Good afternoon. Welcome to the 12 p.m. session of the March 23, 2021 meeting of the city council. I have a few announcements and then we'll move on to our meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on community television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website city of San Cruz.com. All council members are participating in this meeting remotely. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, call in at the beginning of the item you are you are wanting to comment on using the instructions on your screen. Please mute your television or streaming device. Once you call in and listen through the phone. Please note there is a delay in streaming. So if you continue to listen on your television or streaming device, you may miss your opportunity to speak. When it is time for public comment press star night on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak during public comment, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. You may hang up once you have commented on your item of interest. And I would like to ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mayor, Council Member Watkins, Helen Torrey Johnson, there is a friend vice mayor Brunner. I bent the mayoral proclamation declaring March as Red Cross Month, and I will go ahead and just read a few lines from the proclamation here. It's here from the Red Cross. So hi, Megan. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Whereas American Red Cross Month is a special time to honor the kindness of our neighbors who aid families in need every day in Santa Cruz County across the United States and around the world. Their dedication touches millions of lives each year as they carry out the organization's 140 year mission of preventing and alleviating suffering. And whereas during the trying times of the coronavirus pandemic, people have stepped up to help others in need.  And whereas here in Santa Cruz County, local families have relied on Central Coast chapter volunteers for comfort and hope while coping with wildfires and floods. As a recent example in response to the evacuation of some 15,000 people in the Central Coast area due to the dangerously wet and windy storms, the Red Cross mobilized 100 disaster responders to support those in need. And in the following days, following in the evacuation orders, the Red Cross and its partners provided more than 1,200 total overnight stays in hotel accommodations for those that were displaced, provided 2,655 meals and snacks to those who forced to evacuate their homes and made more than 167 individual care contacts to support the health and mental health needs of those affected. And whereas the Central Coast chapter volunteers also helped 18 households affected by home fires in Santa Cruz County by addressing their urgent needs such as food, lodging and recovery support. And whereas this life saving work is vital to strengthening our community's resilience, nearly 200 years since the birth of American Red Cross founder Clara Barton. We dedicate this month of March to all those who continue to advance her noble legacy and we ask others to join in their commitment to care for people in need. Now therefore, I, Donna Myers, Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim the month of March 2021 as Red Cross month in the City of Santa Cruz and encourage all Americans to reach out and support its humanitarian mission. So Megan, thank you for being here. I don't know if you have any words or anything today to add, but we just want to of course honor the work of the Red Cross. You're an incredibly important organization in our community and have been for as long as I can remember, I think my first interaction was after the earthquake. So the work that you do is tremendous. And I know also many Red Cross volunteers who provide, you know, find working with as a Red Cross volunteer is one of the most rewarding volunteer, you know, experiences that people can have in their lifetime. So I see a number of people nodding. I'm not sure if anyone from the Red Cross would like to say anything today, but please do. Thank you, Mayor. And I also am joined by the Chair of the Central Coast Board, Jane Loeb, who would like to say a few words. And Kamala, go ahead and as well. Just want to thank you so much for your kind words and we are honored to be able to work in the benefit community. Thank you. Thank you, Jane. Mayor for acknowledging the Red Cross Month. This is a huge compliment to our organization and we really appreciate being partners with the City of Santa Cruz. Every year, year in, year out, we have volunteers from the city who step up in people's time of greatest need. And I'm grateful to be a volunteer for the Red Cross and honored to be the Chair of the Board. And I can tell you, from the Board Chair position, the City of Santa Cruz means so much to the Red Cross and all the citizens in Santa Cruz matter. And I don't know if we had an earthquake, how important the Red Cross drill was during that major disaster on a daily basis. So when someone is displaced, family or multiple family, we're going to be there for them. And we really appreciate anyone from the City of Santa Cruz stepping up and volunteering to be a member of the Red Cross, whether it's a blood donation or joining our disaster preparedness group. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Dany. And Camilla, did you have some words to say as well? 90% volunteers. And this is just an example of the wonderful people that we have. And there are people that live in our communities who are there during the most tragic times in people's lives. And we're so grateful that you're honoring us, but we're also grateful for all the amazing people in our community. And we're so grateful for your support. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for being here today. And definitely for everything you do for our community. Also, we appreciate it. Thank you. Bye-bye. Take care. Excuse me. Two more proclamations. I'll just read from these as well just very briefly because they're fitting with Clara Barton's legacy as well. So next we have a mayoral proclamation declaring March 24th, 2021 as the Equal Pay Day. And this proclamation is whereas more than 50 years after the passage of the Equal Pay Act, women, especially minority women, continue to suffer the consequences of unequal pay. And whereas according to the U.S. Census Bureau, women working full-time year-round in 2018 typically earned 81.6% of what men earned, indicating little change or progress on pay equity. And whereas according to graduating to a paid grit gap, a 2012 research report by the American Association of University Women, the gender pay is evident one year after college graduation, even after controlling for factors known to affect earnings such as occupation, hours worked and college major. And whereas in 2009, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law, which gives back to employees their day in court to challenge a pay gap. And now we must pass the Pay Check Fairness Act, which would amend the Equal Pay Act by closing loopholes and improving the law's effectiveness. And whereas according to one estimate, college-educated women working full-term time earned more than half a million dollars less than their male peers do over the course of a lifetime. And whereas nearly four in 10 mothers are primary breadwinners in their households and nearly two-thirds are primary or significant earners making pay equity critical to families' economic security. And whereas a lifetime of lower pay means women have less income to favor for retirement and less income counted in a social security or pension benefit formula. And whereas fair pay equity policies can be implemented simply and without undue costs or hardship in both the public and private sectors. And whereas fair pay strengthens the security of families today and eases future retirement costs while enhancing the American economy. And whereas March 24th symbolizes the time in 2021 when the wages paid to American women catch up to the wages paid to the men from the previous year. Now, therefore, I, Donna Myers Mayer, the City of Santa Cruz, do hereby proclaim March 24th, 2021 as Equal Pay Day in the City of Santa Cruz. And I think after all of the data that's coming out about the number of women who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19 and the shift, really a decadal shift that will impact women from COVID-19, probably the most we've seen in many of our lifetimes, I think that is especially important proclamation to spend a few minutes reading through. We have still have work to do in so many ways. And then finally, we have a proclamation today to recognize in women's history month and I'll just do very quickly. Whereas women of every race, class, cultural and ethnic background have made historic contributions to our communities, nation and world in countless recorded and unrecorded ways. And whereas women have played and continue to play a critical role in every sphere of life by constituting a significant portion of the labor force, both inside and outside of the home, as well as sustainers of tradition and social cohesion. And whereas women have served as early leaders in the forefront of every major progressive social change movement, not only in advancing their own rights of suffrage and equal opportunity, but also in the abolitionist emancipation, labor, civil rights, peace, and environmental movements. And whereas there is a long impressive record of local activism to support the rights, opportunities and contributions of women from the early appearance of suffrage activist Susan B. Anthony in Santa Cruz in 1869 to the development of the feminist studies department at the University of California at Santa Cruz, along with outstanding contributions by local women in virtually every area of human endeavor. And whereas despite these contributions, the diversity of women's achievements and importance has been consistently overlooked in most mainstream approaches to history. And whereas history helps us understand who we are and recognizing the achievements of women across the full spectrum of endeavors, science, community, government, arts, sports, medicine, environment, education, economy and more has a huge impact on the development of self respect and opportunities for girls and young women. And on March 8, International Women's Day is observed to honor the achievements of women throughout history and around the world and to serve as a focal point in the movement for women's rights and gender parity. And whereas annually, since 1978, the month of March has been observed as women's history month in the United States, this year has also marked an historic milestone of women's leadership, 232 years in the making with the inauguration of America's first women vice president. Now, therefore, I, Donna Myers, Mayor of the City of Santa Cruz, do you hereby proclaim the month of March 2021 as women's history month in the City of Santa Cruz. So