We're good to go. All right. Let me call to order this 1230 meeting of the Santa Cruz City Council on February 14th, 2023. Clerk will call the roll. Thank you Mayor, Council Member Newsom. Present. Brown. Here. Watkins. Here. Brunner. Present. Calentary Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder. Here. And Mayor Keely. Here. Having established a quorum, our first order of business will be item one to refer to closed session, an item relating to the municipal wharf. Anyone have a question or comment on this item? A motion to include this in our closed session would be in order. So moved. Second. So moved by Ms. Watkins. Seconded by Ms. Brown. Clerk will call the roll. Council Member Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Keely. Aye. Motion passes and is ordered. That will be added to our closed session agenda. We are now preparing to go into closed session. There are noticed items for the public, if you wish to make comments on closed session. Items, this would be the time and place to do so. Let me start with anyone who is with us in chambers this afternoon. Seeing and hearing none. Ms. Bush, do we have anyone online? Well, you do have someone, but his hand isn't raised. So I could assume he does not want to speak. OK. I'm going to give that person just a quick second to make sure that we know whether they want to speak on this item or not. It appears that the person does not. The meeting now will be adjourned to closed session. And we will return after we have finished our business. Recording stopped. I'm so good. This breeze in. I'm here. I'm here. I could have put my dog. The hour of 1.30 having arrived, this session of the Santa Cruz City Council for February 14th, 2023 will be in session. Mr. Clerk, we'll call the roll. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Newsom. Present. Brown. Here. Watkins. Here. Brunner. Present. Calentary Johnson. Present. Vice Mayor Golder. And Mayor Keely. Here. Having established a quorum, we will move along. The first item here is presiding officer's announcements. I want to announce that at our last council meeting, I spoke in a terse manner to our city clerk, and it is not enough to offend in public and apologize in private. I want to apologize in public for the tone of my remark. I apologize to the city clerk and I appreciate your good work, that of your assistant in your office. Thank you very much for that. Let me go to statements of disqualification. Is there any member who wishes to make a statement of disqualification on any items on our agenda? Seeing and hearing none. Additions and deletions. Madam Clerk, do we have additions or deletions to the consent agenda or any other part of our agenda? We do not. We do not. Thank you very much. Mr. Kandadi, does the city attorney have any reportable items out of closed session today? Yes, thank you, Mayor Healy and members of the city council. This afternoon, the council met in closed session in the courtyard conference room to discuss three items of city council business. First item was a conference with labor negotiators and the council received a report from and gave direction to its negotiator involving the following groups, police officers association, police management and SEIU temporary employees. Item two was real property negotiations. Property in question is 45 municipal wharf. The city's negotiator gave a report to and received direction from the city council involving price terms of payment or both or a potential lease of that property. Item three was a conference with legal counsel involving existing litigation. The matter currently pending in the Santa Cruz County Superior Court entitled County of Santa Cruz versus the city of Santa Cruz. On that item, mayor and council members, the council by motion authorized the city attorney's office to file a writ of mandate in the sixth, the pellet district challenging a decision by the superior court last month over rolling a demur that the city attorney's office filed in that case. So we will be preparing and filing a writ of mandate in the sixth, the pellet district on that. That concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Madam clerk, we are on the council meeting calendar. Do you have any additions for us for that? I do not. Thank you. Members, we are on the consent agenda. This is items six through 31 inclusive members of the public. If you wish to comment on this, the city clerk will put the instructions for you up on the screen. This would be, we'll get that. There we go. These items will all be acted upon on one motion unless a member pulls this and we will handle it somewhat differently. Let me ask if there are questions or comments from members regarding any item on the consent agenda. Ms. Brown. I just have a quick question on item 20. Please. So this is a traffic signal maintenance item and I just, and I'm sorry I didn't get to ask this question earlier if anyone is able to answer it. If not, it's okay. But I just like to know if not now at some point, if the contractor who is listed here is the current contractor for our traffic signals, or if we're, I just couldn't tell from the agenda report. But if there isn't anybody available right at this moment to answer that question, I'd just love to get an answer at some point, but I do support the item. City manager, can you provide anything on that? Thank you for the question, Council Member Brown. I'm looking to see if we have Nathan Nguyen or anyone with public works. We do have Dan, who is from Public Works, who just logged in. Okay, let's give it a second. We'll try to get you an answer to that question. Mr. Nguyen, good afternoon. Good afternoon, Council. If you can repeat the question, sorry for jumping on there late. And my apologies for not getting this to you sooner. I am just on item 20, the traffic signals, wondering if the contractor that's involved in this item is a contractor we currently work with. Okay, just wanted to check on that. Yeah, Cal West is a contractor that we've been contracting our traffic signal maintenance with the last five years. They're also the same contractor that the County of Santa Cruz and the City of Watsonville use, so they have great familiarity with our area. Thank you so much. I and I really will get these questions to you in advance. I just, this is an important issue for the community and for safety, so wanted to make sure. Thanks. For the questions or comments on the consent agenda. Madam Clerk, Mr. Cagno had requested additional time. Is he with us online now? He is with us. Let's go to him. Good afternoon, sir. Good afternoon, Mayor and City Council. My name is Serge Cagno and I am the Director of the Recovery Café Santa Cruz. I wanted to speak for a minute about the opioid settlement fund agreement number seven on the consent agenda. Opioid, the opioid epidemic has raged across our country and had effects throughout the United States and the settlements are. TEMS mitigating the issues that our community has the Recovery Café Santa Cruz supports people, whether that's mental health, substance use, domestic violence, social isolation or justice involved. There are 57 recovery cafes across the United States, each one with different contracts to support different groups as their as our community needs. We would just the Recovery Café Santa Cruz just asked that the City of Santa Cruz as it is looking to provide services and support our community remembers the Recovery Café Santa Cruz. In light of this, we are setting up a tour next Wednesday of the Recovery Café San Jose and the City Council is definitely invited to come to see the kind of services that we're talking about that we're growing in Santa Cruz. I'll be in touch with each of you. Thank you. Well, thank you very much. Two thoughts on that, sir. Thank you for your good work back in a few years ago on the Council Advisory Committee on Homelessness. We appreciated your participation in that. As to the Recovery Café, and I know you know this, sir, when I had the good fortune of teaching at San Jose State University. One of my students, one of the students that I had the pleasure of teaching was the operator of that for a substantial period of time and shared a lot of her thoughts about the Recovery Café during class at various points. And thank you for your testimony and thank you for the good work that the Recovery Café does on a regular basis. Let me see if there are other. Ms. Brunner. I had a quick question regarding number seven. Do we know at this time the general timeline or process for how to determine who will be on that stakeholder group from the city? I appreciate the public comment we received, and I think, you know, there's a lot of questions around this topic. So thanks for the question, Council Member Brunner. You'll note in the packet that each agency as part of the settlement agreement will have the opportunity to appoint a representative from each jurisdiction to the stakeholder group. That question will come back to the Council. We've been in discussions with the other agencies as to whether or not that will be a member of staff or a member of City Council or Board of Supervisors depending upon the agency. So we'll have more information for you as the group comes together. Okay, great. Thank you. Any questions or comments? On item 12, if without objection, if we could request that Mr. Huffaker, if you could provide the Council with copies of that application when you have submitted it, and secondly, we would add, I would add an additional comment. I don't know that it needs to be direction. Would you be certain that we engage our state legislative delegation in this activity? This seems particularly important for us in our relationships with HCD as we continue our backing and forthing with them relative to our housing element of our general plan. Happy to do so on both counts, Mayor. Thank you for the questions or comments. Mayor, sorry, I apologize. I do have one more person. Certainly. Let's go to that person online. Who is that person? Mr. Phillips, good afternoon, sir. Yes. As to item 10, the amendment to the Brown Act giving the presiding officer the authority to remove, I assume forcibly, people from meetings if they disrupt or disturb meetings, it's a new law in rights removed from the people to address and request or address of grievances. One wonders whether handcuffs, hog tying and being tossed out like a sack of potatoes followed by a trip down to the station are involved. I kind of get this when disturbances occur that are not by those who recognize time is to be heard and who disrupt and impede the continuation of a meeting, but simply disrupt or disturbs is too vague subjective contains a garbage circular definition and doesn't exclude when it shouldn't apply. The whole tyrannical reason for these amendments to the Brown Act is that lately the people are showing they are justifiably really pissed off at the government actions that severely and negatively impacted their lives. It's the really pissed off parents confronting school boards when their children are being groomed and mostly without their knowledge and consent exposing their children to accept explicit or photographic content and perhaps in their opinion deviant and quite unnecessary at presentations of a sexual nature for when their children are being groomed to accept racial victimization hate theories of the cultural Marxist variety for when City Councils contemplate tyrannical policies which damage people's economic well being putting them essentially under house arrest ruining livelihoods or mandate they get injected with experimental gene therapies in Nuremberg style violations of human rights or attempt to confiscate and control property.  Now authorities want to stop this so they can go about their overlord objectionable business without fully facing those experiencing the negative consequences of their actions. It figures this would occur under Emperor Newsom's watch almost anything could now be considered disrupting or disturbing a meeting. You're under no obligation to be quite as verbatim authoritarian writing this into policy. It is badly missing that clarity this will never ever be used to infringe on a purely critical expression of free speech by those individuals when the order is within their time and right to address an item to the council. It doesn't say that I also don't see why you're having a problem with affirming allegiance to liberty and justice for all or an installing compelled speech where the council must vote yes but not I or now keeping outside agency developments opaque as any kind of positive modification there were at least two occasions I recall when the sergeant was called to assist removal of someone from the podium. One did not address the item at all and refused to have even after their time expired and one for expressing counsel displeasure by purposely addressing the council with his back turned who never did get to fully address the council at all since they abruptly recessed. One of those people should have been removed the other not and there is a difference expressing criticism using free speech even louder rude should be allowed and this new law may well get tested by the courts. Thanks. Thank you Mr. Phillips. Miss Bush anyone else on. There's nobody else. We have we're at a point where a motion on the consent agenda would be in order. I'll move consent. Ms. Watkins moves and Ms. Golder seconds approval of the consent agenda clerk will call the roll. Council member is Newsome. Hi. Brown. Hi. Watkins. Hi. Brunner. Hi. Elementary Johnson. Hi. Vice Mayor Golder. Hi. And Mayor Culey. Hi. Motion carries and so ordered. We are on item 24. This is the consent public hearing item. Item 24 is a second and final adoption of an ordinance amending portions of the municipal code relating to process appointments to the city commissions. Let me ask if there are questions or comments from members saying and hearing none. I would ask if there are public comments from anyone who is with us today in the audience. If you are not with us today and you wish to make comment on this item, the instructions for you are on the screen. Ms. Bush, do we have anyone online? We do not. We do not. No one with us today wishing to a motion to approve us submitted would be in order. Item. Ms. Brown moves item 24. Is there a second? Ms. Brunner seconds. Debate our discussion. Seeing and hearing none, we will move to a vote. Clerk will call the roll. Councilmember Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Calentary Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Culey. Aye. Motion passes and so ordered. Members, we are on item number 25. This is a resolution of intent to annex parcels at 538 Center Street into Park and District number one. Good afternoon. How are you? I'm great. Thank you. Good afternoon, Mayor and council members. I am Claire Glogley, transportation planner for the city and public works. The item before you is really a simple cleanup item. Cavalry Church, the affordable housing project there. They contacted us and let us know that because their property is bisected by a tax boundary, they have been unable to get an APN number and move forward with necessary steps. We have always treated this lot as part of parking district number one. It was formerly a public parking lot that we had as part of the parking district, even though half of the parcels were outside the district.  