 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 streaming device you may miss your opportunity to speak and I would now like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Thank you Mayor, Councilmember Calentari-Johnson, President Boulder. Here. Come in. Here. Brown. Here. Mayor. President. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Brunner. Present. Thank you. Are there any members of the public who would like to speak to any items listed on the closed closed session agenda? If you are attending virtually you can raise your hand by dialing star 9 on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature on the webinar controls of your computer. That means we have nobody in person. Let's go to our virtual attendees. And I don't see any hands raised. Okay. We will come back. Seeing none. This meeting is adjourned and council will go. Councilmember Calentari-Johnson. I have just a brief comment if I may. Okay. We're going to close session. Okay. I want to address the public and our workers. There's been some false claims put out about me in my position around our city workers and their contract. And that's what it is. They're false claims. Legally none of us council members are permitted to share what happens in closed session. But what I can share is that I have and I will continue to advocate for our workers and make sure we have fair contracts. And I acknowledge that you are the boots on the ground that keep our city functioning and I'm grateful for your work. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. This meeting is now adjourned and council will go into its closed session. Members of the public that are attending the meeting virtually please leave the meeting and rejoin at one PM when the regular meeting resumes. Thank you. And this is a summary that has been compiled with all the departments in the city on their progress. Hey, just real quickly. The city this we're working on the implementation of our second climate adaptation plan that was adopted in 2018. It has a five year time horizon and was developed in parallel with our local hazard mitigation plan. However, we have a long history of climate adaptation planning in the city. In fact, we were one of the first in the state to develop a climate adaptation plan back in 2012 that was developed again in conjunction with our local hazard mitigation plan. Together, those plans are certified by California office of emergency services and FEMA. And the benefit of that is that anything that's contained in those plans since they're coupled together are eligible for certain categories of FEMA pre and post hazard mitigation funding, of which we've taken advantage of quite a bit over the years. A minimum of $7 million in that type of funding has been accessed since 2018 for our climate adaptation planning. So it really is in our benefit to continue to be leaders in this space and to develop out those two plans together. As you see the plans both the both have a sunset horizon of 2023 and we have a grant pending with FEMA to develop out our 2024 to 2029 LHMP and climate adaptation plans. And I'll share with you a little bit more later what will be new in those plans. But reflecting on the 2018 plan, it does contain 44 different strategies. 25 are categorized as very high priority strategies. Nine is high and 10 is important. And I think it's really shows the the intent and the leadership of our departments in that every single strategy has been worked on except one. So we're making very good progress. I do want to mention two of our top priority strategies and where we're at with those that are not necessarily associated with a specific hazard. And I should mention, by the way, that all of these that prioritization that you saw on the previous previous slide, all of these strategies were prioritized using what's called the FEMA stately prioritization rubric, which utilizes factors, social, technical, legal, economic and environmental factors to help us to prioritize those strategies. So with respect to these two really high priority ones regarding increasing public awareness and evaluating all decisions through a climate lens, I thought I would just share with you some of the progress made on these two in particular. We have had with respect to wildfire, we have two fire wise communities that are meeting regularly. We've done extensive sea level rise planning, particularly with our communities of concern. Also, the water department has done quite a bit of engagement, particularly with its water commission and some extensive work on water reliability and climate change. As you know, also, we are in, we're entering in the second year where we're integrating health and all policies, which again prioritizes equity, public health and sustainability in our budget. And we go through the budget each year and we determine which projects implement the climate adaptation plan. And that will, that gets put on the beginning of the budget for your purposes for decision making purposes. Yeah, I think that that kind of gets to the extent of our two really high important strategies. So what I'm going to be doing throughout the rest of this presentation is sharing with you kind of a refresher on the climate hazards that we're facing and then what we've been doing with respect to those hazards. So some of these slides might look familiar to you. We are expecting an increase in temperature by the end of the century between four to seven degrees Fahrenheit, which is pretty astounding. And we will be expecting, and in fact, we have already begun experiencing more heat waves by the end of the century. Anecdotally, I was talking to the fire department last year about going, looking at doing a study on high heat and what we can do. And they had said to me that before the past two years, we really would have never thought we had to deal with high heat here on our coastal temperate climate, but things are changing quickly. Obviously, high heat not only impacts public health, but, you know, tons of cascading other things, water availability, water quality, ecosystems, ecology and species and so forth. Now with respect to high heat, we haven't really done any intensive study. And in fact, in our next adaptation plan, we will be focusing in on this area. But what we have done is a lot around trees, which of course provide cooling. They provide filtering of water and so forth. So I think you know that the Street Trees Plan was completed last year and Parks and Rec has on their work plan over the next couple of years, developing an Urban Tree Master Plan, planning 3,000 trees by 2030. And as I mentioned, we'll be doing a high heat study as part of our adaptation plan that we'll be embarking upon by the end of the year, perhaps the beginning of next year, depending on if we receive the funding that we are anticipating. With respect to increase intensity and frequency of storms, inland storms and flooding, we separate inland versus coastal. What you're seeing on the screen here is our FEMA flood hazard zones. The A99 or purple area is the area that is protected by our levee system, which is currently going through FEMA certification right now. So we've done a bunch of different studies, geotechnical hydraulics and hydrology studies to understand how that will perform in terms of FEMA. Now FEMA does not require climate change yet, but that is a study that we are also trying to get funded right now. We do continue to participate in the community rating system, as well as the National Flood Insurance Program, which by the way, if we were unable to certify the levee with FEMA, which we are on track to do, we would actually see an increase by 50% of all the flood insurance premiums within that purple zone that I showed you. So we will be saving our residents money by going through that certification process. We have fully scoped a flood protection and climate change study that we're right now going for Prop 1 funding for through the IRWM process, the Integrated Regional Water Management Agency. We also are pursuing an $11 million grant with FEMA right now. We've made it through the first round to upgrade pump station number one to account for future flows. Of course, the Rivermouth Culvert Project is going to be providing some relief for nuisance flooding that occurs. And we have the Brands of Forty Fish Passage and Sediment Removal Project, which also will help us to prevent flooding upstream in the watershed and downtown. In terms of coastal flooding, well gosh, we've done a ton of work here. I've been in front of you with the Resilient Coast Santa Cruz Initiative. What you see on the screen here, especially where these kind of shaded blue areas are, are areas where we anticipate future flooding if we did nothing at all due to rising tides or sea level rise. And you can see, no big surprises here. We have lower ocean, beach flats area, and some of our downtown and neary lagoon area that are projected to be flooded due to sea level rise. You also see that some of our critical facilities are in this area. But as I said, we have done and we have, you know, up to a billion dollars in assets. And that's just an infrastructure and property alone that is at risk of sea and exposed to sea level rise. This also shows you erosion and landslides. And we're looking again at coastal. If you look down at the bottom of the screen here, you see this shaded red areas. The black and white lines are our coastal armoring structures, seawalls, big boulders and riprap. And in fact, 50% of our coastline is armored right now. But the red areas show where we would expect erosion to occur, making an assumption that perhaps by 2060, no armoring will either be allowed or the failed armoring we will not be able to replace. So this kind of gives us a worse case scenario to understand erosion. And in fact, we would see, should that be the case, we would see erosion entering into this first and second lane of West Cliff Drive. But we have completed the West Cliff Drive adaptation and management plan, as well as at which your council adopted in April of 2021 that outlines a number of different projects over the next 10 years to help bolster our planning and our protection of our coastline. And then also gives indications further out in the medium and longer term of our options, including planned relocation potentially and other types of strategies. Of course, as we implement the West Cliff Drive plan, we will need to continue to have dialogue with our community on this topic and these various options. We also have a local coastal program amendment that's in progress right now that will codify policies to support beach and public access protection. Both of those plans have not been approved by the Coastal Commission yet. We have had quite a bit of delay with a lot on their slate from the city, but we have reengaged recently with them on getting that through their process. And the benefit of that is that particularly for the West Cliff Drive plan, their environmental review is a substitute, an equivalent substitute for CEQA. And so that is a great benefit for us, obviously. And then the LCP amendment must in fact be approved by the Coastal Commission in order for us to implement it. So we continue to work on this, particularly right now we are developing out a coastal change monitoring network. We just did our first drone flights last week from both the ocean side and the landward side to and got high resolution imagery that we'll be doing year to year and using some sophisticated technology to do some analytics on coastal change. We're also looking at ways that we can engage our community through them taking photos in different spots and uploading them and really engaging folks in a community science kind of endeavor. We have over 14 different agencies that are involved in developing out this coastal change monitoring network with our other lead agency being UCSC's Coastal Science and Policy Graduate Program. We have two grants for this work, one through the Coastal Commission, which is also supposed to result in a second LCP amendment to codify this monitoring program as well as from the National Science Foundation. As part of this, not only are we developing, we have physical triggers, things like, okay, when beach width gets to 100 feet, we're going to do this, right now we're developing out social triggers as well. For example, property values or number of evacuations and things like that that will help us to do more improved planning and implementation of our coastal resilience work in the future, particularly working with our communities of concern. We have a lot of funding to compensate groups to participate with us. A future piece of work will be to develop ecological triggers, which by the way, in our adaptation plan, we have only touched very lightly on ecological impacts and so that will be an area we'll be focusing on in our next adaptation plan update. With respect to wildfire, I think these were the projections that we had, which was that we would see increases of really modest increases of areas burned, but I think that's really been blown out of the water based on what we experienced two years ago. And in fact, there have been 276 wildfires in the Wildland Urban Interface since 2018 alone. However, our fire department's been super proactive on this. They've received eight grants for vegetation management since that time. Your council passed a ordinance in 2019. That's a Wildland Urban Interface. We have cooperative agreements with UCSC and others, and I already mentioned the firewise. Two big things for fiscal year 23 that the fire department and parks jointly intend to pursue is a five year vegetation management plan, sorry for the typo, and a forest management and fire resilience plan. So lots of activity going on in this space right now. With respect to increased erosion and landslides inland, we know of course that the wildfire impacts definitely cause more erosion in the watershed and in fact increase the risk of landslides or mudslides as well as sediment in our river. We know, however, that the water department has been doing a lot of work in this area and public works as well. The water department's realigned is in the process of relying realigning their raw water pipelines out of a landslide hazard zone. They're making upgrades to the treatment plant to account for different water quality based on the wildfires and the runoff that we're seeing. Public works is interested in doing a San Lorenzo River Nutrient and Sediment Management Plan and the water department is replacing the Newell Creek Dam inlet and outlet. So again, lots of activity going on in this space. With respect to droughts, we are expecting more intense storms in the watershed but also contrast that with the exact opposite longer droughts and more frequent droughts. I got to give a big shout out to the water department. They've been super proactive working with balanced hydrologics as well as researchers in the University of Massachusetts in doing water supply reliability studies that and they've been implementing their water supply augmentation strategy so that we have reliable water into the future. And lastly, they're developing a securing our water future policy. So how do they make decisions in the future about infrastructure, operations and so forth in the context of climate change. Very sophisticated work going on here I might add. By the way, they have also done a series within their department of lunch and learns so that employees can learn about this kind of stuff. It's been really cool and we're expanding it to all employees to be able to view or packaging that together right now. I think you've seen the slide before really getting ready to wind things up here. We did do in 2018 a social vulnerability to climate change assessment where based on the factors you see in the lower left hand corner, we developed a social vulnerability score by census block group and we ranked them relative to one another. So the areas in red are those with the highest social vulnerability. And those that are in green are those with the lowest. Now this is just kind of a starting point to look at this kind of thing. It is limited to the factors you see on the left poverty and so forth. But this is really I think catapulted us in terms of the work that we're doing with communities of concern to really get to this and address this. And as we go move into the climate adaptation plan update, we will be focusing more so also on people. A lot of our adaptation work in the past has focused on infrastructure and more physical preparedness. And going along with that are the impacts on public health human health that we also are going to be focusing on quite a bit in our adaptation plan. We're so fortunate here to have a temperate climate and good air quality with our ocean acting as some lungs kind of pumping in good air quality. But things will be shifting and you know there are not just impacts related to air pollution. There are disease vectors that could be increasing with increased temperature and so forth. And so this is an area we're going to hone in on in our next adaptation plan as well. So just to round things out what's next. Well we've got those two plan updates I mentioned. We also are integrating this work into our master grant strategy that's been in development and will be finalized by the end of the year. We also are going to be addressing combinations of hazards. In the past we looked at kind of hazards in a stand alone kind of fashion. But as we saw in Santa Barbara where we had a drought followed by fire followed by a 500 year storm and a landslide. These things occurs in combinations right. And then lastly I mentioned develop ecologically oriented strategies addressing public health, high heat, living shorelines and nature based solutions for our coast. And then lastly tying our health and all policies, community well-being, outcome indicator metrics to everything in the plan which is what we've been trying to transition to do. So that's my update for you. I'm happy to take any questions you might have. I know that's a lot of information really. You leave that last slide up for a minute. Absolutely. While we go for questions. Absolutely. Thank you. Vice Mayor Watkins had a question. Let's see. I had a couple of questions on some of the slides, but I don't you need to go all the way back. In regards to the map that we just saw in the red areas is yes. Okay. So those are just to kind of put this like the beach flats area. For some reason I can't really see it very well. There's beach flats, lower ocean and then kind of the greater sea bright area is this red area up here. And I'll tell you why that turned up is red is because there's a large concentration of old folks homes there. And so the the age is the age is the driver in that area. And you know, so one way to think about this is when we looked at that, we're like, Oh gosh, okay, what if there's like a wildfire and are on a gulch that's nearby? Yeah, we got to make sure that those older folks that have mobility issues are evacuated first. Well, in fact, when we looked at our fire department's routing, they in fact had already thought about that. So those are some of the ways that we're using this work in our planning. Thank you for the opportunity to I really appreciate that. And I think with the triggers coming in and really factoring in that with strategy for, for example, one of the vulnerability aspects or criteria is the English, you know, those strategies are different than the elder. And anyway, so just thinking about the whole picture, I think is really great. The other is I know that the governor put out a document around, like, you know, really adapting to the heat and extreme heat. And so an infrastructure is a critical component of that. And we saw them cooling bridges, right? And so as we're thinking about that too, I'm assuming that we're tracking some funding that will likely come from the state. But that seems like a big, big one to really kind of Absolutely. As I mentioned, all of the high priority strategies are getting folded into our master grant strategy. And as I had mentioned, we really are going to be diving into high heat in more detail because we really took a cursory look at it back in 2018 before we really thought that we had to worry about that. But it's come a lot quicker than we thought. But you're absolutely right. There's a lot of funding out there for us to secure for this. Nice. And then just, you know, always appreciate that the health and all policies tie in because I do think there's such interconnection between sustainability and wellness. And we saw that with the health indicators and how we're thinking about making that point or kind of bridging the kind of the kind of asylum thoughts around some of those things and making this connection. So thank you. You're welcome. And I have to say it's really great that we have those indicator metrics developed because it's great to tie into them. That gives us a way to track. Are we are we make a different way to track how we're making impact? Thank you. Council member Cummings. First, just want to thank you for that presentation, that update. It was really great to see what progress is being made on this. My question is along the lines of, you know, seeing that some of those areas of high impact and priority are like, you know, beach flats, lower ocean, the potential for flooding. I'm just wondering, because this has come up when I've spoken with people about, you know, what point do we try to move people out of those lowland areas into higher areas? And I know there's discussion about, you know, paying for new pumps and that comes at a cost and maintenance and upkeep. And I guess at what point does it seem like within some of the planning that we've done, would it trigger kind of moving people from those lowland areas to higher ground? Thank you for that question. Well, we have already initiated that conversation through the Resilient Coast Santa Cruz Initiative that we started a few years back. And that was, I think, a big deal to be able to just start laying it on the table as a possibility. With respect to the pump station, that needs to be upgraded. We're pursuing funding for that. So that's happening, right? And that's going to solve some issues down there for certain. However, we have not yet really come to consensus on when do people move? And I don't want to scare anyone because that is going to be farther out. It is not in the next probably decade or two, maybe not even in three. But that comes to those social triggers that we're developing right now is where we're addressing that. And in fact, we're going to be having a community meeting with the beach flats in the next couple of weeks to really just start giving them information about this project and then enrolling residents in becoming part of our decision-making team on this project and compensating them for that effort. So to be determined, but working on it in earnest. Thanks. Yeah, I just say like as a comment, I think it's important that as we're thinking about planning in terms of, you know, development and where we're developing in the city and what kind of housing we're building that we're also keeping that in mind because if we do have to move in that direction, even if it's 30 years from now, taking that into account now is probably going to be really important as to where will people go. I think you're absolutely right. And in the nearer term, we may want to be thinking about and in fact, we are what's called adaptive design. So how can we accommodate and I'll give an example. If you have been to Napa, Napa redeveloped an area in their downtown that's meant to be flooded. But when it's not, it acts as a community space, a park and activation. So looking at those kinds of things, I think we're going to be really critical before we get to that relocation point. Thank you, councilmember Cummings, councilmember Myers. I just had one question. Thank you for the report and all the work that you've done. And you're right, we're so far ahead, you know, and so now it's just important to follow the plans, you know, and really stick to them. And I think unlike a lot of things that we used to sort of do as we could because of grants or availability, you know, this, all the work you've done has just really shown we really have to commit to this as a community now moving ahead that there's just going to be infrastructure and places and ways that we're going to just really need to invest in that adaptability in our community but also, you know, basically really face some very real likelihood of infrastructure loss and things like that. Back, did you know the cave collapsed yesterday? I do. It's only the first foot of the opening and our engineers have been out to take a look at it and say that it poses no concern to the infrastructure people. Good to hear. Yeah. My question was around, I remember hearing or reading one of the reports, some concern about the Tate intake and this maybe, but I'm sure that I know you worked really closely with water. So that the possibility of the Tate intake on the San Lorenzo River, which is our main water diversion site on the San Lorenzo could be influenced by saline water or brackish water. Is that, that's still on the list of things to. It's happening right now. Yeah, we have a study. I should have mentioned that. I'm sorry I missed it. We have a study going on right now that I've been participating in on that. That should be done soon. That will be incorporated in the redesign of the Tate Street diversion. So that's happening right now. The water department funded that work. Oh, great. And can you speak a little bit to the Branson 40 and the fish passage study? I know that was on the list a while ago and I'm just curious about the update on that. Yes. So we've partnered with the resource conservation district on that project. I have to admit I'm not working on it day to day, but they, the city's committed a little bit of funding and I believe they have grant funding for that. And our public works department and I've been kind of coming in and out of it, have been participating. They're really just at the start of that study. They've been in the data collection and discovery phase right now. But it does have dual purposes in that it will be a sediment removal project as well as the fish passage improvement project. So self scour again, hopefully. Hopefully that's the intent. That's great. Yeah, because the sediment can really, I mean, seen 30 foot tall trees in there. And then lastly, is the is the river mouth culvert done yet? I don't think it's done yet. I don't have the most current update on that. But just having rode my bike by that a few days ago, it's, I don't think it's finished yet. Okay. And I don't know maybe, I don't know if Nathan maybe might want to come on and say something if you wanted some more details. I can send him an email or I go down and check it out. And I yeah, I also just want to comment on the the community work that you've been doing because ultimately, you know, that we are the people who will be experiencing all these unfortunate changes in our world. So glad that you're creating so much connection and doing all that evaluation ahead of time instead of just reactively, you know, trying to manage people in a crisis is going to be well, well appreciated for the people who have to do that when when some of these events hit. So thank you. Thank you, Council Member Myers, Council Member Brown. Thank you, Mayor. And thank you, Tiffany, for the update. It is really wonderful to see all of the work that's happening and see it kind of condensed and organized in this way. It's a lot. I wanted to just taking a step back on the questions around social triggers and ecological triggers and social triggers. You mentioned that that is kind of an increasing area of attention in our planning. And and so I'd like to hear just a little bit more about that. I'm thinking in particular, you said social triggers, for example, you know, property, I think you said property values made with asset. And obviously, looking at the vulnerability assessments are important. But I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about what that looks like for you in terms of your planning. And, you know, in particular, I'm thinking about, you know, how we address concerns of, you know, a lot of the people who are going to be affected are not necessarily property owners in these areas. They are renters. We've heard stories about people who are currently living, you know, like in the beach flats and lower ocean area with black mold and flooded, you know, you know, under the foundations and the like. And so there's already a challenge that we know. So and you're going to be reaching out to beach flats. I love the work that you're doing to really try to engage the community and segments of the community that are not traditionally involved and will be most affected. So with all of that being said, I just would love to hear just a little bit more about what you mean when you say social triggers, how that will play in how that will factor in to our decisions or recommendations that come. Absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity to expand on that right now. And you in fact mentioned some other social triggers we're considering right now. And we are in fact working not just with the beach flats, but with the homeless garden project and with the Amamutsan Tribal Band on development of these social triggers. This really to understand why social triggers really requires mentioning adaptation pathways, which is the adaptation approach that we're utilizing. It's considered a smart and proactive approach. And what what it entails is that we how we decide when to initiate a next step adaptation strategy is based on a set of triggers that when a threshold is exceeded, we would go on to plan or implement the next strategy. So we have developed out physical triggers, things like beach with when it gets to 100 feet or less on main beach three times in a winter season, we need to go in a valuate, make sure that do we need to go to a living shoreline, we need to move back, there's different options that we have. We recognize, though, when we develop these physical triggers that they really they didn't get to the social element. And that there were in fact things like the mold that Council Member Brown mentions other health outcomes. I mentioned property valuation, flooding of the garden in the beach flats, for example, which is the lowest point basically in the city or in that area. So there is a whole universe of social triggers that we're looking at right now that could in fact trigger some of the physical strategies that we're considering like living shorelines. But what might come out of this work are other strategies that really get to that people piece. And as I said, we've just started this work. However, we have these different groups on board as well as our 14 other partners. And I should say that to your point about, yeah, not everyone's a homeowner, there will be different triggers for different segments of the coastline. The low lying areas will be different than the bluff and cliff top locations depending on what's going on. So really, this is a very rapid project. And we'll be developing these social triggers, they will be, we will have a draft set of them by February 1st. And so, again, really on a rapid pace for this. Now, one of the thing I should say is that with respect to this strategy, this adaptation pathway strategy triggers and thresholds, it's an iterative kind of thing, right? Like there's no exact science to selecting these things. And as we develop this out, we may have to adjust them over time and revisit them as we will have to with all of our strategies, as things change, as we understand the temporal aspect and the spatial aspect of them. So I hope that satisfies you, Council Member Brown on just a little bit more about this triggers-based approach. That's great. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's good to hear you talk about it a little bit more. My pleasure. Council Member Golder, thank you, Council Member Brown. Thank you so much. It was really informative and I love, I love learning all about what has happened over the last few years and how you're planning on addressing climate change moving forward. I do have one question that keeps getting brought up to me by community members in regards to West Cliff Drive and I know we've talked about this before, but I'd like just for you to reiterate what is the plan for West Cliff Drive? Sure. So our West Cliff Drive adaptation and management plan has basically a 10-12 year time horizon. It calls for restacking our riprap on our coast, replacing some failed riprap and retaining walls around the greater Mitchell Cove area with integrated seawall, very similar to East Cliff Drive and Pleasure Point. If we can get all of that approved through Coastal Commission. And then it also calls for enhancements to transportation in terms of better signage, better striping for safety. It calls for restoration of ice plant out there. It calls for a master signage project to get rid of the clutter, get consistent signage, address surf etiquette signage is another concern that we want to address. And those are really kind of the major areas. We've already replaced three sets of stairwells out there. That was in the plan. That's already complete. We also will be filling a couple of sea caves. That's what our plan calls for. Now, we will continue to have conversation about and also as our interactions with Coastal Commission will help us to understand what is really possible going forward. We still have on the table other types of strategies to consider for the future. Nothing codified or planned yet, but things around planned relocation. I know a very hot topic is going to one lane, one way on West Cliff. There's nothing in our plan that calls for that right now. We will continue through all these next step projects to have conversation about that, especially as the regulatory climate is starting to move closer and closer to that, as well as do we need to relocate utilities and other critical infrastructure. So all the options are on the table for the future, but our plan is really set on those areas that I just described. You're welcome. It looks like that concludes Council questions. Thank you so much for laying out those updates and breaking it out into those categories and showing what's next. I appreciate all the community work and like Councilmember Brown really highlighting those social triggers, I think is a real great highlight here for us to see and see that work. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. Thank you for joining us. We will continue on with our agenda. I have a few announcements and then we will continue. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television Channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, cityofsanacruz.com. Our rules of decorum are on the window ledge to my left here at Council Chambers and it's my job to keep the meeting running without disruption. And we ask that you respect your fellow citizens when you are inside or outside of chambers. For the consideration of our community, please stay home if you have any symptoms of a cold or flu or feeling unwell in any way. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today and are attending virtually, call in at the beginning of the item, you are wishing to comment on using the instructions on your screen. Please make sure to mute your television or streaming device once you call in and only listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming. So continue to listen on your streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. When it is time for public comment, please raise your hand either by dialing star nine on your phone or selecting the raise hand feature in the webinar controls of your computer. If you are joining us in person, you can line up before any item and sign in at the front clipboard. Please note that public comment is only heard on items that council will be taking action on and not on regular updates and reports. The items that will be open today for public comment during the meeting are numbers six through 19 on our agenda. And now I'd like to ask if there are any, if council members have any statements of disqualification today. And let me just make sure I see council member Brown. Okay, none. Thank you. Seeing none, I'd now like to ask the city clerk to announce any additions or deletions to today's agenda. There are none. Thank you. Thank you. Now like to call on the city attorney to provide a report on our closed session this morning. Yes. Good afternoon, Mayor Brunner, members of the city council. This morning the council met in closed session at 1130 AM in the courtyard conference room with council member Brown appearing remotely to discuss the following items. First item was a conference with labor negotiators. Council received a report from its labor negotiators with respect to three bargaining groups. The SEIU temporary employees, SEIU service employees, and OE3 supervisors. Second item was a conference with legal counsel concerning existing litigation. The council received a status report from the city attorney's office with respect to the matter pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court entitled City of Santa Cruz versus Regents of the University of California. There was no reportable action on either item. Thank you for that report. I'd like to call on the city clerk to provide any updates to our calendar. There are no updates. Okay. I just would like to make a reminder that our next regularly scheduled meeting is November 15th, the third Tuesday in November. At this time, I will ask council members to report out on any actions at external boards, committees, and joint powers authority meetings attended. For future meetings, please come prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that have occurred since our last council meeting so that council members and the public can be informed. So I will begin with council member Cummings. The only external committee that met was Ambag and council member Brown was at the meeting as an alternate. So I don't have any other updates to report. Thank you. Our next council member is council member Myers. Miss the Metro meeting this month. There was a special meeting to do some planning work and I was unfortunately out of town. And my other assignments did not meet this past month. So my report is also very short. Hopefully, council member Calentary Johnson can tell everybody about Metro. Thank you. Thank you, council member Myers. Council member Brown. Hey, well, I think I'm going to use up some of that space, the times he did from my colleagues. But I'll try to keep it organized and succinct. So I'll start with the regional transportation commission. We had which met on the 9th, I believe 6th of October. And so we've had some mercifully mile mannered meetings since the measure devote and but we have been moving ahead with maintenance and project delivery. And so I'll just highlight at our October 6th meeting, the RTC adopted new revised plans for the Pajaro River Bridge rehabilitation project, a really important project south end of our county and then a little further north erosion, supporting erosion and maintenance work along the branch line near Manresa State Beach. It's a really problematic area. As many of you probably know, especially if you're a surfer and then also funding for coastal rail trail maintenance and trail development. And I want to send a real thank you to the city, our cities, public work staff for your commitment to working with the RTC on share of cost and the arrangements for how that work will be done. It's just really wonderful being at the RTC representing a city that's really on board and collaborating and working closely with the RTC. Then let's see, I'm back. I did fill in for council member Cummings and Ambag on October 12th. The board adopted its final six cycle regional housing needs allocation plan, which we've been talking about for quite some time for both Monterey and Santa Cruz counties. And so the process that part of the process is complete. And as we know, this reflects almost a fourfold increase in the allocation to the city of Santa Cruz with a big chunk of that in the low income and very low income categories. So but that is now we're now moving ahead. The other item of note that I'll mention is that Ambag staff has been working on a program framework for the regional early action planning or REAP 2.0, which you've heard about because the city is also engaged in this. And as we've heard the priorities are infill, fair affordable and fair housing and reducing vehicle miles traveled. And so Ambag's advanced applications have been approved and we'll focus on competitive grants, local sub allocations and and then additionally technical assistance. So the city of Santa Cruz will benefit from this and continue on with the good work that's happening there. The Monterey Bay Air Resources District, I attended on October 19th and there I guess one thing of note, I think I've mentioned this, but I can't remember if I mentioned it during one of these updates that the so m m Bard is in charge of funding that is a DMV surcharge for emissions reduction projects under state law. And the grants or the funding has now been approved for supporting incentives to replace like duty vehicles. City of Santa Cruz is benefiting from that and also clean air management, which means fixed assets that yield emissions reductions. So some really great projects across the Tri-County area are happening there. And the final update I'll give is from the area agency on aging. First, I want to let everybody know that Project Scout and the Foster Grandparent Program are both currently hiring for program specialists. These are bilingual positions relatively well paid for nonprofit work. And they're, you know, they're just they're programs that do really, really amazing work. So Foster Grandparent being awaited for older residents to connect with kids in schools. And they they also say just since I'm doing a PSA at this point that they're looking for volunteers that COVID really challenged this program. And it's been hard to reactivate the volunteer base that they had, given that there just wasn't a way to operate in the schools for some time due to COVID. So they're looking for volunteers. So I really highly encourage folks to look it up, tell your friends, tell your older friends about the program and help us get our volunteer pool back up. Then in other good news from the seniors council, staff there along has been working with the county to identify alternative funding to keep the man the federally mandated ombudsman advocate program that is operated by Advocacy Inc. Open. You'll recall that program staff has been on furlough and the program has really been at risk of closure since the board and the council voted to eliminate their funding in the core process. But we have so there we've found funding to keep them ongoing for at least the immediate future through ARPA and then also a funding source for the older Americans, older Americans recovery and resilience funding, I think it's called. So that was really great news and I'll send another shout out of thanks to Randy Morris and Alicia Morales at the county who have been so committed to working with the seniors council on this and Advocacy that we're we're in feeling good there. I think that I will leave it there. Thanks for the time. Thank you, Council Member Brown. I Council Member Golder. I do not have any thing to report other than I have met with a group of about 20 Westside business owners and they're interested in starting a Westside business district and I reached out to Matt and to Bernie who they would like to come to their next meeting and they wanted to talk to other department heads and so I'm working on coordinating that but no none of my other groups met. Our last meeting. Thank you. Council Member Calantari Johnson, I did have the opportunity to attend the special Metro meeting that Council Member Myers referred to three theme areas for that workshop meeting. One was around increasing ridership with a goal of 100 percent ridership increase within the next five years. We had some really excellent presenters that came and spoke about various strategies and design concepts that we can think about as a community. The other focus area was centering transportation and the environment so we spoke a lot about moving to purchase of only zero mission buses before the state mandate. I think it's a state mandate is by 2029 I think. I have to look I have to look but but to start to do that now before the state mandate date. And then the third theme was around housing and transportation. The goal of developing 175 housing units at Metro Transit District within the next decade and there was just a lot of conversation around supporting building housing on transit corridors. There was a really interesting survey that was completed by the Metro that showed I'm really synthesizing but that people really want bus routes where there's housing and where there's work. And so to create these sort of transit walkable communities was a theme that we saw in the survey and you can access the survey through the Metro. I'll also just share that councilmember Myers vice mayor Watkins and myself with the support of city departments fire PD parks homelessness response partnered with fire wise leaders and partnered with supervisor Koenig's office and the county or three office and housing for health as well as association of faith communities and hosted a town hall last week. I think maybe 50 to 80 community members and attendants and the theme there was prevention communication evacuation and it was a lot of information sharing and there is hope that this is this will be the first of many series that fire wise leaders will partner with city and county to bring forward. Thank you councilmember Calentari Johnson. Vice mayor Watkins. Yeah thank you for bringing that up that was really wonderful. I think the only thing I have to add is that I think all of our my colleagues here colleagues here know the farmers market and the city signed to MOU and they put out a joint statement. I serve on the farmers market board and this is a really monumental moment and really getting that affirmation through. I participated in the conversations leading up to the signing of the MOU. However I just wanted to let you all know that I did recuse myself from the final vote given my unique position although the majority or the whole board aside from me recusing myself did support the MOU and just really want to thank Bonnie Lipscomb and our city manager Matt here for their hard work and conversation and it's a really wonderful step in the right direction and really opens up the door for a lot of opportunity for ultimate permanency and commitment to seeing that through. So anyhow really exciting wanted to bring that up and share that also with you all and with the community. And I think that's all I have to add as well this time. Very short. Thank you councilmember Brown for all your updates and hard work. OK thank you vice mayor Watkins. I guess that leaves the two by two committee and we had a pretty full agenda. There was this is a committee with city and county elected and staff and with county housing for health. And we had a brief update on the San Lorenzo Park restoration project and the Benchlands sectioning and updates on campers that have been offered relocation options and how many people and how many sections so far. And we also had from the county some project home key updates that they have applied for in the county to have some more county options for locations and that led right into a discussion on funding opportunities update. So there was a home key round three eight million dollars for Harvey West studios and no place like home funding a Cal aim and Medi-Cal funding California home ARP winter twenty twenty two funding opportunity and CDBG disaster recovery funding for multi family affordable housing. And I think some of that was my understanding to go towards rebuilding housing that was lost. For example the CZU fire disaster recovery. Let's see. We also had a discussion about one twenty five Coral Street and also contract with the Salvation Army and some of the temporary housing project planning in the city and the county. The county is also looking at some county land options and locations and looking at structures and and more of like cabin design structures that could be used and in temporary housing that would be a landing spot in between a path to permanent housing and then we talked about safe parking and having the options of safe parking locations for vehicles and especially oversized vehicles. So essentially free locations for people who need to be able to park their vehicles and have access to water and restrooms and dumping and the county is also working to identify those locations in the county and we also have I think now fourteen vehicles in our city one of our city tier three safe parking locations and I think that was our complete update there. There was a well that that was not at the visit Santa Cruz update so that will be our next update from council members. Okay so now thank you everyone for your updates and we now have our consent agenda. These are items six through thirteen on our agenda for members of the public are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in if you want to comment on items six through thirteen. Instructions should be on your screen and you can please remember to mute your streaming device if you call in. You can raise your hand by dialing star nine so I can see that you wish to speak and you can also select raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer. All items will be acted upon in one motion for the consent agenda. Unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion. Are there any council members who wish to comment on or pull any items. Council member Brown. Yeah thank you I just have a question on the minutes which is item seven I think. Okay a question on item seven the minutes. Okay so it looks like that's it we'll go right to your question. Okay so this is really just a question Bonnie Bush I wanted to just get if I could. I saw that there was some communication from members of the public about the specific wording on the motion that was made around the wharf. And so I just wanted to see if that where that's at is the or the because I don't see that correction in the minutes or on the website. Thank you council member Brown. I was only notified about one area. Where it was the final approved motion. Got it. So I added as amended. Got it. Which would then reflect the friendly amendment that was a concern that was brought to me. Okay yeah sorry to bring it up here but I just wanted to make sure it was settled. Thank you so much. Okay that concludes questions and comments by council members. So at this time then we will go to members of the public and I will look out to see if there are any hands raised and look at our virtual attendees. I'm not seeing any hands raised to any members of the public wish to speak to our consent agenda items 6 through 13. Please step forward. Welcome. Thank you. My name is James Ewing. I don't know what to say. Consent agenda item number 6 about the resolution authorizing the city to continue teleconference public meetings pursuant assembly bill 361. Now where's the actual evidence of any actual emergency that you guys tend to speak about? Yeah because there's a lot of evidence that there's a lot of things going on that you guys often don't speak about. About as polite as I can be. Thanks. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public who wish to speak on consent agenda items? Please step forward. Welcome. Thank you. I'm just looking at consent agenda item number 9, green waste, wood waste, and construction and demolition material, grinding services. I just wanted to kind of put a little check mark there to ask people to think about reuse of resources. I'm not sure what's getting grinded, but I know that as an ecologist, very much an amateur, I see a lot of things like tree limbs, tree trunks, and things like that getting ground up. And I know that there's an economic value to that that's probably very, very legitimate. But I just wanted to ask that as we're moving into the future and addressing things like climate change and sustainability, designing with sort of really a creative mind about sustainability that maybe not everything that's getting ground up should be getting ground up. Perhaps reuse could be considered or other ways of using these materials. And I just wanted to say that because it's kind of to me like those leaf blowers, you guys. They're everywhere now because they're so efficient and they just are so much better than taking forever to sweep up leaves. But there's a real environmental cost, not only with air pollution and noise, but just the combusting and all that. So I'm just getting just kind of flagging that I'm hoping that when it comes to like climate adoption plan and health and things like that that we're just thinking about these things. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other members of the public that wish to speak to our consent agenda items? OK. Let me make sure that no other virtual attendees have their hands up. OK. Seeing none. OK. I will pull it back to council and I'm looking for a motion on I consent agenda items. Six and thirteen. I'll move the item. OK. We have a motion by council member Myers with a second by council member Golder. And I'd like to ask the clerk to do a roll call vote. Please. Member Calentari Johnson. Aye. Golder. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Brown. Aye. Myers. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Moving on into our agenda. Next up is our consent public hearing. These are items 14 and 15 on our agenda. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. All items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion. Items number 14, the tri-annual 2022 Building Standards Code adoption consistent with state building standards and 15 adoption of the 22 edition of the California Fire Code and Fire Code Standards, including annual supplements and state amendments and ARATA. So are there any council members who wish to comment on or pull any items? And let me make sure I see council member Brown. OK. You're good. Seeing none, we will now go out to public comment for items number 14 and 15. And I am not seeing any attendees with hands raised. Press star 9 to raise your hand. If you are joining us in person, you can step up to my left. Seeing none in person, I will bring it back to council. And I'm looking for a motion. I'll move Consent Public Hearing Items 14 and 15. Thank you. I can second. OK. So we have first by Vice Mayor Watkins and a second by Calentary Johnson. May we have a roll call vote? Council member Calentary Johnson. Aye. Golder. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Brown. Aye. Myers. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. And Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. OK. Thank you for being here and being available. Next up on our agenda is item number 16, Youth Well-Being Snapshot Status Update. Again, for members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you wish to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order here will be a presentation of the item by staff, followed by questions from council, and then we will take public comment and return to council for deliberation and action. So I would like to welcome Tony Elliott, our director of Parks and Recreation. All right. Thank you, Mayor Brunner. And joining remotely today and our team has kind of spread out all over the city and county today. We'll be coming to the council here remotely. So yeah, just for the record, Tony Elliott, director of Parks and Recreation for the city. We've got a few of our Parks and Recreation team on the call, Isis Ray, Robert Acosta and Lindsey Bass. And then from the United Way's Youth Action Network, we have Chris Alonzo as well. So this item is really just a status update or a check-in with the council on the status of the youth wellbeing snapshot. This is a report that council I really wanted to see and directed staff to work on just about a year ago. And it's really that the purpose is to create a baseline of metrics in terms of the state of youth in Santa Cruz. So how are young people doing in Santa Cruz? And this is really in the context of a lot of work that the council and the community members and staff have been working on over the past year. These things range from the Children's Fund and measure A about a year ago to the Children and Youth Bill of Rights. It was also put together about a year ago. So some really amazing, incredible work, you know, really focused on youth investment in youth in Santa Cruz. And so as all of these pieces have been coming together, this report, this youth wellbeing snapshot has really been intended again to provide this baseline set of metrics so that we can assess where are we now? And then how do we make, you know, thoughtful and informed policy decisions and budget allocations moving into the future in terms of investing in youth but using those benchmarks to really gauge our success and how we can continue to improve over time. So that's a brief intro. We'll talk a little bit about the status of the report, but wanted to just acknowledge the council subcommittee, really the city schools subcommittee that has been working on this over the last year. And so that is Vice Mayor Watkins, Council Member Calentary Johnson and Council Member Golder, who've done a huge amount of work on this. So I actually want to defer to the city schools committee to kind of speak to some of these components on the work done over the last year and then we'll bring it back toward the end of our presentation here on what this means for the report and where we're headed from this point. So with that summary, I'll send it, Mayor, back over to you and to the city schools committee to report on progress. Great. I'm going to kick us off. Council Member Calentary Johnson, thank you so much, Tony and Iseth and Robert and all of the staff and team for your work on this and welcome, Chris, to the group. So I'm just going to briefly talk about the larger context than the why. A year ago, just shy of a year ago, the Surgeon General released a report that mental health challenges were the leading cause of disability and poor life outcomes in young people in the United States. And we see similar numbers here in Santa Cruz County. Our last data is from 2019, a little dated because of COVID, but the California Health Kids Survey shows 37% of 11th graders reported having experienced chronic sadness or hopelessness and 13% who had seriously considered suicide in the past year. So as a council last year, we brought forward and approved unanimously the Children and Youth Bill of Rights because we, as a council and as a city, have a role to augment youth well-being. So that's kind of the background and the context as to why. We have been working over the last year. I'm the liaison to the Youth Action Network. And we've been working directly with the organizations and youth who are part of the Youth Action Network and really thinking about what are the broader partnerships across our county and what are the roles of the various departments within the city? What are we already doing and how can we expand on it? And as Tony mentioned, what we have here is a baseline to help kick us off. So I think with that all pass it to Vice Mayor Watkins to speak a little bit about how we've operationalized. Thank you, Council Member Calentari Johnson. And thank you to our Parks and Rec staff as well as Nicole, who supported this process. You know, the only addition that I'll add is really just my gratitude, one for this council and for the community for really affirming our commitment to kids with the passage of Measure A, which really has really, I guess, doubled down on our investment in youth. And this is just a status update around the work that we've been trying to do to really tie it into not only the Youth Bill of Rights, but the broader interest around health and all policies and holistic supports for our community and our youngest residents. And the Measure A, within that ballot measure, that language really had written into it to have a community oversight committee. And I know it's in the agenda report. But just to speak to that, that specifies specific stakeholders to participate in this oversight body and really how that will look will be forthcoming and will be brought before the council, but really wanting to think about how we can be thoughtful about their time, about their expertise in the community and how that looks in terms of other precedents that's been happening within other jurisdictions and what we can learn from that. But ultimately to ensure that the dollars can be leveraged to support the specific populations outlined in the ballot language and is also used as often a kind of a hindrance is the requirements associated with different funding sources. So this could be a way to really be nimble as needed to support kids based on the boots on the grounds input from our oversight committee. So that's been part of the discussion as well. And then really looking at the data and the needs not only from our youth directly who are participating in the youth action network but also all ages of youth and families because we have our youngest residents, right? We don't really hear from them but we need to have their voice heard. So really looking at how are we being really mindful about setting up what this looks like moving forward and the North Star really being what's outlined in the Bill of Rights. So yeah, happy to have the opportunity to share this status update with you all in the community. And I'm just going to add one one brief couple of comments is thanks to the staff and everybody that helped with this as well. I know the three of us have been really passionate about youth in our council work and our personal lives and our work. And and I think the one thing that the pandemic showed us was that more youth died by suicide in this county than by COVID. And we have a responsibility and obligation to augment parts of their life experience in the ways that schools and other organizations can't. And so I think just like council Rice Mayor Watkins said was just the ability to be nimble with these funds and the way that we were able to respond to the needs of youth and parents with childcare and using the FOPAR funds to bring rec leaders on-sites to elementary schools and it's just been a really great experience. And I just really appreciate all the collaboration and teamwork. And I can't wait to, you know, this is really just a starting point. I can't wait to see where it grows and leads to. Thanks, everybody. Does that conclude? Back to Tony. Back to Tony. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And as was mentioned, Nicole Young, who's our consultant from Optimal Solutions Consulting really kind of shepherded us through a process over the last several months to help build this draft report. And so just to speak to that briefly in the packet today is a... I don't want to call it our draft Youth Wellbeing Snapshot Report, but it's really kind of the beginning stages of that. It is a draft. And for the public in particular, what we've really and what Nicole really modeled this on are those 10 components of the Children and Youth Bill of Rights. And so with those as guiding objectives, we're really using those to try to capture different types of data, really identify all these different sources, whether it's state, county, local resources through our nonprofits, whatever those might be, to really assemble the story on what is the state of our youth. And so we've got kind of a draft version of that in the packet. But a lot of work left to do on that. And so a couple of key things that we want to really flesh out over the next several months, or next few months. One is in regards to the timeliness of the data. A lot of the data that we captured was from 2018, 19, 20 pre-pandemic times. And we didn't think that was necessarily reflective of the current state of youth in this sort of kind of late, hopefully late stage pandemic timeframe that we're, and so we want to make sure and really identify how do we get the most timely data to include in the final draft report that we bring back to the council into the community. And secondly, and I think perhaps most importantly, we want to make sure that this report is not built by a group of adults saying what is the state of our youth, but we need to involve youth. We have to have youth voice. And so different ways we can do that through our partners at city schools, through our youth that participate through, for example, the team center or through Parks and Recreation. But one avenue that I think is especially valuable is through the United Way and the Youth Action Network. And so really working on the beginning stages of partnership with the Youth Action Network through the United Way to really connect with the youth action network connect with youth, do surveys or figure out the right methodology to get youth voice in this report to really make it reflective of the true state of youth. So with that said, I also wanted to just briefly introduce Chris Alonzo with the Youth Action Network and United Way just to speak briefly about the partnership and what we hope to achieve in this component of the Youth Wellbeing Snapshot Report. Thank you, Tony. Good afternoon, everyone. As Tony said, my name is Chris Alonzo. I'm the new community impact coordinator for United Way. So I'll be coordinating the Youth Action Network and working with those youth and a little bit about the Youth Action Network for folks that aren't familiar with it. The Youth Action Network is actually two kind of components. The larger component being the network itself, different community stakeholders, youth serving organizations, being a part of this network and kind of being able to send youth or kind of contribute right in that manner of helping us guide and carry the word of the work that we're doing. And then there's the actual Youth Steering Committee, which is made up again of the broader network. So these youth are already like the superstars who are already taking on other activities and tasks and what have you, and they're also being a part of the Youth Action Network Steering Committee. And so, you know, with that, we're definitely, you know, like the mayor, the vice mayor mentioned, the Youth Bill of Rights, the Children's Network, that's something that the Youth Action Network and myself were going to be working with, you know, other organizations, other community stakeholders to really find opportunities for a lot of our youth to kind of strengthen their skills, their leadership skills, development skills. We know that doing this and having opportunities for them is important, right? Because it creates those like tight-knit communities that they need, especially during these times. You know, we know that students who lack, you know, mentors, students who lack, you know, that kind of guidance end up going down different routes. And so it's important that we have these opportunities available for them. I know we were mentioning mental health. I know tomorrow I'm going to be part of a, I'm going to be attending a three-day conference here in Santa Cruz where they're going to be actually talking about youth and mental health. And then we're also partnering up with UC Santa Cruz on a youth participatory action research project where we're also trying to, or the youth actually, not us. The youth are really going to dive deep into approaches of mental health. Like how do youth find resources? How do youth get past that stigma and ask for help? Or how do we as adults help them in seeking resources or seeking information when it comes to mental health? So there's definitely a lot happening out there for youth and I'm really excited. I know, sharing with Tony earlier, I'm a father. So a lot of the stuff that I'm trying to do right now or I'm involved in is, you know, things that I hope I can get my son in or that he'll have these opportunities once he's older to participate. Because I know he's always asking about, you know, issues around our community, you know, and so I know that there's many, many, many youth like him that are wanting to be active, wanting to be, you know, change, you know, change agents in their community. So, you know, thank you for this opportunity to allow me to kind of give a little quick glimpse of what we're doing and what we're going to be a part of in the upcoming months and throughout the next year. All right. Yeah, thanks, Chris. And yeah, just to kind of build on that a little bit. So the Parks and Recreation Department within the city obviously is a key stakeholder as it relates to youth and teens and serving young people in Santa Cruz, of course. We don't have all the data. We don't have all the information. So partnerships like the one with United Way, with Chris, with County Office of Education, with the many organizations out there, city schools, we're really just kind of in the middle of the collaboration and the engagement to try to get the data, engage youth and help pull this report together for the city council and the community. So I just want to appreciate Chris and the commitment to be involved there. And yeah, really this item today for the council is a request for the council to hear this update, to accept this update. We anticipate that we will be back in the first quarter of 2023 with a final draft report to report back to the city council on the state of youth or otherwise known as the Youth Well-Being Snapshot. So again, really amazing work all coming together. We've got a little bit more work to do and just really appreciate the council support on this, the United Way support and the many partners that will engage moving forward. So thank you and happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Tony Elliott. I had a quick question and I'll open it up for other council member questions. I really appreciated the attached report in the agenda. I almost wish it had been shown here for members of the public who didn't see it. I really encourage you to find it on our agenda packet. I think it was really visually clear and