thanks, Council, to let it give me a few minutes to read through those. I think it's a really timely set of proclamations and the stories actually interweave quite nicely. And obviously, we're really thrilled to have our first woman vice president and our first woman and our first woman vice president of color, which is also an amazing feat in this year, 232 years later. So I will move on to the few announcements that we will have a few announcements and then we'll move into the regular meeting. Today's meeting is being broadcast live on Community Television channel 25 and streaming on the city's website, city of Santa Cruz.com. If you wish to comment on an agenda item today, instructions are provided on your screen. We will provide these instructions throughout the meeting whenever we move into an agenda item that will be opened up for public comment. Please note public comment is heard only for items Council is taking action on and not regular updates and reports. The items that will be open for public comment during today's meetings are numbers 10 through 26 on our agenda. I'd like to ask that Council members if there are any statements of disqualification today. None. Okay. I'd like to ask the city clerk administrator to announce any additions or deletions to the agenda. There are none. Okay. For oral communications today, oral communications is an opportunity for members of the community to speak to us on items that are not on the agenda. Oral communications will occur immediately after agenda item 26 today. If you wish to make a comment during oral communications, please call in towards the end of item number 26. Next is our city attorney report on closed session. On the city attorney to provide a report on closed session. And I believe Ms. Bronson is here today. Hi, thank you. I'm here today in place of Tony, who is out of town. For the first item on our closed session agenda, public employment. The city council met in closed session with Terry Black and company, their recruiting firm that will be assisting the city with the city manager recruitment process over the next few months. The council discussed the process and timeline for their recruitment, which will include posting community and stakeholder input and public outreach. More details will be made available as the process moves forward. The second item on the closed session agenda was number two real property negotiations. The council met with its real property negotiator to discuss potential sale of city owned property known as part of law 11. And a small undeveloped parcel on the corner of Laurel and Front Street, designated in the Santa Cruz County Assessors parcel numbers 005-151-48 and 005-151-35. For the third item, which was a conference with legal counsel existing litigation. The council received a report from legal counsel on two items of pending litigation. The cases are Santa Cruz Homeless Union versus the city of Santa Cruz, pending in the United States District Court and built more of the work versus the city, which is pending in the Santa Cruz Superior Court. And there was no reportable action taken on those cases. Thank you. Next, we'll have the city manager report. I'd like to call on Martin Bernal, their city manager to report and provide updates on city events and business events. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Martin. Thank you, Mayor and council. I wanted to actually have Lee Butler and Jason Hayduck, our planning director and the homelessness director and our fireteeth to do updates on the pandemic and also to talk about the Highway 1 and 9 situation. I'll first have Lee provide an update and then Jason can follow. Thank you. Thank you, Martin and good afternoon, Mayor and council members. Just quickly, we are continuing to coordinate with Caltrans and CHP as well as the county on the Highway 1 and 9 situation. The Caltrans crew recognizes the safety hazards that are present in that area and they are taking the lead in the approach for making sure that everyone can be moved to out of that dangerous location. We have been working in coordination with Caltrans and the county or excuse me, Caltrans and the CHP on trash removal out there. And tomorrow we have the next in that series of shoulder closures and dumpsters being available. We have paid staff out at that location to assist and we've also been fortunate and appreciate the number of volunteers who have been out to help make those cleanup efforts a success. And finally, the vaccinations of unsheltered individuals has commenced. The county has started offering those vaccinations, including to individuals at Highway 1 and 9. So that's it for the update at this point and happy to have questions after Jason's completed his update as well. Thank you, Lee. Welcome, Jason. City Council, Jason Haiduk and I'm going to give a brief presentation on COVID. You know, follow the format that I've been using for the last couple of meetings. So as you can see, this is from the County Health Department website. Our case numbers continue to drop dramatically and that is really good news for the entire community. This will be updated daily in the afternoon, but from the call this morning, we are headed in the right direction as far as our overall cases within the county. And that is a continued trend that we want to keep up. Next slide, please. So the approach to get vaccinations out was to reserve our health care capacity. And the good news is we've gone from close to 100 people in the hospitals with COVID to single digits. And so the ability to care for people with COVID is there. But just as importantly, the ability to care for people who have non-COVID related health care that could have been displaced is there. So currently within our county, we're doing very well with the overall number of people that are being treated for COVID. And hopefully we can keep that up. Next slide. So this is also from the county as well as the state. And if you look at the overall state metrics, they have a 2.3 positivity rate to the last seven days here within the county of Santa Cruz or 1.2. So we are doing very good in comparison to our counterparts across the state. And this is going to be a significant driver of what happens next when it comes to moving from one tier to the other. Currently we are in the metrics of the red tier. And all indications are that next week we will move into the orange tier. I believe today that San Francisco and Marin will be moving into that orange tier, which is less restrictive. It doesn't mean we can let our guard down, but it does mean that we can get back to a little bit more normal than what we've had. One thing that is changing a little bit within these metrics is it's not just the overall positivity rate or the case count. They are also balancing this against the number of vaccinations that have been distributed. And so as those vaccines, that number rises within the community. The metrics that they're using for the positivity rate and the case counts will actually grow because they're drawn from a smaller sample size. So we're getting close to having that next metric of moving toward orange tier as vaccinations are rolled out. And that's really good news for all of us. Next slide. Besides our current practices that are going to be vaccines and the vaccination process. I'm sure all of you have shared some frustration, both in the rollout and the communication of it. So what I'm going to tell everyone here on the city council as well as the public who are listening is go to Santa Cruz health.org. It is the best collection point that I've been able to find for communicating who can get vaccinated right now, but just as importantly where to get vaccinated. And it has all the different mechanisms, whether that's through public health, through Kaiser Permanente, through Sutter, Dignity, Salute Parliament, the HP HP project. It has a listing of all the different outlets, including, you know, CVS and Rite Aid and soon to be potentially Costco of where you can go to get vaccinated and the parameters for who's included in that. So again, Santa Cruz health.org and they have a really comprehensive listing. They can show where you get this vaccine and I would urge everyone to regularly check that depending where do you fall within the community age underlying health conditions. Next slide. So again, we're not done with this. I know we're all tired. We're at the end of a very grueling year and we have a little bit more to go. So we need to continue to do those things that will prevent this disease, but those graphs that we that I showed you at the beginning, keep going in the direction that we want them to go.  And just as importantly, go to Santa Cruz health.org and look at where you can get a vaccine. There's a number of places that are not requiring that you're a member of that healthcare organization and you can still get vaccinated if you fit within the guidelines that are put out by public health. Great. Thank you, Chief Hedges. Martin, is there any other updates today or can I take questions from council members? Yes, the questions would be great. Thank you. Thank you. I was just wondering if there's any update on any potential reimbursements that we might be able to move that we might be eligible for for the management of the highway one and nine and Cammin in particular, just given that that's on Caltrans.  