legal mechanism that the city has to deny this project. It's a wonderful project I don't think you should deny it and you won't deny it. Thank you very much. Next is Elizabeth Conlonch. This is Elizabeth. I urge you to follow staff recommendation and approve the 3-1 Water Street project. There are many things to like about this project and yet many oppose it and some of these need to be critically examined. The goalposts are constantly moving. A project isn't affordable enough or it isn't in the right location or the right type of affordable housing. If you are concerned that these two buildings will be separated by income then you should oppose all 100% affordable housing projects as those buildings separate neighbors by income. Some supporters of organized labor ignore that the project is paying more attention to housing training to union workers. Solid concerns about drought and water use morph into ignoring that restricting home building hasn't stopped population growth but contributed to overcrowding and homelessness. An apartment is not a punishment for a neighborhood and housing isn't a burden for a city. It is an opportunity to make our community stronger and more inclusive. Please follow objective standards and approve this application. Thank you for the time to speak today. My name is James Rodriguez and I'm a field representative with Carpenter's Local 505. I'm here speaking in support of the Water Street project because with Novan's commitment to use a union signatory general contractor this project will offer many job opportunities for union carpenter men and women many of whom live and spend their earnings right here locally. All making a livable wage with medical and retirement benefits allowing them to continue to live here and contribute to the community they call home. We believe this is a responsible project and look forward to seeing it built. Thank you. Next I have Lucas Henkel. Hi. Thank you for this opportunity. I'm a fourth period carpenter apprentice. I'm a member of the Carpenter's Local 505. I live here in Santa Cruz and could greatly benefit along with my brother and sister Carpenter's from this project. I would like to allow to build something to be proud of proud of in my hometown while advancing myself in a trade working towards a respectable retirement. I look forward to seeing this project move forward and thank you again for your time. Thank you. Next I see phone number ending in 696. This is Robert Erzy speaking. Robert, if you have another device on can you use that device? Thanks. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you better now. A large contingent of concerned Santa Cruz neighbors is appealing to you to be than denying this proposed development. You are our elected officials. We depend on you to keep our city both safe and healthy. This large-scale development would have both safety and healthy health impacts not only on neighboring residents but citywide as well. Otter Street is a major arterial and is a popular route for citizens traveling east and west. The B40 intersection is already a bottleneck. Additional traffic will result in frequent gridlock especially during commute hours. Please be our advocates. Stand up. Speak for us. Health in all policies was a pre-existing condition when this application was submitted. Let us know you do care about our health and safety. After all, these are true objective standards. Thank you. Thank you. Next I have Rosa. I lost Rosa. Is she disappear, Bonnie? Is she on? No, she disappeared. She's one that has an old version of Zoom so I had to promote her really quite often. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. I'm asking you as a resident of Belvedere Terrace to reject this project. We had you console people visit us. You know our concerns. You know that this not NIMBYs we're not. I have been a big, big supporter of the homelessness ever since I got to Santa Cruz 30 years ago. But please build to scale. This thing is horrible. Did you see Simon's video? Did you see it? How horrible it was? How big, I mean what about our traffic? What about our ever drive down the street? I know you do. One of the console people, a few of you who live here it's going to be terrible. We get you turns all the time. We're not against housing. We're against the lovin' housing. Next up I have Jackson. Yes, please. Okay, hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Hi, my name is Jackson and I just want to voice my support for this project. I want to reiterate how severe the lack of housing is in the city and the reason why we have such a shortage is because the city has chosen not to build for a very long time. The shortage or the shortfall of housing units is very deep and we are stuck playing catch up for the foreseeable future. So this project is part of that catching up process which I would like to start sooner rather than later. And I would also like to say that I thought the whole point of this project being improved via SB 35 streamlining was that the only thing that really matters is being in compliance with the objective standards. So the planning department staff has reviewed the application and found that it is in compliance. So unless I'm missing something I understand that this project is required to move forward and be approved. Thanks. Thank you. Next I have Emily Ham. Hi, good evening. Mayor Meyers and members of the council. My name is Emily and I serve as executive director of the San Xiz County Business Council. First of all much for your leadership during this process we understand that the height and the SB 35 