We have coordinated with the developer there and they have elected to give them the option. Would you like to be in or out of the district? They felt that the benefits of being in were good for their residents. And so the item before you starts this process, you will see a follow-up item on the 28th, which will be a notice to annex. And then the project will be able to move forward and obtain APN. So I'm available if you have any questions, but really a pretty simple cleanup. Questions or comments? Let me ask if the public has any comments on this item. Anyone with us today or anyone who may be calling in online? Nobody online. No one online. No public comment. Matter is back before the body. A motion to approve or be in order. So moved. Ms. Watkins moves. And Ms. Collin Tory Johnson seconds. I'm going to spread this around a little bit. Clerk will call the roll. Councilmember Newsom. Aye. Brown. Aye. Watkins. Aye. Brunner. Aye. Collin Tory Johnson. Aye. Vice Mayor Golder. Aye. And Mayor Culey. Aye. Motion carries in its order. Thank you for your presentation. Members, we are on item 26, sister city committee appointment. If anyone who is who's online will will give them the opportunity to see how to participate in this public comment on this appointment. No one with us today in chambers wishes to comment. Let me give folks who may be online a moment to discern whether they would like to make any kind of comment on item 26 on this item. Yes. No, I was just saying I came at one o'clock and you guys were in the full session. Now comment on this. Is it one time? Lots and all. If you're going to speak, go ahead. Oh, thank you. Can we get your name for the record? Okay. Number one, I'd like to see later. Let me, I asked a question. Would you be kind enough to state your name for the record? Oh, sure. Thank you. You remember I wasn't Nicholas. No, I know. I'm Richard Wilson. Mr. Lewis, of course. And it's really nice. I'll be back at your next meeting because this city has the leadership to do something both county and city of sister to sister. Philippi himself from the county, he went to Mexico. I just like to put out there that possibility would be to create a county, county, city, city somewhere. I'd love it to be Guadalajara. At least school. So I will, my public comment is that we don't. I do not believe we have in Santa Cruz a sister city, but boy, we have the population and at the commission countywide, they didn't even have a quorum in their February meeting. So please as leaders, take a look at how nice it would be to go to Jalisco, Guadalajara. And I'd love to work with anybody toward that of what we could do. And thank you. Please, if they'll pass that out. I have been busy since since the letter from what was in 1985, which you'll get a chance to look at. Thank you for that. My name is not important. The people that are sitting here is your destiny to make Santa Cruz what it could be. So I'll be back. I can't be here tonight. I'm going to be up with the students that you see. Thank you very much for letting me be at the mic. Thank you so much for your testimony. We appreciate it. Mr. Sister, it could be done. Got it. Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone still? No one online. Correct, Miss Bush? Right. No one. Good to go. All right. Matters back before the council, there is a recommended motion to appoint a member to the committee. Does anyone have a nomination? Ms. Brunner. I nominate Isabella Bonner. Isabella Bonner. Okay. There is a nomination from Ms. Bonner to be appointed to the sister city commission. Is there any other, are there any other nominees? No. Seeing and hearing none, Ms. Bush, the appropriate motion is to appoint. Correct? By consensus. By consensus. Okay. There is a motion and a second to appoint Ms. Bonner as nominated by Ms. Brunner. Is there any objection? Seeing and hearing none, a unanimous voice vote or excuse me, a unanimous vote has been taken and the appointment is approved. Members, we are on item number 27. This is a response to the 2021 independent police auditor report. Let me also make sure that we are going to be, Ms. Bush will put the information up on the screen real quick for how to participate. We will begin by asking Ms. Brothers, the principal management analyst for this presentation to come forward and make presentation or not as the case may be. I will find out where she is. Thank you so much. What we are going to do is stand in recess for five minutes. We are back from our brief recess. Council is back in session. I would like to welcome Ms. Brothers, police chief, deputy chief. Thank you all very much for being here. Ms. Brothers, we will recognize you for a presentation. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mayor Keely. Yes, I will be the one presenting, but Ms. Brothers deserves all the credit for the construction of the product. Good afternoon, Mayor Keely and council members.  I'm here today to present on our actions as a police department to the 2021 independent police auditor report and the recommendations that came out of that and the things that we have adjusted, changed or modified and some things that we are still currently working on as we speak. So briefly, OIR is the company we are contracted with. They reviewed 13 public complaints investigations. That's not the entire year of complaints. The ones that they selected to review. They reviewed 13 public complaints, two administrative investigations, in other words, investigations that we self-initiated, an investigation on certain actions, and then two other policing performance matters that they also provided some feedback on. In total, as you saw in the report that was provided to you, there were a total of 26 recommendations and out of, I believe, the 17 incidents that they looked at, we had several there that did not provide or did not require any sort of recommendations or feedback from OIR. So I'm going to provide really just a high level. I'm not going to go through each and every recommendation. As you saw, some of the recommendations were redundant, but I'll give it more of a high level of some of the actions that we've taken since we've worked through this report with the independent auditor. First and foremost, we addressed and updated our policy on transporting persons that are in custody. In addition to the updated policy, we also included the new government code 7286.5 before, which also required additional mitigations put in place for the well-being of those in our custody. Secondly, we have an updated policy. Actually, let me back up real quickly. Really what that new policy states is we are required to keep constant observation of the individual that's in our custody. Our policy already required the use of a seat belt, but in some circumstances it's not practical to seat belt somebody. And that's, if that's the case, we need to remain constantly observant of their position and the new government code covers positional affixiation and the preventative measures for that. Updated policy 421 of the mobile audio and video in our cars. Again, along the same lines related to the same incident. We changed our policy now to require at all times when somebody is in the back of our patrol car and in our custody that our in-car camera system will be activated to capture any sort of incidents or issues along the way when we're transporting whether to the hospital or to the county jail. New policy 343, use of force review board. This is still in the works. We are working closely with the auditor to create the best policy possible and constructing the use of force review board, which is an internal board that will be constructed with some use of force experts, instructors, in some cases like a training manager with the intent of this review board to not review the compliance of policy but more so this analysis of tactics and training. We have to make sure that these two processes, in other words the current professional standards process of compliance with policy versus how can we get better even if policy wasn't was adhered to how can we get better with our tactics, our training and our equipment to be more effective even though we may have been able to get better with our policy. So we're still on our second version of that policy that we have sent to our independent auditor for suggestions. Round one included suggestions. We've incorporated those and we are now sending round two back to the auditor for a thorough review. Make sure we get that right. We've updated policy 305, officer involved shooting and death sort of shooting and death incident policy. This one also includes certain recommendations that were made by the auditor. This one is also one that is being reviewed and double checked by the independent auditor about refining a few of the recommendations that they made and we think that we got this one right as well. As you see at the bottom there, these updates or new policies that we put into place cover at a minimum of those five recommendations in the report that you have. One of the more highlighted events in the report was an incident that resulted in the recommendation around bias by proxy sort of policy and or issues that they felt we should address. Just so you know, currently are required to take a five hour course when you're going through the police academy and you recertify with that same bias based policing requirement every five years. That is required by post. Our last updated training was in 2020. We also have this coming year a training course, an eight hour training course titled strategic communications which will also include cultural diversity as part of the curriculum of the class. So the point being is we are constantly training and updating our staff on these skills which we believe cover the bias by proxy recommendation from the auditor. In addition to all of the training that we currently do and have done and will continue to do, if you recall some of you that were on council there was an ordinance passed in November of 2021, 9.86 which covered discriminatory reports to law enforcement and that was in part a result of the auditor's report. And we also currently have a policy, policy 401 which is titled bias based policing which prohibits bias based policing in any way shape or form and has been in existence prior to this report. I feel through all three of these points the recommendation or suggestions are thoroughly covered as far as the concerns out of the report. So one of the recommendations had to do with our policy, the way it existed, 1009 personnel complaints. This is another policy that we continue to work with alongside with the auditors. We have sent the second version back to them or hopefully a final sign off or approval or any other suggestions they may come up with. It's a lengthy policy. As you can see down at the bottom it covers at least seven of the recommendations out of this report. A lot of it had to do with processing personnel complaints, the timeliness of our investigations and also communications not only during but after a complaint investigation is completed. So as you can see here the policy as it sits now it's intended to improve the documentation in the receiving of a complaint from the community or even if it's an internally generated complaint. It addresses the timeliness, the policy before, I think it was more of the unwritten rule we've always done it that way but it was never really written down. So in this case we've documented and addressed the timeliness of the investigations and the necessary steps to take if there's going to be a delay. And it also improves the communication with the complainant. Ultimately we respond to the complainant with what we call a disposition letter articulating what we learned and also offer them the opportunity to come view the body worn camera evidence if that is applicable with that particular complaint. In essence we're trying to be more responsive to the complaint. As I just mentioned we are now since we received the original report from the auditor we started the process of issuing disposition letters to the complainant with an opportunity to come. Necessarily disclose if there were certain disciplinary matters taken into place or that occurred but we do thank them for the opportunity to learn and get better. Again when it's applicable we provide the access to the body camera footage. Up to this point nobody has followed back up with us and taken that opportunity but we offer it in not every circumstance is it applicable. It depends on the nature of the complaint. We're utilizing what we believe to be better internal software to better track not only the receiving of the complaints, the completion of the complaints and also implementing the recommendations of a complaint. Sometimes we may not have discipline that comes out of a complaint but we might have the implementation of training for example. We want to make sure that we check that box and make sure that training has been implemented. And also we currently meet myself Deputy Chief John Bush and Sergeant Eric Hoppe we meet twice a month. We go over everything that's on Sergeant Hoppe's list and ensure that we're better tracking the timeliness of our investigation. And again at the bottom you'll see there's at least six recommendations that are covered in this new policy. That's all I have for this afternoon. Chief thank you very much. Let me see if there are questions or comments by members of the council. Any questions around here? I'll take the opportunity to ask a couple if I might Chief. Take a look at recommendation number three which is on page 27.2 of the agenda packet. The question I have on this is the constant monitoring issue. Does that mean then if you are transporting someone that you've got two officers in the vehicle then one who's driving, one who's paying attention 100% of the time to the person in the vehicle, or is the person driving also trying to pay attention to the person in the vehicle? If necessary it would require to put a second officer in the vehicle. If the subject in the back is sitting up if you will, then the driver of the vehicle can monitor and the camera is also activated. If the individual, if we lose sight of the individual and they've now slumped down into more of a positional association kind of concern, then the instruction is to pull over and we may need to get another officer involved in that or at least try to sit them up. Please take a look at item on the same page in the agenda packet. This is the officer involved shooting death policy to define the use of force in the review boards. You address that in your opening comments. It says here that would define the use of force review boards, composition duties, timelines, meetings, and scope. Could you go to the scope question and help us at least help me. Others have had this opportunity, my first opportunity on the council to do this but I'm interested in the scope question. Yeah, that's a great question because we actually had a follow-up meeting with the auditor to clarify the scope as well because I had not concerns about a review board but I had concerns about kind of duplicating the efforts of an internal investigation and what that looks like. Do they, for example, what if they come up with a policy violation that they've identified that was not identified in the professional standards unit investigation or vice versa that creates a problem. So we talked a little bit about that because there's also there's a recommendation that that board debriefs a situation with an officer or officers to learn. The problem with that is if it becomes more of a internal investigation on policy there's rights and rules we have to follow with that interview but we want it to be more of a casual learning conversation. So the scope to your question the scope is going to be specifically focused on training tactics equipment communications how can we learn and get better and we'll bifurcate that investigation and leave the potential policy violation and potential discipline investigation to the professional standards unit. Thank you. If you would take a look at item recommendation number 15 on page 27 .4 in our agenda packet this is a policy which reevaluate this complaint by focusing on principles of bias by proxy when responding to calls for service. You address that twice in your opening comments. Here's my question how often does post police officers standards and training update their training on this point? You can keep getting trained by them. Do they keep updating their training on this dimension? That's a great question as well and I don't have the answer to that. I would have to get back to how often they update that. Thank you chief. Let me ask if there are members with questions. Anyone with us today who would like to comment on this? Ask questions. I see no one here. Ms. Bush do we have anyone online or shall we give them an opportunity here? We do have one person so far.  