I can speak to the track collection services. We are tracking our costs. We don't have any updates in terms of whether or not Caltrans will cover any of those additional direct costs. I'm just wondering if we can move that case and speak to reimbursements there. My understanding of the FEMA reimbursement, this is one of the challenges of being a city that has issues that are larger than our municipality, but not large enough to sit within the reimbursement process. A lot of what you hear about FEMA reimbursement for COVID is directly related to healthcare for COVID and the fact that someone is homeless or housed doesn't necessarily fall within that equation. And so our ability to get recruitment for that would really be at the direction of our county health officer and has to be specific to COVID. As for fires, we had another fire incident in that location yesterday. We've had a number of fire incidents, some more significant than others, and it's obviously concerned not only for the people that are there, but also the entire community. We are trying to work with our partners to mitigate those within the confines of the COVID restrictions for displacing people. And I had one more question of taking some notes and not sure if I missed this, but is there anywhere on the county's website or state's website to see how many vaccines have gone out in Santa Cruz County? Yes. And I just added so that we can have an understanding of what percentage of our population has been vaccinated. Yeah, so there's two different numbers that are shown. One of them is on the Health Services Agency, the Santa Cruz Health, and it shows the number of health vaccines given to the health department and then the number of distributors. That is a smaller percentage of the overall vaccines that have been given out because of the multi-county entities like Dignity, PAM, Sutter. And the last time, the last number I forgot was we're well over 110,000 vaccines distributed here within the county. And per capita within the state, we are number six of the 58 counties for vaccine distribution. I don't have a specific count for you, but I do believe the county or the state website for COVID, you can drill down to each county that shows those overall numbers. The Health Care Agency is showing what they've distributed and the state is showing what has been distributed within that county as a whole. Thank you. Any other council member with questions? Mayor, I did have actually one other item that I forgot we're going to be giving an update on and that is the sidewalk vendors. So I was going to ask Ralph DeMarica if he could just do a brief update on that. And what I might maybe do just real quick, Martine, also just so council and the public listening, I do want to also just recognize that Senator Laird's office has been also very helpful with the one and nine encampment. I'm part of the team that is in regular conversation weekly with CalTran. I just want to recognize our help with Senator Laird's office on the one and nine issue as well. We're being here, Ralph. And I will get my PowerPoint there by her in council for you guys on how we're doing with the sidewalks ending on Beach Street. I was going to go over the timeline and summary really fast and where things are currently and the next steps we're planning on taking. This was the original direction of staff and it was to work with community bridges to find a more structured and equitable system that would accommodate each area of ending. Here's the timeline of the actions we've taken. The way is the actions I shared with you at the previous update in blue are new actions that have been taken since then. And February 9 was the last update to council about a week after that, vending prohibitive signs were posted along Beach Street just to inform the community and those who are pining on vending at the beach that the regulations were with executive order that was passed and then we have a meeting scheduled with community bridges in a couple of days. This is a signage that's been posted along Beach Street and it's in both English and Spanish. We were finalizing and initiating a process of planning in parks in Iraq. It's a new process for us and we're working both through community bridges to make sure that process is fair for everyone involved. We're continuing our outreach efforts and making sure that everyone will have a really good understanding of what the application process will be when they'll be due and all that. And we're also working with PD and local departments on site outreach efforts to make sure that you know vendors that are going that are popping up there right now understand that it is prohibited. And we have an executive order in place to really make sure people's health and safety are prioritized. And what is new is we're working with the ideal barn grill down there to finalize vending sites. And so we realized on the process that the city actually had a 25-year-old agreement with ideal barn grill on that patio. So that was new that we're working with. And ideal barn grill contributed to the construction of the public debt. And a part of that agreement was for the city to not issue any permits or licenses or business licenses on that patio deck. However, the Senate bill does override that. And so we've been in communication with ideal barn grills to let them know that they are legally able to exercise this. And if they do, we won't issue any permits or licenses at this location. However, if we do that, then we may not be able to regulate any vendors that may want to pop up there. We've been in close communication with them, and we're going to work on some kind of compromise that works for both parties and make sure that we have a really good path moving forward. The original, working with ideal and two and three, they felt comfortable moving forward with. So I'm very confident that we could find a compromise with ideal barn grill and move forward this season. And this is sort of just zooming out as to the location where we're talking about. So the next step is current regulations of the public navigate through a new administrative process. And working with community bridges on the whole application situation with vendors and then issue permits for sign spaces. And this being a really new process for staff and the public and the state even we want to continue to evaluate and respond to the necessary. And we understand that this is going to be changing as we go along. It may look different next year or even this season, but we're definitely just moving forward and trying to make sure we find a better process for both the public and the city this summer. And that's my update. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ralph. Is there questions from council members, council member Cummings. Thank you, Mayor. I was just curious, is this going to come back to council at some point for final adoption ordinance that will allow for people to sell in certain areas or is this just going to be something that Unicode that I'm in bending on parking right property and having to go to the council, you know, but I will leave it up to maybe our city manager and the council to determine if that's something you guys do want to bring back and have a discussion on. But we do have a code right now that does allow staff to to move forward with determining the sites informational item. So the community can see that that topic is going to be on our agenda and get a sense of where we've kind of gotten to with it. I know that we, you know, get communication still with the city manager report. It's not clear from any community members when this is this topic is coming up and when it's being discussed. And I know at one point a couple weeks ago there was murmurs of our houses who voted for us who voted to go in the direction of creating this community process. So just I think as a way for us to engage with the community and demonstrate that we are moving forward, we are creating a process. You know, we have not forgotten about this. It might be good if there's even just an informational presentation at some point on this topic. And then the other question I had was going back switches around them because I know that they use the site on Sundays during the summer when it's nice out. And so that's a big draw. And I know for many businesses in those areas that draws in a lot of people. And it's on the permitting system being in their sort of formula as to permits will be regulated and is one of the major events that they do have in their annual calendar and that they're being that we're keeping in there for the season. Holders understand that there will be special events at the site and that bending during those days may be limited. It's positive. Some good news about that is salsa dancing usually occurs for a few hours on one day. So I think there's definitely a way where we could still do both and have vendors and salsa dancers share the space. Thanks.  I also think it'd be good for us to be able to thank community bridges for all the support that they have provided with this process. And so, you know, as this kind of wraps up, if we can get, you know, whether we have to provide direction or not. But if we can have some kind of presentation to show the community process that's been involved and really thank our community partners, I think it'd be really beneficial overall. Thanks. Thank you. Any other council members with questions at all? Thank you, Martine, and your staff for that update. I'll go ahead and move on to call on the clerk to provide any updates to the city council calendar. We have no update. We'll now move on to item number nine, which is city memberships and city groups and outside agencies. And this is the time for council members to report out on actions at external boards, committees and joint powers authority meetings. For future meetings, please come prepared to provide an update on any meetings or actions that occurred during the last council meeting so that the council and the public can be informed. I will go ahead and I'm just going to call on you from my perspective of seeing you on the screen. So I'll start with council member Watkins. I'm trying to find the notes that I have. I'll keep my that meeting. You know, there's been a lot of discussion around different, different policy changes that could be instituted countywide, particularly as it relates to equity and trust building training, race relations, etc. And just as somebody who's been connected to the CJC for a very long time through my other position in education, it was it's really delightful to see an opening to want to explore how this body can take on different topics in addition to always in the past and continuing to prioritize game prevention. So we had an opportunity to hear from the various jurisdictions about what they are doing in terms of some of the kind of the escalation and 20% through practice policing and some updates and then some potential suggestions and efforts to move forward and I will encourage our other council member coming to be really involved in this to share any additional updates. I believe council member Calentary Johnson will be reporting on our community programs committee and there's an agenda item in the packet today that really I think covers most of what we did so that you probably already know about. Lastly, our public safety committee meeting and we will be bringing forward a kind of a work plan item to the full council for input and suggestions and hopeful approval of as we move forward with thinking about how we as a committee can best move forward with some of our public safety efforts and in addition we had an opportunity to review some of our crime and activity statistics report. And then other than that I'd say you know the farmers market continue to shop there shop safely and support our farmers market and our vendors and and they have instituted similar policies as others who serve us in essential services in terms of wearing masks and and really respecting some of the guidelines that our health department has put out and we can shop and participate in these events safely and I think that covers my committees at this time. Okay, thank you councillor Hawkins vice mayor Bruner. Thank you. I will report on the two by two committee that I attended with Mayor Myers and some of city staff as well and we had updates on large encampments at one and nine and updates on staff for county and Caltrans and county updating us on the reservation of vaccines 150 for the population at that location to begin after March 15 which I think was brought up in the city manager's report. Also