well done. Thank you. I was really happy to see the demographics especially when it came to transgender youth and gender sexual orientation. My question though is in the Well-Being Snapshot, is there support for LGBTQ plus and transgender youth and where I didn't see any indicator metrics, for example, those experiencing sadness, like what is that related to and is it related to LGBTQ plus transgender or racial? I can speak a little bit of that and then I welcome others as well just because I oversee the Healthy Kids Survey. This is just a snapshot of specific indicators. However, these are all public sites where you can access this data and disaggregate it based on the various criteria you'd like to see. So for example, if you were to go on the County Office of Education's website or if you were to go to Cal Schools, which is the California Chick Survey, the California Healthy Kids Survey website, you can tinker with the different criteria that you'd like to see, such as looking at specific populations, for example, their graduation rates, their poverty rates, their correlation to sadness and feeling connected to school, et cetera. So those are the ways that you can kind of do that in real time through the various Tableau-type website availability. But this just is sort of like a snapshot kind of picture, here you go, summary, kind of that level. If that answers your question. Yeah, that's helpful to know that you can tinker around with that Council Member, Helen Terry Johnson. That's some of the work that we have to do in partnership with Youth Action Network, City Schools, Youth from the Youth Teen Center is what are those desegregated data that we are interested in diving into? There's a lot of information out there, so what are the pieces that we really want to dive into to see what's happening in our community and try to get some whys? So is that kind of the next step? Yeah. Okay, thank you. Yeah, just quickly to build on that as well, I just echo similar comments, and I think that the nexus there in Youth is to really first ask the question in this draft report, is this representative of communicating the state of Youth and what are we missing and how do we fill those gaps? So that's kind of a key next step, probably the first major step following this initial draft here. Great, thank you. Let's see, do other Council Members have questions on this report? This is not an action item, I just received this report. Let me make sure I look at Council Member Brown. Okay, you're good, thank you. Council Member Cummings. Just a quick question, so is this going out to public comment and then we're just, or is this just accepting the report and moving on? We're accepting the report and we're not taking action on it. Okay, then I just have a comment that I'd like to make. The one question, thanks Tony and everyone who's worked on this and for bringing this forward, the one thing that I've been hearing about consistently as it relates to kind of this item, but also with the Children's Fund is kind of what's happening with the Children's Fund, how's that money being spent and we haven't gotten an update on that and so when this comes back in January, I think it'd be really critical that we start showing the public about what types of youth programs have been funded with that money, what are the outcomes, and then also kind of what is on deck for what programs will be funded next year and how much money will be going into that because that's the one thing I've been hearing is like hey we have this Children's Fund but what's it getting spent on? How's the money being used and how do we access those funds? So I think that would just be something helpful for transparency around how that money has been used and how it's been used in the past and the outcomes as well. I have one more addition to that as well. How would someone apply for those funds was the other question that I hope in our next update, if not now, in our next update would be available. Yeah, and Mayor, just to speak to that briefly. Yeah, so the use of the Children's Fund will absolutely be reported when we bring this back in Q1. We also bring it as part of the budget each year to report out on it but we can definitely do a better job at communicating that, whether it's publishing it on a webpage or somehow communicating that better but part of Measure A, in particular with the increase to the Children's Fund, contemplates this community oversight panel on the use of the funds and so that will be created here in the coming months and that panel will really add, I think, a new degree of transparency and oversight on the use of the fund and really help advise the council into the future on where future funds could be utilized. So as far as an application process, we don't have an application process right now. The process for appropriating those funds is really through the City Council's budget process which occurs in the spring and summer timeframe. But as we move forward, and as that fund continues to grow, it's good news and a good source of funds to invest directly in youth. We will have an opportunity through that community oversight panel and a more transparent process leading into the budget each year for both the community to see and potentially get involved in that way. Our principal management analyst, Lindsay Bass, just logged in here and I would just welcome her any kind of high level comments on where the funds have gone over the past few years just to give a little bit more kind of weight to where we've been over the past couple of years. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Tony. And appreciate the questions from the council members. We do have a summary of how Children's Fund resources have been spent over the last four fiscal years and there is a summary slide that I can make available to the council and I think it would be easy for Tony and I and the management team to put our heads together in terms of where we could situate that on the website just in the interim. So that council members and members of the public just get a snapshot of where the funds have gone to date and then as we move towards further and future updates on the Children's Fund and its structure, we can adjust where that lives and make sure that that continues to be updated. Thank you. Okay, that concludes that item. Thank you very much for that update on that report. The Youth Well-Being Snapshot item number 16. Thank you very much, everyone who attended and was present. Thank you. And for all the work thus far. Thank you. Next on our agenda, we have a break. That went fast. So we will return at 4.30 p.m. for oral communications and just a reminder, oral communications is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to us on items that are not on today's agenda. So we look forward to seeing you at 4.30 p.m. Thank you. Okay, is the city ready? I am, thank you. Thank you. Okay. Welcome to oral communications. We are returning from our break. Oral communications is an opportunity for members of the public to speak to us on items that are not on today's agenda. For members of the public streaming this meeting, if you wish to comment during oral communications, now is the time to call in. Instructions will be on your screen. If you'd like to raise your hand virtually, please dial star nine on your phone or select raise hand in the webinar controls of your computer. You will have two minutes to speak. Members joining us here in person, if you wish to address the council, please line up to the right of the dais to my left. You will have two minutes to speak. And we request that you sign in to ensure accurate spelling of your name in the meeting. However, it is not required. Please remember, oral communications is a time for council to hear from the public. We are not able to engage in dialogue with each member of the public, but when we are able, we will address questions raised after oral communications has completed. Okay, I will begin. Looks like we've got several people joining us here in person. Let me look to our virtual attendees and see if there are any hands raised and then I can alternate. I'm not seeing any hands raised virtually. So I will begin with our first member here in person. Welcome. Hi, welcome. My name is James Ewing. I signed in earlier. I wanted to talk about item 16. It's all about the children. You know, I'm kind of at a loss. I'm not here that often. Took the day off. I spoke in the supervisor's meeting. It was really quite amazing. How about a public service announcement? What am I drinking in here? Besides some decent water, decent coffee, it's got boron, diatomaceous earth, bentonite clay, a good baking soda, and a couple other things. I'm going to talk a little bit about that. I'm going to talk about some rehydrated jalapeno peppers, which have 200 times the vitamin C of an orange, and some rehydrated blueberries. Why would that be important? There are so many things that you guys just don't talk about. I could talk about the Fabian society. Why do that? You got Ryan Coonerty. Really kind of at a loss. You have some humor that you guys wouldn't really laugh at at all. So what's the point? You guys seem to mostly be following scripts. I just wonder what's going to happen when something really important and dangerous actually happens. But that's already happened. I mean, I do detox as a way of life. I think it was August 12th or 19th on the Tom Quinn show. Dr. Young was interviewed. It was a great Abbott and Costello show. Basically, at the end, there's two kinds of people. There's the people that detox, and there's the people that die, because a bioweapon has been released. And it's also in the air. It's in the liquids, and it's in the foods. I don't expect you guys to talk about it. Anyway, see you next time. Thanks. Thank you for your comment. And I will go to the next person here joining us in person. Welcome. Good afternoon. I'm a librarian, not a poet, but I wanted to share this with you, because I guess I got inspired to write. There once was a measure named O. To another garage, we say no. Bait and switch brought distrust. Outreach was not robust. This mixed use project must go. Affordable housing's a need. Developers chortle with greed. Parking they won't supply. But that on you and I, not on lot four, we plead. Our library's innards are dated, but surely can be renovated. So ditch this bad project, our trees to protect, council trust needs to be reinstated. A floor plan we still haven't seen. The funding may be just a dream. Yes, downtown is changing, but this rearranging is one that makes me want to scream. We all want good libraries. That's true. The trend is to reuse, renew. We've heard what we've said, but our hopes aren't dead. A fresh start is long overdue. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public, and then I will go to some of the virtual hands. Hey, what's shaking gang? Um, that was great poem. I really actually, I I've ever since like the very first time it came before council, like I had a really good feeling about the Warriors arena when that came before council, and this was the exact opposite. It was like, let's make a banana split and put, you know, I don't know, a rotting apple on top. I mean, just dumb, like to have a parking garage on top of a library. The whole idea just really pardon the expression, but it really sucks. Um, I just wanted to, um, I don't know. I don't know what else is involved in measure. I haven't really read it carefully. I just wanted to actually say that if you're, you know, you're voting, one thing that's really kind of cool is this League of Women Voters easy voter guide that they have over at the library. They got a million of them and they're just a really concise summary of the initiatives that we're facing, you know, whatever changed the water temperature a little bit this way or that way, you know, for everybody. I myself am a libertarian. That's the opposite of a fascist, if you don't know. But basically, like I'm in favor of the tribal gaming, I think we should have the sports betting sports book in California. I think that's fine. I think that the flavored tobacco should be like I had to go to San Diego to buy flavored tobacco, but basically I don't, I don't see why I don't, I don't, I don't see why. I don't really think it's like, you know, it's like, uh, they're dangling in front of children. People just prefer joint tobacco. Thank you for your comment. I'll take one more and then I'm going to go to a virtual hand. Hi, welcome. Can you lower the mic to your mouth please so we can hear you. Thank you. Great. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I am here today about a notice which was posted eight days ago on the trees in the farmer's market lot. It is a cutting permit and it has to be responded to by this Friday. Well, actually it's been extended to Sunday. Never mind. We will file by Friday an official on the official form C. A lot of people are very upset about this. I set up a response Google response form on Saturday morning and we had 686 responses and I've been watching this about 3% of them don't agree with us. The rest say because this is a question do you agree that the tree cutting permit should be stopped or voided or put on hold and 95% of these people have said yes. They also some of them were able to record and we have about 40 local organizations already. Given that most organizations have to have a meeting and then poll their members getting that many groups to, I didn't even know half these people existed getting that much responses quickly is pretty amazing and it's continuing. So we will be making noises communicating with people and because this was done so close to the election so that it looks to some people like there's a plan to cut down trees before measure election happens. That's bad. Thank you for your comment. I'm going to go to a virtual hand just to alternate and I have the name I am watching and I'm going to go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. I'll share some concerns here about the movement to install a memorial plaque and interpretive narrative about the water street bridge hanging in said having listened to previous advocacy of this I find it similar to acts to either rewrite history or slant to support a modern day leftist narrative viewing everything in racial terms especially anti-white terms justifying modern leftist anti-white terms is uncomfortable for the likes of the 1940s and 1970s. 1777 passed was long ago in a different time and unlike those who would proclaim relevance even equivalents to today, it really had a place in history viewed in the context of what I call moral evolution which can only be fairly compared to what came just before and just after. The judging of such acts has engaged in a native people's mass genocide fueled by the California Gold Rush greed with bounties on native scouts. Not only 12 years before that the entire country was engaged in mass casualty, civil war to end slavery. Both were extraordinary examples of almost normalized and common ultraviolence and rays did play a part in those. But in just a few dozen years by 1877 though, by witness accounts, those two hung were probably guilty of robbery, murder, not the victims of racial hatred but the violent retribution of vigilante justice. And nobody involved was worthy of any honor by our modern standards. Far from a defining sparking mission moment of white racism, it actually marked more so evidence of the need for even more moral evolutionary change in justice considering just 20 years later innocent until proven guilty became the law. A great deal of the current Marxist left his racial victim oppressor ideology involves this all our people is racist narrative, which is false and it's leftist group identity propaganda is the standout form of racism today. Thanks. Thank you for your comment. I will now return to in person. We have our first member here in the public. Welcome. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I am basically just someone who wants to live in a healthy town. A town that has a positive social community and addresses the needs of the entire population here including the homeless and the housed. I've been very concerned about the direction that the town has gone in the last four years, five years. And I went to the first library meeting and the recommendation at that library meeting was the architect had had done a plan about the renovation and they've done a plan about what it would cost to build a new library and the recommendation at that time was to go ahead and renovate the library. I was at a meeting the other night and I heard the advocate for yes on oh speak and the advocate for no one oh speak. And there was some discussion around the fact that the library that exists across the street now does not get used. I have a grandson that's 11 years old now and I used to, our most fun thing to do was to go to that library every chance we could. And I actually stopped, he used to come and spend two nights a week with me downtown in my, because I live downtown. I wouldn't have him come downtown. After 2019, I would not have him come down here anymore because of what goes on on the street. I feel like that our culture has deteriorated and I feel like that we're rushing to build this housing and I just think that we need to take a longer look at it. And I'm an advocate for yes on oh. Thank you for your comment. Thank you. I will now go to a virtual hand and the name is Jason. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Thank you. My name is Jason Lopez and I am the treasurer of the Villanova Homeowners Association at 180 Dakota Avenue. I wanted to inform the council that our association will be invoicing the city for $37,000 for new fencing. In addition to past costs previously incurred due to the long-term homeless encampment down Lorenzo Park. For more than three years, our association has been asked to shoulder the impact of the camp directly across the street from us. The fiscal cost of this has totaled more than $50,000 during this time, ranging from increased security, clean up, fencing and window repairs. Despite this, our residents continue to encounter human waste, drug paraphernalia and broken windows on a daily basis. Breaking point came this past month when a resident's three-year-old son nearly stepped on a needle because he had the audacity to play outside on a warm day. The result is our association has no choice but to fence in our entire complex. As it has been the city's actions that has led to this decision, we expect prompt payment of our invoice. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. I will now go to the next person in line here in person. Welcome. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I am also wishing to voice my support for the trees on lot four. We need their beauty, their cooling shade and the shelter that they offer to birds and insects as we face climate chaos and loss of diversity. We don't need to house polluting cars as they worsen our air, add our safety and our health and increase greenhouse gas emissions. Please renovate our library as we voted to have done in 2016. Please revitalize our city with a downtown park and only affordable housing on city surface lots. Please save our heritage trees on lot four. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. And I'll give it to the next member here in person. Thank you. Hi, my name is Joy Wood. I'm a 40 plus year resident and voter. And I agree with everything the last speaker said. We voted on measure S, which was to renovate, remodel and refurbish. Modernize. Modernize, thank you. Existing libraries. The other branches have been, this has happened with that money. That's tax money that we voted to spend. There was, I don't believe there can be a use of that money for a new project. And I agree with the last speaker. We don't need a new parking garage. I don't believe that the units will really be affordable. And I certainly do not want the heritage trees cut down. As a resident, if I had a heritage tree, I couldn't have it cut down. Why is the city any different? Why can't you abide by our same laws? So I too am disappointed in all of the development. The high rises, I know that we need to go up instead of out, but this huge monstrosity is beyond anything us citizens who have lived here and supported the town. I've been a teacher for 35 years in this town. And I agree with the other speaker. I'd always go to this library or the Live Oak Library to check out materials for my students. They would go there to use the computers. I don't see that we need to do more building. We have lots of empty storefronts, lots of empty parking lots, parking garages. I just disagree with it completely. So I urge you to please support Measure S, which calls for renovating the existing library. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. I'd like to welcome our next member of the public in person. Hi, Elise Caspier. I want to speak on the Warfish year, which was covered at the last city council meeting. I was able to do a little bit of research. And my understanding, first of all, I have to say that it didn't really add up because my understanding was that in February, Judge Burdick, how do you say this? He gave a definitive order that the wharf plan, as it was presented to him in that court, was to be, what's the word, scrapped. And that the EIR was also supposed to be scrapped. This is a matter of legal, of law and process. And it shouldn't be fuzzy, it shouldn't be confusing to the citizenry. And my understanding is the EIR needed to deal with certain parts of the wharf plan. And this is why I'm getting a little confused because there was what the judge ordered and then what happened last week. And so I just want to say that I believe that the judge ordered that that wharf plan needed to be scrapped along with the EIR and we needed to restart over. I'm sorry I wish I was better informed on the issue, but I did speak to people who are extremely well informed on the issue. So I just wanted to say that. And secondly, may I address another issue? Really quickly, the reason I want yes or no is because the whole thing has been illicit. The voters were misled. We want a common area downtown with an open space. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. And I will invite the next member of the public. Welcome. Good evening, everyone. My name is Iman Oshari and I'm here to bring some attention to some cycling issues in this community. For context, I'm 17 years old and since I moved to the United States at the age of four, something never changed. I always cycled. Cycling to myself and many others is a way to escape the confines of life and it is a way of living. Most importantly, cycling is a way of transportation. I assume everyone here has ridden a bike at least once in their lives. Now imagine if you never rode a bike, you'd have an extreme lust to ride one. I've talked to my peers, college students, teachers and friends about their thoughts and what I said previously is the current reality of cycling in this community. My high school peers don't wanna ride their bikes to school because they don't feel safe. College students who can't afford to drive cars want to ride their bikes but they don't feel safe. Schools don't feel safe when students ride their bikes to school so they've stopped doing bike to school events. And I don't feel safe so I don't wanna ride my bike. A couple of months ago, I was in a hit and run on Soquel Drive. Unfortunately, because I'm not a very good mountain biker, I know how to take a fall. But if someone else would have been in my position, like an eight year old commuting to school, the same eight year old that I was commuting to school, what would have happened then? Had Measure D gone through, I probably wouldn't have been here today but Measure D wouldn't have been able to fix safety issues. So I'd like to advocate for one issue because I don't have much time would be an initiative to better define bike lanes and build protective behaviors, like barriers like the ones that we had on Port Chola Avenue. I'm here today asking the council to begin considering actions to protect our fellow Santa Cruzians and to promote a healthy eco-friendly way of transportation. I've taken the initiative to create an organization that repurposes lost or forgotten bikes and gives them to those who can't afford it. But I cannot in good conscience continue leading this initiative, knowing that bikes I give out are threatening the lives of those who I'm trying to help. I'm doing my part, now will the city do theirs? Thank you. Hi, welcome. And if you could move the microphone down to your mouth so we can hear you. Thank you. Thank you. I am Jane Doyle and I just came from an eye exam and now I can't read my notes but I'll try to remember what I was going to say. I am here because I actually wanna talk about $14 million. $14 million that the city of Santa Cruz got to aid in some way, the homeless, those who are unhoused. And I thought, this is pretty cool. Only then I started looking into things and I read the June report and there is nothing in what you are planning or have already done as far as I can tell that is actually going to the service of those individuals who woke up at 48 degrees the other morning and they were outside. This is ridiculous. You have $14 million. How about some money for those two programs that actually take care of everyday needs? Not only the kinds of needs that we and you can all take care of at home. You can be warm, you can be dry or cooled off if it's hot. You can take a shower, you can cook food. Well, that's what Food Not Bombs does for people who are hungry and that's what the warming center does for people who are so cold that they can barely take care of themselves and they need a shower and they need a blanket and maybe they need a new jacket. What are we doing with $14 million besides hiring a lot of very smart people who talk to each other, having committee meetings, meeting with the county, perhaps meeting with the state? But what about the needs of the people? I suspect that somebody who put this grant together thought that they would actually get some services, maybe just a few, but a few services to the people who really need them. I am so upset that the warming center and that wonderful secret garden center for women who are now safe, because it's not safe to be unhoused. So I hope you will think about doing something a little bit with this $14 million that is for the people it's intended for. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Are there any other members of the public in person or virtually? Okay, it looks like that's it for oral communications and as I mentioned earlier, we are not able to engage, but we do, we did receive an update on the $14 million and there has been a lot done. I'm sorry that that information was not easy to find. I will make sure that it is very present on our website, at least, thecityofsandercruise.com slash homelessness. And it's gone to everything from infrastructure investment, contract with Salvation Army, all kinds of things, working collaboratively with the county who's providing services. So sorry it was not easy to find. There was also, let me just pull my notes back up. I'm gonna let you speak while I pull my notes back up. Council member Cummings had his hand raised. Thank you, I just had a, I wanted to follow up on one of the comments that was made around biking in Santa Cruz because having access to bikes is obviously something that many people are interested in and there's been discussion back and forth on the bringing back the electric bike share program and I was just wondering when we might be able to get an update on what's happening there and when that's coming back because I've been hearing and I know members of the community have been asking, like, is that gonna come back? It would really help for people, especially low income, to have access to bikes and also people who are, like myself included, like I would stop biking as much as I used to because my bike got stolen too many times and I got sick of spending money on a bike and then only to have it disappear. So I'm just wondering if maybe we can get an update or know when we should get some information on the city bike share program, which I believe is also going to be in collaboration with the county now too. Yeah, thanks for the question, Council Member Cummings. I'm happy to speak to it broadly. We're really excited that we're gonna be bringing back a regional bike share program that'll be kicking off around springtime next year. Public Works has been really leading the charge with the other jurisdictions throughout Santa Cruz County to expand the program, to being county-wide for the first time and we look forward to bringing that program back in the new year. Thank you. I would add, I also inquired about that bike share program and there was an RFP and a vendor has been selected and the latest update I received is since it will be county-wide, which is pretty exciting. There will be stations in Watsonville, Cabrera College, UCSC, so a lot broader reach than our previous bike share program, which was only within the city of Santa Cruz. Early next year, hopefully. Okay, and there was several inquiries about the heritage trees and the noticing and I'm wondering if there's anyone on staff that can speak to that. My understanding is it follows the timeline of the direction that the project is on and so back-dating to projected construction time and construction next year. This is the timing of noticing for those trees and so unless the measure changes things, obviously that would not happen but it is a lengthy process apparently so that's why the noticing started now and my understanding is it had nothing to do with the election but that is the length of process that it would take. Is there anyone that can speak to that noticing briefly just for any information that we can direct folks to? Yeah, thanks, Mayor Brunner. I believe Bonnie is on. Bonnie Lipscomb, Economic Development Director. She's probably best to speak to it but you're right that this is the first step in the noticing period just to provide some assurance to those that are here in the chamber today. There's no intent of removing those trees prior to knowing the outcome of the election so this provides that noticing so that those that may want to appeal would have the ability to do so and to move through our heritage tree ordinance removal process but Bonnie may have more to add. Thanks to the city manager and thanks for bringing up this question and I understand how there was some legitimate confusion around this and really the timing of it is related to the fact that there was a formal application submitted to the city and the heritage tree permit and that process is a very long process and staff was trying to align the process and the numerous steps and actually additional steps of processing the heritage tree ordinance to align it to come back to council ultimately as it goes through, it's gonna go through the Parks and Rec Commission, there's an appeal process, there's multiple steps involved but ultimately everything is going to come to council as part of the full project package and so as they were looking at the whole timeline and also working with the developer on future funding applications, that was sort of what was around the timeline of that coming forward but this is just part of the regular consideration process and I see that Director Elliott is on and I think he has some additional information to share on the posting itself to provide some clarity so I'll turn it over to him but I will say that from a process timeline, yes, ideally from the election, there certainly was no intention to cause alarm and there will be no actions on this prior to the election and obviously the outcome of the election will really dictate how we move forward but we're really, we're just trying to follow our noticing procedures that we have when applications are submitted. Thank you, Director Elliott. Yeah, thanks, I think Bonnie covered it perfectly there just in terms of the notice that went out just to clarify we did post new notices earlier today with some additional information and language on those notices about really this sort of contingency that the number of steps that would have to occur including the election, council approval, issuance of building permit until this would occur so we added that language on the notices for the public just to help clarify but always welcome questions if community members have additional questions on that process with any application there's an opportunity to appeal as well and so I'm not aware of appeals at this point but the Parks and Recreation Commission does serve as that appeal sort of hearing body if you will for when those come up but just wanted to clarify with the council and for the community that updated notifications went out with some more context and information on this process. That's helpful, thank you. Is there somewhere, I know there's a library housing website on the city of Santa Cruz dot com website is there any information there or in terms of updates I know that there were updates being posted just where would be a good place to direct folks. Yeah, I think we haven't posted it there at this time but we could just for clarity since there definitely has been a lot of confusion around that so we could put an update there as a lot of folks are very familiar with going to that link and there is a main link on the main city frame page so we're happy to do that. Great, thank you. I think that was it. Do any other council members have any other? Okay, thank you everybody. We will adjourn until 6 p.m. And our agenda item 19 at 6 p.m. will be on permanent outdoor dining program updates so we look forward to seeing everyone then, thank you. And if council members can turn off your cameras. Okay, is the city clerk ready? I am, thank you. Council members, okay. All right, we will begin. Good evening and welcome to our 6 p.m. session of the October 25th, 2022 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council. I would like to ask the clerk to please call roll. Council member Calentary Johnson, President Golder, coming. Here. Brown. Here. Myers. Present. Vice Mayor Watkins. Here. And Mayor Brunner. Thank you. Next up on our agenda is item number, there's a difference of numbers in my, 17 is our next item on our agenda, permanent outdoor dining program update. This is the first reading of the parklet ordinance for permanent public on street parking spaces. For members of the public who are joining us virtually and streaming this meeting, if this is an item you wish to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. If you are joining us here in person, you can line up here on the, my left to the right of the dais and sign in at the clipboard when I call the item for public comment. 