process are new and unfamiliar. Councils and local governing bodies from across the state are also navigating new state legislation that eases the creation of more affordable housing doing so in the name of housing equity and economic sustainability. State requirements and local standards are not arbitrary. They are put in place to reverse decades of inequitable and economically detrimental policies and practices that resulted in our current housing crisis is incidentally the single biggest threat to public health in the county and statewide. Cities do not build affordable housing themselves that are obligated to pave the way for the development of these units. SB 35 is in the process and you should use it as a tool rather than an obstacle so thank you again for your leadership on this. Thank you. Next. You've already spoken so I'm going to go to Sue Karen's next. I think that you have the power and the responsibility to deny this application on the grounds that it will have significant adverse on the health and safety of this community. According to the geotech report commissioned by Mr. Novan, the core born show the first nine foot layer of depth under the site is composed of sand. Beneath that lies a layer of silk stone that is friable which is defined as easily break finger pressure and extends to a depth of 15 feet. Beneath that to the entire 26 foot depth of the boring lies a layer of deeply weathered fractured silk stone characterized by extensive disintegration. This may have supported DJs in the car wash but a five story building with two levels and presents a clear risk of irreparable harm and is inappropriate for the site. Thank you. Thank you. Next I have Brooke Madison. Thank you for listening to our comments. Can you hear me? Yes you can. Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is the city really afraid of possible litigation by a developer but not of its own citizens. I think you're charged with supporting and protecting us. I can think of a myriad possible litigation examples if this project as presented is approved. When the second bicycle down Water Street Hill on a brand new bike lane is that time to worry about it? When the hard of hearing guy walks down the sidewalk and didn't hear the beeping of the garbage truck it's backing into the narrow service lane then maybe he'll take the third rear in collision caused by those trucks so close to the intersection of water and brand support. Maybe they just sit there and idle for 20 minutes waiting to get out on the street. It's more than possible to imagine an ambulance that didn't arrive in time for traffic because it was trapped in the Water Street gridlock. I lodge you and support you and you have the power and responsibility to protect citizens. So please don't act with us, remember that. It's an ill-contained plan whatever you decide to allow this for the president. Thank you. Thank you. Next I have Jim Burns. Can you hear me? Yes we can. We all want projects that help make housing more affordable in Santa Cruz. But that doesn't mean we should accept a development proposal like this that by any objective measure makes no effort to reduce its significant impact on the people who live, work or travel near the project site or accept a proposal that by any objective measure it too many health and safety issues to detail in my one minute or accept a proposal that by any objective measure cherry picks the laws, policies and formulas that benefit one element of the application only to ignore those very same rules when it suits another part of the application or accept a proposal that by any objective measure it odds with regulations that prohibited segregated housing. As our duly elected representatives we ask a lot of you but more than anything else we just need you to do the right thing. In this case doing the right thing is by any objective measure sending this seriously flawed proposal back to the developers drawing board. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next we have Michael. Hello everybody I just wanted to express my support for this I'm a relatively new Santa Cruz citizen I've only been here for about five years just graduated from UCSC and now working on campus. I really support this project because I want to stay in Santa Cruz for the long term and with housing the way it is it's very difficult to see that being feasible for me. This project would give me and others like me an opportunity to stay in Santa Cruz and live in a place we really love. Also being a biker this is a really great project it will actually help us reduce deaths, getting more people on public transit, more people commuting by bike and as long as we upgrade that infrastructure alongside projects like these it'd be a really good thing for the active transportation community in Santa Cruz and for everybody getting more cars off the road means good for everybody. Thank you and I hope who approved this project. Thank you I'm going to make one more call for folks who want to speak Bonnie how are we doing on time I think we're doing fine on time but this will be the last call though for folks who want to speak you'll have one minute you'll need to raise your hand now so that I can figure out who's out there. Okay next up is phone number ending in one five three five if you press star six unmute yourself please. Mayor, members of the council this is Ashley with the Monterey Bank Economic Partnership calling into supplement our written letter of support for this project. Is the city's first affordable housing applicant to propose a project under SB 35 we first and foremost