response recommendations. We had an update on requests for FEMA hotel support and long term locations and financing for temporary and permanent housing. There will be a second round of project home key and we mentioned and talked about the armor sites as well as other locations tied into the update of the county's three year framework and six month plan. And I don't know if Mayor Myers has any additional reporting on that item I will. I'll look at my notes and see if I have anything when I get to my report out. Thank you. Vice Mayor. Any other committees on your end? Vice Mayor? Nope. Okay. Nope. I have this week but not before this meeting. Okay. Council Member Brown, please. Anything of import to and health from the boards and commissions that I am on. And Council Member Collin Tarry Johnson is going to talk about the CPC. Just the one that. Great. There were some actions. So next time. Thank you, Council Member Brown. Council Member Cummings. It used to be an ongoing priority. And although some of the management actions have reduced have resulted in demonstrating reduced chlorophyll concentrations, which is a metric used to measure sea water intrusion. In some areas we've seen reductions in those concentrations and in other areas we've seen increases in those concentrations, which suggests that there may be some inland movement of sea water intrusion that may lead to undesirable results in the future. And so they're continuing to monitor what are going to be some triggers that might result in reduced pumping to kind of ensure that the water table, that we don't have too much salt water intrusion and we're maintaining the freshwater water table. Some of the projects to reduce the net groundwater pumping include, as many of us are aware of, the Pure Water Soquel Project, the aquifer storage and recovery, the water transfer and in lieu groundwater recharge and then distributed stormwater management recharge. In addition to receiving that report, we also spent a good amount of time discussing amendments to the government, the governance documents and agency staffing. And those are some of the major items that were discussed at the meeting. In addition to that and bag and met, we received an update on the Monterey Bay Sanctuary Management Plan, which has been an ongoing effort and is getting close to approval. We received an update on the Monterey Bay Regional Overall Work Program and the budget for that program. We also received an update on the 2045 Metropolitan Transportation Plan and Sustainability Sustainable Community Strategy, which included the draft revenue and constrained project list and land use. We approve the extra territorial service agreement for the Atkinson Lane and Brewington Avenue so that they could receive water and sewer service from the city of Watsonville. We also adopt a service and sphere of influence review for the city of Scotts Valley. And to provide an additional update, I've been invited to the Criminal Justice Council ad hoc committee as a community member and have been working with the chair, supervisor, Zach Friend, to produce a survey that will go out to law enforcement agencies here in Santa Cruz County. And that survey is going to really be looking at trying to see based on eight can't wait and some of the other policies to mitigate and reduce use of force and why we align as law enforcement throughout the county and where there are opportunities for us to improve our policies and further align our policies. And so we'll be sending that survey out in the near future and hopefully based on those results, the ad hoc subcommittee will meet again and provide updates to the Criminal Justice Council at the next meeting on May 13. And with that, I think I'm done the revenue. I can't find my notes for the revenue subcommittee. So I don't know if one of the other members can maybe speak to that, but we did meet with Seal Cirillo. We had discussions with Seal that were taken after the 1989 earthquake around how the city, what were some measures that the city took to try to generate revenue after that disaster that our community faced. And we're also going to be meeting with former council member and former mayor Cynthia Matthews to discuss with her some strategies and approaches that might be worth considering for the city around revenue measures. And so that's all I have to report. Thank you, council member. I mean, next I have council member Callentary Johnson. We've mentioned this is an agenda item later on in our meeting today. So I won't go into the details, but we did discuss staff recommendation for the CDBG and home funding allocations. And we also discussed the core investment funds that we will be looking at reissuing the RFPs this coming fall of 2021. And this round of core investment may look a little different from last round. And we will be discussing the process in our community programs committee. So that's it for that one. And also attended the Metro board last month. We have another meeting this coming Friday. Our last one was February 26th and Mayor Myers, there's a lot there. So if I forget something, please add. I'm going to look at my notes because it's a lot. So the Metro installed, excuse me, I was 17 buses. They have these aren't new these have been here but just to reiterate the COVID precautions that the Metro bus they're taking air ionizers have been installed in buses and in the offices. So dispensers and all the facilities and they've updated face covering flyers to reflect the federal law. And there's been a partnership between the para cruise program and Sutter health to provide free rides for individuals for vaccinations. And they have the Metro has reopened customer services in Watsonville. And they have qualified to not do mandatory weekly testing, but the Metro decided to continue weekly testing to have extra to take extra precautions for the staff and the writers. The transit workers were included last month for vaccinations just recently they were included in a priority by the state to be vaccinated. So in the process of vaccinating the Metro workers. The new pro tarot bus that has arrived several weeks ago and in Watsonville in the fall. And I think, you know, most of you know this but the American rescue plan passed and this will provide for 30.5 billion for transit across the nation. And we'll provide funds for COVID emergency relief through 2023. The last Metro meeting we talked a lot about other funds that will come through after the American rescue plan focus on infrastructure, potentially $2 billion. And we anticipate getting some of this for the Metro added of climate change and racial equity and opportunity for our city and the Metro to look at funds for water broadband affordable housing. So we'll keep our eyes out for that. And we also discussed a recommendation that was approved to do temporary fair reduction. The last of the six months consisting of 50% discount on regular fair for adult and youth and free fairs for writers with an eligible discount card. The staff projects, this proposal could increase ridership financial burden of transportation for customers who need it. And implementation of the fair with us was a worthwhile temporary riders up into our into our buses. The key points and Mayor Myers can add if I missed anything significant. I think you caught a lot of it. I'll look at my notes. I do. I do sit on a lot of committees with my colleagues. I will just look to see if anything was missed. I might also just I do sit on measure the measure you committee with council member Brown and council member Cummings. That committee did approve a submittal on the the EIR for the long range development plan and also submitted additional letters regarding the LRDP and some pertinent decisions and land use designations in that plan. And then finally that committee has been working with Senator Laird on some options regarding understanding community input obviously into university growth and what kinds of options and especially tied to the mitigation issues that have been, you know, there's concern with regards to the university growth and whether or not they're really going to be able to accommodate and accomplish the necessary mitigations for increased student and faculty numbers that are seen in the LRDP and that committee meets again next week. On the two by two, the only thing I would add is that we did receive reports from director Mimi Hall, who also will be helping the city understand more about the administrative claims process, which is a process that entities that do provide some services for healthless individuals. And that is actually the ability to potentially look at doing an administrative claim process to potentially look retain some of those dollars back into the city. So we are going to, she's going to help the city begin to explore that there also was a discussion around a request for qualifications that the county is doing as well. And looking at bringing new providers or providing new providers the opportunity to bid on the request for qualifications. And that is going through the general services department and the city took action as well on a similar idea tied to the outdoor living ordinance. So there may be some good synergy there between looking at some additional providers that may respond to that request for proposal. And then finally, the other was that I believe the county is assessing whether or not they have the availability and capacity to do to move from a twice to every other year pit count to an annual pit count. And this obviously will help inform some of their planning work with regard to their new effort that was adopted by their board two weeks ago. So those are the only things that I would add to the two by two report out. I'm also a member on the downtown management corporation and we met last week. That group has been very focused on downtown recovery and planning around how we manage downtown going forward. I think everyone saw the good news that Regal nine, even though Regal nine is leaving. We do have a replacement tenant who will be operating that super theaters for for to retain that as a theater downtown, which is a really great thing that came through last week. The downtown management corporation group looked at a series of about six proposals that have been developed by a subcommittee on activating downtown during this time. And that includes everything from looking at how to deal with vacant storefront windows to various other types of programs and projects that we could do over the next six months to a year. There's also a new artist selection solicitation that went out with with I believe proposals due April 5th right Sonya. And that's meant to really bring art back into some of the spaces that currently maybe aren't filled or in the process of getting their vacancies resolved. And that bringing art into the downtown is one of the main focuses of the DMC recommendations. And there's some really exciting and really innovative ideas also looking at standardizing