I'm ready. All right. We are good to go. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Hi. I'm this is Peter Gilblum. Thank you mayor and council members. I have an overall request that you postpone consideration of this item at least until the next meeting because the policy that's available to the public online the Santa Cruz police policy manual has not been updated to reflect any of the updates that the chief and their response have mentioned. 15, I might count 15 of the 26 responses say recommendation completed until the policy such and such updated. That's not available to the public so we have no way of looking at what's there so I just asked that you put this off to the next meeting or until the policy online can be updated because we have no way of checking to see what's been done. So I think that's a reasonable request. If you don't do that let me give you a couple of specific comments I have although I really think you can do that. Certainly. First of all I agree with better than Mr. Gettleman said in regarding recommendations one and two. The auditor recommended that interviews of officers involved in critical incidents be completed before the end of shift rather than whenever they get around to it and feel like it if the officer doesn't feel like he's emotionally capable or psychologically capable you can request it to be put off. The existing policies 305 and its subsets specifically require that the officer's physical and psychological needs be taken into account. No member of the public gets that right. You have right to attorney but if you don't remember I said well I'm a little crazed right now this is terrible I don't know. The police officer should not get any more rights than the public has when they have been involved in killing or seriously wounding the resident of this county. Secondly I agree with the writer who wrote in about recommendation 21 about the providing access to the body work camera footage the chief said when it's relevant if you get exactly the word he used way too much discretion. The SCPD should be required to very specific guidelines as to when they feel that not providing footage is required and providing footage should be the default. Thank you but again I do request to put this off until the policies available public. Thank you. Mr. Gillblum thank you very much for your participation. Chief I saw you taking a couple of notes do you wish to make comment on that item sir? Well I'll address the issue about timeliness of interviewing an officer involved in a critical incident. Thank you. I believe that I agree with most of the things that were in that email. I think our objective and our goal is the same and that is to get a thorough accurate timely statement from the officers that are involved and get to the truth of the matter. However I think that it is inappropriate to ask a human being to provide such a critical statement in some circumstances where they may have been up for almost 24 hours and I will use the example of our recent incident where that occurred at 5 30 in the morning and those officers had been working since 10 o'clock the night before so I don't know when they had last slept. At that point we initiate a county protocol that brings in the district attorney's office who's going to conduct the interview. We bring in the sheriff's office who's going to do the evidence processing. There's a lot of things that are going on and at some point actually the ship's not driven by me, it's driven by other entities. The interview for those officers was projected to occur at about 2 o'clock in the afternoon. We started their shift at 10 o'clock the night before. I'm not interested in the officers going home to conjure up a different story which I think will all be captured on the body one camera. I'm interested in a fair process for them. I'm interested in a thorough investigation an accurate investigation that I do not believe we will achieve with somebody that's been up for 18 plus hours. On top of all of that they have a right to an attorney and their attorneys are usually coming from the Bay Area which we don't control how long that will take. So quite frankly I agree with the recommendation in that particular case I believe it was three to four days after the district attorney's office completed an interview. I think we need to learn from that. But I think when you have somebody that's been up a human being that's been up for 18 20 hours straight I think you're going to get a better result and product after they get 68 hours of sleep. That's my response to that one. Thank you Chief. Appreciate that comment. Let me see other questions and comments. Ms. Brown. I wanted to follow up on another point that was made by the caller and thank you for the report. Thank you for all the work that went into it. It was well organized, very helpful and I just wanted to check on the question about the policy manual updates because I did go back at reference the SCPD handbook as I was reading this item but I can't tell where updates have occurred. So is it the case that the old policy is still the public version? So okay so there are members of the public who are interested in weighing in on this and have not been able to see that policy as those changes as of yet. Can we estimate when they may be available to the public? I think since we're on our second round of edits I think that we are getting really close. The other caveat to this I forgot to explain was every year lexical who manages our policies they provide legal updates at the beginning of every calendar year and so every year January, early February our policies are in flux because we're reviewing policy some of it is mandated law that we incorporate into our new policy some of it is suggestions that we have to review and approve or not. So that was the other reason instead of doing it twice I think probably within the next 30 days we should have this wrapped up would be my estimate and then I think the second question or point maybe it was the first one I took maybe out of order as I mentioned we offer the opportunity for complainants to come and view the body worn camera themselves there are certain circumstances where it would be inappropriate for us to do that as an example if there's juveniles in the body worn camera footage that's inappropriate for us to show we could redact the video that's going to take significant staff time there are certain circumstances where a third party makes a complaint that was not related or associated with the incident I feel it would be inappropriate for me to show some body worn camera footage when a third party is viewing it maybe that individual is in a particular place whether it's lack of clothing in the middle of a personal very personal event that's in their home I don't think that those are circumstances it should be exposed to a third party so I think to say that everybody should be able to see all body worn camera is irresponsible to be honest I think that I should have the ability to have that discretion when it's applicable to offer that opportunity when it's not appropriate just a quick follow up on that I hear you and thank you for providing some of the examples of cases in which a policy a blanket policy wouldn't be helpful all the words but I do wonder would it be possible to include some kind of guidelines around what the circumstances are that might be helpful for the public so in third party cases and or where there are minors or personal just to kind of lay out what you just said very basically so that people it's something legible for the public about what their rights are to make those kinds of requests because it just seems like once I heard it that made total sense to me but without knowing that I could understand how the public might have some concern so just wondering if that is something that could be considered we could try I think it's hard to capture all the what ifs I mean general more generally that's what concerns me and so that's why I feel I have the ability to make the decision and our objective is to be fully transparent and currently offer that opportunity to people in the disposition letters and I feel like we've been responsive to the recommendations of the auditor to do that it's just really hard to capture all the potential scenarios and lock us in policy thank you Miss Brunner Thank you Chief Escalante I you know this is interesting I had also several questions I appreciate you answering them in advance when reading through this and it's interesting to hear that some of those questions are again being asked on the recommendations number two and number 21 so I think after talking with you and hearing a lot of the scenarios that do refer in situations with body cameras and footage and accessibility to that footage it's hard to make it a black and white list I want to see a list when we were talking I was asking what are all the reasons why not the interest of transparency as you're going through a second draft to just consider if there are any language tweaks that would help the public feel ensured that it is accessible and I'm wondering if these updates which were in our agenda packet are accessible to the public if they can also be on the recommendations and the responses temporarily if they can be on the scpd website so that anybody who did not see the agenda packet would also have access to this I don't have a problem with that I think we typically just try to communicate and present to all of you first thank you for all of the responses and for all of the work and there's a lot in here so I really appreciate all of I want to say that you're I have no doubt at how thoughtful you are at taking each of these recommendations seriously so thank you for the questions or comments anyone else online miss bush? good there will be a motion to accept the report as the appropriate motion is there such a motion? second by mr. newson under debate and discussion chief let me add my thanks and appreciation to you and to the men of the Santa Cruz police department all of you do all the time every day every night every neighborhood protecting us serving us thank you for all of that please pass that along to every member of your staff we thank you all deeply deep gratitude for keeping us safe thank you for the questions or comments miss brown? just a quick comment because we did have a speaker who follows this very closely and has been really engaged on issues of policing in our community and I appreciate that mr. galblum and so I just do want to say I recognize your interest in postponing this the idea that we may have it in 30 days makes me want to make that I'm not hearing it seems like people are ready to accept the report and given that I would just say perhaps once that policy is up and we've accepted the report it doesn't mean that we're making recommendations about policy changes we are accepting this here but if you want to have a follow-up conversation once that policy handbook is available and the updates are made I'm willing to have that conversation and see if there is more that we want to try to do or community members want to try to do with this document and I don't mean to say massive policy changes but if you want to review this iteration I'm here and willing to talk about that but I don't think that accepting it today is necessarily going to change the outcome so I'll support this thanks for the debate or discussion none the clerk will call the roll Council Member Newsom Brown Watkins Brunner Johnson Golder Mericulis and so ordered members we are on item number 28 this is an ordinance related to the annual living wage adjustment index we will have a staff presentation from Mr. Geese good afternoon good afternoon Council members and Mayor Keely this ordinance relates to the living wage ordinance which requires the city to people who contract with the city must pay their employees a minimum living wage each year that is upwardly indexed based on the consumer price index for the San Francisco Bay Area region in 2018 the finance department in 2018 VLS actually ceased publishing the CPI that's referenced in the ordinance and so this amendment is essentially a cleanup and inserts the accurate CPI so that each year it can be upwardly indexed to match any questions see if there are questions members of the council seen and hearing none hold for just a second there do we have anyone online on this item we do not anyone with us today in chambers who should comment on this I'm going to give folks just a second here in case they wanted to dial in seen and hearing no one is that correct Ms. Bush thank you there is the recommended action on here is to approve the ordinance and direct it to be placed on a future agenda is there such a motion Ms. Brown seconded by Ms. Golder debate or discussion seen and hearing none we will move to vote clerk will call the roll councilmember brown Watkins Brunner Johnson Golder motion passes and so ordered thank you for being here sir thank you we are on item 29 this is an item relating to sidewalk vending ordinance administrative amendments and program update Ms. Nguyen good afternoon city council good afternoon city council members my name is Vivi Nguyen and I am the principal management analyst with the planning and community development department I'm pleased today to be joined with Laura Landry to give you an update on the sidewalk vending program good afternoon today we are providing an update on the first year of administration of the sidewalk vending program under Santa Cruz municipal code chapter 5.82 city council adopted the sidewalk vending ordinance on April 12th, 2022 and directed staff to return to city council this year to provide a program operational update and budget request we have identified eight items for your review these are cleanup amendments in the ordinance the sections are really related to cleanup in the definitions conduct, permit application process, condition of approval and expiration and renewal and I'll be more than happy with Laura to answer any of the questions you may have regarding the amendments we are really intended to clean up the items here before we head into the new season and this is based on our experience from after one year of administration and we're really looking forward to sharing with you some of the items that we have accomplished for the most recent sidewalk vending year for the first season of the administration of the sidewalk vending ordinance which is from April 1st through October 31st staff has the following programs program updates 68 permits were issued 25 written citations were issued and eight impoundments we also want to provide you a budget update so we were here in March of 22 and last year we had approved program funding for fiscal year 2022 and we also had approved funding for fiscal year 2023 and we were also directed at that city council meeting to come back for fiscal year 2024 to provide you some program updates as well as just general estimates that we're looking for in 2024 so with here in 2022 we did have approval of $205,000 and we ended up spending only $54,000 the reason being is that we decided not to use the funding towards private security and we used that towards contracted third party to