commend all the hard work and time that's been invested on behalf of all parties especially staff who've exceeded the amount of labor put in to ensure compliance with all of Jacob's standards pursuant to SB 35 and its density bonus request we can attest to the level of detail and responsiveness the applicant has demonstrated in being all application requirements while addressing community concerns as we expect to see more SB 35 applications in our region we must work all to all together to leverage and work with not against state legislation to tackle our housing shortage and the issues in the most efficient and effective way possible while focusing on social equity environmental justice and that's what this project is pushing the envelope to do within the current constraints of institutionalized redlining this country was built on. Please attach yourself from the status quo, observational selection, self-serving biases, loss of virgin and endowment effects that are being made. A31 water is the kind of infill transit-oriented housing the city's general plan calls for and will provide several long-term community environmental benefits so we advance this project and to establish a more streamlining process for all incoming 35 applications that's going forward. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Barbara Fargo. Can you hear me? Yes we can. Okay, thank you. I am a long time resident of Berkeley Way which as I'm sure most of you know is one street over from Belvedere Terrace. It's a very narrow street that's down to Reed Way and out to water. We spent years dealing with various developments down at the bottom of the hill on Reed Way because of the traffic dangers of people coming up the Berkeley Way hill to make to avoid the traffic light at Branson Forty and Water and coming through speeding through our neighborhood. We have lots of children on the block. We are concerned about them as I'm sure you are also. I do not believe that this suggestion that you have very little leeway on this is correct. You have a right to object to oppose this project if it affects the health and safety of the residents of the city and how you can think of sitting in traffic on the Water Street hill making you turns at Branson Forty around other streets in order to get out there. That doesn't affect the health and safety. I know it does and I'm sure you do. Thank you. Thank you. Next I have phone number ending in 2174 star 6. Unmute yourself please. In green side here I think you should back off on this. It's the first test of the 35 coordinates however it's got massive pushback and you haven't yet developed your objective standards. There's no rush. There are other developments going on around town and I think back off consider and also evaluate this by the objective standards and if health and safety means anything I can't believe that you wouldn't realize that transited onto Water Street halfway down the hill could possibly past master. He thought your staff was a little bit hesitant on that issue. I think you need to look at these issues more carefully. I deny it at this point. Thank you. Thank you. Next is Rachel McKay at star 6. Rachel if you're trying to get on there you go you should be able to speak now. Rachel we can't hear you if you other device on and you want to make sure whatever device you're using you're speaking into that one. Okay Rachel I'll come back to you. We're not able to hear you even though you're unmuted. I'm not quite sure exactly what's going on. Let me move on to phone number ending in 5, 6. Unmute yourself by pressing star 6. I'm looking at phone number ending in 5, 6, 9, 0. If you unmute yourself you'll be able to speak. Yes. This project does not need the objective safety access into the parking racks. 143 cars coming into the project due to the backup that will be on branch supporting avenue will cause cars not to be making the right hand turn even if you make an additional lane. This is very dangerous. This has been documented by the vision zero. You have the documentation. It states clearly that it's dangerous to bike riders, pedestrians and there will definitely be problems, accidents. Our town is number 2 in fatalities and accidents. We have to heed this. People speaking about this project that do not live in this area really don't realize how dangerous this area can be and this type of a downhill slant way on it makes no sense and every bit of your council should really come and observe what really would happen here so that they can have their soldiers when those kids are coming out of school. There are two big schools right around the corner that they exit out of that. They get off school and they are going down that hill. Please sign the project. Thank you. That was our last call. I'm going to go ahead and close this public comment period. I'm going to go ahead and turn back to council. I see council member Johnston you've had your hand up and council member Watkins and then council member Cummings. I'll go in that. Great. Thank you. I just want to first think and acknowledge the very, very hard work of the planning department and city staff. I know there's been a lot of decisions and to the agenda report so I want to acknowledge and thank our staff for their work. I want to thank all of the community members who spoke up tonight. The developer team who came and spoke. And the housing advocate folks who came and spoke up. So as I think a lot of people hopefully a lot of people know I have a lot of experience in housing. I'm proud that up until this point I've had 100% yes vote on any housing project