t, in your perspective, how would that work for you all to codify that? So a couple of things. It's certainly within the council's authority to add a condition that would extend that code required 24 hours to a longer period of time for vehicles that are inoperable. And the, I wanna also address the issue of towing. That's my next question, so go for it. Yeah, because you mentioned that as part of this in terms of like a potential concern about towing. The city's even ability to tow based just on the oversized vehicle ordinance is limited. We would have to go and get, if you had five tickets, it used to be that once you had more than five tickets, that vehicle could be towed. Now, if you get more than five tickets that can't automatically trigger a tow, it would have to come with a judge's order. And so the threat of tow is separate from just the timing of getting another ticket. And I think the PD could correct me if I'm wrong. We've indicated that we, I know that we have not towed anyone. I also don't believe that we have pursued any judge's orders for that. And I believe that's the case. Yeah, I'm seeing at least one affirmative yes there. That's at least the understanding from myself and some others. So thank you for that. My follow-up question there is related to the intention of the city to seek judge's orders for such tows because it seems to me that the purpose of this is largely to get RVs off the street. At least that's what I've heard my colleagues say they wanna do. And so if vehicles can't be towed and that we're just amassing, they're just amassing tickets. It just, again, it's one more bucket for tickets for unhoused people or vehicularly housed people to contend with or not contend with as the case may be. And so that's sort of a, there's my side comment with my question. Will the city pursue judge's orders to tow? And at what point would that decision be made? I think that's best. There's our police chief. Chief Escalante is recognized. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council. We are currently working on, we have to write a search warrant to seize any vehicle, whether it's related to the oversized vehicle ordinance or a collection of five unpaid tickets or more for any violation. New law requires us to write a search warrant and we are working with our judges to figure out what that really looks like because we have an obligation outside of even the oversized vehicle ordinance to address those that collect that bucket of citations that you talked about. So we are working on that to give us that option. Thank you. So I would just say, there's more. I'll stop. No, I just meant I was gonna say, make a comment. Thank you, Chief Escalante. So I think I guess I would just say it's disingenuous to suggest, well, that's not happening so let's not worry about it given that the intention is for that to occur. I just have to point that out. I'm not sure there's much to be done about it. It'll be, we'll see how it goes, but I would argue all the more reason for continued community oversight as stakeholder group that is it really actually involved in these kinds of steps as the decision gets made to take those steps, there should be oversight of that. I think we should hold ourselves to the same standards that we expect of other our contractors and our human service providers that they provide some analysis and evaluation and metrics. And I think that's the case for kind of all, I have a lot of questions related to how many toes, how many tickets and I'm not asking that you answer those questions now, but that is information that I believe should be publicly available. Can you tell us about how it is that that information will be made publicly available? Just as an aside, you said we're gonna give qualitative and quantitative information, but the paper, the documents we have, quantitative information where feasible. So that could mean a lot or it could mean almost nothing. What are we gonna get? Yeah, so the number of tickets is definitely a quantitative set of information and that is, as you can see, whoops, it just moved. As you can see on the slide here, this is how many we've had since the December 4th implementation with most of those happening and in the first week, we will continue to keep track of that. The other quantitative information that we have at this point is the number of trash bags collected and we still do have issues there, but I think it was a 46% reduction or 48% reduction and the number of trash bags collected in the 11 months prior to the average of the 11 months prior and then the three months, December, January and February leading up to now, so another quantitative. We'd also be looking at any other quantitative data that we can collect. The quantitative is challenging and that's why we put both of those in there, the both the qualitative and quantitative, but certainly those two are readily available in things that we're currently tracking and we continue to look at things. The stakeholder group, for example, suggested when we brought this question to them that maybe we could also look at number of service calls unrelated to oversized vehicles, but service recalls related to aggressive behavior or fights or things of that sort that they get called out to in these areas to also have another quantitative metric. That is something that we would continue to work with the stakeholder group on with those ideas. And if I could just one last thing, I just wanted to point out that the towing of vehicles is the last resort, right? It's not the step that anyone wants to take and so that's really if we have to, there's no other option, really. Last question, thank you. And I really want to appreciate Council Member Bruner for raising the question around the conditions because I was going to ask about some of those. That was much more efficient. The last question, you are going to make information available according to the agenda report to the Coastal Commission Executive Director upon request. Is there a reason we wouldn't be just submitting information to them annually just because they've have a role to play in approval of this permit. They demonstrated that. I think the commissioners are going to be interested not to monitor on the ground realities day to day, but to at least have a sense of what's going on. That's certainly something that could be conditioned and the Coastal Commission may actually request it on a more frequent basis as well. And so certainly as they requested and one of the things that we've talked about as a team is just that we are going to need to stay on top of tracking this information so that we're not at the end of the year and I'm trying to recall something that happened 11 months earlier, right? And so that is something that we would be able to do should the Executive Director request it and if it pleases the council and then that condition could be updated so that it is an annual report, for example, and that gives an overview of how we've been implementing the program, the outreach that we've done, the feedback from the stakeholder group as you all could see from the materials that were provided to you. We take very detailed notes as part of those stakeholder group conversations and that allows for both you all and other members of the public and also other bodies like the Coastal Commission to really get the flavor for how those conversations have gone. Thank you. Take a moment, Mr. Meisler. Mr. Meisler, let me get your attention here. What we're going to do is at 4.20, we've got a group of folks who are going to be going to Japan on a sister city program and they're gonna come in here, we're gonna do some nice things together. So if what we can do is in a couple of minutes, we'll suspend this, we'll do that, then we'll come back to your item, all right? That's how we're gonna handle this. So, but before we get there, and because we're not at 4.20, hours that we're living in for me, we'll, I had a couple of questions or a couple of comments. One is we have gotten as a city incredibly focused on this item and not without reason, I understand that. And I think we should. We're incredibly, in my view, very compassionate community. You get to Santa Cruz, we wanna make sure your life works out as best that it can. And we have, as the city, certain responsibilities, county has certain responsibilities, state and federal government has certain responsibilities. We do not have every responsibility for everybody who comes into the city of Santa Cruz. People who come in in an oversized vehicle are not automatically wards of the city of Santa Cruz. There are certain things we should do that a compassionate community would do. I don't know that it is our responsibility to provide gas or insurance or repairs or registration or whatever for a vehicle. I'm not sure, in my mind anyway, I think that's a vast expansion of the responsibility of city of Santa Cruz and I don't believe it's ours. I think that this item, with regard to the way that it has been processed with stakeholders, with numerous interactions with the Coastal Commission, that from my point of view, I think that what is coming forward to us makes an awful lot of good sense. So what I will do at this point is we will simply suspend this item for a few minutes while we hear another item and then we will come back to this. So let's take a couple of minute break and we're gonna let folks come in. Santa Cruz City Council is back in session, the hour of 4.23 having arrived. We are very happy to see a bunch of mildly faces over here and in our chambers and we welcome you here this afternoon. Glad to see you, Ms. Snook. We understand that you are going to be making a presentation and we welcome you here to the City Council and so happy to have you. Thank you very much, Mayor, Vice Mayor, City Council. I am Linda Snook, I'm the current Chair of the Santa Cruz Sister Cities Committee and also of the Shingu Subcommittee and I'm here with my fellow subcommittee member and chaperone, Adrienne Harrell. Chandra Donahue, who couldn't be here today but she's also a chaperone. I always like to quote our mission which is to promote peace through mutual respect, understanding and cooperation, one individual and one community at a time. And we work with our members to play an essential part in creating a more peaceful world through people-to-people exchanges and initiatives. And I can't think of a better way to do that than through a homestay-based youth delegation. So I'm really happy and proud that we are resuming this youth delegation. I'm delighted to present to you the 14 youth delegates and two interns who have been selected from a large group of wonderful applicants this year to represent the City of Santa Cruz in our sister city of Shingu, Japan. After getting to know them a bit better during the language and culture classes we've been holding for them, I'm quite sure they will all do a fine job of representing our city and of hosting the incoming high school delegation which we'll be visiting from Shingu this summer. And shout out and thank you to the Parks and Rec Department for all their help with the logistics, all the activities that we do with the children and adults. Following the incoming high school delegation this fall begins the 50th anniversary of our friendship with Shingu. And in honor of that, that we have invited the mayor of Shingu, their city council and some honored business people to come visit Santa Cruz. And I'm very happy to say that they have accepted a Mayor Taoka Sensei