the the parklets as they're called or the outdoor dining areas so that there's some cost savings for owners and owners and a little more efficiency and how people can stand those up quickly but have a little bit more of a uniform feel to downtown and really anticipating that those that those may be you know turn into more long term availability over over time. So the downtown management corporation is very much focused on really putting some things out on to the street very quickly, which is really exciting. And I think Councilmember voluntary Johnson caught all the things on my list for better. So, I think we'll, we'll end there unless there's any other council members that have things to add. No, okay. Great. Okay, we will move on to agenda items. Here on to our consent agenda today, which will include items 10 through 19 on our agenda today. And for members of the public who are streaming this meeting. Now's the time to call in if you want to comment on items 10 through 19 instructions will be on your screen. Please remember to mute your streaming device press star nine to raise your hand and listen for the Q saying you have been unmuted. All items will be acted upon in one motion unless an item is pulled by a council member for further discussion. Are there any council members who wish to comment or pull on any items excuse me or pull any items. Councilmember Brown. Yeah, thank you. I would like to pull item 11. And I have a question on item 13, which might cause me to want to pull it. Maybe it's better to just do that, but I don't want to make it a big drawn out conversations. I just have a question about a possible addition. So do you want to pull 13? Just so you have a discussion. Yeah. 13. Sorry. No worries. No, that much fear. No worries at all. Councilmember Contari Johnson. Oh, you're muted. I wanted to comment on 11 and 13 so wait until after Councilmember Brown brought up report. Any other council members councilmember Cummings. The comment on item number 17. Council members I 14 and 15 11 and 13 and then we will have comments on items 1415 and 17 that we will go ahead and call on the comments and questions from council members. 1415 and 17 I think the first two are mine and then councilmember Cummings, I'll turn those over to you. So I guess my main thing just on item 14, which for the public is something called the next epic challenge grant application for Pacific Station North project. And this is really a resolution to apply for a grant called the next epic challenge a reimagining affordable mixed use development in a carbon constrained future. This is when I read through the staff report, I just thought that it had some really important things for our public to understand what this could potentially bring to our community. And one sentence, a couple sentences stood out in really stood out to me. So one being that nearly 20 years in the making of Pacific Station mixed use affordable housing and transit project, which is at the existing Metro transit site is rapidly moving toward fruition through recent policy changes and a renewed commitment by the city in the Metro. And this grant really is about obtaining state support for sustainable development couples with recent changes in the building code and innovations in renewable energy, construction technology and electric mobility are unlocking the potential for Pacific Station North to truly become a transformational groundbreaking and climate climate sensitive project in the heart of our downtown. For those in the public, if you get a chance, take a look at this report. It's item 14 on consent and especially folks who are interested in what the city is doing with regards to climate change. I think this is a really exciting and exciting project. And I just want to recognize our staff at economic development and planning for bringing this forward to us. And I hope you get the grant. It's a million dollar, hopefully for design and then potential for additional money for construction. But most importantly, it's really showing the commitment from our staff and our city to pursuing these kinds of projects in the future downtown, which is really exciting. And then similarly, I just want to also compliment our economic development department on the growth and cruise County revolving loan program, which we're authorizing them to enter into a memorandum of understanding with all the other cities and the county in the and the small business development center and the National Development Council to support the growth and cruise revolving loan program for the city of Santa Cruz, but in partnership with all those other entities. And I think this is a demonstration of when COVID puts you into, you know, an extreme situation. Extraordinary things happen. And so it's really amazing to see us take the lead and working with the county and other cities to really look economically at how we can bring more businesses and especially for businesses that can't otherwise obtain traditional bank financing. This loan program is really targeted those folks who really don't have the resources and need that initial capital to get going. So I think this program in especially really reflects both our interim recovery plan and also the high gap goals that we set as a community as well. So and as a council as well. So thank you to economic development leadership on that. And council member Cummings, I'll turn you turn it over to item number 17 for comment or question. The agenda that are really just in, but this one in particular I just wanted to comment on because for members of the public, this is the purchase of an electric refuse vehicle and amending the fiscal year 2021 budget and appropriation of funds for electric refuse hauler emission reduction. And I know that since I've been on the council, this has been something that council members have been interested in and the public has been very interested in. I think it was our last meeting we were purchasing a refuse truck and this conversation came up about, you know, when we might be able to have an electric refuse vehicle. So it's really just wonderful to see that we're going to be able to get on the electric refuse vehicle and then see how that works with, you know, like what are some of the constraints of it that come with having these electric vehicles, how those can be improved and continuing to move in that direction. So I just wanted to thank public work staff for all the work that you all been doing to really respond to the community's comments for making this happen. And so just wanted to express my thanks for bringing this forward. Thank you, council member Cummings. So now that we've finalized the questions and comments, I'm going to move on to public comment on the consent agenda. If there are any members of the public that would like to speak to any item on our consent agenda, with the exception of the items pulled by council members, and that's item number 11 and number 13 today. Now is the time to do so. Please press star nine on your phone to raise your hand. When it is your time to speak, you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted. The timer will then be set to two minutes. I will go ahead and take a look to see who's over here. Okay, I've got phone number ending in one eight. So Bonnie, let me just make sure here. Yeah, this is Garrett Phillip has to item 11 left this outrage over shootings of Asians at massage parlors. The FBI says those weren't paid crimes or caused by racial bias. Of course, two white people were also killed. I guess white lives don't matter.  Orange man bad dredging up the ancient past as if it were yesterday to draw meaningless ever less legitimate or irrelevant parallels for your information when Trump spoke about China, he was referring to the bad actor, Communist China CCP government, not about race. You have that as wrong as blaming China or the Wuhan flu phrase for the recent shootings, senseless violence seems more likely. Nope. Mayor, I just muted him only because this item was pulled. Right. That's okay. Yeah, thank you.  Okay, so I will look for a vote on the remaining items of the consent agenda before moving on to hold items. So now looking for an motion on remaining items on consent with the exceptions of item number 11 and number 13. Mayor Watkins, I mean, Council Member Watkins. Thank you, Mayor Myers. I will move the consent agenda except for items 11 and 13. And if I may just for a brief moment just really thank my colleagues for highlighting some of those really important items that sometimes get wrapped into our consent agenda, but needs to be made known to the public and then also reiterate your appreciation of the connection to some of these bigger plans that we have in place like Hyap and our interim recovery plan. So those are my brief comments as I propose moving the consent agenda at 11 and 13. Thank you, Council Member Watkins, Council Member Cummings. I'll second. Okay. So we have a motion by Council Member Watkins and seconded by Council Member Cummings on the consent agenda. And all in those in favor please say aye. Excuse me. I'll do a roll call vote. Yeah, roll call vote. Council Member Watkins, Callentary Johnson. For Golder-Bean absent. So we'll now come back to item number 11 on our consent agenda item. It's Consent Agenda, which was pulled by Council Member Brenne. Thank you. Yeah, first I want to thank my colleagues who brought this to our agenda. I think it's really important that we make a collective statement about what's happening with, you know, that's part of the longer history as you all raise in the in the agenda report and the resolution.   They're confused. I know working with my students, it's been, you know, a constant conversation. And it, you know, talking about how this fits in with our broader history. And so I wanted to ask if my colleagues might consider, and I know it's pretty dense. There's a lot in this resolution, but just a couple of possible additions. These come from a group that has a BIPOC network that has been, you know, working on issues, you know, fighting racism and many and all its forms. And so they asked me to to bring some language that reflects the US role in foreign policy, our foreign policy, how that and it's kind of alluded to, but it's, I just kind of put it in here, recommended putting it in here at the top of page two of the resolution, which just references the role that US foreign policy and US imperialism, like the word isn't in there, but that's kind of what we're getting out here has played in, you know, affecting Asian people all over the world, right? So the US actions kind of abroad as well. And so I think that that was one they wanted to ask us to include. And then this second one came up in as well from the group, but I've also had several conversations with people who do work in this arena, who have taught have talked with me about really acknowledging that what happened in Atlanta was yes, it was a hate crime, you know, against Asian Americans, but it was also, you know, targeting sex workers, all right? And to acknowledge that that is that there's a real a serious vulnerability there. And many of these women are not necessarily freely engaging in this work.   