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 council for deliberation and action. In addition to public comment tonight, we also received five emails to city council at cityofsantacruise.com. If you are interested in commenting on permanent outdoor dining program and you're joining us virtually, you can dial star nine on your phone to raise your hand or select raise hand feature in the webinar controls of your computer. Okay, so now I will hand it over to our staff for presentation of item number 17, the first reading of parklet ordinance, permanent outdoor dining program. And I'd like to welcome Bonnie Lipscomb and Rebecca unit, economic development manager with the economic development department. Thank you, mayor and members of the council. Good evening. I just wanted to introduce the item. I know that there's been a lot of interest from the community and just wanted to briefly explain the three items before you this evening and then turn it over to Rebecca who has been the project manager who has been working so diligently on this for over the last year. So this is a long time in coming. We're pretty excited to bring before you today the introduce, the first reading of the parklet ordinance for public spaces or public parking spaces. I'd say overall the temporary outdoor dining program has really been a lifeline for many restaurants, food and beverage establishments during the pandemic and it's been widely embraced by the community and we're really excited to bring this before you this evening. Just to jump in quickly too, I just wanted to clarify that there are three items regarding this topic tonight. And so for members joining us, item number 17 is the first item and it's specific to parklets in the city right of way. The next item will be outdoor dining specific to private property. So I just wanted to have that clarification for those joining us. We will have separate public comment and Rebecca I'd like to hand it over to you. Thank you. I'm sorry, I'm mayor. I just have one more comment. So I was gonna also clarify that the first one we originally was going to have one item where we went into each different recommendation but decided there was enough differences between the public parking spaces and the permitting process for that then from the private property and the permitting process for that. So that is why we've broken them out. So this first item is to really talk about the outdoor dining program for public on street parking spaces as the mayor identified. I also wanted to acknowledge one change from when the staff report and recommendations went to print. We were planning on having the first reading of an ordinance amendment as the third item before you this evening to the existing ordinance which allows for temporary use of both public and private property for the purposes of outdoor dining. We have an existing ordinance for the temporary program and we had two different extension timelines. We are now merging them into one. So both the private property as well as the public property also known as the parklets most of those are downtown and some on the wharf and a couple in the beach area. We're proposing a recommended change and Rebecca will go over that in detail to align those together so that the new recommendation in the temporary extension goes through October 31st of 2023. So I wanted to clarify that at the very beginning because I know there's a lot of interest and probably some confusion on the timeline and we'll go into the details of that in Rebecca's presentation. So with that, I also just wanted to acknowledge I've mentioned the hard work Rebecca's had over the year ahead. I also want to acknowledge the sense of outreach to the community, the businesses and the input from other departments. So in answering questions that you may have this evening we have been working really closely with fire, with public works, with planning, with building throughout this process. So there's other members of our team that have a lot of background on this. And so in addition to Rebecca we'll have other support staff from across the city available to answer questions as the evening progresses. So with that, I will turn it over to Rebecca. Thank you. Thank you, Bonnie. Good evening everyone. I'm Rebecca Unit, Economic Development Manager. I'm really excited to bring this next step of our outdoor dining programs to you this evening. So I'm gonna share my presentation. Go through it. Okay, so tonight we have our first reading of our Parkland Ordinance. Okay, I wanted to give a little bit more just a reminder of sort of our timeline of how we've gotten here. So in 1991, we sort of created some of our initial outdoor dining programs in the downtown specifically after the earthquake as a recovery tool then. In 2015, we launched a Parklet Pilot Program in the downtown on side streets. And from that, we got two incredible Parklets in front of Hulos and Lupalo on Cathcart Street. And in 2017, we formalized that into the downtown plan. There weren't any additional Parklets constructed after that period. We heard a lot of feedback around some of the confusion with the permitting process or the complexity and some of those rules. And so in March of 2020, obviously the shelter in place and then we enacted our temporary outdoor dining program for public spaces and private spaces in June of 2020. We've gone through a number of extensions as impacts of the pandemic have continued. And as well as bringing forward these new permanent Parklet Ordinance details to you. So currently our program is set to expire at the end of this year. And later this evening, we'll discuss an extension to that to October 31st of 2023. I've been mixing up my years. So apologize if I do that. But tonight we are presenting our first reading of the Parklet Ordinance, which sets out a new permit process for Parklets allowed citywide. And so also just diving into sort of what our temporary outdoor expansion Parklets usage looks like. We have 26 businesses currently using Parklets in the downtown and that's taking up, utilizing 61 of our parking spaces. We also have activity in the beach area with six businesses on the wharf, currently using 44 spaces, one business on Beach Street using two spaces, one in an unmetered space on the grant. And then on the west side, we have one Parklet in an unmetered parking area. So what we sort of worked towards in this permanent Parklet program and the goals of this new ordinance is really looking at consistency of design as we transition from the temporary model into the permanent. And that includes all the various amenities of the Parklets in terms of their construction and sort of built materials, looking at improved safety and maintenance standards, allowing these Parklets citywide on streets that are 25 miles per hour or less, or revised fee structure and permit process, really looking at sort of what the previous model was under the Parklet pilot program pre-pandemic and what was codified into the downtown plan. And then also really recognizing that this is intended to be a recovery tool. It has been that over the last several years and wanting to be able to make this transition possible for businesses looking at affordable and long-term construction solutions. So the Parklet ordinance that we are presenting through you this evening will replace the current outdoor curb extension ordinance in the zoning code. So previously the planning department had administered the Parklet permitting process. And with these really being in public right-of-way spaces, we determined that it would be better handled under Title V of the municipal code and we'll be taking on the permitting process within economic development since planning typically deals with more of the private property permitting processes. So we did, we've done a number of different outreach activities throughout the last couple of years as we've been sort of refining the temporary program and understanding the goals for the permanent program. And just recently we did bring this to the downtown commission for a recommendation for approval at their September 22nd meeting. When we did get a recommendation from them and we also were directed, I was directed to work with the Parklet ad hoc committee. And so we reviewed the Parklet in more detail, the Parklet ordinance in more detail and the design guidelines. And then I also have presented this to the Transportation and Public Works Commission after October 17th meeting and received a unanimous recommendation to the council to adopt the ordinance. So getting into more of the details of the Parklet ordinance and sort of what it does. So this is our really sort of the legal structure and framework of what the Parklet program is. And it covers all the core components around the Parklet permit process, design guidelines and operating standards, suspension, revocation and removal processes and any appeals process. So the permit application process is really the big hurdle as we're sort of rolling out the new Parklet program. And we looked at revising that process. As I mentioned, the permits were previously handled by the planning department. And so these will now be administered by Economic Development, the core components of the application are general business information, property owner authorization to apply, neighbor authorization if a Parklet encroaches on the frontage of a neighboring business. And then their operational information, construction details, ABC authorization if needed and our standard insurance requirements since these are in the public right away. We are considering sort of a different review process depending on what businesses are presenting. So as we've looked at the pre-approved or the, excuse me, the Parklet permit process, we have been preparing some pre-approved design options. So looking to provide sort of a streamlined approach for businesses that they can take some pre-approved designs and implement them in their space without needing to go through their own custom design process. And with that, since they've already been reviewed and will be reviewed and approved by city staff and by the council, those would have sort of a streamlined review by Economic Development and Public Works. And then custom designs would be reviewed by Economic Development Public Works building and the fire department. And then retrofit designs. We know that a number of businesses have constructed some form of Parklet in their space. There's really sort of a mix of the level of construction that has occurred with the temporary program and so wanting to respect those investments that have been made. And if people want to be able to keep those, conducting a site inspection and preparing sort of a checklist of any changes that need to be made to meet the new program guidelines. Working through that process. So then the other core component of the ordinance really covers the Parklet guidelines. We've provided a draft set of guidelines and we'll be bringing those back for final adoption at the November 15th city council meeting. But those really cover a lot of the details around how the Parklets are constructed and located and those design features. So going into a little bit of detail on what's included in those guidelines. So we've set out some site and location requirements. We're proposing to have a maximum of two parking spaces per Parklet, so per business. There's some exceptions where that might, businesses might be able to have more than that. If their frontage is wider and has additional spaces within it or if there are even spaces available that they can get approval from a neighbor for to be able to utilize, we'll sort of consider those on a case-by-case basis and site-specific basis. As I mentioned, they're going to be allowed on streets 25 miles per hour or lower city-wide. There's specific requirements that really pertain to sort of traffic safety in terms of, they have to be located at least 20 feet from any corner, not located in front of fire hydrants or any of those utility or manhole covers so we have access to those in the public right-of-way and then not located in blue zones for disabled parking and not blocking the view of conflicting movements of traffic. So making sure that our stop signs are visible, crosswalks are visible and all of the, everyone can move around safely within the street around the Parklets. So here's sort of a visual presentation of typical Parklet design within two parking spaces in parallel spaces. So with the guidelines, it sort of lays out that businesses are able to use the majority of the parking space to what we call the parking tees in this area and then with a four-foot setback on each end and that's to enable navigation around Parklets from adjacent parking spaces, retaining a 12-inch wide and six-inch high storm drain clearance so that we have clear flow lines between the curb and the Parklets all the way down the street and then placement of traffic barriers and the placement of those barriers will also depend on sort of the traffic circulation around the Parklets where in some instances a middle barrier might not be required but the end barriers are typically always required. And then this is elevation view sort of the typical Parklet layout so traffic barriers on the end standard fence railing with the allowance of poles to hang string lighting or seed sails and this is the head-on view just to show what that looks like with all the different street users. And we also have a few angled parking spaces as well and so this is sort of that standard layout for the angled parking. So as I mentioned there, these Parklet guidelines really go into the key components of the design of the Parklets so laying out the platform materials, we do our two existing permanent Parklets who lives in Lupalo use a concrete base and so we definitely would support that or steel frame decks. We do want these to be durable materials so that they are long lasting and don't deteriorate over time so that they stay safe for the users. There's no attachment allowed to the roadway or the sidewalk so everything has to be placed on top of the sidewalk or the roadway and maintaining that drainage clearance and then we have specific requirements around fencing and barriers in terms of the height and having them be generally of an open design so that you can see into them as you're going down the street. As I mentioned earlier, really maintaining that visibility on the street so that we have safe, clear views of all traffic moving along the street. We are allowing umbrellas and posts to hang lighting and heaters but we are not allowing any fixed or solid overhead structures and then we have some requirements around cleaning making sure that there's any spills or anything is cleaned up regularly and making sure that we're not needing to have vector control issues come up and then accessibility making sure that all of the state and federal accessibility standards are in place and then utilities making sure that the parklets aren't covering any of our utilities on the street or if they are that there is easy access to those through a deck or some access hole of some manner. So that was a lot of the design guideline components and then we also have requirements around the operating standards. So this is how the parklets can be used and what we have put together is the parklets are really limited to only food and drinking establishments for outdoor dining and we do have an allowance for operation until 11 p.m. And that the parklets need to be closed or gated when not in use. There's no live entertainment allowed and businesses have to have the proper ABC approvals to be able to serve within the parklet areas and this county health requirement but no outdoor food preparation is allowed in the parklet areas. Additional operating standards relate to cleaning like I mentioned previously making sure that they're free of litter and any food spills and making sure that they're easy to clean underneath the platform if there is a deck in place that there are access places so that that can be cleaned out on a regular basis. Making sure that the parklets are maintained well and then secured as well. So having a letter of authority on site for no trespassing and then no smoking within the parklets. So as I mentioned, we have been working on some pre-approved designs but we don't want to limit businesses just that we did hear from our feedback that businesses really wanted to be able to customize their spaces and so these are sort of the three main buckets of design options available and we'll have more details about pre-approved designs at the November 15th meeting but she wanted to talk through that. And then with the parklet program we're looking at revised fees compared to what was previously allowed under the pre-pandemic parklet program. So under the original program businesses were required to get a design permit from the planning department and a temporary approach and permit. And so those two fees are current rates are $2224. And then we also had annual fees that we had a number of fees that applied to these. And so we had parking meter revenue replacement which amounted to $2,500 for two spaces. Oh, we also charged parking deficiency fees at $850 for two spaces. And then we also charged a license fee for the square footage of the space which was just over $2,000. So those totaled $5,419.76 on average. And so under the new program we are proposing to have a $500 application fee and the pre-approved designs and retrofitted design parklets would go under that fee. And if a custom design is proposed we would have the $500 application fee as well as additional hourly time, hourly costs for review by the relevant departments. And then on the annual fees under the new program we're proposing $2,000 per space annually. So $4,000 per year for a typical two parking space per clip. And then in the unmetered spaces as I mentioned we have two currently. Those would use our cafe extension license fee rate of the $5.88 per square foot which is just over $2,000 for a typical two space parking two space per clip. And then we're also proposing to have an annual permit fee. So instead of having a long-term license agreement this would be an annually renewing permit and we would have a $250 renewal fee and that would cover the costs of an annual inspection just to ensure compliance with the operating standards and that everything is in good condition and safely operated. And so that is our annual. And then I did wanna just cover sort of the data that we've tracked from the temporary program and usage of these parking spaces since June of 2020 just to give a picture of sort of what we're projecting of what those spaces would have generated. So we have the downtown area on this top left here and we're looking at potentially there would have been a revenue of $312,646. This is based on a $4 per day average. So that's calculated by what we looked at in terms of the 2021 real revenue for downtown parking meters. And then on Beach Street, it has a higher rate at those meters. And so we looked at a $6.75 per day average. So with those, we had nine spaces originally in 2020 and 2021. And then it reduced to just two in 2022. We liked that we're looking at $42,292. And we're also projecting forward to the October 2023 proposed extension. Just that's clear. And then on the wharf, we also have even higher rates just because of the turnover of those spaces and the demand there. And so that was, it's projected at $505,347 revenue generated. So this is our proposed sort of park lot program transition from where we're at today until our proposed extension expression of next October 2023. So today we're doing our first reading. Since council adopts the first reading, we would come back for the second reading at the November 15th meeting. And then the ordinance takes effect 30 days later on December 15th. We are then proposing that the applications would open and we would require all temporary permit holders to submit an application by the end of March. And at that time, we would also work on removal of tents and canopies that are currently out there and are really intended to be a temporary measure. And then also looking at removal and reduction of underutilized and inactive parklets that are currently operating under the temporary program. And then from April to October, that would be sort of the permit review process and construction period for businesses with the goal of construction being completed by October 31st of next year. And our intention with the application deadline is that temporary operators who are interested in going into the permanent will apply by that time and we'll be working with them to help them get the approval and the timing that they need to be able to begin and complete construction by that October 31 deadline. So currently, we are proposing this parklet to be effective city-wide. We do still need to obtain our coastal commission approval for that. So this will require a coastal permit. City of Capitola is actually the first city in the state of California to have gone through that process and received their permit. So some great lessons learned from their experience. So we already initiated the conversations with coastal commission staff on that process and with council direction, we'll continue to get that approval. And we have eight businesses currently operating in the coastal zone. And so that brings me to our recommendation this evening. There are four parts. So we were recommending that we introduce for publication the parklet organs establishing a permanent parklet program city-wide direct staff to bring the parklet guidelines and parklet fee schedule for adoption at the November 15th city council meeting. Direct staff to coordinate with the coastal commission and process a coastal permit to authorize implementation of the parklet organs for the construction, use or operation of parklets within the coastal zone under chapter 5.83 of the Santa Cruz municipal code. And just direct staff to initiate the process of repealing Santa Cruz municipal code section 24.10.2341 the outdoor curb extension area pursuant to Santa Cruz municipal code chapter 24.06. Now I'll welcome any questions. Thank you, Rebecca. Thanks for breaking down the parts of the timeline. I think that was helpful. And also seeing the revenue loss or the money that was waived. Is that another way to look at it? Yeah, so that's the potential revenue that could have been collected since the initiation of the program in June 2020. My question was, was that based on the 2017 rates of the pre-pandemic parklet program? No, so that was based on our real parking meter revenue. Okay, great. Yeah. I'm going to open it up for council members to start asking any questions. I do see council member Brown, who's joining us virtually today. Go ahead, welcome. Thank you, mayor. It feels strange to be all the way out here, but being COVID safe. Thank you for the presentation, Rebecca. Thank you for all of your work on this, Bonnie as well. I know that there's a lot that goes into trying to navigate how to make this work. And it sounds like you've had a collaborative process, love being the progress. I just have two questions. One actually is a follow-up to mayor Bruner's question about the projected or possible revenue loss. I'm just wondering in that analysis, did you wait at all for the reduction in parking demand that occurred when we were in lockdown during COVID? Because 2021, it was a little different than that first year. So just wondering if that was included. And then I have one other question, which is a bigger question, I think. Okay. Yeah, I can give you the answer for the first. So the downtown numbers were using the 2021 data so that we were still had the less demand, but it was significantly more than 2020. So we looked at that also because it was the first year of full year of data that we had since 2020 we had, we were only operating from June to December. So just wanted to get that bigger picture. And then for the worth revenue dollars, that was looking at 2021 as well, just getting that full year picture. And then the beach area, that was looking at actually fiscal year 20 numbers. That was our sort of most recent increase in those meters. So grain of salt a little bit maybe because the actual revenue might not have been quite there given that people weren't really out and about. Just wanted to kind of understand that's a big figure. So, but I'm glad we're doing it. And then the other question I had is in your presentation was very clear and I like how you talk about providing, some options, but also the ability to really use a standardized process or I guess plans. And I guess I'm wondering what I haven't heard is just wondering how the businesses that you're, that have are operating under the temporary program, how they're responding to the proposal and what concerns or what kind of support there is there for moving forward in this way right now. Yeah, great question. So we did, I did host a sort of outreach meeting to the businesses in May of this year and gave the initial overview of the pre approved designs that we had to date then as well as the cost estimates. And our cost estimate really ranged between 40,000 to 75,000, which we heard was way too expensive and absolutely acknowledged that that was not reasonable for the intent of this, right. And so we've been working with our landscape architecture firm to bring those costs down and re-look at the partly designs. That was really some of the biggest feedback that we got was around the cost. And then we also got a lot of really great feedback around businesses wanting to be able to customize the look and feel of it. So the colors, the materials that are used and so wanting to have a little bit more flexibility in that rather than saying all of our workloads are gonna be this color and these things. There was a lot of interest in just having that customization. So we've looked at reworking sort of being able to have power coded materials and having that color customization or the ability to paint things and having a much lower cost material for some of the traffic barriers and things like that. So that's what we wanna be able to present to you at the November 15th meeting. A little bit more detail on that. We did also survey businesses about if they would want to use a pre approved design and a lot of the feedback was really we need more information and also a lower cost. And so that's something that we definitely need to be able to provide. I think that's a general review but happy to answer any additional questions around that. Yeah, and I just wanted to add to that in addition to the pre approved designs and those are what the cost estimates are for are for those that the city is working on because we wanted to be able to provide more information on what these pre approved designs would cost. So the other options for businesses are to really look at and look at my parklet now and that's part of the process. Well, we'll have a city team come out and do an assessment on their existing parklet if they want to say what can I do to just get it compliant under the new permanent under the new permanent ordinance that's an option and a route for them as well. And then the third one is, oh no, I have a designer, I want my own design and that's a third route they can go. So we're, and that's really based on the outreach that Rebecca conducted. So I just wanted to add to that. And then another thing that we didn't include in this presentation, but it is in the staff report and we'll come back to you in November is we've been working and this is based on the feedback from a lot of the businesses as well is that this is a big investment. We recognize that this is an investment on public property. And while there would be an agreement in place and they can operate it for many years into the future it's still a big investment and we recognize that. So as part of that we've been looking at a forgivable loan program where in each year they operate the parklet they would get, for example, 20% of the loan forgiven and up to a maximum of I think what we're proposing right now is 50% of what they want to borrow. So we've been meeting with a couple of different potential partners for this program including local credit union. And so we're still working on the details of that but that's something that we want to roll out as well so that businesses have the opportunity to be able to look long-term of how long they plan on having this and if this is a good investment for them and then looking at that potential to an effect turn part of a loan into a grant. So that's something we're working on. Thank you. I'm sad. Thanks, Mayor Brunner. Council Member Brown, did you have a second question? That was it, thanks. Thank you. I will move on to Council Member Cummings, Council Member Golder, Council Member Callentari Johnson. Thanks for that presentation. I do want to revisit that question that came up around the revenue losses from parking because I do want to know whether or not staff actually explored how much sales tax revenue was generated from those businesses through having the outdoor because while it's $7 per day per space, a lot of these businesses saw a huge increase in the amount of people they were able to accommodate under these circumstances, which we're still living under where there's a lot of people out there who are still very concerned about getting sick and there's a lot of people out there, myself included, who have recently gotten COVID. So I'm just wondering if you all explored how having that outdoor actually increased revenue for the city during this time, especially when people weren't really driving downtown, trying to eat indoors. Yeah, certainly. So we've been closely monitoring sales tax throughout the pandemic and especially related to the outdoor dining and doing specific dives into what businesses have outdoor dining and how their performance has been impacted. I don't have a direct comparison for you this evening, but we can certainly provide more of that data to you at the next City Council meeting. And I think generally I would say that the food and beverage industry within our tax has been sort of the quickest to recover, certainly amongst other industries. And not that that means that businesses are whole, but just that we have seen that that industry has increased and sort of come back to pre-pandemic levels over time, but I can provide more detail to you as well. Thank you. And then another question I had, I can have a bunch, but I'm gonna try to keep it limited. But I know that you all just mentioned the Forgivable Loan Program to businesses that are operating on private property and there's no discussion about private businesses on private property. And I know that there are a number of businesses that wanna operate in that capacity and could use some help with kind of getting going and getting started. I'm curious why there hasn't been any discussion about extending those same kinds of loans to private businesses on private property where we're still getting a lot of revenue from these businesses. And so is there any rationale behind not providing those same kinds of loans to those kinds of businesses? Yeah, I mean, I think how we've been looking at it, the Parklets that being on public property, they're permanent so far as they're within the public, that they're permanently installed. But they are also having to pay annual fees because it's on public property. So paying those parking revenue replacement fees and sort of those ongoing components. So in addition to the construction costs outlay at the beginning, there's also that ongoing cost to the city. And so being able to help sort of front load for the businesses, the assistance to build it out to get them going, sort of our initial idea. And with the private property spaces, they absolutely will still have a front loaded construction costs, but it is the one time permit fee and then they can continue to operate without annual recurring fees. So I think sort of incentivizing the use of the public space and having this amenity, we're looking to put those dollars that we have within our budget towards that and just looking at sort of what the impact that we can make with the limited, I think the $500,000 sort of allocated for that program. And so looking at how many businesses can we reach and have a meaningful impact in those funds that are available. I would just add to that, that is something we can definitely look at. We don't know at this point how many businesses are going to be interested in our loans. So I think that's just, it's something that we would request feedback from you on and we go back as Rebecca said, we are trying to leverage as much as we can with the limited funding that we have. And we were thinking that a loan could be up to $50,000. And so when you look at it from that perspective, we realized it's a limited program. So please, if you have thoughts on that, give us some feedback now. We are in sort of the structuring phase and we're really trying to have the biggest impact. Okay, I'll leave my questions there for now. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Cummings. Council Member Golder. I really want to appreciate Rebecca and Bonnie for all your work on this. And I couldn't be more thrilled to see this permanent pathway. This is something that I cared about before the pandemic. I just like sitting outside. And when I was calculating, I was thinking the same thing that Council Member Cummings said. And I was just kind of roughly thinking because I went to Hula's a few days ago and I was thinking we sat there for maybe an hour and we've spent 100 bucks, that's $10. And there was five tables, that's 50 bucks. Maybe they're open five hours for dinner, but it just seemed like that seems like a huge factor. And I would way rather see us bringing in revenue with increased sales tax to local businesses than any other way. Like that seems like a great way to drive our local economy. So if we could analyze that in some way, I agree, like bring it back. And any way that we can support our local businesses, private parking or public parking, thank you. So I guess I don't really have a question other than, I think that I was wondering the exact same thing. Thank you. Council Member Calantari-Johnson. Thank you for the presentation and the work. And thank you for working individually with us council members and individually with businesses, making that adjustment in the timeline. I know that was really big as I've been talking to local businesses. So my colleagues have asked some of my questions and made comments, I won't repeat those. I have a couple of nitty gritties if that's okay. And I'll just ask those. The alcohol services authorization, that isn't, there isn't a need to get an additional license, is that correct? From ABC, if you have an ABC license, you don't need to get an additional one for the parking lot, I just wanted to clarify that. Yeah, so they would just need to expand their licensed area. So just working with ABC to recognize this additional service area on their license. And do we know, I know ABC is a whole nother beast. I've worked with them on some of my youth prevention stuff. Do we know if that's gonna be another red tape that businesses have to go through? Is that something that should be fairly easy? It is an application process. I can't speak to the specific details of it right now, but I can definitely do that research and bring it back. I know that the governor has made it a mission that we have these expanded areas and support these permanently. So I believe that it's a pretty standard process, but we can bring more information on top. Thank you. My other one, the question is, the parklets are allowed on streets 25 miles per hour or less. I'm assuming that that's already the case, is that true? There aren't other, there are businesses in areas that are more than 25, okay. The other question I have is, let's see here. Oh, so there's that piece about maximum of two parking spaces per parklet and that there could be exceptions made. How does that impact any of our current, of course we don't know which of our current businesses want this permanently. Maybe we have an idea, but we don't have it in writing. Does that impact our current businesses who have parklets and what are those exceptions? Can you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, so we did a survey about a year ago now of who wanted to move to the permanent. So the exact numbers might be a little different, but we're estimating about 28 businesses, just so you're aware that wants to do a permanent parklet and the instances. So currently, I'm gonna think if we have any of that, we do have a couple on, or one on Walnut Street that currently is encroaching into an adjacent parking space and there's a little bit of overlap. And so sort of how that works is that if you are encroaching into your neighbor's frontage, we'll have a neighbor authorization form as part of the application, just to get their approval for your use of that space, just sort of a good neighbor practice. During the temporary program, we have had to sort of negotiate some of these instances where businesses were really wanting to expand and the adjacent businesses on their neighboring business wasn't as supportive of having that within their frontage. And so just trying to balance those competing needs. And then additionally, if a business has a very wide frontage, and maybe has like three or four spaces in front of it within their frontage, we would allow that if they wanna take that on as their part of it and just looking at it from a site-specific requirement and review the outcome, it works to make sure that it meets all the requirements, but allowing them to increase if they have that frontage. Great, last question, sorry. I'm really glad to hear that you saw feedback around the pre-proved design and that 40,000 to 75,000 was not realistic. Did businesses indicate what is a realistic number and how can we get there so that we can, I'll just make my last comment with that question that I'm really, really happy to see that we're on this path to permanent parklets. It is something that our communities wanted, even pre-pandemic, as Council Member Golder said. So what is feasible? What's realistic? How can we really support businesses in having that pre-proved design if they want it? Thank you. You know, I would say that the general feedback we've heard was like under 20,000, typically, you know. Yeah, I don't know that I have the best gauge of sort of where everyone's at on that, but I do know that under 20,000 is sort of a preference. I imagine that there are members in the audience that can share their perspective on that, which I would love to hear. And, but I will also just add to that that what we've seen in other communities, we've been working closely with a lot of Bay Area cities and sort of how their parking programs have been rolling out and we are seeing that a lot of them are experiencing sort of 30 to $50,000 as their average cost. So there is a high number out there and but we want to work on our cost estimates to bring that down as much as possible. Thank you, Council Member Calantari-Johnson. Council Member Myers. Thank you for the presentation and all the work that you've done. I think, yeah, this is a wonderful thing to make permanent in our community for sure. They're really, I mean, especially with the weather we've been having, I would love to have some rain, but. Anyways, I think it's a great place and it's nice. I see a lot of families using these, you know, with kids and stuff, it's nice for them to be outside not be cooped up in a little place in the restaurant. I just have a couple of quick questions. So thank you, Rebecca, for all your work and Bonnie and the whole team. And I do like that idea a lot of seeing, you know, what these particular spaces, I don't know how you get at that data, but it would be nice to understand a little bit more about, you know, the revenue stream that's coming from these just so we get a sense of, you know, how private businesses are using these and so that we can kind of understand a little bit about our losses versus some of those revenues. I have a couple of quick questions. One was how did you arrive at the 11 p.m. operation end date, end time, just because I actually got one question about that. And then along with that, maybe Rebecca, because it's under operating standards, it says parklets may be used by food and drinking establishments. And so another question I got from somebody was, does that mean that parklets have to have both of those for customers so they can't just be drinks or, you know, what that actual sentence means or is interpreted as? Yeah, great question. So on the food and drink question, you don't have to serve both either or, but just it's really limited to, you know, restaurant industry or, you know, beer, wine, spirits, restaurant operators, but not exclusively that it has to be food and drink. And then on the hours of operation, the pre-pandemic ordinance had an 11 p.m. cut off time. And so we're sort of, we're looking at that model as what was allowed previously. Under our temporary program, we have limited it to 10 p.m. And so, you know, I would welcome feedback on that, you know, I think sort of providing a little bit more of that late night coverage is beneficial, especially in the downtown. I know that's something that DTA's really been focused on, you know, building up more well, so, but welcome feedback on those hours of operation. Yeah, I mean, I support, I think it is nice to have the street active, you know, kind of into that later evening, just, you know, and that's the way I read that sentence was that it could be either or, but I mean, we're not encouraging sort of just wine and spirits, we are trying to kind of get that full restaurant flavor into these kinds of, I mean, that seems to be what most folks are offering, so. Yeah, absolutely. And I would just add that, you know, we do actually have a number of wine tasting rooms that are using these for their tasting experiences as well. So, you know, there's sort of a mix of that rather than just, you know, traditional bar, there are sort of breweries and wineries taking advantage of it as well. Okay. And then my only other question was, again, just from an interested party, is there an appeal process, there's an appeal process if the design or the permit is denied based on application requirements, whatever, is there actual appeal process for not supporting the parklet? I'm not seeing that in the ordinance right now. So in other words, it seems like there's not an appeal process, for example, for some entity or whatever that found a parklet to not be, you know, maybe copacetic with the neighbor over time. So that was where that question came from was, you get an annual renewal and you pay the year 250 and then does that just make this a permanent and is the, you know, I hate to say it, but is the enforcement piece all on us to just try to make sure that the facility and the establishment is being operated. But it doesn't look like there's any way to appeal something at some point in time. And so I'm just, that just was just a question someone brought up to me. So just curious about your thoughts on that. That's a great question. So yeah, we don't have a component for sort of an appeal from a community member on a parklet. We only have it for the business operator who is wanting to obtain the parklet. But we do have enforcement built into it in terms of utilizing our code enforcement practices. So if they're not in, you know, compliance with the conditions of their permit, they're not operating within standard operating procedures. They're not upkeeping it, you know, we will utilize the code enforcement components for that. You know, I think there's also adjustments that could be made to conditions of approval. And then we do have revocations. So if it is a, you know, bad operator, there are some impacts that, you know, it's felt that they're not meeting the terms of the program. We do have those parameters to sort of take that action. Good. I gave them the right answer then because I pointed to our other code that said that, yeah. So one last question is, how many do you think are gonna be in the CULSA zone? It looks like there's like seven right now. Do you anticipate CULSA commission or is it eight? Do you anticipate any issues with the CULSA commission and getting these approved? Or I'd hate to see like a long lag time for the folks who are sort of dealing with CULSA zone. And did you get any kind of sense from CULSA staff, like what they may do with this kind of permit process? Yeah. So we did have an initial conversation with them just to talk through the extension that we're proposing and also this permanent program. There was not as much support for the parklets on the wharf. And we're actually working through the parklets on the wharf as well in terms of some maintenance needs and other impacts. The each street parklets, they were more supportive of their, with the access being created through the rail trail and some of the other components, they felt that there was some justification to be made for use of those parking spaces. And additionally, the one in LeBrand is further off of each street. And so I think there was more support there but we'll work through those conversations to figure that out. And yeah, and we would want still the businesses to be able to apply and go through the process and be ready once we seek that approval. Well, I hope they support us. I mean, it's most people who come to the ocean, they don't want to sit in the building. They want to sit outside and look at the ocean and the beach and enjoy the air. So I hope we don't get wrapped or on the racks with them on another thing. So I appreciate you reaching out to them. I think those are my questions right now. Wait on that, Donna, Council Member Myers. The city of Capitola really did help pave the way for us on this and they're utilizing, I believe that's 25 parking spaces in the village. So that is prime coastal access and they were able to find a path forward for that approval. So I'm pretty confident with sort of what they were able to pioneer there. So yeah. That's great. And I just want to thank all of our local businesses who really worked on this, really experiment with us. And you guys have all built really interesting places to be and at your own cost and you didn't know what was going to happen in the end. So I just want to thank you all for doing that and building out a more fun Santa Cruz. So thanks. Thank you, Council Member Myers, Vice Mayor Watkins. Yeah, I'll just sort of piggyback on what Council Member Myers was saying in regards to just the support for our businesses and our gratitude in that way. Like Council Member Golder mentioned, outdoor dining is definitely something that really fits with our community, I think really well and it's something that we've all desired and appreciated and seeing it expanded is a really great thing for so many reasons and particularly under the circumstances with COVID, right? So Council Member Myers asked my question in regards to the coastal access challenges and the wharf and sort of thinking about the impacts there. So, you know, I'm just curious to learn more. At some point it doesn't, I think you've already really spoken to the question I had in regards to that. The other question I had was really thinking about some of the other areas of our community. I know we really have a lot of these popping up in our downtown, but we have our midtown businesses and our west side businesses. And I guess just really thinking about the different areas of our community that could really benefit from this as well and how are we supporting them and where do they fit into this picture? If you could just maybe speak to that a little bit as well. Yeah, happy to. So yeah, we've definitely seen the most demand in our downtown. I think it's been sort of the largest concentration of restaurants and that easy street access. We do have one business, Humble Sea has a parklet on the west side and they were really excited to be able to sort of take that on. We did get some outreach initially from businesses, one business on Seabright for a parklet and we were sort of negotiating some of the traffic impacts there just sort of the speed of travel and safety. So I think we're happy to revisit that conversation under this permanent ordinance as well. I would also say that what we've seen the majority of businesses in sort of the midtown and Seabright and west side areas is really utilization of private property because they do have parking lots that they can utilize and be able to transform. And there's not as much of that street frontage space, but yeah, we definitely support expansion and interest from those businesses as well. Yeah, thank you. I think you're absolutely right in regards to the kind of the private property opportunities there for them. And then just also to Johnna's point or to Councilor Meyer's point, I do have a little one who I think was probably really benefiting from being outside and has one of those chairs that kind of rolls around throughout dinner. So I think in general, it's just a really great thing for not only enjoying our outside, our community and just sort of access to our businesses and all the wonderful things, but it really opens up opportunity in many ways. So really appreciate the work you've done on this and happy to find ways to continue moving it forward. And I just wanted to add on, we're talking about sort of on the midtown on the east side and our parking lot that we have there. We had the very successful midtown Fridays. And as we're going forward, we recognize we need these public spaces to be active. So we are very open to having conversations about from some of our food establishments, about activating those spaces. We've had some conversations with the farmer's market and some food truck vendors about different ways to really keep in different parts of our community in different commercial areas to really try to keep those areas active and looking at public spaces a little differently. So we're open to that as well. Well, since you brought it up Bonnie, sorry, I wasn't gonna say, but since you brought it up Bonnie, because I did think about that in terms of the midtown parking lot, that area for sure has so much opportunity and really truly activated that area. I live nearby, we would walk over, it was amazing to see so many people there and to have that utilization of a parking lot that is often really not really utilized on a regular basis. So as long as we're thinking about economic development and opportunity, I just wanna put in a plug for that area and thinking about even like having some of those containers. I know that was a thought for storage and also thinking about the incubator possibilities there as we do with our downtown businesses. Like that has true potential and it's really been an incredible asset to that side of town. So whatever direction you need or support from the council, I'll just put in my two cents here and saying that I'm 100% on board for that and would love to see that move forward in any way possible. And I appreciate you bringing it up because I thought that too. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Vice Mayor Watkins. So that concludes council questions. Everyone had a chance to ask their questions. Thank you so much for really going through and clarifying some of those questions. I do wanna open it up now for public comment. I know that we have many of our businesses here in person. We also have virtual hands, people joining us virtually for public comment. And again, thank you for separating out our public space permanent parklet program versus our private space permanent outdoor dining program. I think that really makes it easier to move forward with some of these components knowing that each of these locations have unique needs to work through and really appreciate some of the feedback that we received. So adjusting the October 31st deadline for both public and private. So at this time, I would like to ask anyone who would like to speak for public comment. If you're joining us in person, you can line up on the right of the dais. And I will alternate between our virtual attendees and our in-person attendees. So our first person in person here, welcome. And make sure the microphone is at your mouth so we can hear you. Okay, thank you very much. My name's Ian McCray, I own Hula's Island Grill and Tiki Room, about to go into our 17th year. I'm joined by a couple of my partners who are behind me as well as our landlord. And I'd just like to thank you, start out with thanking Rebecca and Bonnie for all the work they've done in the city council because I don't think we'd still be here if it weren't for what you guys have done for us on Calcard Street. So this may be a little redundant, I'm not sure if we have an extension through October 31st now or not because I came to ask for a year extension on Calcard Street. If we lose Calcard or it goes back to two ways, we lose 56 seats. I mean, that's just insurmountable. You know, like we've changed our menu over the past years as our people who are vegan, vegetarian, gluten-free, so have we had to change our preferences for outdoor dining. I mean, it's just the new normal. Typically in the weekend, I'm gonna have a 60-minute wait for outside and no wait for inside. Something else that's been a big change is people's bringing their pets, their dogs. They're very attached. I mean, I think it's what the, you know, what's going on in our country and COVID and they just feel much more safe bringing their pets and it's just, we've seen a huge increase in that and of course, because of that, they wanna be outside. You know, COVID's still with us. We've got to, you know, hopefully we don't have a recession but we are looking at it. You know, right now I employ 72 people. The last thing I wanna do is lay anybody off and if we lose 56 seats, there's just, there's no way we can continue without laying people off. You know, the other thing we'd like to do is bring back our Mahalo Monday giving program that we've given over $200,000 through, since we began it, to over 56 local nonprofits and we'd love to bring that back. And, you know, if we felt a little more secure, we would definitely be doing that. You know, tomorrow we're meeting with an architect, Peter Bagnell, to talk about expanding our current parklet. So we're working on it but we'd like to be able to do it, get it done, without missing a beat, so to speak. So we have engaged, you know, my partners are in construction, I mean, we can do it but we just, we need more time. So we're not, you know, so we're not losing seats during that process. Okay, thank you guys, I appreciate it. Thank you for your comment. Okay, I'll bring the next person here in person. Welcome. So good evening, my name is Enda Brennan, I believe I know most of you and I am your appointee to the Downtown Commission and I also have a wife that owns SWAF and La Posta so they both have parklets. The first thing I wanna do is thank every single one of you for your unanimous support for the outdoor dining program. It has been made a difference for every single business and we would be hollowed out downtown if you had not stepped forward when you did. The second thing I wanna say is I was delighted to see that there was a change since I last saw of extending into October 31st and that started me thinking, okay, well if we're extending the actual date to October 31st, why are we adopting an ordinance tonight? And then when I heard your questions, I thought, hmm, you know, I think that there's some doubt on the exact details and specifics of this program and I'm encouraging you as a body to step back, put the brakes on, ask staff to come back with those cheaper design proponent proposals which can be out there, can be found and right now they're not being found as far as I know. I know that they're doing outreach, they've heard that it's as little as 30,000. I just have to tell you, I was at the downtown commission meeting on September 22nd and there was, we asked the same questions you guys did. Hmm, we said, what, what have businesses been saying? And Rebecca was very honest. She said they were, she didn't use the word uniformly. I will use that word because I've spoken to many of these businesses. Our uniformly concerned about the dramatic cost that's currently being proposed for the pre-approved designs and that's really what we need to try and do is ask staff to come back with lower numbers for those. And so I think as a result of that, one of the, I think it was one of the things they did after that was then start exploring this potential loan program. But that's all it is right now. It's a potential loan program. There's no flesh on those bones. There is nothing specific about it. So those are the main issues that I would ask you to consider is put the brakes on, do not adopt this ordinance in its first reading tonight. Send it back to staff with very specific and perceptive questions that you have and then take a closer look at it when it comes back to you. The one thing I will have to say on behalf of my fellow member of the Downtown Commission and he and I both sat on the Parklet Ad Hoc Committee which met with Rebecca afterwards and that's Joe Ferrara. And Joe is an interesting man. And what I would say very simply is Joe brought up the equity issue and he said, you know, we're doing this for the dining establishments and I understand that. But what about all those other retail businesses in the city of Santa Cruz? If you're gonna be taking a public spot which is a parking spot and you're gonna be dedicating it, why aren't you doing it, making this program for all retail business? Your time is up, thank you. Anyway, that was Joe's concern. And Rebecca heard that concern and it's not in this ordinance that's before you tonight. I will take our next caller virtually. There are a couple hands raised. Thank you. The first person with their hand raised is the name I am watching you. Okay, thank you. It seems to me permanent public property parklets need more examination and full debate on their basic principles. My basic principle of public property is that it belongs to all the city's people, should theoretically be uniformly usable by all the people if they desire and exceptions to apply equally to all people like being closed or open or fees or for improved resources or yes, sometimes a fee queue for a temporary exclusive use permits. This is none of those. Everyone can use parks, libraries, roads, play municipal golf, park, rent a civic, et cetera. Used to all is uniformly permitted and the basic city core principle of city purpose is charging normally via taxes but sometimes by temporary exclusive use fees for services or use rights that are available to everyone as well as defending all individuals' equal rights to health, safety, life and liberty. However, when the city permanently removes public access to public property, for instance, as a subsidy in developing affordable housing, this then only goes to benefit developers and a very small public minority and the vast rest of the entire public is shut out of use of that property long-term. A worst example is Measure K and L where the public assumes the debt of 100% the cost for developing segregated affordable housing but really has no shorter benefit from that 100% subsidized housing and additionally it's a sham using bonds to really pay for operational costs like an employee housing benefit similar to using a mortgage to buy food. Awful principles are involved. The parklets principles are even worse. It's like the adjacent business owner has granted a permanent use permit of what was heavily used a public property parking or access and now public control use is permanently lost. It's a cozy partnership between business and government where the public land use rights are just auctioned off to make city and business more money and the public is the property rights loser. It's a kind of fascism, yes it is. Additionally, I can't believe you suggest sticking the public with any costs for this whatsoever. The government is not the public. It's an obvious sell out of finite public land use. I'm not saying the pandemic response had no consequences that require temporary practices and fair consideration or even compensation but the public needs a value for permanently giving up public spaces and I mean the public, not the government. There are plenty of special moneyed interests that want this. The question is what guiding principles are you employing eroding public property rights? I see no permit number limits. What compensation does the public get? As usual, we find out later and I don't think a general fund deposit answers that. Don't forget you are employed caretakers of public assets, not self-interested public asset wheeler dealers. Ask yourself, when you've sold all the public land use rights where do you go from there? What's the worst? The public doesn't have the right to pay full restaurant fare to eat in a parking lot. Okay, thanks. Thank you for your comment. I will take one more virtual caller. The name is Alex Gershenson. Welcome, go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Good evening. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Perfect. Thank you, city council. Thank you, city staff. My name is Alex and I am a business owner downtown but a slightly different business. I don't have a parklet. I run Siflashift, which is a software company and I wanted to put a few comments for consideration of the city council. My company benefits from the parklet program because I'm able to bring my customers, my investors, my employees to have lunch, to use public spaces safely. We are in a pandemic. We are going to be in a pandemic for a very long time and I wouldn't bring my staff. I wouldn't bring my team. I wouldn't bring my customers and investors inside. And so these parklets, these public spaces generate substantial additional revenue for the city. It just wouldn't be there without it. And so at the same time, I really want the city council to consider the fact that, you know, the fees that are being proposed on these businesses, you know, we're not just talking about these fees. We're talking about these fees in the context of interest rates that are really high right now because we have inflation. We have high Fed rates. And so, you know, business loans right now run, I mean, it depends where you're getting them from. SBA, I think is about 8.5% minimum and business lines of credit are certainly north of 10%. I've seen 16%, right? So it's not just the money that businesses would have to put out. It is also the interest rates, you know, forgivable loans, that's all, that's great, but they have to be concurrent as a previous commenter said. And more importantly, right now there are parklets that are beautiful and they've been well-designed. And, you know, I would suggest that the stuff that's already there should just be grandfathered in because businesses shouldn't have to spend additional money to do the same thing that is already there. And for the rest, I think there should be a lot more flexibility because I bet that the amount of money that the city gets for various public programs from the additional sales tax is far higher than the parking fees. So thank you so much. Really appreciate all your work and looking forward to the next iteration. Thank you for your comment. I will go to our next comment in person here. Welcome. My name is Elise Kasby and I've been watching the Parklets develop. I wanna start by saying that I think it adds robustly to our civic culture and life to have these dining places and to have restaurant tours who have already been in business facilitating these vehicles. I do have some things that I think that we should consider. First of all, I just wanna ask, have we had any IR? I just think that would be important to have some kind of environmental impact report. I suspect it would be very positive because there's less traffic and less cars in the parking spaces. I have no idea. But what I'm more concerned with here is really, as I'm a pedestrian and I take the bus, I'm an environmentalist and this is great not having a car. It really hasn't been much of a problem to have some of the restaurants moving on to the sidewalk, but there are a few who have just blatantly taken over the sidewalk and they're directing the traffic to walk on the street. Generally we are protected, but I'll just be honest here. My concern is with the public sentiment, the hit that I think that the public, the feeling of a public life is taking and the supremacy of a private kind of ownership that is maybe a little too oppressive. I'm just putting this out there for consideration. For example, could we have some parklets where you don't have to buy anything? So for example, one or two could be youth oriented, some could be specifically very friendly for people who are elderly to feel that they can sit and rest. I'm really just trying to bring in the sense of public space here and that you don't have to purchase something to be in this place. And I think that's important to consider in our civic life. And the last thing that I just wanna end on is, I really do think that what we need to start thinking about as a city is all kinds of traffic. Years ago we were in the Civic Center trying to possibly take out traffic from the downtown core. And that did not happen. I actually didn't live here, but I was residing here for a while. And I thought it was a fascinating option. I'd really like to see us more thoroughly think about pedestrian traffic on the sidewalks. Servers are coming out with tables and heaters and champagne service. And that's great. But I just also want us to think about what kind of access do pedestrians have? What kind of civic life are we really building here? And I just wanna end on saying, I think this needs more analysis of our pedestrian flow. And just wanna end by saying, I love the parklets. I really think they do add tremendously to our downtown life. And I'm glad they're there. And I just want us to really be a little thoughtful about it. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Our next comment will be in person. Welcome. Hi, my name is Alexis Carr and I work at SWAF in downtown Santa Cruz. Like pretty much everyone before me, I would like to just say again, thank you all so much for all the hard work, especially Rebecca, as well as a lot of the members on city council who I know have personally taken time out of their work schedule to talk to myself and the other manager at SWAF, Andrea Eckhart, about our concerns and the issues that we've had throughout the pandemic. I know one of the main problems before when we were talking about the original plan for the parklets moving forward was the cost that restaurants would face. And I think again, from what I've heard from other people who are also in the industry downtown and throughout Santa Cruz as well, we've all invested so much in parklets already that when we're proposing this additional cost of about 40 grand to 70 grand, that's not the original cost. That's on top of what we paid and had to redo and had to redo. So my concern is, well, if we put together this plan and then we put it all together, what's to say that we're not gonna get, oh, no, we need to change it and we need to invest more in changing it again. I'm a little concerned with currently the fact that it seems like not everything's quite there yet to invest for us to be, to invest again. It's kind of scary to be perfectly frank. And I really hope that we can look a little bit further before we spend the significant investment that it costs to do this. But I wanna thank everybody again and really just urge that for a lot of people, these are small businesses and this is their livelihood and it is a really big gamble. So thank you all for listening. Thank you for your comment. I'll invite the next person here in person. Hi, my name is Maya Zohara and I'm a frequent customer of these amazing businesses. So I wanna give a huge amount of appreciation to the efforts that all of you on the council and the presenter put into coming up with a plan for our community that supports our small businesses. Special shout out to Oswald and SWAF and Hulus and all of the other Midtown and Worf and whatnot. Basically, they helped us get through a very, very difficult time with the pandemic. Breaking bread together is a heart of a community globally. It often, breaking bread together transpires divisive experiences. It brings a community with shared experiences. I wanna reiterate what Martin said just about and someone else with bringing your animals outside and having more formal quiet adult only experiences inside, having families come together with their children, being able to dine outside, not just for safety, but also just for a need that was unrecognized in our community. I am in support of our restaurants and their recommendations. I do wanna say as a pedestrian, I write public transportation. The only concern I've ever had is if the city could do something that would be a bit more directional for those in need, the handicap community with walkers, wheelchairs, blind, it's a little bit challenging. I do not wanna place the burden of that on our restaurantiers. I'm an advocate for whatever way we can to make these permanent parklets permanent in our community in a cost-effective way for our restaurantiers because they are small businesses. Also, it brings us up to the global standard of many countries. I lived all around the world and I will tell you this, it was very hard coming back to the United States. It was so isolating in this model that we had and the pandemic model really brought us forward in a sense that is just wonderful breaking bread and sharing tables, talking in a safe way. So anything that we can do to support our restaurantiers and also there is a pedestrian issue that needs to be solved around accessibility that I think we could resolve in a cost-effective way without putting that burden on the restaurantiers. So anyway, I just wanna thank you very so much for all that you're doing, your support of our small businesses, the engagement of community life and public spaces has been outstanding benefit of our pandemic and this pandemic is not gonna just resolve, there's gonna be other things that come forward. So to eradicate and then have them restart is just financially not wise. And in my opinion, I think that the tax revenue really may outweigh the public space parking loss issue. So anyway, thank you for your time. Thank you for your comment. I will go to our next caller joining us virtually with our hand raised and that is Peter be here. Go ahead and press star six to unmute. Hello, can you hear me? Come city council. Yes, welcome Peter. Thank you, mayor. This is Peter B. Shea community liaison for the city of Santa Cruz, but right now I'm speaking on behalf of David Torres and he wrote me his message from up to my phone. He's obviously behind the kitchen in La Taqueria, La Montaña. Hola, Pedro, y el resto del concilio. Hi, Pedro and the rest of the city council. Básicamente lo que me gustaría decir en la junta para nosotros es muy importante el espacio afuera. Basically what I would like to share with you all that the space outside is very important. El año pasado nuestras ventas cayeron un 80%. Last year my incomes went down, fell down by 80%. En particular mi negocio también depende del boardwalk, especially that my business depends on the boardwalk. Now that the boardwalk is open, it's also better for me in having more people outside. La gente de Santa Cruz le encanta comer afuera, so the people from Santa Cruz love to eat outside en el aire libre y el espacio que estoy tanto permanentemente no interfiere con el tráfico and the space that I'm also interested in permanently does not interfere with traffic. And ya que estaria ese color a mío since this is a yellow zone, it's yellow bandit y me digo hasta una rampa pública and also I have a public ramp and the owner of the place also is in the green. I really thank Rebeca Unit and the group in the economic development who have been helping us strongly to survive this tough year. I hope we're able to have these permanent permits from David Torres, just through me. Thank you. Peter, thank you. I did not hear who you said that was from. Are you still there? Did anyone catch that? It's David Torres. It's David Torres. Thank you. Yes, correct. It's David Torres from Taqueria La Montaña. Thank you. Did you have a question, Council Member? Okay, our next caller is the name Sandra. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. You are six. Okay, star six, hold on a second. We hear you. You hear me. Okay, great, great. Hi. You know, I hadn't really planned on speaking. I don't really have anything prepared, but I'm very passionate about a certain topic. And I was listening to the earlier public address and my computer was still on. And so I hear these wonderful people talking about the restaurants and how to keep them open on the street. And I hear people extolling the virtues of the east side, the parking lot that's there, which to me looks pretty shabby, could definitely be spruced up as a public space. And I guess I want to segue back to the parking garage proposed to be and the affordable housing and the library proposed to be on our vacant lot and kind of tie it all together and let the restaurateurs think about what it might be like to have their people sitting on the street dining with the construction happening during the day, all the dust, all the debris being back and forth, all the traffic, all the traffic hold up. So I'd like the restaurateurs who actually haven't really stopped to visualize or think about how that's gonna affect their business. Think about that. And hopefully there's time for them to vote because I'm a little bit despondent that the way that the measure O has kind of transpired with the new permits on the trees. It's sort of like if measure O doesn't pass, does that mean that the parking garage and the affordable housing and the whole block long construction site, that's a done deal? Is that how it goes? Like if measure O doesn't pass, yes, you get to put permits on the trees to take the trees down. You get to move forward because measure O didn't pass. I guess I'm not that familiar with government. And granted measure O is a grassroots effort that was written maybe not very professionally, maybe a lawyer attorney needed to really spruce it up. But it seems like if it doesn't pass, now it's people are backed into the corner to build this huge building. And I'd like the people who extoll the virtues of public land. I like to take their little ones on Friday night to the East side to think about that's our last public land right there. And once it's gone, it's gone. There's no bringing it back. If anybody's lived in a city that's watched that happen to a neighborhood, you know that there's no bringing a neighborhood back. So I would like the restaurateurs to think about how their sidewalk dining experience is gonna be for their clients after this happens, if it happens, hopefully not. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. I will now invite anybody else. Are you waiting to talk on this item? Okay, come forward. Thank you. Hello again. Welcome. Thank you. Max Mission West Bar over on the West side. I'm thoroughly impressed with that packet. Renee and Bonnie, thank you guys. Seriously, I think we've been, you know, not sure of what we were gonna see for the last two years and it's just nice to have something to go off. I do kind of wanna piggyback off this gentleman about, it might be good to take a look at a couple things. You know, I think overall it's really nice, but let's sleep on it, right? For at least a day or two. I am eager to see what might be a similar packet for private property. That is what my business is dealing with right now. And I want to urge and piggyback off of council member Cummings and Golder and most of you in saying that the loss in parking money is, I mean, percentages of tax revenue. It's not just the sales tax. It is the guy that I go buy my plants from, the water that I water them with. It is every little thing, you know, everything gets taxed. And maybe even more important is the additional employment that we get to give money in people's hands that live here. Ian has talked about this, how many more people he can employ. So important. So I want you guys to think about that when you're looking at the fees. You know, I saw this one for the parklets. Not saying it's unrealistic or that it's not fair, but I think it's something to consider is that you guys are gaining essentially way more restaurants. Even though they're not more restaurants, it's tons more seating. Something for private. I want to kind of put out there is that we're in a situation with our landlords if we don't own the property. And these guys are seeing that there's potential for more money and some of them have expressed that they want to charge us more money or rent. While they might not be able to do that in public, they can in private in most cases. So again, when we're forming a private packet, please consider the additional fees that could be coming our way. You know, nothing's free, right? Let's see what else. I know that one thing that I'd like to do, the Midtown Fridays have been an incredible event. Private property has a lot more space on them, typically, and more build-out costs. And I think that that's something to be considered about the loans that Bonnie had kind of brought up. It could be more, but it could bring the community more in regards to, you know, we have a West Side similar to the Midtown Fridays. One thing I'd like to present in good time. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. There are no virtual attendees with their hands raised on item. We are discussing agenda item 17 on our agenda, the permanent outdoor dining program on public on-street parking spaces. And we just had comments from members of the public. Members of the public. And it looks like that concludes public comment. And so at this time I'd like to bring it back to council for deliberation and action. I did want to clarify one thing. There was one caller who said, do not adopt the ordinance in its first reading tonight. And the way that this typically works is this is what's called a first reading. And then we have a second reading. And then we have an option to adopt it. So I know that we, anybody still has the option to email us, email or connect with economic development team to further refine specific questions or input or suggestions. But if we move forward with this first reading and second reading on November 15th, and if it does get adopted, then this would then take effect December 30 days later. So that's kind of the process of how it works. And then businesses for the November 15th that would also include the parklet fee schedule. I think there was another comment about the fee schedule. So I will bring it over to council member Cummings. Thank you, Mayor. I just want to thank everybody for their comments on this item. I did have one question for staff before we move on. One of the members of the public brought up Oswald's, which then also made me think about, there are a few businesses. I think there might, maybe it's just two, maybe it's Oswald's in the parish public house on the west side where they use sidewalks and they don't use the streets. And we haven't actually discussed that and how those businesses are not, well, if there's anything that needs to be done about businesses that want to work, that want to conduct their outdoor on sidewalks. And we also heard some comments from members of the public around pedestrian access. So just wanted to see if you can make some comments on those businesses that have been operating outdoors, but operating on sidewalks and not in public streets. Yeah, absolutely. Great question. So we do still have our outdoor extension area, it's a cafe extension program in the downtown which has been in place for a long time. So that has a traditional permit process through the planning department. It is on my to-do list and goal is to refine that process as well to bring into the compliance so that's something that I wanted to also explore as we're working on repealing the outdoor curb extension is looking at refining that cafe extension program. And I think that, you know, with the, that program is long established and has some clear guidelines within the ordinance and it's not as much of a lift as sort of the parklet details. So that is something that is our priority to revise those before the October 31st deadline as well. Okay. Thank you. So I did have a motion that I prepared and just want to thank everybody for all the work that they've done on this and also thank the community for their input this evening because I think I was able to incorporate some of that into this. Just understanding that, and I do want to kind of clarify something around, you know, first readings and second readings. Oftentimes when we make changes to ordinances that come before us during that first reading, the second reading is really to adopt that language. But one of the things that we've heard tonight from staff, from some of the concerns from council members and concern from the community is, you know, needing to have some more input on this. And so the language that I proposed is that we, so I'll move that we establish an outdoor dining subcommittee to work with staff and community stakeholders on issues and concerns related to temporary and permanent outdoor dining. Two, that we direct staff to bring the parklet guidelines and parklet fee schedule and an ordinance establishing a permanent parklet program city-wide for adoption by no later than the second city council meeting in February 2023. And we direct the subcommittee to work with staff and community stakeholders to explore extending forgivable loans to businesses on private property for the coordination with the subcommittee and community stakeholders direct staff to coordinate with the coastal commission and process a coastal permit to authorize implementation of the parklet ordinance, the construction use or operations of parklets within the coastal zone under chapter 5.83 of the Santa Cruz municipal code and five direct staff to initiate the process of repealing SCMC section 24.10.2341 outdoor curb extension area pursuant Santa Cruz municipal code chapter 24.06. I'll second that. We had a motion by council member Cummings seconded by council member Golder. Any further? I just have one question. It was five, because you made me think when you mentioned Oswald and the public parish house, I was also thinking of what's that one on the website, the your place, Humboldt, and they kind of take over the sidewalk and when someone mentioned the pedestrian access, it is something I think we should look into because if someone was in a wheelchair or pushing a stroller or walking a dog, if it's interfering with that, I don't look into it. Oh, sorry. I'm so sorry. I usually have such a loud voice. People told me to shut up. Did you hear what I said or? Okay. I'm assuming this is a council subcommittee. I just want to clarify that. I see council member Calentari Johnson and then council member Myers and one second here while I pull this up. Okay. Council member Calentari Johnson. Yeah, I had a question item, I had two in the motion. So is this a shift from staff recommendation that we would be, I'm just trying to compare it to the staff recommendation that staff recommendations November 15th and we're proposing February 23rd or is this different? This is a question for council member Cummings. It's the language is no later than the second meeting in February. So it can come before. It could be anytime before. Okay. And so the additional really is around the subcommittee. It's a big piece. It's around the subcommittee and then providing more opportunity to work with staff working with council members and the businesses so that everybody's kind of getting on board with, you know, everything as it's rolling out and we're taking all those concerns into account. Okay. Council member Myers and council member Golder. I guess my question. I mean, I'm supportive. I think of the motion as it's written. I just want to make sure I understand kind of how and what will be different in these, except for the fact that the council members could kind of be part of the discussion now. Just curious from staff's perspective, will we gain a lot more? I'm just, I mean, I'm not against the motion at all, but I'm just trying to understand whether or not we're going to really gain anything or if staff feels like they missed something along the way is curious. Yeah. Thanks for the question council member Myers and I would pull Bonnie Lipscomb and Rebecca back into the conversation, but there has been a significant amount of outreach as was reflected in tonight's presentation and ultimately resulted in the recommendations that were brought forward. As we often do with council subcommittees, it's an opportunity for council members that are interested in the topic to support staff in that work as well as engaging with our key stakeholder groups. So defer to the council if there's interest in doing that. I do think a number of the concerns that have been raised throughout that work, staff have done a good job of addressing, but open to that suggestion. My one comment then would just to make sure that we, you know, it seems like we've done a lot of outreach, but, you know, just again, making sure we get communications around, you know, a newly appointed, you know, commission, because it sounds like went through our commissions, which is kind of typical downtown and then public works and transportation. So those two kind of, you know, looked at it, said yes, there were some recommendations. So I just make sure that the communication goes back out and makes the big round again so that we don't lose people on the way. Thanks. Council Member Golder and then Vice Mayor Watkins. I just wanted to say when we're thinking about stakeholders, another stakeholder that we might want to include is local architects. My neighbor Pete Bagnell, was talking to him about this and he thinks it could be done for a lot cheaper. And especially if like businesses work together and they made the good design that they kind of cloned, but I just think if that was brought in into the mix, if during that conversation, we could save some money for businesses too. Vice Mayor Watkins. Yeah, I just wanted to see what Rebecca and Bonnie had to say in regards to this proposal and knowing that I think it's essentially the same other than the subcommittee kind of joining forces and kind of understanding what has been done and between now and February, what could be done. I know that that's also a holiday time and a lot of other things are going on, right? So anyways, if you want to speak to that too or if you want to weigh in, happy to hear your perspective. I'll let Rebecca weigh in on some of the programmatic elements in the outreach. I think we're always open to receiving more feedback. I do think we've had quite an extensive amount of feedback where the ordinance is today. I think the way that we're having the first reading today, be very happy to meet with community members, meet with the committee of the existing commission committee that had already weighed in and had a subcommittee on this, meet with them again. I think where I do have some concerns is tabling the first reading today and waiting until February. And the reason why I have some concerns about that is looking at the extension date and wanting to make sure we have enough time for those that want to have a permanent program to be able to apply, submit their application and have time to go through the permitting process and construct their parklet prior to the expiration of the temporary program. I mean, the concept behind the temporary program is that we are allowing at no additional cost folks to work their way through to permanence and we're gonna work with them one-on-one. And so delaying us having the permanent ordinance out there where people know these are the parameters, delaying that, I'm worried that's going to impact the overall timeline and schedule for businesses who are ready to go and just as an option is right now, want to do the minimal to take their existing temporary parklet and make it permanent because that's always an option. I think we're some of the feedback and requests for more information is around, is involving our pre-approved sort of designs or the streamlined. And I think I really appreciate that feedback. I know we have tried to get some quotes for some local architects that's something we're committed to trying to get a lower cost point and having some options of not having some of the overhead features with some of those elements that could bring the cost down a little bit. And on the, I would say the permanent, the funding program is a separate process from completely from the ordinance. And so I don't want those two to get wrapped up together. I think we can have a similar timeline where we're working on that. We've been meeting with the Credit Union and our other potential provider and just really working through the program details. I will say, during the pandemic, when we had our initial emergency loan program, we did turn that around really quickly. I know we can do that again for this program, but I think delaying this from October all the way to February before we have the beginning of an ordinance could be really problematic for us. Yeah, we have a follow-up question from Vice Mayor Watkins. I see Council Member Brown has her hand up. I wanted to chime in and Council Member Cummings as well. So Bonnie, if I hear you correctly, I understand your concerns. And so if I hear what you're suggesting, I mean, if it was up to you, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but what I'm hearing is to have us move forward with the first reading, knowing that there could be changes and modifications between now and the second reading, potentially, as well as additional information that would inform enhancements along the way. Is that accurately kind of summarized your thoughts on that? I appreciate that, because I think we don't want to undo harm here and delay this ordinance if it's not necessarily gonna be who the business is as well. So yeah, anyways, that brings concern for me with the motion as proposed, but I appreciate your perspective. Thank you, Council Member Brown. Thank you. I guess I'm a little confused because I'm hearing a response that this is gonna be a problematic, it could be problematic for businesses, but we've heard businesses themselves asking us to take more time. And so I feel a little, I guess I'm just confused by that. It seems like a mixed message. Mike, I am supportive of delaying a first reading. I think that the February 2023 timeline no later then, if people wanna say we need to do it sooner, that's great, that's fine, but I do wanna just ask about, well, the wisdom of moving forward with an ordinance that could end up being changed enough and it doesn't require a significant amount of change to then require a new first reading. Why we would not at a minimum consider first reading somewhere further down the road once Council committee, once people can get back together with the businesses and get some feedback on a proposal that I recognize has been in the works and a lot of sharing has happened with the businesses, but there still seem to be lots of questions and concerns and so it feels to me like doing a first reading when we've maybe worked through a little bit more of that makes sense, not to put this off and hurt businesses that are ready to go, but I'm also hearing businesses say we're ready to go, but not necessarily on the terms or without some questions being worked out for us. So, and I recognize that's not all of the businesses who are enrolled in this program, but I guess to suggest that making this decision when hurt businesses, when it's businesses asking us to take more time, this leads me to think we should take more time. I would love to respond to that. I think in general, having some of this information in advance would from a staff level been really helpful from council. I will say that we've had many businesses tell us, how soon can you get to council? And so with having a different recommendation presented at the council meeting, it's hard for us to process that in real time, particularly for communication out to businesses to know that this could be delayed again. So I think for the number of the businesses that have really been pushing on us to bring this forward, I feel like it's not fair to them that you're not hearing their voices tonight because they agreed with the recommendations in the staff report. So I just feel like it's important to share that because from a staff level perspective, we also had a lot of pressure and we really took extra time to make sure we were trying to accommodate a lot of the concerns and feedback that we have and feel like that is why we came to you tonight. So while just in general, the waiting till February wouldn't be an issue for the reasons I stated earlier, I am concerned around the timeline. And I'm also concerned that we're not fully representing some of the businesses that wanted us to come forward earlier than later so that they had ample time to go through the permitting process and construct their parklets before the termination of the temporary program. So I don't know, Rebecca, if you have some additional comments you'd like to add to that. Yeah, I just had a clarifying question as well in terms of the changes that we wanna work through on the ordinance. I'm wondering, I just wanna clarify if it's to the actual ordinance components or if it's the parklet guidelines, which we'll be bringing to the November 15th meeting for final adoption. We've shared a draft with you tonight and it's in the agenda packet. And I would love to take in that feedback and be able to incorporate that for the November 15th meeting. And the pre-approved designs, I'm meeting with our LSU architecture firm tomorrow to talk through some of the revised cost estimates that we reviewed a couple of weeks ago. So I just wanted to understand if it's components of the ordinance language or if it is the guidelines and the fee schedule. So just for my own understanding. Do you have any comment on that? Sure, I've comment on a lot of what's come up right now. Okay, on the guidelines or the fee schedule? I think all of the above. Okay. So first, this is the first time many members of the public have seen this document including council members and many members of the, many of the businesses they're here to. And this is an opportunity as many have expressed tonight for them to have a chance to really dive into this working with council members and staff to really look at some of the issues that they've brought up. It sounded like today that there had been some discussion for example with the approved design options and sounded like based on staff's communication that that was like one conversation that they had had with some businesses and that the businesses that expressed that the 50 to the 75,000 is cost prohibitive. The businesses that are here and maybe the businesses that haven't been able to get here, you know, haven't, since they've seen this for the first time, it's unclear whether they have concerns with those fee schedules. It sounded like there is some concern based on comments that have been brought up. And so the reason why the recommendation was to form the subcommittee is because it's an opportunity for council members who are very much interested in this to sit down with impacted stakeholders, to sit down with staff and have an opportunity to have a conversation of what are the concerns that they have? What are the changes they would like to see made? And there's nothing in this motion that precludes this item from coming back to council before February of 2023. So this is not saying it has to come back February 2023. It's providing flexibility so that if there needs, there's more time that's necessary that staff can push this out because we know that there's a lot going on. But I think what we've heard from the businesses here tonight and what I've been hearing, what I've been having conversations with businesses is that what they really wanted to understand was what's happening with the temporary extension? Are we gonna get another extension? And is there the process moving forward for permanency? And I think, and what's unfortunate is we don't have all this, I mean, I understand why we've separated this out, but I think that there was some discussion around the March expiration date and what one of the edits that we have before us is extending that to October. I think I've heard from other members of the public who wanna see the temporary extended out for a year after the statewide expiration of COVID, which happens February of this year. And I know that's one of the next items on our agenda. But to kind of sum all this up, there's nothing stopping this from coming back before February. I think the main thing that we've been hearing from people tonight is that they would like a chance to be able to read and absorb and understand how this is gonna impact their business. And by putting together a subcommittee to work with members of the community and with staff, it's an opportunity for us to bring something forward that everybody can agree on or get to a point where they're okay with what's gonna be coming forward. Does that conclude your? For now. Council Member Calantari Johnson. So I heard a couple of different things tonight and in my conversations over the last several months with business owners is that we do want a pathway for permanency. And I see what was brought before us tonight as that pathway to permanent permanency. I really appreciate the motion around developing a subcommittee as we look at those guidelines and look at the parklet fees. I think that's really important. But I really heard clearly from several of the businesses who spoke that this is an amazing packet. You really listen to us. I see some of what I heard from business owners that I've relayed to Bonnie, Rebecca and staff integrated in here, including the extension of that March deadline to the October so that it's an alignment with the private program and it's an alignment with what the county's doing. So I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe there is a middle ground to this motion Council Member Cummings and I'm not making a friendly commitment, I'm just an amendment, but that we proceed with the subcommittee and we do what's laid out here but we do have the first reading of that ordinance because it doesn't seem to me that the ordinance is where the challenges are. It's the details within the guidelines and the parklet fee. The ordinance would create that pathway for us to move forward and that's what I've heard really clearly both tonight and in speaking to community members along the way. So I'm just putting that out there as a comment, not ready to make a friendly amendment until we've kind of thought through it and talked through it. Thank you, Council Member Callentary Johnson, Council Member Golder. Yeah, after hearing staff's comments and other Council Member's comments, I was thinking kind of along the same lines another thought that popped into my head was that if there are businesses that are ready to go, I would hate to have them lose funding opportunities with interest rates rising and things like that. We really have to take that into account that we don't know what's gonna happen with the economy and for them to be able to establish permanence as quickly as possible if they're able then. But I do agree that it's really the details that need to be worked out. And so I'm wondering if we can come to a compromise here in that. Vice Mayor Watkins. Yeah, no, I really appreciate the comments. I do, I share the sentiment and that I think this could be really a both and and truly this is a first reading and a lot can change if I don't anticipate a lot changing, but I mean, things can change between now and the second reading. So I don't see the harm in that. I also, I do hear loud and clearly that there is concern around the delay and I share that. I think there's only one meeting in November and there's a lot of business that I'm sure will likely occur between that and then December. And there's a lot of holidays in between. And I think for me, I think just even realistically that there is concern with that being postponed. So I don't see the harm in that. I really appreciate the suggestion. If that is a friendly amendment or a substitute motion, I'm happy to second that, but I hope that we can get to that compromise because I think that's the way to go. Council Member Cummings. Just based on the discussion, I'm wondering if we can just move, we can remove that and have that as a separate. Motion that we take so we can, you know, the subcommittee, sounds like there's interest in having the subcommittee work with the fee schedule, working on exploring the extension of forgivable loans, coastal permit and process and then, you know. Design. Correct. And, but it does seem like there's some difference in the adoption of the first reading tonight. So maybe what we can do is just pull that out. We can take that as a separate motion and then that way, you know, if we can't agree on that, then that's something. So you're proposing, if I can just make sure you're clear, is that you're proposing the motion to be essentially the staff recommendation, but to encompass a subcommittee in addition to that, to really look at some of the elements you laid out. The motion would be to take the number two where it says direct staff to return to council no later than the second council meeting of February 2023 with the Parkland guidelines and Parkland fee schedule. That'd be a period. And then the rest of that with the adopting an ordinance, that would be a separate item. And so the motion could be made to adopt the ordinance tonight. I'll introduce it for publication. Yeah. You mean tonight? Yeah. So that would just be a separate motion. You don't want to incorporate that into your motion? No, because I think that might be one area of difference. Of difference. Okay. Yeah. Your problem. And I guess I could just comment if I have the floor on that. Go ahead. Yeah. And I just wanted to say that again, the reason why there's the flexibility in the language is so that if this can come to council sooner, that will provide the council with an opportunity the subcommittee to work with the businesses to have a conversation with the businesses and staff together on the ordinance language before it's adopted and to get more input from the community. But if that's something that council wants to take action on that, I'm happy to pull it out and we can have that as a separate motion. Bonnie Lipscomb, I see your hands raised. Thank you. I just, I really appreciate this recommended change. I feel like this is just seeing this now, I think, and I appreciate council member Cummings you suggesting that because I, now that I'm looking at this and look, I feel like this can really work for us. And I think working as we have all along, I think with the community, having a council and subcommittee that's rolling up their sleeves, working on that with us, that's great, particularly on the design guidelines and the park with fee schedule because that is something that, we just presented some data tonight, but we really do need to have more feedback on that. So separating that out from the ordinance, which I do think is a different process and we have spent a lot of time on that and having that first reading tonight, that it's like we can work within this timeline because I do think we have some room on the guidelines and the park with fee schedule outside of the ordinance, the first reading of the ordinance to work on that. So thank you for making that recommendation. And I also want to appreciate council member Palantari Johnson for making that observation about the guidelines as well as being a little separate from the ordinance language itself. Thank you. Okay, so we have a... I was gonna say, I haven't heard if that was acceptable to the maker of the second. We have a motion by council member Cummings, seconded by council member Golder and the change was acceptable to the maker and the second. So may we have a roll call vote, please? Council member Calantari Johnson. Aye. Golder. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Brown. Aye. Myers. Aye. Vice mayor Watkins. Aye. Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. And I'll move the first recommendation in the... First item of the recommendation, which is the motion to introduce for publication and ordinance establishing a permanent part of the program. Okay. We have a motion by vice mayor Watkins to establish an ordinance for an ordinance establishing a permanent public program citywide, seconded by council member Calantari Johnson. Any comments on that? Council member Cummings. Yeah, I'll just say for the record that while I am supportive of us having this kind of ordinance, I think that it would be in the best interest of the community. I know that a lot of community members would like to weigh in on this more before we take action tonight. And so I won't be voting in support of the ordinance as it's proposed this evening. And my hope is that between now and the second reading, that there will be an opportunity for community members to provide input and that we can incorporate that input at the time that it's heard. And I know that that also may mean that it will trigger another first reading, but my hope is that we can get some input from the community at that second reading. Thank you. Council member Calantari Johnson. Yeah, and I'll echo those sentiments. This gives us a path forward and gives us something concrete for the businesses in the community to work with. So I'd like to invite any of the businesses who wanna work directly with any one of us to reach out so that if there are changes that need in the ordinance, we have a month to work through it, or about a month. Before the November 15th second reading. Okay. Okay, may we have a roll call vote? Council member Calantari Johnson. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Cummings. No. Brown. No. Myers. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. And Mayor Brunner. Aye. That motion passes five to one. Five to two. I apologize. Council member Brown and council member Cummings. Or no. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. We will now move on to item number 18. On our agenda, this is the permanent outdoor dining program on private property. For members of the public who are streaming this meeting, if this is an item you wish to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council. We will then take public comment and return to council for deliberation and action. And with this, I would like to welcome our presenter of agenda item 18, Rebecca Unit Economic Development Manager. Thank you. All right, I'll share my screen to begin the presentation. So this is our second item on our permanent outdoor dining program updates. So looking at private property permitting. Okay, so currently we have about 21 businesses that have expressed interest in seeking permanent approval from some hours that we did last year. These include restaurants, bars, wineries, breweries. And we have worked with the planning department to do a review of sort of what the permitting process looks like under our existing codes. We've worked with individual businesses to get an understanding of sort of how those codes impact them and the process to permanence for them. And so we found that there are a number of challenges that came up in a number of permits that are required under our existing codes. So I just want to give some examples of what we found sort of most common. In a lot of cases for businesses, if they're serving alcohol or even just expanding into outdoor dining, that's triggering an administrative use permit. That is the city's sort of lowest level of discretionary permit, which goes to the zoning administrator hearing. It also has a 30 day review time initially and has a hefty fee attached to it as well. And then also a design permit can be required. We also found in instances where businesses are serving alcohol, we have a section of our code that states that if you're increasing your floor area, so the amount of space that you're serving alcohol in beyond 20% that can trigger a special use permit. And that's our highest level of discretionary review and often goes to the planning commission for approval. So a lot of these businesses who have expanded outdoors, many of them have exceeded 20%. And so that's another significant barrier and permit process that they would have to go through to get that approval. We've also seen that with the number of the businesses who are utilizing their parking areas, in some instances, their parking lot might be on an adjacent parcel. So it's not necessarily the same piece of land and under our codes. That can require either a lot line adjustment to combine those parcels together so that that permit can go with one parcel or I can require an AUP to recognize the business operating on two separate parcels. So it's another sort of barrier and permit process that business has to undertake. And then a lot of the most common challenges that we saw across businesses was really some of the restrictions around our minimum parking requirements. So based on your square footage of a seating area, you're required to provide a certain number of parking spaces on site and removing those spaces to provide more outdoor dining means that you're deficient in spaces and not able to actually expand into those areas. So sort of a high level from the common permitting challenges that we came across in that review. In response to that and some of the communication that we've had with businesses really wanting to expand onto private property, similarly with the Parklet program, they're really looking for an easier path, a streamlined permit process, lower fees, just a clear guidelines of how they can operate and be able to continue doing what they've been doing since June of 2020 and having this expanded outdoor space on their outdoor dining or on their private property. So what we are seeking direction on today is to begin the process to create a new staff level review permit under the municipal code in our community design section to establish our requirements for outdoor dining. We've reviewed a couple of cities. There's not a lot of cities have taken on sort of the private property streamlining as compared to how much cities have undertaken Parklet programs. But we have looked to some of the work that the city of Fremont has done in really creating an easy one permit process. And so looking at some of their lessons learned and what team need to Santa Cruz, we're proposing that we would establish a staff level review permit. We would have the permit run with the operator with the property owner approval. And that's really so we can just have it tied to that particular use and have the revocation suspension and modification rules providing standard operating requirements similar to sort of how we've outlined things in the Parklet but specific to the unique needs of private property spaces. So looking at reducing impacts to noise and fight sound hours of operation, keeping in mind where the businesses are located if there's a decent residential or just different uses nearby. And then because these are permanent changes on private property, there are still requirements for building permits for fixed structures or improvements. So if businesses are wanting to install roofs on any fixed seating, electrical lighting or heating, that is still a requirement but we're trying to really simplify the use approval piece of it and then enabling businesses to go through that standard building code building permit review process. Just additional information and sort of what's informing the permit development process and things that we have to keep in mind as the city is that the building and fire codes really require building permit review for permanent private property extension and some of the things that may be triggered from these extensions becoming permanent is increase in the number of restrooms or fixtures required because of that increased seating capacity. And so we're reviewing now with the businesses to make sure that those impacts won't be triggered and that can be done by either reducing indoor capacity which we know a number of businesses have already done because there's so much more demand for outdoor or just refining sort of how much space they are utilizing outdoors so that they don't need to make those bigger improvements within their space. So that's sort of just the navigation piece of what those codes are to that particular business. We'll also need to look at accessibility and ADA compliance in the outdoor seating areas for the actual seating as well as sort of how the parking lots are configured and making sure that we have those accessible routes. So if businesses are utilizing outdoor dining in areas that were once accessible parking spaces making sure that that is replaced somewhere else and that the appropriate routing is provided just making sure that that's all clearly defined and in compliance. We've also had a lot of allowances for the temporary tents and canopies under the temporary program and under the fire code those are really supposed to be limited to I believe it's no more than six months but it's really a temporary measure. And so looking at helping businesses to put in more permanent overhead structures if that's something that they wanna pursue navigating that through the building process. And similarly the electrical permit for lighting and electric heaters on private property. We do also have a number of businesses that are operating in the coastal zone on private property. So we would be reviewing this in tandem with the coastal commission as well to get their approval and work through any challenges that might impact the businesses on in the coastal zone as well. And so our recommendation for you this evening is to direct staff to make the necessary revisions to the municipal code for future council consideration in early 2023 to develop a streamlined permit for private property outdoor dining and direct staff to continue to work with the coastal commission staff to allow for the construction user operation of permanent outdoor dining on private property within the coastal zone. And I also wanna add that with this direction we would be doing outreach and coordinated meetings with the business owners in their private property spaces getting feedback on this permit process which are functional, just taking in the feedback from the last item and just acknowledging that these rules are intended to be specific and helpful to these businesses. So getting that going on in the process and as we bring it forward for council consideration. That concludes my presentation. Thank you, Rebecca unit. I'm going to bring it out to council members for any further clarifying questions, council member Golder. Okay, then I will bring it out to public comment. And at this time I will look to members virtually and in public if you're joining us virtually and would like to comment on agenda item number 18, permanent outdoor dining program on private property permitting. Now is the time to call in and press star nine to raise your hand. And there should be instructions on your screen. And I will also ask anybody in person who would like to speak to line up on the right of the dais. So our first person virtually is the name I am watching you. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Okay, thank you. Hey, I see it's a wee wee break time at the council when the public speaks once again. Wow. Anyway, recurring annual C permit fees have little private property parkless justification. This is private property that already pays property taxes on the entire property. Presumably unless they are going to remodel the parklets once approved and built, they're good to go permanently until one of several conditions occurs. Annual permit fees seem like a pure fundraising greed on the part of the city to fund its insatiable spending habits devoid of justification. Annual payments are a matter better suited to the county property appraiser via a property taxes if at all. Yes, private parking destruction is an issue and I can't imagine how it won't stay bad or get worse but then before COVID if more businesses adopt private property parking lot parkless. On the margin, the public will be a loser with more crowded street parking similar to item 17. I suppose a nominal fee for annual safety inspections makes sense but how much is there really to inspect here that can't be a few minutes of some other inspection. The matter of perpetual COVID fear mongering is a serious consideration and any permanent social distancing of outside air parklets are a reinforcing reminder, narrative and supporter of the presumption of some needed perpetual fear of closeness to other people which if not false already will become baseless soon. The day must come as rapidly as it can when people can return to hugging rubbing elbows, being close and not fleeing from other's presence. The psychologically damaged ones can still be seen around wearing masks even if outside was young missing their early social development years abound and anything that perpetuates that damage isn't a good thing. Although I will admit the public has gotten used to the luxury of quieter, spaciously spaced out tables instead of noisy crowded restaurants and bars. However, the day can't come soon enough when any social distancing or master requirements or vaccine apartheid or COVID mandated anything needs a final removal and hopefully people of reasoned principle can prevail against those with the opposite agenda. When the day comes, I hope soon I see no need for semi-practice parkless permits but I do also respect private property rights and the need for economic recovery. I have a divided mind on this proposal except for the animal fees which are pre-extortionist greed and hope some consideration to parking congestion can be solved, thanks. Thank you for your comment. Our next member of the public is the name Karen Madura. Go ahead and press star six to unmute yourself. Let's see, Karen, go try pressing star six to unmute or use the unmute feature in your webinar controls. There we go. Hi, my name is Karen Madura and I just wanted to speak out in support of these patios and I don't have a lot of time because I'm busy right now but I really appreciate the city council taking the time to meet with all of us and to do this for everyone. Thank you very much, good evening. Thank you so much. And so sorry. Our next member of the public here in person, welcome. Welcome back. All right, thanks for having me again. I realize now I got up too soon but to circle back and I've learned more since then I think I thought that with the private, I'm sorry the public spaces we were going to kind of amend that to a private property and I'm kind of seeing now that it's a whole another monster that maybe you guys might have less control over because it's not your land which brings up my biggest concern which is planning and public works and all types of fun stuff. And I'm concerned now, going back to we're looking at early next year on just getting back in like just even getting close to what I just saw with public. I'm asking you guys to please understand that we have these relationships with our landlords right now that are in like, it's not just me, it's a lot of other people. It's so shaky. You know, we have certain amount of years left even and we don't even know if we're gonna be able to bring negotiate with our landlords based on what they're gonna want. I mean, time is, when I say time is money, I really mean that. Also, we've been, we're half-assing what we're putting into our patios right now with temporary seating, our plants, we can't put a lot of money into them because we don't know how long we're gonna have them. You guys already know this. And for the real stuff on what we wanna do with these properties, we don't wanna keep half-assing it. We wanna go big and make it nice and permanent. Yes, we're willing to even pay more rent. We're willing to increase our landlord's property value. I think they're up for that too. But as you know, it's gotta be realistic. I'm looking at 150 to 250,000. It's not realistic. So I was really hoping that we would have something a little more clear about how we're gonna work with planning and zoning as that is everybody's biggest concern. You guys have all been amazing in your vision, shared vision for our private property. But yeah, I'm back to being concerned for sure. I feel like we're having a really, actually, I don't know, we made a lot of progress, but the private guys are concerned right now. I'm kind of feeling like we're bringing another year. Makes it extremely difficult. But thank you guys still, and we will be in touch. Thank you for your comment. We have a virtual hand raised, Alex Groshensen. Go ahead and... Hi, good evening again. And I wanted to echo, again, I have many friends who run businesses in the town and some of them run them on the private property. And one of the concerns is that there isn't a very clear set of rules and they keep shifting. And investment is hard when rules keep shifting. Dealing with the permit department is very challenging, of course. And I know that right now I believe that the deadline is expiring in March for private property. Oh, and probably should be extended. And they're, again, getting funding, getting loans is expensive. And to echo Max's concern, businesses with private property outdoor public spaces should get equal support to the businesses with parklets on public parking lots. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. Are there any other members of the public that would like to speak to item number 18? I just want to add a creative thought. I hope that it is creative and not just a total waste of your time. I'm really concerned when I see the inflation, the cost of food, when I see what business owners are going through, knowing some things about food, accessibility, knowing that food not bombs is going on close to something like 1,000 days of being the main hot meal for hundreds and hundreds of people in the city. And it's in a difficult place. It's on public property, but it's difficult for a lot of people. They don't like it. So I just want to ask also that the city maybe consider maybe the homeless garden project in conjunction with the city could start a food program and perhaps it could be educational where people could learn to cook like from Cabrillo College. And I think that the city should start to be in a meal provision service to some extent so that we don't have the effort that I see food not bombs providing is amazing, but it's a really small staff that's going to this outlandish amount of personal effort to provide this meal to hundreds of people. And I know it's not agreeable to a lot of people in the city. So all's I'm really doing is inserting at this moment because it might be an opportunity to ask for the businesses to have their needs streamlined, but also to really think about who are the people that are getting these meals provided for. I mean, that's great. It's a business. If it's an out of town person, whoever it is, but we have real hunger issues in the city. We are facing food shortages from what I hear. And I just hope that the council will start to really think about maybe some creative program to employ people. It's just maybe a city program to provide a hot meal for people at a low cost. And to consider that as you're considering things like this, if not tonight or in conjunction with this particular process, because that would probably just slow the whole thing down, but to consider it at another time. And I just appreciate your time. And I hope I haven't wasted it too much. Thank you. Thank you for your comment. It looks like that concludes our public comment. And so I would like to bring it back to council. And, I'm happy to make it. Did you have something? Go ahead. We're looking for vice vice mayor Watkins. And I, you also have your, yeah, go ahead. I'm just happy for the purposes of moving this along. I'm happy to make the make the motion to, which is essentially the recommendation, which is to direct staff to make the necessary revisions to the municipal code for future council consideration in early 2023. To develop a streamlined permit for private property, outdoor dining and direct staff to continue to work with the coastal commission staff to allow for the construction use and operation of permanent outdoor dining on private property within the coastal zone. Now, second with one minor friendly amendment, which would be the, since in the last, in the last item that was heard, there was the establishment of subcommissioned and given that there is concern from business owners about how long this is taking, you know, having that work done in conjunction with the small business owners and with the subcommittee with the staff seems like it'd be a good way for us to make sure we're all staying on track to actually making sure we're coming up with something that's going to be brought forward to the community sooner than later. And so I would just add that in addition to directing staff that they work with stakeholders, and subcommittee to make the necessary revisions and everything else would stay the same within the staff recommendation. Is that amenable to the... Yeah, I think that was implied by Rebecca also that she would continue to work with the staff and the community and the subcommittee and the council to get this moving to expedite the process. So, yeah, happy to do that more specifically with the friendly amendment. And then I just have a comment. I just had to get one too. Okay. So we have a motion by Vice Mayor Watkins a second by Cummings with a minor friendly amendment to have the language included that staff will work with subcommittee and stakeholders to make the necessary revisions to the municipal code. Okay, so I'm going to bring this out to comments and is that clear to staff? To Rebecca and Pony, you'll be working on this. Okay. Council Member Calantari-Johnson. Yeah, just thank you for your comment and it just goes to the previous agenda item that there really is urgency. I've heard loudly and clearly from many business members that they want a clear pathway and they want it yesterday and I know staff has worked so hard for so long to get us there. So just that confirms the vote we just took around the moving forward with the ordinance and I'm happy to see that we're moving forward in this way. I heard loud and clear the extension of the timeline which is our next agenda item and a clear pathway with guidelines and an ordinance right away. So thank you for you've got a lot of work to do. Thank you for being here and making your comments and thank you to the work that staff has done. Thank you. Council Member Calantari-Johnson. Council Member Cummings. I just want to, you know, again, thank staff and thank members of the public who've spoken up about this many, many times because, you know, we've provided direction in the past for us to work on this and I think some of the emails that we've gotten have just demonstrated that, you know, for moving forward with permanent programs on private property, there's a lot of challenges that we don't have with the public right of ways and I know there's been a lot of emphasis on the public right of way, you know, ordinances, but the people who are operating their businesses on private property really want to see us making advancements on this and so I'm happy to see that there will be a subcommittee working directly with business owners so they're not constantly asking us, hey, what's going on, what's moving forward and we're just kind of like, well, we'll talk to staff. I think us working in collaboration on this will really help us make some meaningful strides forward and will help us as we try to expedite this private program to move forward. So I just want to thank everybody for their ongoing input and for their, for them pushing us to actually start moving this forward. Thank you. The one thing I would just add to that is the importance of also communicating early on with our staff and with our colleagues to make sure that we have these things in place from the very beginning so as we move forward there's things, there's a lot of opportunity for these ideas to come forth with having staff input early on so that we can have an informed discussion with everybody in the know. So those are just my additional comments. Great and I would just like to say thank you to all of the restaurants outdoor dining businesses that were able to meet and talk with me and were able to meet and talk with staff and share some of the challenges on private property. I know it included everything from fencing and signage and grease traps and sprinkler systems, lighting, heaters, et cetera and I think because each location has unique needs and different triggers based on state law, I know it has been challenging to make one kind of blanket solution so I hope that each business will continue to receive that one-on-one work through what their vision is and what their needs are and that our city staff can really be a support to them moving forward to really encourage and say and show that we want to see you succeed. We're here for you, what do you need, what do you want and how can we get you there? So I think that's really important for the private property businesses that are really struggling with that. Council Member Myers. Yeah, I guess I just, I want to think the businesses that came out tonight and I'm glad we're moving forward with the permanent or the public, excuse me, for the privately held properties. And yeah, I guess, you know, what I'm hearing is that folks have been waiting for some, you know, just direction and overall sort of process-based actions that they can take and so just want to be cautionary that we can over, over, sometimes overdue on our process in terms of, you know, reaching out and, you know, especially during the holidays we're going to lose a couple months and I know it's going to be February and I just hope that this, you know, through scheduling very busy people that this, you know, doesn't kind of stall out in a few months from now, you know, businesses in the private part haven't moved forward in the way that they want. So I appreciate the work by our staff and I'm getting the message loud and clear that folks want some clarity, I think on both sides and I'm hoping that our staff can really think about this industry-blind vision that is in the staff report and that, you know, we do want to try to get these business owners stabilized in what they're investing in and have some permanency in what they're going to be able to put on the property. So I appreciate the work that everybody did. Thank you. Okay. Are there, does that conclude council comments, discussion? Okay. We have a motion by Vice Mayor Watkins seconded by Council Member Cummings with a minor friendly amendment. May we have a roll call vote please? Council Member Callentary Johnson. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Cumming. Brown. Aye. Myers. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. Mayor Brunner. Aye. Anyways, prior comments to arms is a amendment from Vice Mayor Watkins. You're not~] unanimously. Thank you. Okay. Our next agenda item is agenda item 19 permanent outdoor dining program update. First reading of an ordinance amending un codified ordinance 2020-27 extending temporary use of certain adjacent public street and outdoor areas for we're back in your economic development manager. Hey number three our final item I thank you very much again for hearing this item so this is our discussion of extension of our temporary outdoor expansion programs so that covers all of our outdoor uses that we've approved throughout the pandemic so just I'm gonna go through this based on where the outdoor expansions are located so just a refresher I showed this earlier on but temporary outdoor expansion parklets this is the location of our current temporary permit holders which you are very well versed in now and then we have our you know as we were talking about this extension and the work that we're doing on the parklet ordinance and the feedback that we received earlier this evening this was our draft timeline that we pulled together just to talk through sort of how we're envisioning this transition period going so just you know looking at the timeline that we originally projected of November 15th second reading with the ordinance taking effect December 15th we are also still proposing and this is a recommendation we welcome feedback on having a permanent parklet application deadline of March 31st so that we know what businesses are ready to move forward with their permanent parklets and be able to you know support those permit reviews through the transition period to enable them to construct by the proposed temporary permit expiration date of October 31st of next year we also want to look at that March 31st date still as an opportunity to make some changes some of the public safety health safety and welfare impacts in the downtown and looking at removing some of the tents and canapes removal of the inactive parklets and underutilized parklet areas and so that is we welcome your feedback on that at the conclusion of this presentation and then in terms of the temporary outdoor dining on private property as I just shared in the previous item you know we do have 21 businesses that are seeking permanent approval and operating their temporary outdoor dining spaces and we also have been talking with the county about how they're approaching some code changes towards private property outdoor dining and they're currently extending their permits until October 31st 2023 as well and all of the permits are on private property they don't have any public permits in their temporary program and as we shared in the last presentation we're also going to be working on that new permit process another part of our item today is discussion around the Cathcart Street temporary closure so when we started the program in June of 2020 we also created this temporary partial closure of Cathcart Street just for the restaurants and businesses in that area extending into into the street closure we also previously had had a street closure on the 1100 block of Pacific Avenue between Lincoln and Cathcart Street and that was a full closure of that area which allowed the businesses to extend into the street and really expand their outdoor dining we did a review of that in late 2021 and and recommended removal based on some of the conflicts around some of the business uses access for residents in that area and some of the public safety access as well we've been reviewing Cathcart Street as well with our with our colleagues in fire and public works and there has been a recommendation to move to maintain the expiration of the Cathcart Street closure at the end of this year and we've been talking with the businesses and talking through you know the impacts around the closure and the impacts their business as well so I want to talk through some of the points that we've put together as staff in terms of making this decision or making this recommendation to council for consideration so you know this is largely coming from our colleagues in the fire department from their experience and sort of level of service as they're navigating through this partial closure or around it in terms of the public safety challenges Cathcart Street is the only direct two-way east-west street that connects Cedar Pacific in front and that's really critical to their emergency response and the one-way layout really cuts off a major eastbound route for them the Cathcart Street is also crucial in terms of fire access to some of our multi-level residential buildings on Pacific Avenue so it does provide direct access towards 10-tent Pacific University Town Center El Centro Apartments and Gularte Apartments and then another impact is the one-way traffic results in increased response time increased hazard traveling opposite of traffic and reversing the lane still has those same impacts of sort of the hazard of that one-way traffic and opposite driving. We've also consulted with public works and received feedback around the circulation and some of the construction activity downtown and what we're seeing from those impacts and really having the two-way traffic is critical for connectivity and circulation with construction that's occurring downtown right now with a lot of the new developments. Those developments don't have a lot of room for staging on site and also they're having a lot of trucks come into the downtown area to deliver supplies or performance options for that construction and with the closure on Cathcart there are some reroutes that are needing to occur into residential neighborhoods and we have heard they've heard some complaints from residents around these large trucks traveling on their residential streets and sort of the vibration of of those in their homes and then also looking at this from a business equity perspective as we are working on implementation of the permanent parking lot program you know we did remove the 1100 block closure previously and required those businesses to sort of cut down on their spaces and with the permanent parking lot program there will also be some reductions in number of spaces or utilization of the parking area that or result in loss of table space and we would also support the businesses on Cathcart applying for and using additional parking spaces within their frontage, excuse me, temporarily and long term. And so we have a recommendation for you this evening. We also shared a revised temporary ordinance reflecting the change in the expiration date for the public right of way users so our recommendation is to adopt an amendment to uncodified ordinance 2020-27 extending temporary use of certain adjacent public streets and outdoor areas for eligible businesses that extends the temporary program for commercial use in the public right of way currently set to expire at the end of this December through October 31st 2023 and similarly extending the temporary period for commercial use on private property from the end of this December through October 31st 2023 and maintains the expiration date of December 31st 2022 for the partial closure of Cathcart streets. We're also requesting Council direction to return to the City Council on November 15th of the timeline for transition to permanence for Parklets in the public right of way, including an application deadline, removal of inactive Parklets health safety and welfare adjustments and attendant fee schedule for consideration for the temporary permits. And with that, I will take the sheets. Thank you. Thank you, Rebecca unit. I have a quick question. I'm curious on the Cathcart Street why it's not recommended to align it with the extension of the the Parklet program. Yes, so the concerns that I laid out in the presentation is really why we're recommending that early removal. I mean, in consultation with the Fire Department, especially throughout this year, even early on in this year, they were really requesting for earlier than December expiration of that closure. And we do also have Tim Shields here and Nathan from Public Works as well to answer questions. Great. Thank you. Welcome, Tim Shields. Welcome, Nathan, you and Public Works and Fire Department here. Yes. Good evening, Mayor, Reiner and Council members. You know, Public Works has felt very strongly that we want to maintain the two way access on Cathcart Street for quite some time. And so during the closure with during the pandemic, the closure of Civic Avenue, once I got reinstated, we felt that we want to reinstate Cathcart as well at the same time. Again, there's a lot of development that's happening in the downtown area right now that you guys are well aware of. There's many different traffic, temporary traffic control plans that are being implemented and will be implemented with the development with the construction of the Riverfront Project, the Cedar, the Cedar Center Project, as well as you still have pure water paving and then with the future development of Metro Station, etc. So we really want to push forward getting the two way traffic operation and circulation back so that we can get the maintain access and allow for again this different types of construction staging in this upcoming year. Thank you. Does fire have anything to add to that? I think Rebecca hit all the points pretty well and I appreciate that. Thank you and thank you Council members for having us here today. It's just one of those things where when the COVID pandemic happened, we made a lot of concessions in terms of life safety to allow these parklets to happen, which is great. I think it was a fantastic thing for the city. But as we look into the future, we've been asking for this to open