and others will be here October 2nd through 9th, 2024, this fall. And I know you will all want to help welcome them. And they in turn invite all of you to visit Shingu as a mayoral delegation for the 50th anniversary in fall of 2025. And I hope many of you will take advantage of that opportunity. As these young folks are about to find out, Shingu is a remarkable place for its natural beauty and mostly for its very kind citizens who have many times in the last 50 years gone way above and beyond to welcome Santa Cruz citizens and show them an amazing experience of a lifetime. And I thank you all for promoting or supporting our mission to promote peace by cultivating individual friendships across all kinds of borders. Not only across country borders, but within our community. We have five different schools represented here in this group of young people. And I'd like to present now our youth delegates, intern Aidan Bingham and Naomi Gerhardt who's not here today. And the youth delegation, Amara Anderson, Avery Schrum, Daisy Harlin, Daphne Bingham, Eliza McGinnis, Gillian Hall, Ninja Maxfield, Rene McKee, Joaquin Cervantes Brewer, Logan Franks, Marina Tucker, Naomi Duria, and Matthew Salas could not be here today. Well, thank you. Before we invite the students up to stand here and we'll take a picture and so on, I know that we want to make a couple of remarks and thank you for everything. My colleague, Ms. Brown, I'm gonna see if I can bring her to tears here because as we were getting ready for this, she said to me that this is gonna change your life, that she has been to Japan and this is gonna change your life. But Ms. Brown, see if I can make you cry. I've never been able to cry on cue, but I do feel it. I really feel the emotion. It's an incredible place. The people that you will meet and engage with will, they really will open up new ways of thinking about the world.  Close. Ms. Joaquin, just recognize. I just wanna congratulate every one of you as my colleagues share, this is gonna be an incredible experience for you. I had the opportunity of going in 2019 and the level of care and welcoming that the people of Shingu provide us when we visit is overwhelming and truly to the mission of promoting peace and interconnected worlds and people, it feels like that in 50 years is something to be so proud of. I wanna thank you both for all of the things that you do in terms of volunteering to make this happen for our city and our community and along with our city parks and rec department. It's a really outstanding relationship that we have and I think you're all gonna have an incredible experience and I can't wait to hear about it after. So have fun and enjoy. Now let me, for a couple of minutes here, we're going to recess the council meeting so that you can have an opportunity to come up here and get behind us with a couple of pictures. Council's back in session. We are now resuming our work on item number 20 and council members, I wanna make sure have you had an opportunity to ask your initial set of questions? All right, good. This is the opportunity for the public to comment on this appeal. So if provided you're not an appellant, we're gonna hear from them one more time but if you are here to speak on this item, this is the opportunity to do so. Let me ask if you would like, just come on up. Come on up. Good afternoon, welcome to the council. Good afternoon. Good afternoon and thank you city council. My name is Margaret Gannon and I live at 2395 Delaware Avenue, DeAnne's a mobile home park, a senior MoMA home park. We have about 200 mobile home spaces and around 300 plus residents, the majority of them are seniors. The park and all of its residents want to thank you the city council, Bernie Escalani and the Santa Cruz city de police department, Evan Morrison, the director of the safe parking program for enforcing the oversized vehicle ordinance and giving back seniors and all others their peace of mind regarding their health and safety on the city streets of Santa Cruz. It's working, let's keep it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon mayor, city council members, city staff, city attorney. My name is Carl James Fox, lived in Santa Cruz 55 years. I'm disabled, my mother's disabled, she's 90 in a wheelchair. She lives at 1010 Pacific Avenue. The last two years I've been parking the handicapped vehicle that I have outside her apartment. It's a school bus, it's exactly 20 feet long, it has decals of wheelchairs on it, it has a wheelchair on the license plate, and it has a placard that I put in the window. I received the first ticket on December 4th. It's parked in the handicapped spot in front of five guys across the street from 1010 Pacific. I sent the ticket for review, I didn't want it dismissed. I requested an official measurement. Within a week, I had two more tickets, I took those for review. The tickets were sent for review back to the officer who wrote them. He's not a parking control officer, so maybe it's the first tickets he ever wrote, I don't know. He sent back saying your vehicle is 20 feet six inches, your reviews denied. It came back from San Jose, it was already past due by the time I received it. So I said, can I send it for further review? They said, no, you've missed that window now. I said, well where's the official measurement station? That's the question I have for the city attorney, for the chief of police, for anyone else that's responsible for writing these tickets. If you have an ordinance based on measurement, doesn't there need to be a mechanism for the people that have vehicles to be measured? What if my vehicle's proven to me to be 20 feet one inch? Well then I know I can modify it one inch because I know the official measurement. So these tickets, I'm being told, cannot be reviewed. I was told by the manager over there at the parking control office. ADA law does not supersede the city ordinance. Now this is having an effect on my life and my mother's life. We're both disabled, we've been in Santa Cruz 65 years. I'm her sole caregiver. I parked that van there to give us a sense of relief knowing in case of emergency, we could transport. Those are my questions. I need relief from this issue right now. Thank you. I just bought a new tape measure. My vehicle's parked right outside, Mayor. I want an official measurement. Okay, fair enough. Thank you, sir. Thank you. What we're going to do is there's a person online. We'll take them and then we'll take you. Person online, good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Person online, good afternoon. Three, two, one. Amy Chen Mills, welcome to the council meeting. Good to have you here. No, we'll hear you after Ms. Mills. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for being here, for being our council members. I didn't think I was going to say anything. I was really interested to hear how this issue has developed from all sides and it sounds like there's been a lot of really good communication and working together on some of these issues. Thanks to everyone and the stakeholders. I think that's great. And I'm glad for that, given that I was on the committee on homelessness. I just want to speak a little bit to my own personal experience. I had a friend who was working for me from time to time at my house who became unhoused. She had nowhere to go. The first thing she did was take all of her savings and buy the most rundown. Ridiculous RV that she could find and ended up down on Delaware. At that time, I was trying to help her talk to her on the phone. Her hair was falling out. She was losing weight by the day, losing pounds daily. She was so stressed out. She could barely operate the vehicle. It was a huge vehicle for her to try to operate on her own. And at one point I said, why don't you come, we're going to go out of town and you can house it, park the RV in front of our house. Within probably 10 minutes of her getting in front of our house, this was before the OVO, we had two neighbors come to our house and start calling the police about her vehicle. And I know that people get alarmed and concerned. I told them that she's house sitting for us, but it's a sort of a tale, I think of two different realities, those who are housed and how fearful they become and those who are actually living in fear for their lives, which she was. Finally, I was able to get her to a church that I'm a part of and to actually park her RV there. My husband had to drive it for her because she could not drive it. And it's taken probably nine months for her to start to regain her mental health. So the fact that we can provide people with stability, which I don't know that tier two really does, but I know that the armory does. And so I sort of recommend that the comments that the appellants have made be incorporated as much as possible. I really like what Sandy said about codifying things because otherwise, what are the rules? It's just up to individual officers, is it up to individual staff members, the person who's answering phones on the weekends, is that a rule that we have that they have to do that or they're just willing to do that or what is that? So I think that codification is important and I'm glad I was here and thank you so much. Thank you. We're gonna go back to the person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the city council meeting. Hi, good afternoon. This is Serge Cagno, Recovery Cafe, stepping up Santa Cruz. I really wanna state my appreciation for all of the time staff have put into this. I appreciate services and I appreciate compassionate structured services. I'd like to say that there should be some data as we look at the permit. Data that should be accepted should be quantified effects and one of the specific bits within the permit was the lack of quantified effects on the unhoused. Data that should not be accepted should be qualitative or anecdotal evidence. Data that should not be accepted should be calls for service, which we know can be high percentage of frivolous and non-lawbreaking calls for service. I'd also like to appreciate that staff are working on having a dumping site. I think that would make a huge difference in this entire conversation for the community, but within the discussion that we had, maybe I missed it, but I didn't hear Lee talk about the length of time to find such a site or the fact that that actually got started back in 2018 during the catch when I first asked about that. So to every one of these kind of meetings and appeals and all that stuff, there's always the city is working on it and it never seems to be happening. So an actual timeline would be great. In the permit documents that went to the planning committee for them to vote on, one of the comments was the County of Santa Cruz has an ordinance like this. There was no comment that the Coastal Commission actually told them that they never actually applied to the Coastal Commission and the Coastal Commission staff actually told them that they were breaking the Coastal Act and they've still gone on with it. I think that's a valid piece of information as you make your decisions. But I do want to say I appreciate the compassionate services where they fit into this process. Thanks. Thank you, sir. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? We'll take the next person online. Good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Can you hear me? Yes. This is Robert Norris of Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom. The OVO is itself a law like the camping ban, which does not fairly serve the majority of homeless folks in their vehicles as a camping ban, really appears to, but does makes no attempt to serve the majority of people who are outside. It simply plays a whack-a-mole. And in this case with the OVO, it is serving the city staff's purpose, which is to essentially as Police Chief Escalante as reportedly said, make the city as uncomfortable as possible for those who are outside without appearing to do so. This happens when you run folks out of town and out of sight. This has got to be shoehorned into a liberal fantasy that meets the Coastal Commission's guidelines. And that's what this is all about. Those are coastal access, justice requirements, adequate vehicatures, storage. I have some familiarity with this because I appealed it way back in 2015. The issue is not to be compassionate as Fred so piously intoned or even reasonable. Otherwise, the city will have in this last year with its many grants already established waste disposal stations, which would meet neighborhoods concerns as well as those folks in their vehicles and set up truly workable tier three programs. They have not done this. You have an overloaded program which doesn't serve. It serves some people well, but a very small number. Just as the shelter program serves some people but has nothing to do with simply dismisses the majority of homeless folks who are outside with not even sanitary stations and toilets and being provided for them. Forcing those whose only home is their vehicle here is for enforcing them to move twice a day here is cruel and unusual punishment and should not be done. Let's do something about it. Thank you. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? One more hand. One more hand. Person online, good afternoon. Welcome to the council meeting. Hello, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, I live on the lower west side and I wanna thank the council and city staff for having worked on the oversized vehicle ordinance. It's been many, many years and we can see the results in our neighborhoods where our homes are. I want to thank you very much. I particularly wanna point out Mr. Keely's comments, Mayor Keely's comments a few minutes ago, I wholeheartedly agree with that. Also, I want to say that those of us who I believe the city is really bending over backwards to accommodate these folks. Those of us who pay property tax, some of us a lot of property tax are funding this operation and I think it's a good thing to do. But I find item number 11 on the proposed changes for the $200 gas to be an absolute insult to those of us who are working hard to pay our mortgages, to pay our property tax and to pay our bills. So again, thank you. Please deny this appeal. Thank you. Anyone else online, Ms. Bush? Anyone else wish to make comment on this last opportunity? Thank you. Mr. Meisler, it is now your opportunity to take up to five minutes or the appellant, take up to five minutes to provide any additional rebuttal or response that you wish to provide. Thank you. First, I wanna respond, before I respond to the sort of point by point things, I just wanna say something, a personal note about my own participation in the stakeholder group. Reggie and I shared attendance because sometimes we just couldn't make it. The first stakeholder meeting that I went to, I was truly shocked at the palpable hostility in the room that I felt as a housed community member. There was one other stakeholder who was critical of OVO and they were on Zoom and every other stakeholder in the room was a supporter of OVO. Neither one of the unhoused or vehicular dwelling stakeholders were there and it was shocking. And it took me a couple of days to get over it and for all the wonderful effort that staff has put into it, this was not a trauma-informed process. And people who have lived experience of houselessness, along with so many of the rest of us in our society, in our communities, need trauma-informed processes. I am not surprised that Jamie didn't come back. I was very happily surprised that the Tier 3, the 24-7 stakeholder was there. The next time I attended, I was very glad to hear his thoughts. I think that he was incredibly important to the process. I also wanna say that my perception is that we spoke about most of these things in the meetings. And I'm not trying to throw shade on anybody, but my perception was that the suggestions of people who were in favor of OVO were taken percentage-wise more than our suggestions. And that may be because our suggestions aren't seen as viable or not supported by as many of the letters that you're getting, but these are justice-based. They're based on what we hear from people with lived experience and they're based on the participation of ACLU and disability rights advocates. And these are experts, these are legal experts. They spend their professional lives and much of their free time working on these issues. So I think it's unfortunate that some of what we suggested, that's one reason why we're bringing it to you here because we need to be heard. We have a duty to be heard, okay? So I just wanna do a couple of quick points. Thank you, Council Member Sandy, for bringing up the inconsistency of the application of the law. Flexibility is great. It can also be harmful, incredibly harmful to people. Many, many people, when you get the data, we can even send it to you because we filed FOIAs to get it. Many people have multiple tickets and you've heard a little bit about the stress that this can cause people. Some people get left alone. Some people get multiple tickets. Some people get harassed. Some people don't. This is uneven and fundamentally unfair and yes, one of the reasons why we're pursuing this is because it's not codified and we don't know what could happen in one year, three years, five years. So again, we feel that this is our responsibility. We also see with the, there's no honeypot truck. There's an enforcement before services. So I know that this is very challenging and the city is working on it, but there are sort of like, up at the UCSC trailer parks, they have external tanks. There are things that are less expensive and less infrastructure. We have documented two vehicles with the ADH tags that have gotten multiple tickets. You heard from one person, again, inconsistency and in terms of gas offsets, community charity is not an adequate substitute for systemic solutions to what is a systemic problem of houselessness and a cost of living crisis. So I think that covered everything for me. Sorry to like rush, rush, rush. We are disappointed that we're not hearing as much positive indication about our list as we would like and I would really urge you all to really go for it. Listen to us, listen to our stakeholders. We're the people affected. Thank you. Matters back before the council. Council Member Caldwell Johnson is recognized. Thank you. I'd like to move to deny the appeal and uphold the planning commission's acknowledgement of environmental determination and approval of the coastal permit based on the findings listed in the draft resolution and the conditions of approval attached as exhibit A. I have a second portion to my motion. I emailed it to you, Bonnie, is to direct staff to report back to the OVO subcommittee and the stakeholder group regarding the actions that are in process such as a detailed outgoing message for overnight parking program regarding where individuals can park on an emergency basis, calling during non-business hours such as progress on mobile dumping station. There's a motion. Is there a second? There's a second by the vice mayor. Madam, excuse me, Ms. Caldwell Johnson may open on your motion. Unless others need to see it. I'm sorry, excuse me. Who's asking if she wanted to, if we needed to see the motion? Okay. If you could, that'd be just fine, put that up there. Sure. Yeah, I just, you know, this has been an issue in our community for over a decade. I know Vice Mayor Golder has worked on it. I think that's what I don't want to speak for you, but maybe inspired you to seek elected office. I know a lot of community members have worked on this and it's been a long road. It's been a contentious road. It's both brought our community together and pulled us apart at some times. And I think that we've landed in a really exceptional place. I don't think I'm hearing and seeing from others in the community that we've landed in an exceptional place. We as a city have gone above and beyond in addressing this public health, public safety issue. And let me just say it's a public health and public safety issue for those who are housed and those who are unhoused. We're connecting people to services. We're connecting people to long-term housing. And the numbers are there in a short amount of time. We've connected, I know the whole, the whole homeless action response plan, we've connected around 200 people to permanent housing. This is being noticed by our community members. It's being noticed by other communities around the nation. And I think that, sure, there are things that we can do to improve. There are always things that we can do to improve. So let's continue on this path. Let's continue to work together and let's continue to learn from each other. There is always more need. There will always be more need. And as Mayor Keely mentioned, this is outside of our scope what we're doing. Health and Human Services really belongs in the county. We are working closely with the county. We have commitment from our county supervisors, including supervisor comings, to work on this issue with us. We've been in touch with him. We've been in touch with his office. So there's lots happening at the county level. Mayor Keely and I now serve on the Housing for Health Policy Board. This came up as a discussion point in the last policy board that providing more safe parking for oversized vehicles and vehicles should be a priority that all jurisdictions take up. So that the burden isn't just on the city of Santa Cruz to address the needs that we have in our city and county-wide. So I'm really grateful for the work that staff has done. I'm grateful for the work of the stakeholder group, every single person that served on the stakeholder group and the community at large that again has worked on this for over a decade now. So I'll leave it there. Thank you. For the debate over discussion. Ms. Brown is recognized. I'll just make a couple of brief comments. I am not gonna, this is mostly for the appellants. I'm not gonna try to include these conditions here. I absolutely understand why you presented them. I appreciate the work you've done, the thoughtfulness of your participation and your recommendations. But like you, I'm concerned about the hostility that I may encounter in trying to move this forward and it really seems futile. So I would just say that I support, I think your points are really well taken and I support you. I'm not gonna try to wordsmith conditions here because I just don't see any percentage in it. But I do think that, and I will speak to my colleagues on the council that it would behoove you and city leadership to think about the concerns that were expressed by the Coastal Commissioners, in particular Commissioner Nothoff and that these are potentially gonna be looked at by another body that has to approve this. So I'm just gonna encourage you to think seriously about that as things proceed. I think it's really critical that community engagement continue and kind of disappointed to see the limited role or the limited time that maybe spent engaging with the stakeholder group moving forward. I think that it would behoove us as a city to really reconsider that and work more closely. So that we don't have situation, we don't need to have situations like what Mr. Fox, did I get that right? Explain where we clearly have some misinformation and we have people who are now in struggling with that. So as an aside, please can somebody follow up with this gentleman to try to work out what is happening because if our parking enforcement is saying that the OVO supersedes disability placards, that is just not the case. And so that's just a plea. I think I'll leave it there because I don't wanna just keep carrying on with my concerns. City manager is recognized. Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to provide an opportunity for Mr. Butler to respond with a proposed condition regarding one of the concerns that Council Member Brown raised earlier. Mr. Butler. Thank you, Mayor. So in response to some of the concerns that we heard from the community members, during the deliberation here, we were coordinating with both the police chief and our parking programs manager to understand how from a perspective of implementation, we might be able to address one of those concerns. And so I'll read this condition and then would welcome any questions. So it says, the city shall recommend that engineering officer overseeing parking ticket appeals should waive any OVO parking tickets received within a 72-hour period, during which time the appellant provides evidence that their vehicle was disabled and unable to relocate. What this would mean is if they have, so we have the 24-hour provision right now. And if we had something where they provided a receipt to the hearing officer saying, here's where I had my vehicle fixed. It was inoperable at the time. Here's where I purchased a new alternator or whatever part it may be. And it was inoperable at the time. This would be one way. And the reason why we've worded it this way is because it would be challenging for our police officers who are providing tickets to know, for example, if no one was at the vehicle that it is disabled, or if there's a different officer that's coming out, they may not recognize that. So if it's the will of the council, this is a way that that could be addressed while also not adversely affecting how we would implement the program. Thank you. Thank you for offering that. Yes, I'll include that in the motion. It's okay by the seconder. I wanna make sure, know what's now going to be included in the motion. What is it we're putting in the motion? What is it you want in the motion? To add this additional condition of approval. It's on the screen. So it would be. Go to that. I have a question. Okay. The vice mayor is recognized. I have a question specifically about this. My understanding is you're not allowed to work on vehicles on our streets already under existing codes. No matter, you know, wouldn't you have to have it towed to a garage to work? I mean, am I wrong? Don't think you wanna go there. So then I would say someone's, then I would say the opposite is true. Someone, if it is, some people are getting special treatment being allowed to work on their vehicles. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, council members. So the California Gavin Hussey parking program manager for the city, the California vehicle code does specify that disabled vehicles should be parked off street and either in a driveway or parking garage. So there is language in there about working on disabled vehicles in the right-of-way and operable vehicles are supposed to be removed to sub-side streets or off-street locations. But I think what we're trying to do here is make sure there's an accommodation. We're not sure if the vehicle is disabled. We would be willing to work with the individual to allow them to try to make accommodations for their parking on the street. If I might ask, thank you. I'll ask you some questions, Mr. I understand. So Coastal Commission approves our ordinance at some point and now we're in this one-year review period. We're moving along. As I understand it, stakeholder group meets, public outreach took place, Planning Commission has a hearing. So from when the Coastal Commission approved the contents of our measure as we are in the review period to go back to them at the stakeholder level where there are changes recommended that are reflected in what you are now proposing. In other words, were any of the stakeholder recommendations included in what you now want to bring forward to the Coastal Commission? In this, what you've got on the screen right now? I don't know about what's on the screen right now. In general, yes, in fact, lots from the balance. In addition to the stakeholder meetings, there were other public outreach efforts, is that correct? Above and beyond the stakeholder meeting? We have heard from many members of the public surrounding this, both through the public hearing process and separate. And in the public hearing process and outside of it, any of the recommendations that people have made, are any of those recommendations included in what you've brought forward? Yes. The Planning Commission held a hearing on this matter and did they make any changes? They accepted recommended changes that staff made at the time of the hearing in response to the feedback that we received. Okay, now the reason I do that is because what I want to be certain of is that as we've gotten closer and closer and closer to this meeting, outreach has resulted in changes, changes, and changes. In fact, one more is being recommended right here right now as part of this motion, if I understand it. The reason I do that is that I understand the appellant's arguments. What I don't accept is that somehow from when the Coastal Commission approved this to now going back to the Coastal Commission, nobody got heard, no changes were made, et cetera. Because it seems to me that lots of people were heard, lots of changes have been made. They aren't every change that everybody wanted, but there are quite a number of changes. Is that correct? Yes. Okay.  I'm going to take just a moment with my colleague, Ms. Brown, who knows because we've had a very, very longstanding relationship that preceded this, our appearance together, our joint service on the city council. I hope that at least insofar as the time that I've been mayor, I hope that you have never felt that either my comportment of these meetings or that these meetings are hostile to you. Because if you feel that, I extend my apology to you and I will do my best going forward to not make you feel that way. As you made a reference to hostility here, and I, again, I extend my apology if you feel that way as a result of anything I've done. It is, I think, a testimony to this group of people who are on here right now that we can disagree without being disagreeable and it's one of the things I've really enjoyed about being mayor, but if our feelings are our feelings, we can't debate them. So if that feeling occurred to you, I apologize. For the debate or discussion, Ms. Bruner is recognized. Thank you. Good discussion. Thank you for all the follow-up information. I think what I'd like to just make sure is call out a point to be discussed at future stakeholder meetings so that we can get clearer on the California vehicle code has a provision of a 24-hour period for breakdown of vehicles and Director Butler cited an instance of where one vehicle was given a week so that, you know, we approach it with flexibility, which I think is great, but I think we need to know for certain like a range. Like you have a minimum of 24 hours up to one week for those types of instances. I think that stability of knowing is huge and I don't know what that time is. We aren't here to make that decision now, but I would really like to see that solidified a little more. So coming back to us. Happy to have that continued discussion. Through the debate or discussion. No debate or discussion, but clarification. Who was the second? Okay. And then, sorry, I asked you, but I didn't hear what your answer was. Your motion said resolution as presented at the point had edits to the conditions of approval aside from this one. What is the recommended? The conditions that we read through, that Tim read through. So I can include, I can give you a moment on each of these slides if you'd like to read them. So what I refer to in my motion is as it's written on the agenda and it refers to the conditions of approval attached as exhibit A. So there were additions to that exhibit A. That's correct. So we just need to change that language, I think. To also include the recommendations. You're okay with the recommended addition. Yes. Yes. That's all I wanted to clarify. Correct. So however we capture that. Is that sufficient? Bonnie, did you see it? As presented. There you go. Thank you. So attached as exhibit A, just conditions of approval as presented instead of attached at exhibit A. Thank you. Thank you for that, Ms. Bush. No further debate or discussion. The clerk will call the roll. Council member is Nusa. Brown? No. Aye. Brunner? Aye. Eilentary Johnson? Aye. Grace Marigold? Aye. And Mary Keely? Aye. Motion passes and so ordered. We are on item 21. Item 21 is an ordinance amending Santa Cruz Municipal Code chapter 13.12 use of skateboards and bicycles at city-owned parks and recreational facilities. We will give an opportunity here for a changing of the guard for a moment. That's right. The changing of the guard has occurred. I'll recognize Ms. Duck. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, mayor and city council members. Stephanie Duck with the city attorney's office. Here to present to you today with director of parks and recreation, Tony Elliott on proposed amendments to Santa Cruz Municipal Code chapter 13.12. I prepared a very, very brief slide show for everyone so they had everything up in front of them. And Bonnie has graciously agreed to help me move through the slide. So thank you. So the city adopted Santa Cruz Municipal Code chapter 13.12 to comply with requirements in the health and safety code. The health and safety code previously prohibited an operator of a skate park from allowing a person to ride a skateboard in that facility unless that person was wearing a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads. A local public agency that owned or operated a skateboard park could, that was not supervised on a regular basis, satisfy those requirements by adopting an ordinance requiring that a person riding a skateboard in that skate park wear a helmet, elbow pads and knee pads. And by posting signage, affording notice that the person was required to wear that safety gear and could be subject to citation or failing to do so. Next slide, please. So these proposed amendments, health and safety code section 115-800 was amended in 2020 to incorporate reference to skateboards and other wheeled recreational devices. So those are defined as non-motorized bicycles, scooters, inline skates, roller skates or wheelchairs being used for recreational purposes. These proposed amendments before the council today update chapter 13.12 to incorporate reference to wheeled recreational devices. And so as written now chapter 13.12 would prohibit a person from riding a skateboard or other wheeled recreational device in a city park or recreational facility that is designed for such use of those devices unless that person is wearing a helmet, elbow pad and knee pads. Next slide, please. And finally, and just very quickly, I think it's worth noting that the health and safety code explicitly deems the riding of a skateboard or other wheeled recreational device at a city owned or operated facility, a hazardous recreational activity in certain circumstances. And so that would be when the person is riding, the device is 12 years of age or older. The type of riding was a stunt trick, lunge or stunt trick or loose riding that caused the injury. And the city had adopted an ordinance and posted signage in compliance with health and safety code section 115800. So as the council is aware, under the government code, a public entity is not liable to a person who participates in a hazardous recreational activity. And so by adopting these amendments, the city will not only be ensuring compliance with the health and safety code, but will also afford the city immunity in some circumstances. That is all, very straightforward and quick, but we are here for questions if you have any. Council members, questions? Questions? Questions? It just sounds like an update, a state-required update, helmets, knee pads, safety, at skate parks. And wheeled recreational devices. Okay, fairly straightforward. Thank you. For the questions or comments, be glad to entertain a motion. I'm sorry, excuse me. Public, anyone with us wish to comment on this item? Anybody online want to comment on this item? Seeing and hearing none, the matter is back before the council. There's a motion by Ms. Contar Johnson. Second by Ms. Brown. And under debate and discussion, seeing and hearing none, like we'll call the roll. Council members Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watson. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentari-Johnson. Aye. Vice-Miracle. Aye. Mayor Culey. Aye. Motion carries in so ordered. Thank you for your good work. We are on item 22, Parks and Recreation Fiscal Year 2023 annual update in 2024 progress update. Mr. Elliott, thank you for all of your good work on so many fronts and for a wonderful Saturday morning out at Harvey West Park for the first pitch of Little League season. If you have not seen what the photos from Mr. Elliott in the Parks Department, it is the cutest thing in the history of cute things. You should have out yourself with that. Mr. Director, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor. Thank you very much for that. There was an excellent summary of opening day on Saturday. I appreciate that. It got cuter as it went along too because it was majors and then T-ball by the end. So it got a little less organized as things went along. Thank you so much for the opportunity today to present our 2023, this is fiscal year 2023 annual report and a brief progress update on fiscal year 2024. I'm joined with our principal management analyst, Lindsay Bass. I will do a lot of talking. So bear with me and I'll try to be efficient as we go through this, but appreciate the opportunity to provide updates and we will jump into it here. So as far as context on our annual report. Sorry to interrupt, so you're not screen sharing yet. Oh, is it not up there? Thank you for that. I'm assuming that the audience is all online for this. So I mean, not too many folks here, but I know. Thank you. All right, perfect. Okay, thanks Lindsay. All right, so wanted to give our annual report a little bit of context. This is actually our fourth year as a department doing an annual report. And this is really about performance measurement, telling the story of what we accomplished as a department in service to the city of Santa Cruz over the last year. So for some context, Parks and Rec is guided by the city's general plan, by our parks master plan for 2030, a whole range of property specific plans like the Pogan and master plan to different management plans that we have. And then down to a strategic plan, a departmental strategic plan that's really complimentary of the city's strategic plan. And then each year, of course, through the budget, we submit our goals and achievements through the budget that are reflective of that strategic plan. So there's a whole series of plans, guiding documents that really guide what we do and why we do it. And so the annual report that we're presenting today is really a look back. It's a retrospective that in some ways will feel like a really long time ago, fiscal year 2023, but sort of a performance assessment and summary of the work done in fiscal year 23. So in many ways, Santa Cruz is Parks and Recreation. I won't belabor these points, but I think a lot of what we really love, the quality of life aspects, the health and wellness, the conservation, climate resiliency, the economy, property values, visitor spending, really Parks and Rec is at the heart of so much in our town. By the numbers, this is reflected in the annual report. So 2 million plus people visited the wharf in 23, nearly 100,000 participants in our programs and classes, over 120,000 rounds of golf and disc golf played up at De La Viega in 2023 and then values of trees, values of the acreage that we maintain. So a lot of data, a lot of these points throughout the annual report. In terms of economic impact, just a brief illustration here. So this is the visitation at the wharf over fiscal year 2023 and you see this spike sometime in late June of 2023. And that really is reflective of one of our key events out at the wharf, what he's on the wharf, really drives that tourism, drives that economic impact. So really right at the heart of what we do in Parks and Rec. If you look at Visit Santa Cruz County's annual reports as well, they reflect on what are the drivers of tourism, what are the drivers of our local economy. A lot of those are reflected through Parks and Rec. So our beaches, our trails, surf spots, cultural attractions as well, the wharf surf museum, not to mention our top 10 world ranked disc golf course. So a lot of things drawing people here as well as serving people who live and work here as well. In terms of our mission delivery, wanted to reflect on, wanted to reflect on, oh yes, there's an image here. We'll talk about in a moment. So in our annual report, we reflect on the three themes of our mission in Parks and Recreation. And so that mission is rooted in providing quality public spaces and experiences, fostering equity and bettering the environment. So just a couple of highlights I'll go over that again are reflected in the plan, but just to call out. So in terms of providing quality public spaces and experiences, we completed the Garfield Park and Playground renovation, I believe Vice Mayor Golder helped us cut the ribbon on that one in 23. In that year, a record clam chowder event and for fiscal year 24, we'll have a new record that we'll report on about a year from now. Civic Auditorium attracted some of its biggest shows and events in a long time from Bob Dylan to Modest Mouse, Bonnie Raitt. Bonnie Raitt ran with no power on backup generators during storms. So it was a tremendous year at the Civic Auditorium. In terms of fostering equity, a lot of things, but just a quick highlight. We had some antiquated rules in our softball leagues about related to gender that we've really updated and modernized and really broke down a lot of barriers as it relates to gender in our different leagues. Partnered with the Juneteenth Committee on the Juneteenth Celebration, included a march and parade. We partnered with Shared Adventures and Day on the Beach to expand access to Cal Beach and expand opportunities for people with disabilities to enjoy the ocean and the beach. In terms of bettering the environment a lot there as well, we leveraged research with UCSC and grant funding to see really a huge sort of explosion of tar plant regrowth out at Arana Gulch. As successful as we've seen in many years, a lot of invasive removal funded through another grant out in Moor Creek and Pogonip. A lot of water conservation measures out of the golf course in our parks as well. So just a lot of tremendous work in 2023. And then in the center photo, I'm pretty sure Council Member Bruner came back and won that race. So we'll have to look back at the record on that one. So a few key lessons that we learned just wanted to reflect on, and this is part of the reason we do these annual reports is to reflect on where we've been, what we went through, what we learned. And so I just wanted to call out a couple of these. And this is in the report as well. But 2023 fiscal year 2023 was really the end of the bench land in Camp Med. And so that was a huge cap, 240 plus people who were living in that camp at the time really just grew out of control and was a really dangerous place to be bad for the people living there, bad for the community members living in the area, the park users, et cetera. And so, but I think that the Bench Lines in Camp Med was also a great example of the collaboration among different departments in the city. So this is really, if I can recall, the city manager was down there helping clean up and take out trash one day. But the collaboration among departments from police, fire, city manager's office, public works, parks and rec, it was really a great example of that cross departmental collaboration coming together to address that camp, offer everybody shelter. Not everybody took shelter, but it was offered and we were able to abate that camp, get the site cleaned up. And then a few months after that, we had Earth Day. Mayor Keely joined us there on the Duck Island stage. And it felt like there was never a camp there in the first place. So a huge transition from early fiscal year 23 to Earth Day in April, that should say Earth Day 2023. And then the, where we are now is the San Lorenzo Park redesign, where we've had more than 2000 community members engaged in this process to think about the future of the park moving forward. So kind of tough times collaborating with city partners and working toward a kind of a brighter path ahead. So just an example that we called out in the report. And building on this too, I just wanted to reflect on our community partnerships as well. And so there's some amazing human beings up on the screen. Once again, Jane Mio and the best, the Bench Lands Environmental Stewardship Team really made sort of lemonade out of lemons in many ways with the Bench Lands and Camp Met, but really creating a stewardship team in that riparian corridor. So just brilliant work. Jane won a state award for her work with this group, all the camp was going on. River cleanup events as well. You see save the waves in the picture here, save our shores, Coastal Watershed Council, incredible partnerships there. And then San Lorenzo Park neighbors and many amazing organizations that really just partnered together through again tough times while the encampment was in the park, but really did some great work and in fact award-winning work. So some good stuff. So that is a quick run through of our fiscal year 23 annual report. This is the cover sheet for the community or for the council. This report will be found on the city's website under Santa Cruz Parks and Rec.com. It's not up yet. Pending council direction today will make final edits to the report. We'll get that posted in the next week or two up on the website. So that I'll transition over to our 2024 progress update. And this was my view from opening day, this past Saturday with all the kids. And so just wanted to reflect on a few items here related to 2024. So we're nearing the end of fiscal year 2024. Again, this is guided, our work in 2024 is guided