that's come before council since I've joined the council in December. This is really hard. This is a very challenging proposal and situation. This specific application has many challenges which I won't go into because we've been hearing about them for the last few hours. But a lot of them are around health and safety impacts to the surrounding community. And as was mentioned this is our first SB 35 application so that in itself is very challenging figuring out how to facilitate and navigate the process. We haven't even finished our completed our objective standard process that we're doing as a community. We're relying on existing codes. And I do just want to note and say that this is a result of how we have responded or haven't responded as a community in terms of housing. Our local opposition in past years are saying no too many times has brought us here. And now this is the outcome. This project that is not aligned with our community of equity and health and sustainability which we've explicitly named in ways and health and all policies Vision Zero, our climate action plans, it's not aligned. And beyond not being aligned with our values, like I said, after diving deep into the hundreds and hundreds of pages I do see the impacts of health and safety on our community. I'd really like to use this as an opportunity to invite developers, investors, invite housing advocates and the community at large to really pause and think about where we're at and to come together to build projects that work for our community. I'll build a project for this site that includes 100% affordable housing. I don't think this project is it. I do think that there are concessions and what's listed as minor deficiencies that don't seem like minor. They seem major that are a basis for denial for the project. I want to just note quickly on concession one and segregation that's been brought up several times. This was brought up earlier in the afternoon, but I question the true intent of this segregation of the two units whether it will be a way to facilitate and maneuver abandonment of the affordable housing building, affordable housing component of this project. This is difficult, but after much thought and really looking into the components of the packet and listening and taking in everything that everyone has said I am in the opinion that the deficiencies outlined in the agenda report are not minor and that the concessions do impact health and safety and can be measured in a quantifiable way and again are the basis for denial. So with that I would like a motion to deny the project based on the lack of evidence that it will meet the city's objective standard. And I'll just pause there. We have a motion on the cable councilmember Watkins. I'll second the motion. We have a motion that to deny the project based on the objective standards not meeting the objective standards councilmember if you might have that motion up maybe you could put that up if you have it written down that might be helpful based on not meeting objective standards. We have a second to that and we have councilmember coming. May I have a few comments. I'm sorry I didn't know. Go for it. No problem. I want to think I share a lot of the comments that have been made by my colleague and I too want to think all that were present here and those who couldn't be present those that participated in the public process and spoke out and I've been engaged in housing from various perspectives over time. I want to thank our staff because I do know that they've been working very, very hard to also interpret this new law and all of the companies in terms of its challenges and I share a lot of the concerns that were raised by councilmember Johnston in regards to just feeling that this does not meet the standards that we'd like to see. I too have been I approach housing in a way that I try to find compromise and I know it's not always easy or all or nothing or you are for affordable housing or you're not and you just want market rate. It's so easy to fall into these very black and white positions but often what I try to find is a place where we're aiming for good but not perfect and that we are authentically listening to each other to make modifications to hear each other and often not everybody you know a place for their voice to be heard to the way they want it to be but generally the majority can come in the middle and say I can live with this and this is our joint and universal value of wanting to see more housing and inroads to affordability here in our community and I feel that that is a really critical component to getting really good projects moving forward and that this for me lacks and I think it really speaks out by the public comment that we've heard and I think it kind of speaks to just the SB-35 process and I get it I understand why the states made that policy decision I understand where we're at as a state in terms of our affordability issues and housing I turn around it not meeting really the standards to the level to see I do have concern about the segregated housing and I hear when people say we do have that because we try to make those leverage points in terms of how we use some of the incentives and on one parcel really segregating two buildings via kind of a pathway a bridge doesn't settle well for me and frankly I think that is known of our history as a nation that often those that really fall into the affordability are people of color are low and economic individuals and so I just I can't I can file that personally and so I don't feel comfortable with that concession and for a number of