And so that's the other one that was that I've been asked to recommend or to propose here. And then finally, I had a question about the not the use of the term immigrant is not really in here. And so we have, you know, Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, API communities. And I'm just wondering if there's a way to acknowledge that we're talking about many people who are immigrants who are who are very vulnerable as a result of their immigration status. So that was that's what I forgot. I am happy to, you know, try to wordsmith if folks want to do that. But these were just the ones that stood out for for some of us. Thank you, Council Member Brown. I would, yeah, if we could maybe keep those up. Bonnie, I'd be happy to work with Council Member Watkins and Council Member Contari Johnson in terms of revisions. Council Member Contari Johnson. Thank you, Council Member Brown for bringing those points to our attention. I think these are important additions to make. And if Mayor Myers and Council Member Watkins are okay with it, I would like to accept those changes that you recommended and suggested as well as I don't exactly aware about leaving in the term immigration in here. And then if I may, I'll just give my comment that I wanted to give earlier as as Middle Easterner and someone who is an immigrant here in this country, my community has been a recipient of hate and hate crime. And it's so important and so meaningful for us to explicitly and publicly acknowledge the history, acknowledge the current hate and make a commitment of the community to stand up against it, fight against it and to re-envision a different future. So I just wanted to share those words. But this touches me very personally. And I'm proud of our city for making this statement. Thank you, Council Member. And Council Member Cummings, and I would agree, I fully accept, I fully acknowledge and I think your additions are really great, Council Member Brown. So I too am fine with those. And if we can figure out the right spot, I have to pull everything up on my screen. So if there anybody has a Council Member Brown, if you haven't, I see, yeah, if you have an idea on where we can put immigration in this. Yes. So Bonnie, if I remember, if I could, Mayor Myers, please, please, because if weaving it in, you know, I was, I thought about that as I was putting together the proposal. And it is a little bit of a challenge. I'm wondering if, including an additional whereas, just acknowledging that there are, you know, many members of our communities who are nationally vulnerable, or I see, how to say this, is due to their immigration status, might be a way to do it. But if others who are better at words than me want to give it a shot, please do. And I'm wondering if it's, I wonder, Bonnie, if the whereas right there at the top, below the second red line, I wonder, is a part of the history of violent communities of color and immigrant. And immigrant, would that work there, Council Member Brown? Yeah, I think so. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I have Council Member Cummings and then Council Member Watkins. Made in the words, I think if it was necessary, a point out is that, that acknowledges that violent acts, so against Asian, Pacific Islander immigrants, and their community stands, you know, ready to support our Asian immigrant communities. I'm just, I was just putting some, trying to put something else out there to help with the word switching, but whatever seems appropriate and, you know, where we can include something to that extent, I think it's fine. So, yeah, I did want to acknowledge that the other challenges around citizenship and, you know, and that can influence how they're able to access resources for their own safety, because the immigration status prevents you from going forward to the police or to have you that that's another constraint. And so, I just want to acknowledge what's been brought up and, you know, if there's any need for help with that word to something, but I thought forward should probably be sufficient, unless we want to have further discussion around that. And I also want to thank council members, Calentari Johnson, Watkins, and Mayor Myers for bringing this forward during the time when we really need to continue, you know, focusing on eliminating racism from our community. And the last year, we made racism of public health crisis in the city and in the county, and I think that we need to continue doing what we can to let people know that it's not tolerated in our community. So, thank you all. Thank you, council member Cummings. Council member Watkins, and then council member Calentari Johnson, I'll go back to you. No, I want to, I too just want to thank my colleagues and thank our staff who was able to really quickly put this together in acknowledgement of the recent violence that occurred in Atlanta. I also just want to acknowledge and thank the additions that were brought forward by council member Brown and the inability to strengthen the relevance of it. And I also, although it's not necessary to include it, just want to remember how the Watsonville riots here occurred as well in our local history. And so, it's our responsibility to acknowledge our history and to make these types of statements to move forward in a more positive direction. So, I want to thank everybody who was involved in getting it, getting it to the place we're at today. Yeah, and I just want to acknowledge the help of Ralph, Democrat, in our, in helping me prepare this and also our Assistant City Manager, Laura Schmidt, and just acknowledge that, similar to what my colleagues have said, yeah, we just have such a long way to go. And anytime that we can, as a small community, just reiterate our values as much as possible. And whatever notice that makes in people's minds and their hearts by us doing these kinds of things, I think it's always worth it. And I appreciate your edits or your additions council member Brown and really appreciate you bringing those to us, really good additions. So, thank you everybody. Bonnie, do I vote on these one at a time then, right? No, you need public comment first and you don't have a motion on the table yet. Okay, I'll go ahead and can I take it out to public comment once we've done 13-2? No, this was pulled, so you have to do them separately. Okay, so I'll go ahead and take this out to public comment. This will be for item number 11 on the Consent Agenda, which is a resolution denouncing hate crimes and bigotry targeting Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. So, number ending in 1810.  No current FBI data adjusted for demographics exist to indicate white people are more likely to commit hate crimes against Asians than other races are. There are many subversive actors that works viewing division and stability advocating woke Marxism like the BLM where isolated acts of police violence is really a cover for a very different agenda that you don't really have to blindly support. Some Chinese progressive associations are reported to be funded by the CCP and those have then funded the BLM.   Think about some early reports of the Denver shooter suspect yesterday as a white middle age man and then later revealed he was 21 in of Syrian origin. I'm skeptical about race and blame finger pointing. Good luck trying to count the endless incidences of violence in the BLM riots or with antifa. 2020 overflowed with violence instances and when FBI hate crime data comes out for 2020 we'll see how objectively accurate or appropriate the finger pointing of claims are. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Next item member of the public. Minami with the last name. Please go ahead. Star 9 you should be able to unmute yourself. It's on your phone. There we go. Hello. Hi there. Welcome. Hi. My name is Akiko Minami and I am a resident of Santa Cruz. I guess I can't see you all but maybe you can see me. So in this resolution that people will have more buy-in and feel like it really speaks to the needs of the community and it's not may not necessarily represent Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. I will participate in the resolution. I personally would be willing to delay action on it if we can bring it back out to more community input. So I'd be happy to do that and look for a motion potentially for that. Council Member Brown. Thanks. Yeah. I would. I agree. I appreciate your willingness to do this. I think it is really important to really create a space that's welcoming and you know open to community input. And as you know I say hi. So I really appreciate that. And with that I would I guess I would make I could make a motion. This would be a motion to continue the item would it be continue? To continue the item considering a resolution denouncing heat crimes and bigotry targeting Asian American and Pacific Islanders. API community here in Santa Cruz to bring back a revised version at a future meeting. I have Council Vice Mayor Bruner. Council Member Cummings. Wait a minute. Sorry. It was my. I was muted. Have for a hand up first. Yeah. Council Member Brown. Does that include your additions? Yeah. Yeah. I think so. That's a place that I know that's where some of these books want to want to go. Yeah. So I would like to second that motion. And I feel that providing that space for further input from the community would be very important to this. So I second that. Thank you. Further comments or comments before we vote? Council Member Collentary Johnson. Yeah. I wonder if we can set making this commitment and having a resolution. So I think absolutely further community input. But if Council Member Brown, if you would maybe recommend some time limit to it, that would be great. Council Member Cummings. Oftentimes we usually have to we usually have, you know, a week before agendas are out, but this is one of the few times during the year that we actually have two weeks before the agendas are posted. So it could, I would imagine there might be an opportunity to get input by for this to come at the next meeting since we'll have two weeks before our meeting on April 13th, which means I think the agenda reports would need to be in by the first and then it will be published on the 8th. So just wanted to put that out there that we have a little bit more of a buffer for the next meeting that we normally do for most council meetings. And so wanted to provide that to just to demonstrate that we do have a little bit extra time that would allow us to to meet that urgency, but they would provide that buffer that would be needed to get some level of community outreach. And then I guess within that motion as well, if the friendly amendment to have it come back at the first meeting in April, just also do we need to provide direction for those the three members