by our strategic plan and the city's strategic plan just to sort of orient. What are we doing and why are we doing it? A lot of really positive things happening this year. The San Lorenzo Park redesign I mentioned is ongoing. The council has heard about the master plan on aging and age friendly designation through AARP that's been before the city council. A lot of open space invasive removal is ongoing, grant funding, the council heard from Santa Cruz Mountain Trail Stewardship earlier about the great work that they're doing. So a lot of things ongoing event grant program, it's collaboration with the city manager's office that we just announced a week or so ago, getting grants out to event organizers in the community. A lot of internal assessment as well. We're doing a facility condition assessment to look at the condition of all of our 70 facilities that we oversee through Parks and Recreation. What is their condition? What investment are we making and should we make into the future? We are looking at a fee study in partnership with the planning department to look at our Quimby and Park tax, our impact fees, looking to update those. So doing that work as well. And one that we're excited about and reference back to this image is a Harvey West Park redesign and rethinking the Harvey West pool as well. So we'll launch that this year and we'll look forward to going through a robust community process, thinking about the future of Harvey West Park. A few challenges I just wanted to highlight in the midst of fiscal year 24. And these are kind of ongoing and these could be talking points probably for most departments within the city, but we continue to be very challenged with just insufficient system investment. We have around $100 million in deferred maintenance across the system. A lot of just failures of our facilities. Some new ones in the past week, including the roof at London Nelson Community Center, the roof and the structure at the grill, the golf lodge up at De La Viega Park. So continuing to kind of see and feel the lack of investment over years in trying to find ways to invest in that and make those improvements. Anyway, we can lean staff. Again, a theme that could be for many department in the city, but I had a chance anecdotally to work with our medians crew, which is a subset of our neighborhood parks team. We have two guys, many and Joaquin are their names that maintain 13 miles of our city's median. So we were out there on Friday as the Metro buses are zipping by and it's a little bit of terrifying work, but incredible work that these teams do. Our urban forestry division is a division of one, Leslie Keady that the council knows well. So really trying to figure out how do we do this? How do we sustain this? How do we make these investments into the future with the lean teams that we have? And last thing I wanted to mention on this slide related to Harvey West, I think that when we think of a progress update or the state of parks and recreation in some ways, it really varies a lot. So if you are a baseball player on opening day and you go to Harvey West Park, you may say, hey, these are the best fields in Santa Cruz County, city parks and rec, they're doing great. Parks are looking good. My experience is wonderful. So that can be that unique experience, but a hundred yards further into the park, we have an active encampment. We have a public health crisis, a Shigella outbreak. We have a lot of people suffering in that space. The park is getting trashed. And so if you are venturing into the park back in Friendship Garden, your experience of the parks is they're failing, that we're doing a terrible job. This isn't a safe place to go. People are struggling here. So the experience can be vastly different even within a matter of a hundred yards or so in a given park. And so in between both of those, I'll build on this a little bit more. In between those, we have a pool. And that pool is our second most highly demanded asset according to the parks master plan, but the pool is also failing. And we don't have the budget to keep the pool up and running. We don't have the staff or the really operators to run the pool. So just in this small area, this is sort of a case in point of what the parks and rec staff are sort of grappling with is providing the experience on a ball field. That could be great. Challenged with the large encampment and the public health outbreak a few hundred yards away. And then trying to meet the demand of the community in the pool. How do we fund this? How do we come up with creative partnerships or solutions? But the staff just in this one park are pulled many different directions just with those three pieces. So that's kind of the state of parks and rec. We can't really say what that is. It depends. It depends where you are. It depends what your experience is. So it's nuanced. And we just wanted to share that context and perspective from staff with the city council and with the community. Again, big picture, what we are really grappling with. Again, this could apply to any department in the city as this balance these trade-offs within our department. So on one hand, the budget, the staffing, the resources that we have balanced with our service offerings. So the portfolio that we have, which is almost 2000 acres and 50 parks and all of these facilities that we talk about. And then the service levels. And so this next slide. So as our budgets across the city and what we've seen recently with the status quo budgets, but with inflation, the sort of power of the dollar is reduced. And again, this is for all departments. But in Parks and Recreation, what that means is the power of that dollar is less and our service offerings are staying the same if not increasing. So for example, the rail trail is wonderful, but it's new scope. It's new portfolio for Parks and Rec to manage. So that's staying the same if not growing. So the result of this is our service levels are diminishing. So the quality of that median, the quality of the park, the quality of the experience that folks may have is steadily sort of decreasing. And so what we're trying to do is really sort of evaluate these three different pieces and evaluate these trade-offs and over time really be tough and think about the priorities that we have to set to try to utilize the resources we have to do the best we can with the portfolio that we have. So on that, almost done here. Thanks for bearing with me, but what we're really asking of the city council in many ways and really departments across the city is managing these trade-offs. So we want to make sure in all cases that we remain mission focused, that we don't get a scope creep or off mission in any areas. We want to really take a hard look at needs versus wants. So what are the core things that our community needs and really focus on those? We're going to maximize public good. As we talked about in the example of the San Lorenzo Park when a leverage partners both externally and internally, meaning partner with those nonprofit organizations in the community, for example, and then internally with the city manager's office with public works, police, fire, et cetera. That's where the sort of magic happens is when we're able to collaborate and partner across departments. And then find creative ways, of course, to grow our resources. Oops. So the, here's the crew. So this group right here, I just wanted to reflect on quickly, this crew is not satisfied with the status quo. This is a group of folks who live here, who work here and are not content with doing the best we can. They really want to make this a better place for the next generation. So just wanted to give a shout out to the crew here. And again, the passionate group really want to do it for the right reasons and make sure that we're not just managing, that we're not just maintaining, but we're really investing for the future. So the recommendation for the council today is to accept the fiscal year 2023, Parks and Rec annual report and direct the staff to continue evaluation of service levels, service offerings and associated resources in the delivery of our fiscal year 2024 goals. I'm happy to answer any questions. Mr. Director, thank you very much. Let me, actually I'm going to start over here for once. There we go. Yep. Ms. Brown. I don't have many questions, but it's that time of year for me to, first of all, it really is that time of year for me to ask the question. But I first I want to say once again, incredible work, the report you put together is phenomenal in terms of really demonstrating the breadth and depth of what you all do. Always want to find ways to provide more resources to your department because we see the benefits in our community across generations. All walks of life, it's just, it's really incredible and your ability to maintain the Cadillac, I think you said it was a Porsche at one time when we were talking Ferrari, it was a Ferrari, this Ferrari with such limited resources. It's just, it's really incredible. I have a question because anytime I see you here, I want to find out about what's happening with Neri Lagoon with the trails there. The fencing's done, things look good. On the other side, segment seven B is almost there. And I know that there's some areas where some additional repairs are warranted. Just wondering if that's programmed where you're at in terms of being able to make that happen. It's a great question, appreciate that. There's a lot of work going on at Neri Lagoon with the fencing and improvements there. I don't have an update on trail work specifically in Neri Lagoon, but I can get that information and follow up. Just on the recent grant that we got through the Habitat Conservation Fund that is wrapping up and so the new decking is in place and the new interpretive signs will be going in in the coming weeks. So that is one thing that is very nearly tied up in a bow. Great. I thought you were gonna ask, what about the pool? Which is gonna be my question. I'm gonna wait on that, I'll end with that question. I just wanna say first and foremost, there's no question that your division department, staff, the individuals care so deeply about the work they do and it doesn't go unnoticed by us or by our community. And 100% recognize the challenges as you clearly articulate with the experiences just within one of our facilities and one of our spaces, right? And so certainly wanting to have that conversation with my colleagues around how to move forward with more investment and resources. And I know I've talked to the city manager about that, specifically for this valued attribute of our community that makes it so exceptional. And I wanted to see about the pool. And I'm just, I didn't hear, I heard it but I didn't see it in the goals. And I'm wondering if there's an interest in wanting to have that as an explicit goal, given it's been a priority for so long to have the pool running, we're an ocean community, there's been more issues that have come before our public safety committee around ocean safety, having a community pool is so essential. And it's sad to be so underutilized for so many years. And I know we've talked about wanting to have it but I feel like however we can start to move that forward and I know we're doing assessments, et cetera, but I was hoping to see it in the goals. And I'm wondering if that's something you either wanna speak to that I may have missed or we might not consider adding potentially. Yeah, great question. We could certainly add it to the list here. Happy