provide additional support for code enforcement we also ended up not using an electronic citation system because we deemed that it was incompatible with really being in the field and that it would just be easier for us to develop paper citation that we would end up tracking rather than dealing with software and in 2023 we had approved or city council had approved $205,000 as well so expected expenditures going into the end of the fiscal year is going to be $194,000 this does not include the code compliance supervisor role so city council had approved that new position and so city council had also approved the position and we hired that position in December of last year now going into 2024 you will see this included in the planning and community development budget proposal so these are really tentative numbers as we are still flushing it out since the packet has been posted we are suggesting additional support for Friday evenings just so that especially during the peak season we have accounted for additional $30,000 in here and this would also exclude the code compliance supervisor in terms of just really looking at contracted code support and supplies and you will see us back again included in our budget proposal more formally in a couple months we have the staff recommendation for city council review and approval if amendments are approved the sidewalk bending ordinance has a second hearing anticipated to be held on the 20th of February if the second hearing is approved then it's anticipated to for the ordinance to take effect on March 30th of this year the sidewalk bending season second season is to start on April 1st Laura and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have Questions or comments by council, Ms. Brown Thank you for the presentation and the updates I have a question about the change one of the specific changes that I didn't hear mentioned and I'm just trying to understand in 5.82060 on the permit expiration and renewal I see that you are trying to set up a regularized schedule where permits expire at the end of the season and I'm just wondering how that will work because it seems like it will make it for people who apply for the summer maybe mid season they're going to be paying the same amount I know it's not a huge fee but the same amount as people who apply every September 30th and I'm just wondering why you're recommending that change Absolutely, that's a great question council member the first aspect is that as we first just launched our season we learned that it was an administrative challenge trying to track all the different expiration dates and as people come in the first time we found that some of them didn't want to add on the parks permit so then we have to add on another timeline of when they come in maybe three months later they want a parks permit so now we're managing two separate timelines we also have to think about their business license timeline and that expires so we're really looking for an opportunity to consolidate the timeline and we were looking at September specifically so that we could have a chance to kind of ramp up everyone before the start of the end of the season really that's to be street season and so we also looked at the mobile vending ordinance which also has a renewal period of March and so we wanted to have a chance to kind of align similar to sidewalk vending although they're not on the same timeline just having a more consistent opportunity so administratively we wouldn't have to reprint permits permit cards in conditions of use every couple months as people come in and just a quick follow-up does it feels like the end of season is a time when that that will make sense for the flow of vendors and your office because we realized from this experience we had an influx of vendors coming in to add on additional permitting so they could vend on beach streets and so during the peak season they cannot vend on beach streets so when they can vend on beach streets in October they want to come in so it made sense for us to align that timeline thank you that was also one of my questions I'm still a member Brown so I'm still if you could just clarify if someone comes in let's say they want to start and apply in June how is that process different can you just kind of briefly state what that looks like that's that question and so that's for example June of this year they would come in is that correct okay so administratively right now what would similar to we have an influx of vendors who came in in March or May of last year coming to apply so in terms of those subsets of applicants they would we would allow their their vending to continue until which will then carry on that and if someone were to come in in June of this year who would also try to align it so that when they come in it would be vending depending on when this ordinance would be approved they would come in and they would have to renew their new permit in September okay and the price is the same so it would be regardless August they would still pay the same price and renew in September correct and then my second question they're in the track changes document which was really helpful to see it that way thank you there is I guess I'll read the the number 5.8 2.0 3.0 sidewalk vending conduct and I'm not seeing a page number on this online version but it's A3 except for the brief duration of time for a roaming sidewalk vendor to conduct sale to maintain accessibility standard sidewalk vendor shall not place or allow any obstruction to be placed on the sidewalk that would reduce the width of the sidewalk to a minimum of 48 inches excluding the curb and excluding any sidewalk areas that are made non-passable due to any post parking meter street trees planters or signs that have been installed on the sidewalk etc it goes on but two of those changes in red so the first one my question except for the brief duration of time how is that defined and who defines it brief duration of time Laura Landry code compliance so the brief time is the interaction that it takes for the roaming vendor whether it's to sell food or merchandise to be able to just do that quick transaction so that is a brief that cannot remain in that condition where the sidewalk bending is not accessible to for instance strollers or wheelchair so there needs to be accessibility it's still not clear to me with that but I understand the intent of it I just wonder if there's a way to consider clarifying with that brief duration of time it would entail the couple of minutes to be able to do the transaction in exchange of whether it's monetary or the merchandise and then what was interesting to me on the second part the second edition here was specific examples were given of parking meters street cheese planters and again the language could be slightly tweaked to maybe in general say something like in general items such as these items because I can think of several more things that would fall into the categories so I can just see little wiggle room it's just not really clear like a bike rack for example or you know just whatever there happens to be a freestanding factory or something that is not listed here and so just a little clarification there I think would be helpful thank you thank you Ms. Callantari Johnson thank you for the presentation and the work on this I just have one question what's our process as part of this process what is our process in working with current permitted vendors and providing feedback from them what's working what's not working and how did that you know how did that influence what was put together and brought before us today I think I'll take the first part in terms of kind of sharing the application process and then ask for Laura's feedback as she really has been on the ground providing the eyes and the ears I think for the application process the biggest challenge so far has been really tried to provide the information in multiple languages specifically Spanish especially for our vendors and that's also one of the things that we were thinking about when recommending these changes too is how do we make this process easier and the main driving part of having the annual kind of a set timeline is that we don't have to have them coming in multiple touch points and that once we have the information we can just send them the permit and send them the information and they're ready to go I think the other aspect too of providing some of these there was a lot of confusion about where they could send or what the rules are it is a lot and so we wanted to provide as much clarity as we can and I think in our intent of clarifying the flag, the poles, the trash bins like you can't be bending near there because there was a lot of confusion to dispose my items and I think that's part of the educational experience there as well To add to what Vivian just stated regarding clarification I think in my conversations with the vendors out on Beach Street and also on Pacific Avenue mainly on Beach Street they needed to have the clarification as the type of equipment, size of equipment that they had in the areas that they were located that they were allowed to so providing that clarity whether it's in the conditions of approval or in the ordinance provided a lot more clarity to them also one of the other items was the enforcement official that's who's enforcing the ordinance and so we provided that information verbally but it was a clarity for them as well to be able to see that in the ordinance as to who was enforcing that and who they can talk to Thank you Council Member Golder All your work on this I know it was quite a nuisance a few years ago and I think it's really made a lot of progress I do have a couple of thoughts and the first one is in regards to sales tax remittance is there a mechanism for us to ensure that these vendors are paying their fair share to contribute to our city's budget? Excellent question I also talk briefly with the finance department to understand because the requirements of to get a vending license is to get a state seller's permit you have to get the city's business license and of course they have to pay for the city's respective permits to bend and so currently we don't have a mechanism set up to ensure that they are paying the sales tax in our feedback with the finance department they're not it's a non-regulatory and so one of our enforcement mechanisms is that you have to get the business licenses and the respective permits in order to bend Is there a way that in the future it could be required where a vendor would potentially show proof of payment of sales tax to the state prior to receiving a second year renewal? That's an excellent question we'll be sure to research that further I have a couple other questions Is there anywhere in here where we're addressing hours of operation for the vendors? We have the hours of operation addressed in the conditions of use and so while this ordinance here is a more of a high level guidance our condition of use that gets issued with the sidewalk vendors that includes a permit and also a condition of use that specifies the hours they're allowed to bend and then I did notice about that people could have one dog on a leash or one pet on a leash I know there's a lot of dog lovers around here and I'm not going to be popular for saying this but is there a reason is it for you know are they therapy dogs or is it support animals or is it just because not everybody likes dogs and pets and they make a mess Absolutely That's a good question and I think we wanted to ensure that included for example support animals if they needed to and we do have a community of homeless individuals who have these vendor businesses and they do have pets with them and so that the intent was for support animals but also realistically some of our vendors are homeless and this is a way that they make their sale and they're living and asking a million questions I don't want to dominate the time but my next question and I've brought this up before is about kids I've seen kids at these booths for hours Is that allowed? Usually the I want to say the minus that I have encountered when I was doing the sidewalk bending they are there with their families and while I do understand that some of my look quite young there are some of them that are 15 and 16 years old which of course they're allowed to work and so they're doing that with their families so these are families that are out there bending with their children I've seen some that are quite younger than that in different parts other than the beach area and it was concerning to me just knowing the work permit process and how many hours kids are allowed if they're with their parents at work it seems a little the conditions seem a little harsh the next question I have is about are all of these vendors sole proprietors or any of them getting the license and having others serve as vendors for them That's a great question so in terms of when they indicate on their business license it includes sole proprietors and so what a vendor could do would be the main owner and then the applicant can add on operators so that they have to show additional documentation ID and be added to the vendor so if I was the owner I could ask Laura to be an operator for me as long as Laura shows all the justification and the permitting and what not Have you seen that much? We have a few permits in which there is an owner and an operator who is actually going out there and so like for example the people that have I've seen like a white van just drop off people on corners with selling flowers and fruit and what not and it's like one person going place to place to place is that one vendor they allowed multiple spots around so for the vendors that are on Beach Street that are assigned to different locations each location has its own separate permit sidewalk vending permit that operator is assigned to that permit itself so it's an individual with a permit that is assigned to that area okay okay I swear I'm almost done with my questions my last question is about trailers or like food trucks that park and I know they're not allowed on sidewalks but are they allowed to just dominate the meter all day long or I've driven by and seen them not even using the meter at all is there any rules around that so for parking we do know that the vendors that are out there use the parking areas to be able to vent in the location that they're typically parked in and so there's they're not vending from that location they're just using the meters and they're paying for the meter so there's it's just yeah I was talking about like once that they set up like a little they're actually selling like food from a truck or something in a parking meter space that's what I was talking about like all day we have mobile vending which is separate from sidewalk vending and so if they're vending from like a food truck that would fall under the mobile vending then okay so that's always confused it was by the bowling alleys where I saw it yeah thank you for answering all of my long questions and I appreciate I appreciate your work on this thanks thank you miss Golder miss Watkins yeah thank you thank you for the presentation I also just have I have one brief question and you mentioned multiple languages and is this policy presented to individuals in Spanish or in other languages as well as need in it is so the first time that we went in March of 2022 the ordinance was translated in Spanish so we didn't bring forth a Spanish translated version to you today but the ordinance will be translated so that it could be provided and one of our goals is for the condition of you to also be fully translated right and then I know in the region there is more miss teco speaking individuals as well is that also something that you're observing in terms of vendors in our community or is that not necessarily applicable so we do I have