who brought forward to meet with community or how we want that community incorporation to happen. And so just wanted to put that out there for us to make sure that we it's clear who who's going to be who's going to be in charge of getting getting that community input. And if it's the council members or the staff, I think it's just important that we include that in the motion. As a maybe one as one of the members that brought it forward, I believe the three of us would be happy to accommodate that and have other council members members join as long as we don't, you know, ground ask so we but certainly the three of us will absolutely and other council members, please, you know, I'm open. I shared I share the urgency component to this with council member voluntary Johnson and had been had been in receipt of a lot of and emails regarding this from other mayors around the country that were seeking an urgent declaration by as many counts as possible in relation to what was happening. So certainly we we were reflecting on a nationwide brilliant nationwide request that as many communities possible as quickly as possible, you know, work to get a resolution passed. So but I will defer to my colleagues if they on on the on the item if they would like to add to that council member Brown. Yeah, thank you. I absolutely would accept that as a friendly amendment council member Cummings. I hesitated at the end of making the motion because I know that bringing back if I'm certain or a day certain is really important and I recognize the urgency as well. So I think this does give us an opportunity to be able to bring this back pretty quickly. I'm having that extra time between council meetings. Thank you for raising that council member Cummings. So with that, I would just add, you know, and return on our April 13 meeting April 13 council. Okay, great. Council member Joachim, did you have any other comments? No, I'm just happy to be part of, you know, supporting this direction. And I know Ralph has done a lot of work with bringing this before us and happy to work with my colleagues who co sponsored this resolution as well as if Ralph has capacity to support us in engaging specific community members for input. Thank you, Ralph. Okay, so we won't go. We have a motion by council member Brown. Seconded by council member, excuse me, Vice Mayor Bruner. Yeah, Vice Mayor Bruner. Sorry, Sonya has been bouncing all over the place. Seconded by Vice Mayor Bruner to and to return the resolution for action by April 13. Is that capture it? So I will go, let's go ahead and do a roll call vote on this Bonnie. Council member Watkins, Callentary Johnson, member Golder, and move on to item number 13 on the consent agenda. And I believe that was also council member Brown. Thank my colleagues for bringing this forward. As we know, you know, food service workers and food service workers are at much higher risk of the exposure to COVID. You know, farm workers are really on the front lines and have been, as we know, very vulnerable. They tend to in terms of workplace and living space be in places that expose them to more risk.  And, you know, while we don't have farms in the city of Santa Cruz, given that this is in concert with Watsonville and, you know, our region is really one of the, you know, the solid bowl of the world. It seems like farm workers, it would be good to include them. And I'm just wondering, maybe there was a reason that they weren't included. And if so, then that makes sense. You know, I'm sure it makes sense. But if not, it would be nice to include farm workers. Do you want to make that into a motion? I'm Miss O'Hara, did you want to clarify? Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, thank you, members. Suzy O'Hara, go ahead, please. Thank you, Mayor. So I just wanted to provide a little bit of context for council member Brown. So in my research of the available specific vaccine clinics that the County Department of Public Health is already conducting, there are farm worker clinics already. Most, I mean, all of them are in Watsonville. And there's a pretty high level of effort already underway to carve out specific vaccine clinics for farm workers. That being said, I think it would be good to engage with Watsonville on if there is an additional level of advocacy that should happen. And I'm happy to do that with the council approval and direction to the city manager. Thank you, Suzy. Okay, I have council member Cummings, council member Watkins, and council member Collin Tard Johnson. And I'm just going to make a quick note, we're running about 20 minutes late. So we'll go ahead, please. Yeah, Mayor, I was just going to say maybe we could go to public comment before we make motions because I know that was mentioned, but if we could go to public comment, I think we could probably incorporate the changes and make motions and kind of get moving as well. Yeah, I was just opening it up to see if you had any questions or other comments. I was going to go to public comment. I thought the making of the motion was mentioned when after council member Brown made her comment. So sorry if I was wrong. I'm sorry. Council member Watkins. No, thank you for bringing that up. Council member Brown and for the clarification also, Suzy. I just also wanted to as we think about this population of folks who are providing this essential service that although maybe not farm workers, but are, you know, our farmers market is implied and I just but I just want to you know, intentionally state that we can include that later if we basically get into motion making. And council member commentary Johnson. Thank you. Thank you, Council member Brown and Suzy and my colleagues who worked with me on this. I just a comment that this is this is so necessary right now is outlined in the agenda. I report, so I won't repeat it, but I wanted to quickly share that I have some personal impacts from this. I know a family here locally personally who family member worked at a local grocery store. There was an outbreak and their their father got COVID and passed away a month ago. And I know there are a lot of other stories like that here in our community and beyond. So I'm hoping that our county colleagues hear this and that we can immediately move forward with vaccine clinics for this population. It's more important now than ever as the community is opening up and it's all outlined in the report, but I just wanted to say it here publicly. Thank you. Thank you, Council member. I'll go ahead and bring this out for public comment now. Phone number ending in 1810. My letter has more detail and I'll keep this short, but it's worth reading. The highest vaccine priority is the highest at risk individuals, but job type is not really the first selector to that to me as age and health are. More importantly, any coming attempts to coerce vaccine after vaccine jab or show proof of vaccination by increasingly restricting travel, assembly, attending sporting events, etc. Some authoritarians plan to is not freedom and should be opposed. A friend of mine died two days after his second dose. No scientists or health directors showed up to investigate. Not saying the vaccines don't work. They're brilliant, but there are many health professionals with some serious questions about them and they really have not been tested for their long term effects and it is an individual decision. Anyway, the COVID response, including the ineffective fear masking, the deadly horrific lockdown measures, the loss of human rights, the power grabbing, the money grabbing, the fear mongering, the risk of long term effects discounted, the flip flopping, the political grandstanding, so much fake science, the coercion, endless emergency states and the epic debt and monetary destruction cannot be repeated for every new virus that shows up. In my work experience, there was considerable effort put into a lessons learned diary. Every aspect of the COVID response deserves to be in one. Thanks. You've seen no other members of the public with their hands raised, so I'll return it back to council for a motion. Council member Cummings. I'll move the recommendation and Bonnie, I'm wondering could you put it up on the screen? So I think I can incorporate two changes that might might help us move on. So I'll leave the comment between food and and then comma after agriculture for retail. Where does the restaurant fit in here? Oh, there'll be a comma after agriculture. So food and agriculture restaurant.  And I just wanted to add that little front line because there are people like bus drivers and thinking of people like there are people who work whether it's they're outward facing in banks, I have a roommate that works in a pawn shop. You know, there are people who are engaging with the public regularly in these spaces and those people are going to be the ones who are really most at risk of exposure because they're constantly dealing and outward facing for many businesses. And so just really trying to ensure that we're capturing frontline workers who are constantly engaging with the public in this as well. And so to clean that up, it will be restaurant comma front line and retail workers in both north and south county. And council member commentary Johnson. I was going to second the motion. Okay, great. And I just might make one note. I have family that work in agriculture. I know that they have to Miss O'Hara's note. They have been available for vaccinations for several weeks, but I agree. I mean, I think that we should continue to advocate for that. I do know also that our metro drivers and transit actually was moved up as well. And there was a specialized clinic stood up in Watsonville and Santa Cruz for all Metro. In fact, I think we just got a report from the Metro director that almost everyone from Metro I think received is available to receive the vaccination if they're if they so choose. So that that is making progress. And I really want to recognize Mayor Mayor Dutra in Watsonville for really spearheading as a member of the Metro Board. And he's been incredibly helpful both in the he's just been a huge advocate for the farm worker community. The frontline workers and other folks that have really struggled to get to get vaccine. So he's an amazing partner in this work. So I will go ahead and call for a roll call vote, please. Council Member Watkins. Motion will pass unanimously. And that is a motion to direct the city manager to engage in a letter to the Santa Cruz Public Health Officer with the amended additions to include our culture frontline and frontline workers to that list. And so thank you Council members for bringing that forward. Next up, we will move on to item number 20. And I think I'm going to call for a 10 minute break. We are running about 40 minutes late. So let's take a 10 minute break. And I will try to see if we can make up some of this time. So next item up will be item number 20 for the public. That's the 2021-2022 HUD action plan. Thank you. We'll be back at 2-10. Council members