to do that. Just an update on everything that's happening related to the pool and I'll try to be brief on this. So we did initiate a pool feasibility study. We've actually just completed that in the past week or two to look at the condition of the pool and to evaluate the market. What are the aquatics needs in our city and in our county and then to look more broadly at our region in terms of what's the sort of state of the art in terms of aquatics facilities and what range of options might we have here in Santa Cruz to provide that service. So, and we haven't shared that document yet with the council, we need to get that out soon but in summary, it's a range from a roughly say a four to $5 million investment in the existing pool to bring it up to a safe operational standards to there are a lot of pools over the hill. There are 30, 35, $40 million of aquatics complexes. So that's kind of that Cadillac or Ferrari end of that. So everywhere in between. So these are decisions that we will bring in a more formal way and we can have discussion over time what that might look like. As far as the pool currently, so we are looking for a partner. So we do not have staff to have the experience or training to maintain a pool nor the capacity to maintain a pool. So we had a tentative partnership with Santa Cruz County Parks and Rec last year that didn't work out. We're looking to work with a group called Quicksilver to be our operator. So they would do both the maintenance and operations of the pool under contract which would be great to get to that point. We have to fix the pool. So we spent about $150,000 on the pool this summer. We thought it was up and ready to go. We got all of our permits from County Environmental Health. It continues to fail. So we have a variety of valves in our main pump that continue to fail in the pool. So we were using all the resources and duct tape we can to try to get it up and running in a safe way. So we wanna make sure that we can get it permitted through County Environmental Health to be safe. But that's where we are. So our goal right now is to fix the pool. And to get our operating agreement with Quicksilver and ideally open the pool by June this summer. So it could be a sort of modified schedule. There's a lot of what ifs there but we hope to open by June this summer. That's really wonderful to hear. And I appreciate your response to that. And it would be great even just to see that so that we can also share that with our community. I just feel like you can pay for lessons, right? And then there's so many that just don't know how to swim or learn how to swim. And I was talking to a colleague recently and they were saying there's not a lot of people who can get into the conservation and science who do diving and because of exposure and diversity. And so we don't have the answer to all of that but we certainly can play a part. And that's what a community pool can do as well as diversify our students that can go into our junior lifeguards program, right? And so I think it's a really important asset to see and if it could be reflected in the goals that would be something I'd be interested in moving forward if my colleagues are as well. And I do know this, I recognize the struggle, I certainly do. And I think if there's anything that we can do as a governing body to support that goal move forward, I'm certainly open to that. I also hear what you're saying in terms of the spectrum of options, right? Like, and I don't know, I know the schools have, I'm all over the place with my kid at this moment with a lot of the swimming stuff and the pools are at capacity. So there's certainly a need in terms of wanting to have more pool time, right? So, I don't know, we can just continue the conversation but just to see that, just to share that, I hope that you feel supported as you move forward with that goal and we can try to find the resources to make it happen. Anyways, thank you, Mayor. You took one of my questions and ideas. Next second, so you'll keep me more brief. So somebody, one question I have, the trail steward group mentioned was the rangers. Is that something that you guys would want or is that something that was taken away not just because of budgets because it was too much to manage? Cause I know it was ultimately in the police departments when it did get taken away, it was taken away from PD, not from you. Is he the city manager? I'm happy to chime in on that one. I'm sure Mr. Elliott will have some follow up comments but we're an active discussion around how we can ensure that our parks and open space are safe for our community members as well as our staff. So Tony and I and Chief Escalante actually have a meeting, follow up meeting next week with Coastal Watershed Council on this very topic. Yeah, we recently had a meeting with Santa Cruz Mountain Trails Stewardship, also with regards to the M.M. Recruity Trail that you were referencing earlier today, Council Member Golder, to explore what those options could be. That may not be a return of the ranger program as it existed traditionally, but it could be some form of a parks and open space safety division that would allow us to have an increased presence in those areas to try to mitigate some of the impacts that we're experiencing. There needs to be resources on budget to come with that but it is something that we're exploring. Okay, my next question was in terms of paying for repairs and maintenance, what budget do you use for that? And I didn't know if I saw it in there and I missed it. I missed it when we talked last night. For general repairs and maintenance, we do have services and supplies budget across the department that's broken out by activity. When we talked about the budget last year, about 80% of that services and supplies budget kind of goes to like the basic, keeping the lights on, paying electricity bills, paying water bills. And so there's about 20% of that budget that is for use to do things like improve landscapes, take care of turf maintenance, those types of things. So I believe across the entire budget we have about six to seven million and that services and supplies. But when it comes down to it, like what we have to work with is closer to around two million a year. And so then like in terms of capital improvement, deferred maintenance and things like that, I'm just, I know there's a lot and I know we talked about this at Public Safety in terms of the developments that are coming through planning and we've so far kind of exempted affordable housing. Is this the same case from developer fees for parks? Is that the same for you? Do they have to pay developer fees regardless of? Sorry, that's a great question. Yeah, regardless if they're affordable or not. Yeah, it depends. So we have a couple of tools when it comes to generating our own revenue to fund CIP work across the system. It is driven by development. So that makes it a little unpredictable in terms of how and when that comes in. Quimby fees provide a portion of that and our park tax provides a larger majority of that. The park tax developers are exempt if they are building ADUs. And that's a state law. So any ADU under 750 feet, those first 750 feet are exempt from fees but then we have generally been able to apply fees beyond that and on most developments. We have been approached and been asked to waive fees for affordable housing developments. And up to this point, we've tried to make the case for continuing to build the parks and recreation impact fees into that so that we can make sure that everybody who is moving in and going to enjoy different parts of our community are going to have thriving, well-maintained parks. Okay, thank you. And I just wanna say, you didn't give yourself enough credit with your teamwork and solving complex problems like beach street vending and West Cliff and closing the bench lens encampment and collaborating with the schools in ways that also bring equity to our community. So thank you for that. Yeah, thank you. Ditto, ditto, ditto. Thank you for all of the incredible work and I was also gonna bring Harvey West pull up. So my colleagues brought that up. I was also gonna bring Neri Lagoon up. I know there's been a lot of work that's been put into Neri Lagoon and I've started to dive into the Neri Lagoon master plan and I think there's more that can be done there for activation and I don't know that it needs to be called out specifically in here. If it can, that would be great. I was specifically thinking about just accessibility. I mean, that's such a, that goal under the goal accessibility. It's such a place where people of all ages can use but it's under accessed. So maybe a question, maybe a suggestion of specifically calling out Neri Lagoon activation and then, so I guess these aren't questions. These are just comments. The other is under partnership. I was so glad to see the increase engagement with the Youth Action Network and I wanted to ask that we add and the city youth liaison to that bullet point and then I did have a question looking at how much is brought in through grant funds as with my grant writing had on, it seems actually kind of low. I haven't written specifically a parks and rec grant for a city or jurisdiction but the question is, are we working with, do we still have the grant consultants? Are we working with those grant consultants and have we considered partnering with other community organizations so that we could increase those funds? I think it was like 700,000 a year. Like we, I'm sure we could get like five million, maybe that's shooting high but it seems like there should be more funds out there and sometimes you just have to think creatively like the trail stores, like that's building youth assets and that's keeping youth from a pathway to the justice system. I mean, there's so many opportunities that if you think outside the box and you partner with the right partners we can bring in additional funds. So that's a question and a comment about grant funds. Yeah, great question. Thank you for that. On grant funding, I agree. We've got opportunities to grow our grant funding. Historically, where we've been a little bit challenged in terms of being really competitive on grants is that we are a, what I'll describe as a sort of parks rich town. We have a lot of parks. We've got a lot of acreage. We've got 96% of our communities within a 10 minute walk of a park, which we're in the top in the nation in that respect. So a lot of grants are oriented toward communities that have park deserts or lower income communities or under resource communities. And so on paper, we in a lot of cases don't meet those marks but totally agree with the point about being creative. And so where we have found success working with partners like Coastal Watershed Council, for example, we've got partner grants with the Museum of Natural History and so forth. So leveraging like AARP for example, so some opportunities there that we can leverage. So, but I agree there's more work to do there. Need to be more creative there. There's a philanthropic side of this as well that we want to tap into. And we've found some philanthropic support through the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County. But we sort of within the city are friends of Parks and Recreation. There's a lot of opportunity there to really grow the philanthropic side of this as well. And so currently FOPAR does not generate annual revenue to invest in city parks and rec. And so that's part of a healthy parks and rec department both on the grant side but on that philanthropic side as well. Just that first question, do we, are we still engaged with our grant consultants? Yeah. We are engaged with our, excuse me, outside grant consultants. All of our departments are working very closely with them on several fronts. And I know that Tony's team does from time to time as well. And I think there's more opportunity there. One of the areas that we've also not focused on much today when it comes to budget and resources. One of our areas of focus as we move into FY 24 and 25 is sustainable funding for Parks and Rec. The work on the sales tax really took center stage and attention over the course of this last year. But there's some really great work that the Land for Public Trust put together over the course of the last couple of years that we're gonna be dusting off and looking at those opportunities as we move forward in addition to the grants as well. Thank you. Thank you so much for all the amazing work. Yeah, just a couple of additional comments on grants. It does ebb and flow. So this fiscal year we'll be able to report a million dollar community urban forestry grant. We've been successful in gathering and looking to leverage that grant to go after additional CAL FIRE aligned grants and directing those funds to aligned with our incredible Santa Cruz Street Tree Master Plan. Our urban forestry team, as Tony mentioned, is under resourced.  