heard different dialects but they are primary Spanish so we are able to receive the information and just like Vivian stated last year we also provided all our outreach in Spanish as well Spanish and English including the permitting process and application process as well other questions or comments a couple if I might thank you first of all on page 29.6 of our packet on this item it indicates a code compliant supervisor if I understood that was sort of reclassified if you will upwards is that correct what was approved at the March 22nd city council meeting was a senior code compliant specialist and we just provided a renaming to code compliant supervisor who does that code compliant supervisor supervise they they supervise the contract the code enforcement contract that we have that are going to be assisting with the enforcement aspect in the program thank you I ask a couple other questions I want to get into this business about the sales tax this government decided last year to ask the voters to increase their sales tax and for a wide variety of reasons they chose not to do it I wonder if one of those might be that some people feel if there are two classes of tax compliance those who comply and those who don't and among that it's people with brick and mortar facilities that have to comply with sales tax and by and large it's a wink and a nod when it comes to sidewalk vending I am very interested in understanding more about this sales tax compliance issue so for example when you get your vending license from the city and you have to attest that you have a sales tax permit from the California Board of Equalization am I right so far and what does it I'm sorry Ms. Nguyen so when they come to us to request an application we ask for the state sellers permit so then that is one of the items that we request and that has to be shown to you not a box that is checked someone is vending are they required to display their business license or street vending license correct in a conspicuous place presumably and does that also have on it any indication about their sales tax BOE permit does that have any information about that I don't recall the top of my head do you have any reason to believe that there is a substantial portion of the folks who are vending and competing with brick and mortar businesses in downtown Santa Cruz are remitting sales tax collecting and remitting sales tax do you have any reason to believe that's happening I'll be raising this issue again when we get on to our next issue about mid-year budget adjustments and so on but I do appreciate that I'll be raising that issue in a separate context there are other questions or comments from council members I want to make sure that I'm really clear on this new state relatively newish state law on this question if I understand the fines and declare section of that senate bill it is the findings and declarations on that statute essentially make try to make the case anyway I think it's convincing that in certain instances cities local governments have to erect barriers to entry for street vending which has the effect if I understand it from the fines and declare section of the statute is that it in effect prohibits, creases insurmountable barriers for certain low income folks to be able to engage in street vending am I right about what that statute says okay and in that regard which I don't think is a bad statute I suspect most of us are probably voted for that would you agree or disagree that collection and remittance of sales tax is or is not a barrier to entry I don't have all the information to give you an answer my sense is that it shouldn't be and it isn't tax laws for everybody or we have two sets of tax laws but if you have a sales tax permit from the California Board of Equalization then there should be some evidence that you're actually we can associate that license with some remittance to the Board of Equalization on an annual basis I'd be fascinated to see what that tells us because again the state's taking care of the part about barrier to entry you know you can't have something this tall or you need something that big whatever all the economic issues that would go into barrier to entry but collection remittance of sales tax is not a barrier to entry my judgment that's a compliance with the law just like if there was some health and safety requirement in the health and safety code of the state enforcing it is not a barrier to entry it's compliance with the law is my sense I'm interested in your observation on that Good afternoon Mayor and Council Members Good afternoon it is our Distinguished Planning Director how are you sir? Doing great thank you I would say with respect to it being a barrier we have that prerequisite for the applicant the sidewalk vendor to actually receive that license from the state and so I wouldn't see it as a barrier to your question about is there any evidence as to whether or not the individuals are remitting sales tax I don't believe that the city checks that and for brick and mortar or for for sidewalk vendors I do believe that it comes through we ultimately see what those taxes are and I don't know if there's a distinction between sidewalk vendor and whether or not we can pull that information out I do see our finance director is here she may have some additional sure we'll get into this next item thank you any further questions trying to decide whether to split my time or load up my time I think I'll split my time with the next item thank you for that I appreciate it thank you very much for your item and mayor if I could if it pleases the mayor and the council in response to councilmember Bruno's comments I did make some language tweaks to the section of code that councilmember Bruno referenced and the body bush has that and she's sharing her screen now there's Bruno while that's loading I'll ask a quick question on the sales tax I know that I've had conversations with economic development department and they do track sales tax of businesses in the city so I I wonder if it's how they do that search if it's by business license or geographical area so that would be something that would speak to what is being asked if I may I'll chime in here as well I appreciate the questions from the mayor and councilmember Bruno so we do work with an outside company called HDL it's a sales tax and public finance consulting agency that provides quarterly sales tax reports to the city those quarterly sales tax reports include gross sales as well as sales tax remittance that come directly to the city as well through the county as well as the county pool for online sales and it's by business and so we draw no distinction between those as a business or brick and mortar they're all treated the same they're all expected to remit and collect their sales tax and when there are occasions that call for it there are additional audits that HDL can do in concert with our staff as well and so as we get into our discussions later this afternoon around budget we're happy to talk about that more but I think the spirit behind this is we don't see it as a barrier to entry it's the same standard that we hold all of our businesses to in Santa Cruz we try to make that process as seamless as possible and we expect and all businesses are required to pay their share of sales tax I think the distinction here is not between whether they are required it's whether or not it happens is my issue is whether or not that collection and remittance is taking place and it would seem to me that if I'm going to take a wild guess I have no idea about this but I take a wild guess that somebody who buys a silver trinket outside the brick and mortar silver trinket place thinks that not only are they getting a good deal because it's cheaper I would be shocked if they think they are going to be asked to pay a sales tax $45 or $20 or $10 or whatever it says you hand them a $10 bill they give you the trinket and off they go that would be my guess but I need some I want to get into this on the next item as you can tell because it doesn't seem to me I will be quite interested in seeing how we handle this let me make this point it's the state government's job to decide what barriers to entry are and they've made those decisions I have no trouble with that it's just fine in fact I think it's one of the things that makes our community charming sometimes a little too charming perhaps but it's charming to have these street vendors whether it's mostly food over on Beach Street or it's mostly trinkets and so on on Pacific Avenue I think it adds to the mystique of Santa Cruz it's great comma but and I don't mean that as a verbal eraser but you got to play by the rules here and I have a deep suspicion that's not happening by and large on the sales tax component Mr. Butler did you have further comment on this? I do not. Thank you sir further questions or comments by members is there anyone with with us today who wishes to comment on this item and Ms. Bush do we have anyone online? No I don't. We do not the matter is back before the council and a motion would be in order sure I'm happy to move the amended version of the ordinance there's a motion is there a second? Second by Ms. Brenner debate or discussion on this item seeing and hearing none we will move to a vote and the clerk will call the roll Mr. Newsom Brown Watkins Brenner Calentary Johnson Maricoudre motion carries out of an abundance of attention to detail here actually the motion covered the first of the two recommendations can I get a recommendation to accept the sidewalk vending program update Mr. Newsom Ms. Calentary Johnson seconds debate or discussion seeing and hearing none clerk will call the roll Council Member Newsom Brown Watkins Brenner Calentary Johnson Maricoudre motion passes and so ordered members I think you think that what we're going to do we're not without objection what we'll do is we're going to take up these two items we're going to take up in the evening we're not prevented procedurally from taking those up now what we will do if we dispense with these two in a timely manner at least four of us need to be here at 630 simply to receive oral communications everybody good you okay going with this now Mayor if I may just one caveat to that after conferring with our city attorney because the item is noticed for after 630 out of an abundance of caution what we'd like to recommend is taking the presentation council comments and questions and then deferring action until after 630 and allowing for public comment at that time that's why God created city attorneys thank you alright let's do that we are on item 30 this mrs. Cavill mrs. Cavill here's what we're going to do we're going to take a five minute recess we'll be right back with you council is back in session we are on item 30.1 and before we get there I want to make sure that public understands and knows joining us online understand how we will proceed this afternoon we are going to take up the staff report and council member questions on items 30.1 and 30.2 we will then recess and return here at 630 p.m. this evening at that time we will begin with oral communication we will then ask for public comment on the two items 30.1 and 30.2 when we receive public comment on that we will take a motion on both items as one item in terms of the recommendations as you know any question which can be divided shall be divided if asked by a council member to do so it's the intent of the presiding officer to take this as one motion on both items when we come back at 630. Ms. Cabell thank you very much for your forbearance good afternoon good afternoon Elizabeth Cabell finance director I am joined here by Tracy Cole our budget manager and Sarah De Leon our new chief people officer and we are going to present the mid-year fiscal year 23 mid-year update so briefly what we are going to cover this afternoon is how things are looking for fiscal year 23 trends that we see specifically in revenue looking past over the last few years and how things are trending Ms. Bush is going to give you a little bit of assistance here to get that up on the screen thank you Ms. Bush Ms. Cabell thank you and so we will look at how fiscal year 23 is looking up to this point some revenue trends and then look at the budget adjustments and changes that we are requesting and bringing to you this afternoon that includes budget items for specific items in our budget as well as positions and then I will end with looking at a little bit of our budget strategy and sort of how things are looking going into fiscal year 24 so for fiscal year 23 we had a very strong start to the year which was really due to fiscal year 22 so we in 22 we ended the year with significantly more revenue than we thought specifically sales tax transient occupancy tax also some ARPA revenue so when we closed 22 and began 23 we had solid reserve balances which consisted of about seven and a half million in a pension reserve that is restricted it is our section 115 trust that is a restricted reserve that we have we have about 7 million in an emergency reserve we did move some additional money about a million dollars over there in fiscal year 22 so we did move some money over there to increase that based on how strongly we finished fiscal 22 we also have 6.3 million in an operating reserve that is committed in our general fund operating fund balance and then we also had 1.2 million in carry forwards so we had significantly large number of carry forwards for PO's and projects that were not completed in fiscal year 22 but were moved forward into 23 so that particular carry forward is what when you are looking at on the screen our revenue our revenue and expenditures are the adjusted budget so that increase that strong increase in the expenditures is a result of that carry forward so the plan as you can see right now the adjusted budget is a deficit and the plan is to cover that deficit with those reserves that I previously mentioned at this point or at the end of January we are running about where we would expect to be little less than 50% as far as revenue and expenditures and that's exactly where we expect to be we usually see the largest part of our or significant portion of our revenue expenditures in July and August so this is right on track looking a little bit at what has happened in the past and specifically with some of our larger revenue sources we ended fiscal year 22 overall with 126 million in revenue we expect to be about the same for fiscal year 23 a slight increase 127 million but basically the same for fiscal year 23 we're very optimistic at this point about being able to hit that target hit that 127 million but we're also balancing that with trying to see how revenues may change as a result of the storms we don't really know what that's going to look like as well as some of the expenses that we may need to refer to get everything back up as you can see from the slide here pretty much every revenue stream if you look at the green the green is that is fiscal year 22 and that was sought in every revenue category so significant increases over 21 and really that's just an indication of coming out of the pandemic lots of people everybody's back out we've got much higher increases in sales tax, trans-unit tax and so on we don't expect that to continue we're not going to continue to accelerate with revenues going up that high but we do expect it to be stable so that's why in the last 23 we kind of conservatively budgeted about the same mild increases to what we received in 22 so now there's a lot looking some at the budget adjustment highlights I didn't put everything on here there's a lot going on but I did want to just pull out a few of them so you can kind of see where how these things work here so parks and rec has seen an increase in revenue these last years in recreation classes so we're increasing their revenue to