reasons I feel that there are there's evidence that really shows that we don't necessarily have what we need to approve it at this time and so I am happy to second the motion as it was presented and interested in further conversation with my colleagues in regards to moving forward I just want to make sure Council Member that we got the language I was not able to write it down it was so quick I don't know that this was fully the full motion I don't know if you have it written down and I would assume it does not meet the city's I did send after this was put up I sent it to Bonnie it's pretty close to see that it yeah that it does not meet that was incorrect on my part and I just want to let the applicant know and his attorney that Amara that with this is a council deliberation time so we actually do not engage with folks from the audience at this point in time until the motion has been voted on really until we've made the decision this evening so I just want to let you know that I'll move on to council so this is the current language that the motion has and I'll go ahead and talk to my councilmember thank you mayor thank you staff for the presentation and for the community and for the developer for joining us this evening my questions were asked by my colleagues earlier and I just want to make a couple statements regarding the project and to clarify my intent this evening so as many of us know cities throughout the state of California have been stripped of their authority related to local control over land use decisions and as a result we're here this evening to review objective standards and determine whether that's before us meets all the objective standards for approval there are a number of assumptions that have been made that studies that are underway will allow the project to meet objective standards but given that today we don't have the results of any of these studies and any evidence before us that would allow us to definitively say that the project will meet our objective standards we cannot say that the project meets our objective standards as a proponent of affordable housing in a proponent of housing I voted to support the construction of hundreds of units of housing many of which have been affordable and some that I didn't 100% agree with and I would be supportive and I think many of the community members would be supportive of 100% affordable project on the site that meets the studies objective standards but it's clear that not only are there many objections to this but there are also many concerns around the objective standards that aren't being met so on behalf of the community members that have expressed concern I've also prepared what would have been a motion but now I would like to propose it as a friendly amendment to the motion that's on the floor so because the motion has already denied the A31 water project based on not meeting the objective standards and I think it's important that we outline some of these objective standards so we have explicit objective standards that the city can lean on when this goes to court so one, the anti-segregation standard and the inclusionary ordinance and density bonus ordinance that requires the dispersal of affordable units project which also violates our health policy ordinance by creating segregated housing two, that the objective standards around the slope regulation that the project be located no closer than 20 feet from a 30% slope without a variance three, the lack of a completed stormwater management plan and a completed drainage plan that ensures the city's standards to prevent flooding on the property and in the neighborhood four, the lack of a traffic study demonstrating that the city's traffic standards protecting the public health and safety from the proposed driveway crossing of bike lanes five, the lack of a completed noise study documenting that the city's objective noise standards will be met and in addition to the SB35 deemed that the density bonus application being incomplete for not complying with the state housing and community development's regular affordable units are distributed throughout the development and for not showing the breakdown of area median income levels and density bonus unit locations that's the friendly amendment if it's not accepted as a friendly I'm happy to move an amendment to the motion but for the members of the public and everyone who's watching without having results from studies that will evaluate whether or not the project will meet our objective standards to mitigate health and safety impacts on local residents the city should not in good faith approve this project and should deny the project based on the reasons expressed and so with that I'll end my comments as I mentioned before I'm happy to make this as a friendly amendment if it's not accepted as a friendly amendment I'm prepared to make a motion to amend the main motion I'll look to the maker of the motion I'll accept the friendly amendment thank you council and is the seconder okay with these changes yes I'll move on to council member Brown I just want to say very quickly that I am going to support the motion I I'm very happy with the concerns that have been expressed by my colleagues on the council and I recognize that we are here to speak directly to whether or not this project as currently proposed meets objective standards I won't repeat what's already been said but it's pretty clear to me and I appreciate that our staff has spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to navigate this we've had a lot of documents come our way we've been talking with people