up for an extended period of time, understanding the impacts to businesses. We keep allowing concessions, but at some point we're going to have to draw the hard line and open these roads up. As Rebecca mentioned, it is a key route 1100 block of Pacific and there are several multi residential multi store buildings there. It's also a key route to Front Street where we actually did have a fire today inside one of the vacant structures. So things like that just is ours on the forefront of our response in our response times. And it does become difficult responding. Opposing traffic is never a safe thing. And one of our biggest concerns in public safety are vehicle accidents. It's very dangerous component of our job. And it also increases response time. So those are considerations that we've we've looked at. And it's something that we would recommend as well. Thank you. Thank you. I have one more question for Rebecca and the the Cathcart Street businesses there. So in this proposal, Cathcart Street would open back up. They would lose their seating until they could build extended parklet areas outside. Is that what how that would affect them? Yeah, I mean, it would definitely be an impact to the number of seats that they have total there. But we would support, you know, either shifting the barricades that they have in place now into the parking spaces along their frontage and extending along the street rather than out into the street. Or we can provide some of the barriers that we have at the city as well. But you know, yeah, if they would lose seats, but not that they would need to construct a full parklet, you know, right away, we would allow them to operate in that temporary manner just within the parking spaces. Okay, thank you for clarifying that. I will open it up for other council members and Council Member Callentari Johnson. Thank you, Maria. You asked one of my questions around this December is right around the corner. So what does that mean for the businesses that are there? And do they then lose all of their outdoor space? That's still not really clear. It sounds like no. So they would have a they would. What I'm understanding is they would be able to do a temporary parklet. And we would help them with that. So if you could just confirm that. And then my other question is a fire marshal Tim Shields. If we were to consider flipping the direction so that we were going from the fire department to the east side, so the directions the other way, if we flipped it, what are the public safety impacts and considerations there? Are they the same? Or would it reduce it if we were to flip the direction the other way? So those two questions. I'll go I'll go ahead and hit the first point or actually your second point. Where I'm not a traffic engineer, and I leave that to public works in terms of doing traffic studies in terms of reversing the lane. The way that would work, though, it would be I think confusing because then you would be traveling and crossing to opposing traffic basically for normal traffic to go eastbound into Pacific. And so that I think that would increase the danger and risk safety by doing that. But again, I'd have to defer to public works in terms of like a traffic type study. Again, it's one lane again. And anytime that we're responding lights and sirens, people have to pull over and if it's a single lane, there's nowhere for someone to go to pull over. So that's another one of them. Yeah, I would say that it's, you know, it's a balance here that we're trying to strike. We do want to maintain this two way access on Cathcart. And it's kind of more about and more about if not if but when we want to reopen that street and we've really had that thing closed down for over sounds like about a year and a half now due to the pandemic. And for us in public works, we just know that that Cathcart is going to be that critical access between front Pacific and center. As Tim has to noted, now that the closure of the temporary closure right now of Cathcart, if we reduce it or we take reinstate the two way traffic on Cathcart, it doesn't eliminate the the Parklet on Cathcart, but it does reduce it drastically because currently it's extended from the sidewalk all the way out into the center of the street. And so in reversing the direction what Tim was mentioning is that currently it operates with normal travel lane with the westbound on the north side. So it doesn't look like you're traveling in the wrong direction. But if we were to try to reverse that, we would have to reverse all the traffic as well with the parking on the north side and to be driving in that in that westbound lane. Thank you. And Rebecca, you don't mind the first question just confirming I mean, I heard earlier 56 seats would be lost from one business. I know there are other businesses that use that space. So what does what does that mean for those businesses? How are we helping them not lose all those seats and potentially lay off employees and lose revenue and all of that? Yeah, so there there is additional frontage adjacent to loop or excuse me adjacent to Hula's as you're traveling east on Cathcart. Next to the there's some store frontage that is not, you know, publicly accessible necessarily. And so we could extend their parking spaces in that direction. So let me I can look into the exact number, but it is an additional number of spaces. And then on Cedar Street, there are three parking spaces that loop low had previously had as part of the temporary permit, and they weren't utilizing it because they were really focused on the partial closure area. And we would be a supportive of reinstating those additional spaces for loop low so that they can retain some of the additional seating. I just need to confirm the number of spaces adjacent to Hula's that we'd be able to provide. Rebecca, do you know how many seats are in the the existing pre pandemic parklets that Hula's and loop low have? Does they have those pre pandemic parklets? So essentially it would be lengthwise instead of widthwise where the expansion for them would be so 56 seats would be reduced to what 24 or like, what is that how significant of a reduction? It's likely, yeah, 24 seats, potentially more because they'd be able to utilize the full parking space with it temporarily. But if they did go towards the permanent, then there would be a little bit of reduction in the setback area. Okay. Council Member Myers, thank you. Thank you, Mayor. I just had a question. I believe it was Mr. Mc. I think it was Ian that mentioned this, this idea of utilizing the spaces on the other side to gain some some width. And I'm just looking on my Google Earth, trying to see if that would work. So I'm just curious about fire and everybody's response to that. So my understanding was that they would basically try to purchase those, maybe I don't know what they would do. But the idea is that they would use those spots across the street so they could, you know, move out a little bit on the away from the singular linear that we're proposing. So I'm just curious if there's could just get some feedback for the stuff on that. You guys understand what I'm saying? I would if you look at it from the sky. Thank you, Nathan. Yeah, happy to, happy to respond to that. Thank you, Council Member Myers. I believe Ian did reach out to Public Works and I believe even buyer staff to discuss the idea of reinstating two way by incorporating the four parking spots on the north side of Cathcart. And so we did explore that idea with them and asked them if they wanted to actually hire a traffic engineer to develop that design. We would be open to discussing that with them to create that two way access. Now, it's very likely that there would be a bit of a jog in the roadway between center and Pacific. And so we have to make sure and that's the reason why we wanted to make sure that an engineering firm reviewed that it was good with fire to make sure that we still had that two way access. But that is something that would be that was discussed and again to be, you know, additional four parking stall losses on the north side, but it could be explored within this segment to maintain two way. And sorry, I'm going to jump in real quick. Yeah, sorry. Go ahead, Tim. All we're really looking for is the two way access and for us, you know, whether or not you move, you move the entire thing over where we would support that. So I guess my, you know, my, I guess my thought on that is, you know, December 31st feels like a pretty fast time. I think, you know, Ian's been a great long time running and really any business that was trying to problem solve this particular area with us, I would say the same thing of. But yeah, I mean, I would be potentially interested in making a motion to see if we could extend that, look at some of this other possibility and do a little bit of work together and maybe not, maybe not have this end quite so quickly. So I would be happy to shape that motion after other questions. Thank you. Council Member Brown. Yeah, thank you. I guess I just wanted to, kind of building on Council Member Meyers' point here. You know, I agree. I feel like this is something that it is, it's very soon. This is a solid business in our community. And so I would support that absolutely. Should you choose to craft a motion? And I guess I wanted, so I wanted to ask Nathan, you said, well, we've let them know they can hire a traffic consultant or a traffic engineer. And that can be expensive. It is expensive. And you know, we've been hearing from businesses talking about making these investments and the risk involved in that. And this seems to be one where there would be significant risk because a traffic engineer may not give a report that is to public work satisfaction. You know, lots of things could happen. And so I guess I'm just wondering if there's a way that we can try to think about how to do that kind of assessment in a way that seems doable for the business. Yeah, thank you, Council Member Brown. Yeah, it is one of those situations where most often we try to ask the developer or the business to propose a plan that works for them, that works for us. And so they oftentimes will take on that risk, as you mentioned, that we don't necessarily want to design temporary traffic control plans. For instance, for a lot of development projects, we actually have them design that we review and look at it. But we don't ultimately want to take responsibility for that design. And so that's part of the challenge about being the local agency proposing the design versus having it being submitted and then reviewed and approved. And if I could just add, understood, but at the same time, we're talking about it. And that makes sense when we're talking about a property owner. This is a business owner who's leasing the space. So it's just, it's a different arrangement and a different risk calculation, I guess. We can most certainly reach out to the business owner again or they can reach out to us again if they wanted to explore a design. And if something that we could work out in a two-way, to reopen it in a two-way fashion with the rest of staff here, we could bring it back to Council for you guys to review and really give that approval as a part of that design immunity process. Okay. If I could also add, just going back to Council Member Calentari-Johnson's question as well, just on track with this discussion, I did look at the number of parking spaces and there are approximately four spaces that who else could potentially use. And in reviewing, I believe that it gets them either the same amount of tables are very close. However, I don't know that I'm for sure. So I also want to suggest that as we go back to speak with the business owners, we also just do that evaluation of how much seating they could provide within the parking spaces as well, just to do that full audit of the two options available. Okay. Council Member Meyers. Is there any other questions? Otherwise, I'm just going to try to make a motion. I have one other question. We have to go out to public. Right. Yeah. I just have one other question. Rebecca, are there additional sites or are there additional parking spaces that Lupalo would have along their Cedar Street beyond the two? So could they, would they be eligible to potentially go a little further down that? I think there's four spaces there, right? Yeah. I believe it's three or four. Yeah. There's at least three before you hit the curb cut to go into the little parking lot, right? And we do have to have some clearance from the corner, but yeah, there are absolutely spaces on Cedar Street that we would allow them to use, and they did have access to them previously and requested us to remove them because they weren't using them. So we would definitely support bringing that back. And, you know, depending on, you know, sort of the usage between the neighbors, there are spaces in front of Spokesman and the hair salon there as well. However, I want to also reserve that for their use too, but just to, you know, we'll look at any of those spaces available for accommodation. Okay. Yeah, I'm happy to hear the public. Yeah. And I just, you brought up a point about the Cedar Street spaces that I hope when staff is looking at this, I remember those three spaces on Cedar Street, that loop below had prevented 515 kitchen and cocktails from getting their spaces in front. The two spaces in front of their business because of turn access, I believe. And so, you know, looking at how they, yeah, how it all fits together. Yeah, we can revisit that as well, just to make sure that the complimentary. I'll wait till I have to put it. Your question. Yes, Council Member Cummings. I have a question within regards to the, how this all fits with the ordinance that was just adopted for a first reading tonight, because my understanding from what came before council is that a business would be allowed up to two spaces and that a business could not encroach on another business's parking spaces unless they receive permission from that neighboring business. So I guess some of the concern that I have is that it sounds like if loop below were to expand on to Cedar Street, that that would be four spaces because they'd be taken up two in front, two on Cedar. And if there's any interest in moving them in front of the hairdresser or spokesman, they would need to get permission from those two businesses in order to expand their footprint. That's correct. Yeah, I'm not guaranteeing the spaces in front of spokesman or the hair salon. That would certainly have to be with authorization of those neighbors. But the Cedar Street site is all within loop below's frontage, so there's not the neighbor approval needed there. Okay, I was just, I just wanted to make sure that that was clear because it didn't, based on the conversation we're having right now, it seemed like there's the potential for moving in front of those two businesses, but that has actually depended upon those businesses being okay with the expansion of other businesses into those spaces. Absolutely. Okay. Okay. Council Member Meyers. Did you want to, I'm okay. Did you want to take that to public? You're done with your question. Okay. So at this time, I'm going to go out to public comment. We are on agenda item 19. So we will take public comment on agenda item 19. Permanent outdoor dining program update, first reading of an ordinance amending uncodified ordinance 2020-27. Extending temporary use of certain adjacent public street and outdoor areas for eligible businesses. And let's see if there's virtual attendees, there's one hand raised. And any members of the public who wish to speak on this item, please. Great. Why don't you step forward and welcome. Sounds like we might extend to October. I'm just going to throw it out there because we did not get the same quality packet, I would say, as the public space. Two years would be so unbelievably helpful for temporary. I'm just going to throw it out there. It gives us time to make our places nice again. One year is really divided by 12, and it's like, it goes quick. Throw it out there. I'll take five years. Thank you. Okay. We have one virtual hand raised, and that is the name I am watching you. Go ahead and press start. Thank you. I'd say give the public right-of-way Parklix exceptions a well-considered fair, but definite end date, and then be done with public right-of-way invasive Parklix. As I said before, it's fascist. Ask yourself, would you grant me a permanent control of my home's adjacent public parking space if the price was right? I'm thinking, yeah, you can all be bought. Isn't this a way of converting emergency powers and resulting COVID fear mongering into a permanent cash cow and a permanent COVID fear mongering? What public assets are you going to sell next to feed your spending habits? Ask yourself, if you can reassign who controls use of public property, what stops you from reassigning private property control? Again, as I said many times before, what other cities do is never, ever, never, ever in itself, any justification whatsoever to copy anything ever. Didn't your mom ever teach you that just because Johnny does something, it doesn't justify you have to? The French laundry emperor Newsom said the COVID emergency will be over sometime next year, the last state to do so. But like Charleston Heston said, Newsom should be more honest and say, the people will have to prime my emergency powers in my dead cold hands or perhaps in the election if they wise up, which I doubt. All this is extending emergency authority way past its expiration in a special interest extravaganza. It sure might be good for some, but it is devoid of American principles. Thanks. Thank you for your comment. It looks like that concludes the virtual attendees. Bringing back, I just wanted to say that temporary use located on private property and in public right of way will expire on October 31st, 2023. And what has been brought in the private property permitting is revisions to the municipal code for consideration in early 2023. But the temporary use is also extended to October 31st, 2023. So at this time with agenda item 19, council member Myers, you had a motion. You'd like to. Sure. So I'm going to go ahead and make a motion put something out there on the floor to go ahead and go with the staff recommendation to introduce your publication on an ordinance, the revised recommendation. But I do have one change to add. Introduce your publication in ordinance amending on codified ordinance number 2020-27, extending temporary use of a certain adjacent public street and outdoor areas for eligible businesses that extends the temporary period for commercial use in the public right of way currently set to expire at the end of this December through October of 2023, October 31st, 2023. And I'd like to put up here just for discussion. I'd like to for B, look at extending the temporary period for commercial use on private property from the end of this December, actually for six more months past October 2023. So that would be November, December, January, February, March, 2023. Four. Sorry, 24. Exactly. And I'll explain a little bit about that. And then I heard from our staff that maybe some time exploring with the loop below and who was folks might be worthwhile. I'd like to see our resource kind of come into that discussion in terms of, you know, our engineering staff and, you know, see how far we can get. Those are both really important. That whole block is full of very important businesses. And so I'd really like at minimum, I would like to extend that expiration date actually to March 31, 2020, 2023 with a possibility of extension if a resolution is reached around a new design that accommodates safety, public safety concerns. Is that okay, Bonnie? That's that. So, sorry. Motion to maintain. So the third would be maintain the expiration date, excuse me, extend the expiration date to March 31, 2023 for the partial closure of Cathcart Street to and direct staff to work with property owners to assess redesign to accommodate public safety and traffic flow concerns. And just, I just want to comment a little bit on why I want to give the private property folks just to rereading everything. And now you have a dynamic where you're you're also dealing with a landlord. You know, I do and I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I'm also trying to balance this with the need to have some of these spaces that are somewhat kind of falling apart a little bit. And, you know, there's not uniformity across all the private spaces, unfortunately. So, you know, I think if we can sort of make a cut in the middle to give you guys a little more time. And then also recognize that some spaces really are sort of not really probably going to move forward and they're sort of sitting out there in a not very, you know, especially useful, you know, look right now. So I'm just trying to give you guys a little more time and definitely acknowledge your concerns. And hopefully that will give us a little more time. I'm happy to find out from our staff if this is going to be a big problem. Just if you have any comments on that and then I'll be quiet. Thanks. That was quite a motion. We had a motion by Council Member Meyers seconded by Vice Mayor Watkins. And I'm not... Are we there? Could we read back the changes to the draft ordinance? Yes, I'm not quite clear on all of that. So if... I'm going off the recommendation. If we can pull up the recommendation and see what that is. And then I'd like to hear from staff on those impacts and Council Member Cummings. You would be next. I believe that was reflected in the new version of the ordinance we got. So A is pretty much consistent. B was where we were going to extend the temporary career for commercials on private property from the end of this December through March. C is correct. Sorry. C looks right. And then D was direct staff to work with property owners. It would be, I guess, property owners and business owners on CAFGART to assess design to accommodate public safety and traffic concerns. Council Member Meyers, if I may add on D, if we can say two-way traffic at the very end, accommodate public safety and two-way traffic. To accommodate public safety and two-way traffic. Add that in the front there. And if we can add business owners. Yeah, with business and property owners to assess design to accommodate public safety and two-way traffic on CAFGART Street. And you can add on CAFGART Street there at the end of that sentence on D. Thanks, Bonnie. Okay. Thanks for pulling up that motion. And now, Rebecca, unit, do you have any... I'm supportive of that motion. We can continue to... Yeah, that timing looks good. I don't know if Tim Shield is available on the timing, but I think just having that additional extension and to find that final resolution that works well for the city's needs. Yeah, I would support that recommendation. What was that? I didn't hear you. I support that recommendation as well. Okay, thank you. Okay, we have a first and a second. On this motion and Council Member Cummings, you had a comment, question? Yeah, I guess one thing that I just want to put out there is that, you know, since 2020 has happened, we've had this saying that we're all in this together. COVID is not going anywhere. This is going to be our second winner, where we'll have more businesses open. And last winter, we saw the biggest spike since the beginning of COVID in terms of the number of cases. In public. And I think right now, our number one concern around public health and safety is ensuring that we're creating opportunities for people to be out in public and be safe from catching COVID. I appreciate the motion that's before us. I do think though that, you know, given that the governor's exploration for the statewide state of emergency is February of 2024, I was actually thinking maybe to extend it a year past that, I actually like the extension of the March 2024 deadline and would maybe make a motion to amend that the dates that have been proposed, the expirations would all be March 2024. And so if you bring the motion language back up, another one that Donna just proposed. So the amendment would just be that, you know, C would also be March 21st, 2024 and A would also be March 31st, 2024. So all the dates would, for the expiration, would coincide with one another around March 2024. I actually liked the idea that was brought before us by the member of the public saying, you know, two years for private property. I don't know if we'll get that support, but I think at a minimum, if we can all, you know, be on board, as we've been saying, like, you know, we're all in this together, we all have the same, all the businesses have the same dates. It can be revisited if we need to make an extension, but trying to keep everything kind of aligned seems like it would be a good approach for us to move forward. So that's my motion to amend. It's a motion to amend. Amend or? It's not a friendly. I can do a friendly amendment. If it's not acceptable, we can make a motion. Well, yeah, I mean, I think what I'm hearing is that we've, we've, we're trying to move out of this temporary period. And the more time we add on to the temporary period, there's some people that are going to be happy with that, and then there's other people that are not going to be happy with that because many people kind of want to know what the reality is going to be sooner rather than later. And so I, yeah, I'm not, I'm not really going to, I'm not in favor of accepting it for a, I think it makes sense to give again, because a lot of, you know, to the gentleman who's been here all evening with us, you know, he has said several times, you know, he saw the packet, he wants a packet, you know, and he didn't, you know, we didn't have the details for what he's looking for. So I think giving that additional time to March 31, 2024, with the potential difficulties with private properties, you know, I think that makes a lot of sense. We could always give them a little more time, but, you know, I think it gives us focus on the private property side. It doesn't keep you extending the public right-of-way thing, because we do need to kind of understand and get that wrapped up. And then I think we've given, you know, a good amount of time for our staff to sit down with some of the owners on calf cart and the businesses and try to work something out that may work. So I feel like we're at a good place personally, and I definitely appreciate the thought about trying to get everybody on the same timeline, but I think actually people, a lot of places aren't on the same timeline. And so we have to kind of acknowledge sort of the breadth of people that need to have assurity. So that's what I tried to do in crafting that. Appreciate the offer. I'm going to decline those. Okay, so the amendment has been declined. So I'm going to make that as a motion to amend. Okay, so is there a second? Yeah, I'll second that, and if I could make a comment. Okay, go ahead. So I, you know, I support this, and I recognize the, you know, Council Member Myers, the concerns that you're expressing, you know, and I agree. And I guess I just am feeling that given the way that this is rolling out that I'm not seeing anything in an extension that would actually prevent businesses from moving forward. We've, there's an ordinance on a first reading. So there's nothing that would, by giving some folks extra time wouldn't necessarily mean that others aren't going to have that level of certainty if they want to move forward more rapidly. So I guess that, but there are businesses that are going to have, because they're just unique situations, different landlords, different, you know, just different circumstances. And so, you know, it seems to me that giving them more time and less panic about this seems reasonable. So that's why I'm going to support this. Thank you, Council Member Brown. I just wanted to express extreme concern on C to extend it to March 2024 after we just received comments from our fire and public works regarding two-way traffic. I think in this current motion, it gives that opportunity to work on that particular location with that issue. So extending it out another year is concerning. I think the work needs to happen, and then we can move forward with a safety element there for emergency response. So extending it to, I'm happy to see an extension from December. I felt like from what we heard tonight from businesses, December would have been an impact to those Cathcart Street businesses. So I don't, I won't be supporting that amendment, that motion to amend. You know, I had the same concerns that we don't want to, you know, further risk health and safety at this point. And I think there's also, you know, if there needs to be a conversation around an additional month to work out whatever, I don't think it precludes that option either. So I too am comfortable with how it's written and won't be supporting the amendment. Yeah, and I'll just kind of give my reasoning on A. You know, I think the balance that we're trying to realize right now is that is the word public right of way. And to provide an extension, you know, I think through October 31st, 2023 is very reasonable. But ultimately, we do need to sort of, you know, settle down our public rights away. You know, we heard some of these comments tonight. So those are public spaces, they will be being, you know, in a sense leased for those reasons, but we do want to move those public right of way parklets forward and get everything sort of settled. So that the town, you know, kind of gets used to a certain book and there's some standardization, their safety concerns are taken care of, access is taken care of. So I think just giving another year without getting, you know, a lot of feedback on why we would take another year, I'd like to see when get get it done. So I think a year seems like a reasonable time. So that's why I won't support the motion. Thanks. Council Member Callentari-Johnson. Thank you. I was really hoping that we could all be really aligned since we've worked through this for several hours now. And just a couple comments. My challenge with this amended motion is also really largely around C. I've been working quite extensively before this meeting, talking to staff around the safety issues and talking to businesses. Is there any way that we can keep it one way, move it that, let's flip the direction, extensive conversations. And we haven't gotten there. I do think those extra extended deadline will help, hopefully help us create some, have some creative solutions. But the safety issues that were reiterated tonight are of concern. One thing I did hear from businesses is, can we have alignment with what the county is doing? And I think we heard way earlier tonight that the county's extension is through October 31st, 2023. When Max spoke though, he made a really good point that we don't have those draft guidelines or draft ordinance for the public. Businesses on the private, excuse me, private property. Oh, it's getting late. So I think that extension absolutely makes sense. There's a lot of nuances to work through. But the first one in the public right of way is aligned with what the county is doing. So unfortunately, I won't be supporting this amended motion either for those reasons. Okay, Council Member Cummings. I didn't want to make one item of clarification, which was that when the county moved forward with extension, it was prior to the governor's sun setting, the statewide emergency declaration, which I think was last week that he made that, and that's at the end of February 2023. And some of the conversations I'd had with small business owners was around if we can get a year from that deadline, from when it was, when the emergency declaration is suspended, if we can get another year. So that was kind of the justification and motivation behind that. So just for clarification as to why it's not coinciding with the county. Rebecca, can you speak briefly or Bonnie Lipscomb about the temporary use versus you know, a business applying for the permanent program once they've applied that that deadline is different than they're in the permanent program. And so can you speak to that difference of extending temporary use versus getting into the permanent program, which is the goal of getting all the business into a permanent program that want to keep outdoor dining? Yeah, me too. So we do need to have the extension for the temporary program so that, you know, what businesses have in place now, they can continue to operate under those permit parameters. When we do roll out the permanent Parkland program and businesses apply and they receive their permit and, you know, they're ready to begin construction in that permit that remains effective for one year so that they can begin construction. However, because these two programs are sort of operating parallel, if they want to continue to operate their temporary that, you know, they would need to construct their permanent before the temporary expires. So that's why we're extending it to October so that people have more time to complete that portion once they are able to apply and begin construction. Thank you. Thank you. City Manager, did you have a comment? I can't resist but to make a comment, real briefly Mayor Burner. I hear the concerns about some of the ongoing impacts related to COVID and the emergency declaration of the timeline around that. But I think what I would like to say is the spirit of this ordinance is really acknowledging the tremendous value that those outdoor spaces have created and wanting to help those businesses to make those outdoor spaces permanent. And so I think the timeline, especially with the extension, allows us that runway to be able to work with these businesses to keep these wonderful outdoor spaces on a permanent ongoing basis. So the framework that's in front of you is very helpful for us to get there, but I wanted to make clear this is not a prohibition of outdoor space. This is really an effort to keep those spaces intact. Thank you. Okay. Are there any further comments? No. Okay. Discussion. We will have a roll call vote on the motion to amend. Council Member Callentary-Johnson. No. Boulder. No. Coming. Aye. Brown. Aye. Myers. No. Vice Mayor Watkins. Nope. Mayor Burner. No. No. That motion does not pass five to two. Okay. So we have the main motion. Can you pull that up please? And we'll have a roll call vote on that. Council Member Cummings. Yeah. I just wanted to comment on the main motion, maybe when it's up. I can make some comments on that. So yeah, in the extended, the previous motion that was made, tried to extend in the line these timelines around March 31st, 2024. I will say though that they do provide an extension of the temporary outdoor and extended past some of the December 31st, 2022 timeline. So I'm going to support the motion. Although, you know, well, I already made an attempt at extending them further. And so since that wasn't accepted, I'll support this motion. Thank you, Council Member Cummings. May we have a roll call vote? Council Member Callentary-Johnson. Aye. Boulder. Aye. Cummings. Aye. Brown. Aye. Myers. Aye. Vice Mayor Watkins. Aye. And Mayor Burner. Aye. That motion passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you to all the staff and all the public comment today. This meeting is now adjourned. Thank you.