account for that because we expect that to continue and then that's also we also have an expenditure the 140,000 down there for the additional expenses for the golf operator as well as the parks and rec instructors we also for public works another example of receiving more revenue than we expected so public works is seeing more revenue from the California Electric Vehicle infrastructure project and low carbon fuel standard credits from public parking lots charging stations so again they are increasing they're hoping to increase their revenue by or requesting to increase their revenue by 170,000 the other category here the last line item here on both the revenue and expenditure side is what we call non-departmental and that really represents the transfers things that we have coming in and out of the general fund from other funds so in this case looking at the top of the revenue side of things that 270,000 is made up of three rather significant transfers one is 200,000 that's coming from our CIP fund into the general fund to then fund the new homelessness response division that's in public works so you'll see that kind of down there below that's what that 200,000 represents there is the monies coming in from CIP and then we are requesting appropriations to support that division there's also a $35,000 transfer from the carbon fund, same thing to support projects that are going to be spent out of the general fund 27,000 in parks and rec and 8,000 from the city manager's office and then another 35,000 is coming in from the liability fund to cover some tree work that we had done as a result of the storms on the expenditure side the large non-departmental that you see down there that 1.1 million that's a transfer out of the general fund over to our streets and sidewalks fund and that's because this goes back many years but when we passed and voters passed an additional sales increase in 2008 the commitment to the city was that we would use that additional increase of $1.7 million specifically for streets and sidewalks so in 2016 the general fund started paying on a debt for streets and sidewalks which was about $1.5 million so this transfer kind of trues up the difference between the revenues that were committed the 1.7 per year and the debt service payment that we made out of the general fund so we're just sort of right sizing things and getting it to the right place it's going over to the streets and sidewalks fund so it's coming out of the general fund and going over there so that's kind of some high points there for the general fund in looking at some of the other funds again the streets and sidewalks will see that as the additional 1.1 million in revenue there's also a decrease in revenue in that same fund due to a reduction in grant funding that we budgeted for but are not going to be able to receive the grant and then the large expenditure or one of the large expenditures that you'll see is an appropriation from the requested by the water department of $5 million to do a repayment of their credit line another thing that's one reason that makes the when you look at the list of projects and things that there's a lot of many many pages but there's a lot of in and outs there and really what we're trying to do we've created a better process for tracking and recording CIP projects in particular so what we used to do was we would just transfer from the general fund into the CIP fund and spend but what we're trying to do now is transfer from the general fund to what we're calling a CIP reserve and that way we get the money say the $5 million in there and then we move that money into the CIP fund itself to actually spend for projects so it allows us to really first of all get the money out of the general fund into a CIP reserve fund and then be able to appropriate the funds and the projects in the CIP fund so it allows us to do better project tracking but also the result of that on this particular item is you'll see $5 million kind of in and out of there a lot but it's really just a cleanup we really are just trying to make sure that we're getting the appropriations and the funds in the right funds in the right fund to make sure that it's easy for us to track and for people to be able to see exactly, you know, we may put $5 million every year we don't spend $5 million every year so we want to be sure that we're putting that making that sure that money is set aside and that's why we've got this kind of we'll see a lot of back and forth there so part of it is just getting it to the right fund the CIP reserve and the other part of that is actually getting the appropriations into the regular CIP fund where it's going to be spent on the position side of things again I tried to focus on not everything but sort of the things that are some of the major position changes sort of going left to right here for finance we are requesting to delete two principal management analysts and then add a senior accountant and a safety officer cost-wise it's pretty much net zero so we're making this decision or requesting that to make that align better with what we want to do in the department and the needs that we have in the department and on parks and rec they are requesting to add a half time or a half FTE and that half is actually coming from the city manager's office so you'll see that delete half in the city manager's office and the add those two are just basically swabbing on the city manager's side there's a request to add a half time FTE to make it make the homelessness response shelter and outreach specialist a full time position right now that's only a part or half FTE so we're just requesting to add another half to make that full time IT is also doing kind of a swap of positions deleting an IT network and systems administrator I'm sorry deleting a SCADA systems and network administrator and adding the IT network and systems administrator that works again to one add and one delete adding the wastewater facilities lead electrical instrumentation technician and then deleting a wastewater facilities electrical instrumentation technician 2 and water has a delete of a management analyst that was a limited term position so they are requesting to delete that position and then add a water supervisor and a water SCADA analyst so those and again many of the other position changes that are in there are cleanup things things that we may have added a position at the beginning of the year and now we need to clean that up and get rid of the position I'll get rid of another position so kind of sliding a little bit into fiscal year 24 our continued strategy as far as the budget goes is several things one of which is pursuing continuing to pursue the best recovery for our services identify various opportunities for federal and state aid we also have our continuing the council ad hoc budget and revenue committee so we'll be looking at identifying new revenue sources and then another thing that we're working with in the budget and kind of overall with the city is just developing a plan to address some of our infrastructure needs those are sort of ongoing things that are happening in the fiscal year 24 budget and the calendar we plan to bring the budget to council on June 13 and before that we will have review by the commissions in April and May with budget hearings at the end of May May 23rd and 24th that's a lot of words that will happen so I am here as well as Tracy and Sarah if you have any questions or anything you can thank you very much let me ask if members have questions and comments on this item please miss Watkins I just have one process question have we always run the budget by the commissions or is that a new thing we always have and there is it just specific commissions that receive that in terms of like planning or parks and records water and public yes okay thanks for the questions and comments miss colder I have one question it was on I think one of the first slides and I saw the estimated 23 property taxes was estimated to be lower than 22 what would cause property taxes to go down those numbers come directly from the county so that's what they are expecting it's very small it's not a large number but that's the estimates that we received and then my other question is in regards it was on page 2 to the fire truck I don't know what the technical term is for the fire truck purchase but I'm glad to see that was on there I know we've been limping along and borrowing from neighboring jurisdictions is there a plan to continue to replace our apparatus as they age and need to moving forward they're not all at the same time they're staggered right and yes for all the vehicles yes we have a replacement schedule we have a plan for how we're going to get these things so again so we're not everything's not falling apart at the same time especially with the fire trucks depending on things like we get the funding for what's out there then we may need to adjust the timeline we've had to do that before as well and if I could just jump to on Elizabeth's comment we have together a fairly detailed and thoughtful apparatus replacement plan what you're alluding to councilmember Golder is that we're at the point now where many of our vehicles are reaching the end of their useful life they're requiring more and more maintenance on a regular basis becoming less reliable and so as part of our annual CIP we've been prioritizing the apparatus replacements they're expensive purchases and require planning much of the timeline has also been impacted as many things have with supply chain issues so Elizabeth's team has been working closely with chief Odie of working on some creative ways to get those replaced thank you that concludes my comments and one thing to add to that that's one of the reasons that we are doing we've structured the CIP differently because we know that even though we've committed to purchase a fire truck we can't do that right now but we don't want to lose that commitment that we've made for that particular purchase so we are moving it over to the CIP so that it's sitting there and ready to be used whenever it's needed Miss Collin, Tori Johnson thank you I had a question on this slide as well the slight decrease in charges for services in FY23 so basically what we're doing is we budgeted what we had budgeted in fiscal year 22 so because 22 came in higher so this will be updated so as we get closer to the end of the year and you know some of the things that we put in there like the additional golf and the recreation classes and some of those other things will fall into that category it's just we initially budgeted very conservatively basically looking at what the 22 budget was Council Member Watkins I have a couple more additional I'm wondering if the property tax has to do with sort of the fluctuation of the market something that's reflected or potentially going to be impacting it but but they only go up right but they haven't had as many cells lately even so yours is just every year and goes up huh interesting okay it'll be interesting to hear more about that I know that we talked you mentioned grants and not receiving some of the grants I know we've brought up having grant support and I'm wondering if you have any updates on where we're at with that or how that's going you met two if you don't have it Elizabeth generally speaking I would say it's going well we have brought on supplemental grant support to help our in-house team and as the council knows we also have some really talented in-house grant writers as well and continue to be aggressive at pursuing those opportunities when we bring the larger budget discussion we can also include some dedicated slides related to the grant work we're doing across all of our operations because there is a lot to celebrate there and some good work happening okay great yeah I just was curious after that and then lastly I know that we had talked in our committee at the health and all policies committee but also in terms of the prior finance director about how to incorporate that into the budget process and I'm wondering I know it's not necessarily reflected in this item but moving forward just wanting to put in a request to see that as well and I think the first phase of that was just sort of making everyone aware of health and all policies and we're definitely on the priority of how we're going to bring the budget back so definitely happy to hear that thank you so much thank you for the questions or comments Ms. Brenner thank you I'm glad you asked that grant question that was one of my questions because there was a missed grant and we had had those conversations so thank you I was curious about some of the missed payments and amounts that are being adjusted in here and if you could just briefly speak to you know how what led to those processes happening and how we can is that common this is my first budget cycle here in a while but yes I mean I think in general a lot of it is just you know there's a lot of numbers that go into the budget we do line item budgeting so there's a lot of things that go on we do have the departments as well review the budget there's a lot of moving parts so it's not totally surprising that some things got missed and then again you know we do try and catch these things before we fully bring between proposed and the adopted budget but we don't always catch everything and I think that the departments when they and sometimes depending on what it is we may not even need to do an adjustment because it may be able to be absorbed into the current budget so I think there's a lot of factors that play into it but I don't see this as incredibly unusual I think it's we can always probably be a little bit better about checking and rechecking and rechecking but I know that in order to keep the budget kind of process moving there are a lot of moving parts and there are a lot of people that are involved in that process we'll continue to work on that as far as making sure that we okay thank you questions or comments a couple of comments if I might thank you for the presentation was quite good on this slide that you have up right now I want to associate myself with the comments having been part of the county's fiscal triangle of the assessor the auditor controller the treasure tax collector have been a part of that for a decade I also wonder about the projection about 23 estimated on property taxes it doesn't seem to be consistent with my experience anyway with Prop 13 in terms of how it is simply automatically indexed then you get sales reassessments and so on it I wonder about that so I'm imagining your source is the government and the fiscal triangle over there telling you what they think it might be probably a good idea to put a note there that when we come back at budget hearings that's going to be an interesting piece to examine okay let me ask you had a fund adjustment slide can we go to that for a moment thank you let me take a quick look let me look at the other one thank you with regard to the streets and highway I'm not sure well I am sure that I did not track the it's here then it moves here then this one goes here and that one goes there you take me through that one more time on the streets and sidewalks specifically the 1.1 million actually measure H was passed back in 2008 and the expectation at that time and the commitment that was made to citizens is that we would use the additional revenue of approximately 1.7 million specifically for streets and sidewalks it was not a special tax it was a general tax so what we did is so the money is receded into the general fund starting in about and has been continuously used for streets and sidewalks in 2016 what happened is we took out a loan public works took out a loan I think it was $14 million specifically for streets and sidewalks now instead of having that loan paid out of the streets and sidewalks fund it was paid out of the