and some of the documents seemingly ever changing trying to turn this around after getting something on a Friday so that we're ready to have information I just want to say I really appreciate that staff has done your level best to make that and still despite your best efforts I do not believe that the application itself meets certain objective standards so I'll be supporting the motion I appreciate the other concerns that have been raised that I'm not going to talk about but I just want for the community members of the public who are listening I hear you and I think valid that's not the reason I'm voting to deny the project tonight that is strictly based upon the objective standards criteria evaluation and I'll just leave it there thanks thank you council member are there any other council member comments at this time sure okay I just maybe I would just like to make a few comments as well this has been an incredibly difficult project I mean this has kind of hit the streets about almost a year ago there's been repeated attempts to try to find some common cause with neighborhood that obviously knew they were living next to some commercial area or mixed use area that may someday get you know get developed purchased and developed into another use and I think you know I don't think there is any doubt that folks who live in this neighborhood you know acknowledge that I think what really strikes me is really the waivers for the project and those are the things that fit with you know the feeling of a neighborhood and those things are not available now as things that we can weigh a project against and I did hear quite a bit tonight about you know things that the state has said in this legislation that they have passed well we didn't have a voice in any of those legislative actions we are a local government governed by seven people sitting on a city council and this is a sign of you know an actual very complex sort of land use push by our state legislature and you know the values that we have in our general plan have been in that general plan and those values were expressed through hundreds of people participating in the general plan and one of the most important things is that we want to affordable units to be integrated amongst all housing types we do not want to separate out buildings because that is now a stated mandate by California sometimes as an elected official you have to speak for your community and not just you know get pushed around by the state of California frankly I too am an affordable housing advocate and have worked every time every minute on the council to push as far as I can for getting projects done up against a lot of folks who do not want those projects done and I think every affordable unit is worth building I'm not focused on getting the win every time but if I can get a unit built as part of the market rate project then that's a win every unit that provides affordability for someone in this town is a win for me and I do believe that this provides those things if there is a willingness to work with the neighborhood and work with your city government and work with your city leaders it's an important site it's a wonderful site has been mentioned on all sides for the kinds of housing that we have envisioned and that was really envisioned in our general plan and we were doing things in our general plan that other cities weren't even touching back 10 years ago so you know there's frustration and instead of having this project be such a divisive project I really hope that this is a learning moment right now and that we can hopefully you know get back to the drawing board and try to create something that's going to work and get support I am going to support the motion tonight and I just want to recognize that I do also share concerns about some of the lack of information as well as really being able to fully feel like I am making a vote that is in the public health and safety component of the community so I just wanted to close with some comments I don't know if any of my other colleagues want to have any comments at all tonight so we will go ahead and move to the motion we have a motion by council member Dari Johnson seconded by council member Watkins with a friendly amendment which is to deny the project based on the lack of evidence that it does not meet the city's objective standards there has been a number of these five specific standards that are mentioned and then secondly to being the density bonus application incomplete for not complying with the state housing and community development regulation that four-way units are distributed through development and for not showing the breakdown of AMI levels and density bonus unit locations and I will go ahead and ask for a roll call vote please thank you mayor council members Watkins Calentari Johnson Brown Minks Boulder Vice Mayor Brunner I will be voting no I would just like to say that this is not a public hearing and this public hearing and this public oversight purpose and role was to recognize objective standards as outlined by staff and the health and safety concerns brought forward will not be ignored and as stated earlier will come later in the process for example with the building permit assessment that the city will be doing so our role for this purpose I do recognize that standard so I will be voting no and Mayor Myers I'm a yes that motion passes six four and one against one no that concludes our meetings this evening and we will be reconvening at our next council meeting on October 26th so tonight we are adjourned thank you everyone for attending good night