So being able to direct the grant resources specifically to gaps outlined in this plan just kind of speaks to the importance of doing these types of efforts so that when we have those opportunities, we can deploy them strategically as a department. So just an example, but I think there's a lot of desire to grow that and work with amazing people in the city like Dr. Weiswest. Council Member Brunner. Thank you. I won't repeat a lot of the comments. Just thank you so much. It's always amazing to me the multifaceted department that Parks and Rec is and the roles that you play in our community. And so this report, you know, really outlines the values, the mission and the impact and many of the highlights. And I know it's not, it's a small part of what you do, but for me, I just wanna thank you really for the equity component. We've made a lot of strides in that since I've joined council in 2020 and that looks many different ways in our systems, in our access. You've worked with community members and stakeholders. We've gotten at some really good progress in that area and partnerships and around youth and seniors and just so many ways that you've really addressed that through Parks and Rec and programs and permits and thank you. I just wanted to call that out really because that is huge. And I hope to see under goals some roller skating surfaces. I will continue to talk about that. Multi-use courts, smooth roller skating surfaces and equity in that area. And I have joke, but I'm half serious about, you know, just really you've done a great job in that area and I know that the work will continue and I hope to continue finding ways to support your department and your staff and they're out there in so many ways working really hard. So thank you. Thank you so much for the questions or comments. Anybody with us wish to make comment on the item? Matters back for the body. Someone online. There is someone online. Chris online. Good afternoon. Welcome. Good afternoon Council. Can you hear me? Yes. Great. This is Eric Rodberg and I want to also speak about the Hollywood pool. I'm actually missing my swim right now. I'm forced to swim at UCSC which is often closed and inconvenient to get to. We really, really, really need a pool. It's disgraceful that I can be the, like ours doesn't have one. And I've spoken before council on this topic before. I think the last time only council members, Watkins and that Brown were on council. So, and I know the Masters from club which I'm not a part of also showed up in force one evening. So this is a long standing issue and there are so many things that come before council that are, but just say it, they're kind of crazy. They don't always have much to do with Santa Cruz. And this is really a core thing. A city needs a public pool. It's really a core function. And I think as politicians, you guys would be a lot more popular if you get this done. And I realize there are a lot of challenges. He just looks like measures can now are passing. I don't know if you can take any of that extra money but whatever it is you need to really make it a priority. I mean, one year, I know it's a state grant. We've got $14 million for homeless issues. And I know that's a real problem and a difficult one, but you also need to provide basic things for the everyday ordinary person. And so I can't agree with council member Watkins and us. And I know other we wanted to repeat what she said. So just figure out how to get it done, prioritize it, please also in the interim, make an agreement with the high school so that city residents can use the high school pool when high school is not in session. Santa Rosa Valley does it. There's no reason we can't do it. It's a perfect centralized location. And it's not a perfect solution, but it would be a good interim solution. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your thoughtful input. Anyone else online? Matters back for the body. I recognize the council member for a motion. There's a motion by Ms. Brown. Thank you, mayor. I would move to accept the fiscal year 2023 Parks and Recreation Annual Report and direct department staff to continue their evaluation of service levels, service offerings and associated resources in the delivery of fiscal year 2024 goals. I would like to add inclusion of continued work towards fiscal year 2023. I'm not sure how we would say this, continuing to work on the pool master plan, get that in there. And I always want to put nary Lagoon in the goals. And so if other council members, I heard council member Callentary Johnson was- Make sure we get a motion. Oh, I'm sorry. Let's keep going. Sorry, I, I, it's ingrained in me. Okay. So to also include act efforts to activate nary Lagoon in the goals. There is a motion. Is there a second? I'll second. And I have a question. Second and real quick. Absolutely. Real quick. Do we need to specify that adding the youth city youth liaison as part of the motion or you got that and not necessary? You got that. Okay. All right. You may open on your motion, Ms. Brown. Well, I already did. So I really want to appreciate council member Watkins. You know, I know that the feasibility study is happening and things are in process, but to really call that out, I think is important. And love to hear nary Lagoon is getting some love from its council member as well. I just have a couple of things. And I don't know if they need to be added to the motion or if they can just be just some additional direction, but I think to the extent possible, working with other departments in coordination, breaking up encampments when they get to a certain threshold. And I don't know what that is. I'll leave that up to you guys as the experts. But it seems to me that when they get to a capacity where there's an outbreak like the one in friendship garden or the benchlands that we're wasting valuable resources that could be used on other things to clean those up. And so using every tool in your tool belt and working together would be something I would like to see. I don't, do you need additional direction or can that just be? I'll chime in on that one. That's currently the process of the stands now. We have a, what we refer to as the encampment assessment team that meets on a weekly basis. It's cross departmental, Tony's staff and our parks team are working very closely with public works and our homelessness response team. And of course, with all that collective support, we're also resource constrained at times through addresses and cabinets, but we'll continue that collaboration. They're working together in ways that we've not seen before and really making progress on addressing and really working to avoid those large encampments from forming friendships garden is one of those areas that's on the radar. As soon as we move through the current situation related to the outbreak, but we will eventually address that area as well. Okay, thank you. And then I know that the resources, there's a push and a pull throughout the city, but I think the way you've collaborated with outside partners, I think Eric had a great idea of reaching out to the schools and seeing if there's a way we can make an MOU to make those schools available for the public to have swim hours. That would be awesome. And then I guess my, my, yeah, my final, I don't, that's it. That's all my final things, but thank you. Thank you. Further? Council Member Watkins is recognized. Thank you, Mayor. I certainly agree with the direction and appreciate the motion. I wonder if, and this is partially just so that I'm not badgering you guys, if we could have an update in about, I don't know, like four months or so on, just so we keep the conversation about the pool going because we have questions that come to us and we're like, well, we heard this and there's that and we don't really know and I know it's fluid in terms of changing, but at least we'll be aware. And if there's an opportunity or a need for us to intervene with any kind of policy direction for support and that feels good, like we'll know, but I feel like when it's a year and then there's just, there's just like sort of a gap, right? And so if we can get an update on the progress of that goal as well as others in the next four to six months. Council Member Brown. Just to add, it feels, I know it's sooner than that, but maybe at budget time, we might think about how we're gonna support those efforts if there's a match or if there's something that we need, that we could help with to try to demonstrate that commitment, so maybe that would be a good time. Yeah. If I could just add to that, Tony and I haven't had a chance to talk about this, but I think if the timing alliance, perhaps what Tony's team could do is bring forward the economic feasibility work that's been done around the pool and hopefully by that time, we'll have more certainty around whether or not this partnership with Quicksilver is going to materialize with the goal of us opening the pool right around that same time as well. So we can work towards bringing those updates. And just quickly, as far as communication, we can make a commitment to update the city website as well on what's going on with the pool just so that we've got that ongoing sort of information available for the public. Thank you. For the questions, comments, observations, wish list for budget hearings. All right, I've seen hearing none. The clerk will call the roll. Thank you, Mayor. Council Member Nussbaum? Aye. Brown? Aye. What's yours? Aye. Brunner? Aye. Calentary Johnson? Aye. Vice Mayor Golder? Aye. Mayor Keely? Aye. Motion passes and is ordered. Mr. Director, very final thing on page five of your report, the council is concerned about a particular, I'll just go with you, talk to you about it right afterwards. All right, is there for the business to come before the body? Seeing and hearing none, Ms. Bush, no more business. Mr. Condati, no more business. Motion to adjourn. Vice Mayor makes motion to adjourn. Council Member Nussbaum with deep, deep re-elections. Seconds of motion, non-invadeable. Those in favor, signify by saying aye, opposed, motion carries. So are we standing adjourned?