general fund but the amount of the loan payments were about 1.5 million not the 1.7 so moving forward once the loan is paid off we will just do a transfer every year from 1.7 into that fund but because general fund was paying 1.5 million what we are doing right now is kind of truing that up we are saying we committed to send 1.7 million from the general fund over to fund 317 our streets and sidewalks but we actually paid 1.5 million of that directly to make the loan payment on that so now we are just truing that up to 1.7 per year thank you that time not only did I hear it like the first time this time I got it thank you very much I appreciate that let's talk about the note not played here as we are sitting here in mid-year and we have just had a presidentially declared disaster and we have spent more than a penny or two in immediate response to that and that is a key to the battle as well as since then we have incurred additional expenses and I presume we have paid for those additional expenses where can you speak to that for a moment so right now what we do is we run those expenses through the general fund we submit to FEMA for reimbursement and ten years later we get money so this disaster we expect estimates are over ten million dollars so we expect a significant cost what we are doing and we are looking at a couple of different ways of handling this what we may end up doing and I think would probably be advantageous for us is to put those specifically in kind of a non-recurring general fund like basically pull them out because it does skew the expenditures it makes it hard to and it is also easier to track that way at least we have got everything in one place and if FEMA does pay us we get that into one place so we are looking at that and we are asking departments as part of the fiscal year 24 budget to put those packages or those projects in as decision packages and we will have to figure out exactly where they are going to go but what we will do for 23 what we have already spent is as we get ready to close the year we have already identified the projects they already have a number of expenditures done so far and move them over into a separate fund or put them somewhere so that we can again get them out of the operating because this is going to be a significant cost for this year and 10 years of use thank you I appreciate that I know you have been waiting to discuss sales tax so I guess let us discuss some sales tax we go back to that previous slide about the general fund revenue sources thank you here is a couple of questions about this and TOT they intrigue me for the same reason all of the lines up until the fuchsia colored line on top are based on actuals in the past so those are locked down the purple colored line on top is halfway through the fiscal year your estimate by way of a question for the 22-23 fiscal year that is what the purple line is is that correct? so we do not have something above that which is trying to look at the 23-24 FY that is not on here this is the current year we are in you have hard data on everything except the purple line it is pretty good information because you are halfway through the fiscal year fair enough I will reserve the property tax question we will see what that looks like we will be interested sales tax is interesting to me for a similar reason it seems that this is our first full year out of COVID so you see businesses those that are collecting and remitting sales tax sales tax they are back in the game now a lot of places that were offline essentially who paid sales tax because their experience was so low what is interesting to me is your yellow line on both the sales tax and TOT are largely the same in 22 as they are 22-23 fiscal year and that perplexes me this is a way different economy than it was last fiscal year so can you talk about your assumptions in driving the sales tax and TOT number the purple line both of those are really first keep in mind we budget very conservatively part of where we're coming from it's the only conservative bone in my body and so a significant reason that we ended the year where we did in 22 is because the actual budget for sales tax and TOT the actuals came in significantly higher but what we don't and what we're a little we want to again be cautious about we don't expect that big leap that we had between fiscal year 21 and 22 to continue from 22-23 so again if you look at the budget it's sort of how we budgeted in 22-23 it's very close and again with the storms and with people who knows what it's just hard to predict behavior and so I think that we are and I kind of looked at where we were this time last year and to try and again are we on track in the same sort of way and we are we're tracking very close right now in TOT the sales tax to where we were last year so that's another part I do think I don't think the sales tax is going to definitely not going to jump like it did last year it may be larger than what we have there but I think those are the things part of our fiscal 24 budget process is to look at estimated actuals so this basically what you see here is truly our budget for 23 but when we come back and at the budget hearings we'll have done a much more deep deeper dive into them and we will have more estimated actuals as opposed to just this is what the budget is thank you for that relative to TOT relative to TOT my understanding is we brought on two new TOT payors this fiscal year that we're in right now so again I would ask the question if we've increased the payors we brought on new TOT folks who have new TOT obligation it would again ask me if we have the same year we had last year in terms of your sense of this we brought on a couple more payors in this is that I know what I'm doing here I think which is that I'm sort of you still have estimates for the rest of the year and I know you're going to plug those back in when we get to the 23-24 FY conversation so I don't disagree with the way you're forecasting this and this isn't a disagreement it's a question about what our experience is telling us in this year that wasn't there last year fiscal year we brought two new hotels on we're going to bring four or five on in the next year and a half or so and we have a tax measure that was passed in November this does not reflect that because that was not around what we didn't have that we had not been approved so that's one thing that's not there and again we have to keep in mind we're doing the budget this time of year and we don't usually unless it's dramatic for the revenue side of things we'll include that as part of our estimated actuals so yes we're looking at the numbers and how we predicted them in February and March of last year and there's a lot of things that have happened since then as far as new hotels coming online the passage of the TOT ballot measure so those sorts of things are not reflected here so I do agree that there will be much more accurate revenue projections when we look at the budget and then Mayor if I could do that real quick yes I see where you're going with your line of questioning I want to talk a little bit about the bar charts we're looking at so you know I think part of what you're hearing from Elizabeth is caution about using fiscal year 22 as a benchmark for building out fiscal year 23 for a number of reasons we've been facing probably the most uncertain and volatile economy that we've seen in the last several decades as a result of the ways in which the pandemic has affected our economy in ways we've not seen before abruptly shutting down entire segments of the economy overnight we're still recovering from that and trying to get a sense of what the baseline will look like once the dust has really settled 22 is not a good indication I think of what our baseline will be going forward and so as Elizabeth also points out we always are very careful about not overestimating the revenues that we have coming in having said all that there's some bright spots on the horizon we have new hotels coming online tourism seems to continue to be strong and stable and you see those numbers reflected in the TOT you see those numbers reflected in the sales tax and we hope that those trends will continue so all of that folds into also looking at the fact that sales tax is lumpy so we've received a larger chunk in the summer quarters than we do as well as the tail end of the year during the holiday shopping season so trying to take all of that into account based on where we are today through the end of the year and come up with those estimates having said that we hope that those numbers exceed the estimates that we're showing you today but all of that's factored into these estimates Thank you Ms. Watkins, did you have a question? No, I just wanted to add that both councilmember Brunner and I sit on the Visit Sandwich County Board just to really substantiate the point around TOT that our hoteliers are reporting that they're experiencing at the highest level they've seen in a really long time in terms of people who are coming and using their hotels and then additionally so I do think that's a very conservative estimate and we'll see a much different number later Well, be conservative on your revenues and be not conservative on your expenditure projections and we'll all get along fine Let me ask let me go to sales tax one more time here because it's my particular hobby horse today Do you receive disaggregated information from BOE relative to sales tax by permit holder? We get from our consultant HDL we do get specific information like what's part of the pool and how everything and we do get it by it's confidential but we do get it by by business Why is it confidential? By the the totals are not confidential but the specific businesses are confidential we can't release that information we can't say how much revenue is generated from a specific business But you know it Yes, I do have that We can do it by category Cannabis, how much do we get from that? I'll get to that in a minute but let's talk about let's stay with the sales tax for a moment So you get a disaggregated number by permit holder from BOE from the consultant who presumably gets it from BOE and then you know but that is not something you can release to us nor can we release it publicly, so we can't know that but you can I just want to make sure I understand how this works Yes, it's not public information The detail by vendor is not something that we are allowed or can release We do it by category as far as type of business Could you do it by category by let's say you could say the visitor serving industry and this and that and so on sidewalk vendors and so on you could give us information on that by those categories If that category exists when they register with CDTFA and they get their selling permit and all that kind of stuff if that whatever they indicate as the type of business, yes Good, that's Ms. Watkins Sorry, I just have a follow-up question just because I do the surveys for our schools and if we have too small of an N in terms of the businesses or the size then if you're going to disclose by category and we only had for example one cannabis business that's going to obviously indicate that business's revenue So is there a certain threshold in terms of the N or the amount that you have within a specific category that you can release publicly I don't know that off the top I'm sure there is and I could get that information from HDR but yes We will not release anything that can be identified as a specific business whether that's and then just to detail on that real quickly because it is really fascinating data our sales tax consultant does provide us with a non-confidential quarterly report that aggregates some of that data by industry kind of shows you trend quarter by quarter year after year as well as larger economic trends that are happening within each of those industries hospitality, restaurants auto and transportation those types of categories and the reports also show us how those trends are shifting in terms of our largest sales tax generator right so we also get reports that have top 25 sales tax by quarter we're able to track how they're doing throughout the year Miss Brunner City Manager beat me to it I was just going to say on some of those sales tax reports you know we are able to see in certain order of how it's shown does it show I guess my question does it show past due or not paid or someone is zero or show the past quarters but it's what's been paid but it doesn't show if someone hasn't paid well it'll be zero does it show that so do we get a total amount of sales tax paid and then sales tax not collected so we know what we would have collected had it been we don't it's just a zero so we won't know like what that or what that business should have paid we only know they didn't pay so if I understand it the only way to sort of get to your point is through the periodic auditing process that they use and that is a system designed to learn some facts but mostly it's designed to be an inhibitor against people not doing it because if you hold the license and you're not showing very much you're going to be a pretty good target for the audit the audit shows whatever it shows but it's designed to be a not paying or remitting collecting or remitting your sales tax to find out how BOE handles that what I would also add to that is HDL along with other sales tax consulting firms have rich data on each business's performance over those each reporting period if there's an anomaly there's a particular business that's generated in a certain amount on a consistent basis and there's a quarter where it's not reporting for whatever reason that same level of of gross revenue they'll flag that and investigate it further and that's part of the work they do on our behalf sales taxes are the single largest source of the general fund so there's a reason for focusing in on it I believe property tax you almost can't evade it very hard to do transient occupancy tax it's a pretty easy thing to figure out charges for services is an internal issue that's very certain it seems like the sales tax is the most open for evasion of collection and remittance by anybody who's a who holds a sales tax license from BOE so given that our interest that it is not a de minimis portion of our general fund it's a huge portion of our general fund do we have the independent authority to do anything relative to the sales tax by way of compliance or auditing or any of that business we do we do contract with HDL to do audits so how do they make those choices on what to audit and what not to audit a lot of it has to do with what Matt mentioned when there's a difference when they see that also a lot of times there'll be a correction for maybe they were remitting sales they didn't report themselves as being in the city limits they may have been somewhere else and so then HDL will discover that and as part of that discovery process we'll go back X number of quarters I don't know how far back they go maybe 3 or 4 quarters but then they will get them on track so I think a lot of it has to do with the variances that we see so if it's you know you get a $20,000 in one quarter and zero in the next then that's going to trigger HDL to investigate we really do focus a lot on the high tax and that's how the information is presented usually to us so when we're looking at specific businesses it's top to the largest to the smallest so their audit process may follow something like that we have to I don't know exactly what their criteria is but they are constantly sort of out there looking to see where we may not be collecting sales tax Fair enough, good. Other questions or comments? Ms. Brunner and then I don't want to take too much time and I'm happy to follow up with you if need be I was wondering how often that HDL has done an audit process for the city of Santa Cruz and also is there an extra cost is it part of the contract it's already accounted for in the budget? Yes, there is a separate part of our contract that is specifically for sales tax audits we don't initiate that on any kind of timetable they are sort of constantly doing that as part of the service they provide to us so we unless we see something if we see that oh we know that this new business just opened up and we're not seeing any sales tax or haven't seen any for the last three quarters we can initiate that but really our contract with them is that the sales tax auditing piece is a separate piece that we do book and we pay and purchase order separately part of that is that they are constantly kind of working with CDTFA and also looking at the business licenses and trying to figure out who's where and who's not Ms. Watkins? I guess maybe just to add on to that I've been to move to a cashless system really I'm wondering as you brought up sort of these transactions that in the past had primarily been you know with cash but now there's things like Venmo or Zell or whatever is that also factored into the kind of the auditing process for some of these folks who hold these licenses that in prior years maybe had done cash transactions primarily but now may offer a cashless option you don't have to know that but I'm just curious about the trend because now people don't carry cash anymore It's true and I don't know HDL is really looking at things that are reported and things that are not reported so if somebody you know does a lot of their business through and reports some of it but some of it is cash and they they're not going to necessarily know that so it really is a lot of it is done it's what is reported and if it looks like an audit or a closer look at it or if it's something that we identify and say please go look at this and I think if I remember correctly there was like legislation that was passed at the state I believe in terms of having some system in place for tracking these independent businesses being able to do some of the transactions in that way that would probably have gone kind of under the table if you will back today right okay thank you thank you may be receiving a separate report on item 30.2 with regard to personnel positions are you including that it's all in one we're good maybe we had on that there was another person testifying as well but it's all from you correct okay we're good if you have any questions but this is really everything thank you for being here thank you we may as far as we can go here is that correct Mr. Condati we should bring a halt to this and what we would do is we will recess until 6 30 p.m. tonight we will return take oral communication we will then return to items 30.1 and 30.2 we will take public comment and we will take action at that time everyone clear on that any questions about that okay I got a thumbs up around there without objection we stand in recess until 6 30 p.m. Ms. Bush are we good to go you tell me when we're ready the hour of 6 30 having arrived the Santa Cruz City Council is back in session back in order in order to be very careful about having this Ms. Bush would you be kind enough to help us establish a quorum by calling the roll thank you Councilmember Newsom Watkins here Brunner present Calentary Johnson present Vice Mayor Golder here and Mayor Culey here having established a quorum we will return excuse me we will begin this evening with oral communication this would be the opportunity for anyone to address the council for up to three minutes on any subject under our jurisdiction but not on today or tonight's agenda sir are you here for that purpose come on forward sure thank you sir and Ms. Bush you will keep track of if anyone's online for us good evening good evening Mayor do I have three minutes or two minutes excuse me do I have three minutes or two minutes thank you good evening council my name is Eric Rodberg thank you for hearing my comments tonight last June I applied to the building department and PG&E for a permit to upgrade my electrical service to 200 amps that's the minimum size required for a small home to convert all appliances to electric after weeks of delay PG&E determined that they had to upgrade their equipment before I could upgrade my service currently PG&E has given me an April 2023 estimate for completing their work that's a minimum of 10 months since I first applied my city building permit expired after six months they were gracious enough to extend it for another six months I currently have a 70 amp service for context a Tesla wall charger requires a 60 amp dedicated 240 volt branch circuit and most other EV chargers do as well I don't live in a remote area from Ban Mission building electrification is not in the same league as a sewer lateral or low flow water fixture mandates it's many times more complicated costly and time consuming than either of those before staff proceeds with developing ordinances mandating existing building electrification council should direct staff to obtain a detailed street by street map of PG&E's existing infrastructure and its capacities they should include detailed information on the capacities of its transformers electrical lines substations switches and other vital infrastructure specific amperage and voltage capacities of all existing equipment should be shown once this is complete city staff working with PG&E should map out the PG&E upgrades required for the city to implement building electrification this roadmap should identify specific capacities required on a street by street level equipment needed to reach those capacities time and manpower to install the equipment and cost a deviation from my prepared remarks there's no way you could possibly expect someone to be required to do building electrification in order to sell their house for me I'm not trying to sell my house this is a minimum of 10 months just for PG&E to get their side done this information on the existing capacities and outline for what's needed to be done in order to get it up to the capacity needed in order for building electrification is a necessary prerequisite for building electrification it would be imprudent and premature to let staff develop mandates for knowing what infrastructure upgrades are needed to implement those mandates the city's current electrical infrastructure is grossly insufficient thank you thank you very much we appreciate your input as you probably know go ahead the information I gave you is just the receipts showing that that is in fact my correspondence with PG&E and I can give you much more detailed information if you have any doubts thank you very much we appreciate that anyone online good evening someone is online and we appreciate your participation this evening there's hardly anybody three minutes sounds good okay it's a time of nationally of general police negligence and brutality untempered by the reality of a growing number of police murders each year the evidence is clear as is the city council's inaction a refusal to stop enabling and funding this dangerous culture of violence wasn't Tyree Nichols brutal murder enough it's not a few rotten eggs but a sick and violent racist police culture when will the SCPD clean house a few years back the SCPD refused to release racial stats of their arrests and their citation they wouldn't respond to stop racial and class discrimination to end selective policing targeting the most vulnerable all non-consensual stops need to be documented and made public particularly those shivering and sleeping outside where are the millions of dollars of homeless funding going anyway how much of that goes to picking out those in parking garages who are huddling against the cold and the rain are trying to get a meal there and getting arrested for their trouble why haven't toilet and hand washing facilities been replaced for those survival camping next to highway nine police privilege rubber stamped by this council and of course this council's anti-homeless laws qualified immunity and other special powers emboldened cops here state-wide reform efforts are steam rolled past this afternoon we saw a bad process rammed through the public had no idea what was being voted on a brown act violation if there ever was one get mayor fast lane fred keely who I want to thank by the way for extending the oral communication makes up the agenda and presided over the meeting he took no action to respect legal process a disgraceful and abusive decision today the council voted on an item with no public information almost thing ahead without apology I say shame but what use against the shameless thank you for the extra time thank you mr. Norris anyone else online good welcome good evening yes hello this is Garrett hey my panda express fortune cookie tonight said to be brave try something new so I'll explain my different perspective than the council's DEI theories of inequality as a semiconductor engineer I learned one never solves any problems looking in the wrong place for causes and answers that industry is extraordinarily functional and as diverse as any except there was a decided lack of black engineers like men ideally in a multicultural society each ethnic group can maintain their culture and find acceptance within a necessary overarching common meta culture the original meta culture of the United States was based on the European Christian Judeo anti-colonial and religious freedom ideas detailed within the constitution as other ethnic groups arrived they made contributions to the meta culture and assimilated in the capacity to function under these common ideas including speaking English while maintaining and contributing their cultural identity since East Indian Americans have the highest average income by far about 60% more than the average person they excel in this assimilation while maintaining their identity but still have to do Chinese, Japanese, Filipino or Pakistanis when compared to the hardly privileged white people who earn about a natural average income while parts of black culture have found acceptance and success in the arts with blues, jazz, sports pop culture, politics other parts are hugely problematic demographically relative to other races sometimes by an order of magnitude too many in the black community have an immense character problem with excess expressions of violence, criminality, teen pregnancy, abortions being illiterate and are being used like dish rags by the cultural Marxists to do their dirty work of destabilizing and fomenting revolution in America spreading anger with victimization and race hatred narratives the meta culture comes down hard on criminality and violence as it should and there are regrettable human events in that but the answers to these larger real problems can be found examining the successes of those cultures that have intensely strong multi-generational families preaching discipline and education believed in their own success and have not been trapped in the quicksand of the welfare affirmative action state the stride black families were three and four black children are now raised by only one parent or neither the search for problem answers needs to go elsewhere besides your defective DEI methods if there is a happy ending to this story I would say the black families on my block are among the nicest people there and seem to be doing very well with their Corbettes Mercedes and our V's and our examples of what a better new face of black America middle class is I believe it's because they have complete strong multi-generational families thank you very much and anyone else with us wish to make or participate in our communication seen here none we're finished with that aspect we are resuming our work on items 31.1 and 31.2 these are the mid-year budget adjustments and information on the financial status as well as a resolution regarding various adjustments that need to be made to various personnel positions and so on we received a thorough presentation from Ms. Cavill early on earlier today asked our questions let me provide an opportunity now for members of the public who may wish to comment on items 30.1 and 30.2 on our agenda this evening and Ms. Bush I want to give folks an opportunity in case they're online that we want to do that we currently have one person with their hands raised let's hear what they have to say good evening welcome to the council meeting hey it's me again hey there's a lot to have served here and I gotta say I don't know if I like that whole idea of you're discussing all this before it was to be discussed this seems awful but anyway it seems like the bottom line is you plan on expending $9.3 million more than planned where the plan originally was to run reserves down to zero which begs the question should you be planning larger expenses when it sure seems like you're out of money to be start with all these whoopsies that are mentioned like we forgot that mandatory expense here and there in the budget adjustments tells a lot about fiscal methodologies it's amazing to me you need you see no need to start yesterday assigning spending priorities starting with critical services and working your way down to the wish list asking hard questions about value and need because your mission is to provide the pervasive needs wants of that the people are willing to pay for running out of money violates that last condition along with the failed measure F which says the public really doesn't want to pay anymore for what is going on. You spent a million dollars getting the first electric garbage truck going you are continuing to hire people even though the rate of hiring over the last 12 years far exceeds the population growth rate the time for costable extravagances like DEI personnel and training extensive climate change crusading additional paid holidays derivative living wage inflation adjusted pay increases living wage instead of market driven wages no layoff union provisions and future unfunded monetary investments can all await the day when you have done the hard work to create a fat balance sheet reserve yours is overdrawn got me what else but take a harder look at all the outside money matching money is wasted money if it isn't a priority critically needed grant writing is wasted personnel if it isn't priority critically needed free money isn't always free if it doesn't always cover your costs and anyway all that money isn't what the city people need want to pay for anyway it's the doings of whatever outside big money wants you might want to take a look at your priorities of inviting and enabling ever more poverty into the city versus via the sanctuary city status fostering a non-profit economy maybe have less high price consultants and do some work yourselves and maybe fix whoever or whatever is inviting that national record homeless population here it's time to wean yourselves off of all the old politics and eco sustainability and spend all your time prioritizing how to become economically sustainable maybe somebody can figure out if this is the biggest mid-year negative budget correction in history or where it ranks can't be far from it if you don't come away from this meeting with a commitment to lower this 9.3 million dollars it's game over you don't know what a checkbook is thanks thank you mr. Phillips we appreciate your participation um nobody else no one else anyone one more time anyone who wishes to address us on these two items on our council agenda good evening oh these are mid-year budget changes I'm going to give you a minute there to see if you want to make a comment oh no we we have been there and gone do you have something you did you show up this evening for that I'll tell you what I'll do because we're going to probably I'm going to guess we're going to dispense with this in a few minutes I'll return to oral communication give you an opportunity okay okay of course now reset we are on items