are back if you could turn on your cameras so that we can get rolling. Bonnie, did you see if Council Member Golders back in yet? I don't see her. I don't see her either. I texted her but she hasn't responded yet. Okay, great. Great. We'll go ahead and get started. On our agenda is item number 20, which is the 2021-22 Housing and Urban Development Action Plan. For members who are streaming this meeting, if this is an action you want to comment on, now is the time to call in using the instructions on your screen. The order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the Council. We will then take public comment and then return to the Council for Deliberation in action. We will have Tiffany Lake, Principal Management Analyst from our Economic Development Department presenting today. And welcome, Tiffany. Thank you, Mayor Marce. I think Jessica DeWitt, our Housing and Community Development Manager is going to give a brief introduction. Great. Thank you. Good afternoon, Council. I'm Jessica DeWitt with Economic Development's Housing Team, and we also have Tiffany Lake here from the Housing Team presenting the Housing and Urban Development Annual Action Plan today. Every year, the Federal Department's Housing and Urban Development allocates community development, block grant, and home funding to designated jurisdictions. The City of Santa Cruz recently received notification of its funding allotment and Tiffany will provide more details about this in a minute. While there are a couple smaller subcategories, the CDBG funds are largely split into two umbrella categories. One is for programs serving community needs, and the second category is for projects like infrastructure improvements and building rehab that also serve a community need. Home funds are primarily focused on providing new housing opportunities and tenant-related assistance for low-income households. For the City to allocate the home and CDBG funds, I noticed the funding availability was issued last November to provide the opportunity for community organizations and agencies to respond with requests for funding. The City has received funding requests from various applicants, and now Tiffany is going to walk you through the funding requests that were received and the recommended funding distribution. From opening up the NOFA in November and then most recently bringing the estimated budget and funding recommendations to the Community Programs Committee or CPC in February. And that brings us to today this first public hearing where we're seeking the initial council approval from the full council for the 2021-2022 action plan budget. And that'll keep us in line to hit our hot deadlines. The funding recommendations that we get from the full council today will be able to draft our 2021-2022 annual action plan 2015. When we met with the CPC, our Community Programs Committee back in February, we only had estimates of what we would receive for CDBG at home. Now we've received the actual numbers we know we have about 15,000 more than our estimate for CDBG and about 4,000 less than what we had estimated for home. So the actual funding numbers for CDBG are 618,000 and the actual funding numbers for this upcoming program year for home are 396,000. The funding made up of what we know now is our actual grant amount of 618,000 estimated program income of 35,000. So program income is made up of repaid loans from prior CDBG grants in the past. And then also prior your funds for reprogramming of 70,000. This category could be made up of a few things. It could be canceled projects that aren't going to move forward and haven't used all of their funds but they're done. Or in the past we may have underestimated program income and so then not programmed are allocated to anything. So the majority of the 70,000 we see here is that last category where we underestimated the program income we were going to receive. So that gives us a pot of about 723,000 that we have available for allocation. 3,000 for CDBG. 20% is set by HUD formula that's 20% of the new grant and the estimated program income. We also have rehab administration so this is loan servicing for prior CDBG and home loans. And we have the total remaining for programs and projects of 586,000. This year we received four applications for community programs are what HUD calls public services. 15% activities cap which is about 90,000 but we have total requests of 190,000 but this is okay because only these three programs here are subject to that 15% public services cap. This is because Nueva Vista is a community-based development organization or CBDO and that means that they have a board of directors that's made up of at least 51% low income residents are residents of the community served and in this case because they are a CBDO the area served is our NRSA our neighborhood revitalization strategy area which is the beach flats and lower ocean area our capital improvement. So Loudon Nelson had an application for the senior studio so this would be concrete slab foundation ADA accessible ramp and other hookups to install a modular unit that the parks and rec department already has they don't have the funds to do the installation so that 50,000 they requested cannot be the amount to move forward. The Market Street Senior Center this is a second application they applied for and received CBG funding last year of 100,000 and they have a total estimate of about 500,000 is needed improvements so we can expect that we will receive further applications from them in the future and then the city of Santa Cruz has put in an application for homeless infrastructure that can include encampment response it could be procurement of hygiene units our other sanitation and cleanup our other CBG eligible homeless infrastructure so we have total request of 425,000 but we only have 396,000 available so not all of the projects can be fully funded at their ask and the recommendation that we got back from the CPC was to fully fund all of the programs that applied so that would be at 190,000 if all four programs are fully funded at their ask and that's without exceeding the HUD public service cap and we received some updates that we requested for those who've received CBG last year to give some updates to council for those that have applied again this year last year we were able to fund second harvest with CBG coronavirus funding and without funding they've been able to increase those served in City of Santa Cruz because they were doing work before the pandemic but when the pandemic started food insecurity has greatly increased so they've been helping an average of 15,000 City of Santa Cruz residents every month and helping with approximately 235,000 pounds of food each month as well we also got some updates from Nueva Vista which operates two locations that are funded with CBBG so their familiar center on east coast has provided over 700 hours of advocacy and support they've been able to stay open during the pandemic with social distancing and other safety protocols and then Nueva Vista youth center the beach class community center has provided over a thousand hours of recreation and 575 hours of homework so these are just some of the highlights of all the work they've been doing because it would have been a lot to put on a slide because they've been doing so much and since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic CRLA our California Rural Legal Assistance has seen a great increase in those seeking help related to housing so they've seen about 87% of those seeking assistance it's had to do with housing and this has been a great increase so they only had numbers for calendar year 2020 so that overlapped somewhat with the funding they received related to CBBG so in that time they were able to assist 148 City of Santa Cruz household our 259 residents so moving on to projects when we brought the funding to the CPC because we only had our estimates we were trying to be a little conservative we thought we had a total of 381,000 but we know now we have a little bit more we really have 396,000 available to split between the remaining projects after the programs are funded so the recommendation is to fund the senior studio at their ask as before at 50,000 because this is what they need to move forward the senior center at 110,000 and homeless infrastructure projects at 236,000 both of these projects can be phased so they're able to both move forward if they're not funded at their full ask 30,000 is that we had administration by the HUD formula at 130,000 rehab program administration for prior loans at 6,500 community prep imposed by HUD because Mueva Vista is excluded as a CBDO and capital projects at 396,000 so that's the remaining split between those three applications for capital improvements moving on to home funding again we have our actual funding numbers for home so that's 396,000 for home like CDBG this is repayment of prior loans that the city made with home funding and we have administration at 10% also HUD formula which is 10% of the new grant year and the incoming program income and we have a prior that are designated for future housing projects so home funds have to be the last funding into a project and can't be designated to a specific project until all of the other funding is lightened up but this is a pot of money that's growing over time that will be available to close funding gaps for affordable housing in the city of Santa Cruz so we have a total of a little under 1.27 million here what we've proposed is that 100,000 go to the security deposit program which is administered by the Santa Cruz Housing Authority so this program funds city of Santa Cruz residents with their security deposit which is paid directly to landlords on their behalf we have a CHODO set aside so CHODO is a community housing development organization so like the CVDO equivalent that we discussed for CDBG this organization would need to have over 51% of their board of directors being low income our residents serve through the program so that 15% of the total grant would be 59,000 and the city of Santa Cruz has currently two CHODOs we have Habitat for Humanity and Mid Peninsula Housing our Mid-Pen and we anticipate that we'll get an application coming soon before our second public hearing from First Community Housing which is working on a number of affordable housing projects in the city of Santa Cruz so with what's left over and our prior reserves our new amount available for future housing projects will be about 1.1 million dollars when a project's ready to move forward because it's kind of a small pot in the large scheme of things because housing projects need so much so again that's a total of a little under 1.27 million based on the budget we get today we're going to be able to draft our 2021-2022 annual action plan and then we're going to bring that again to the second public hearing where we get final approval finalize the budget and this will allow us to hit our HUD-required deadline and then if we hit those milestones along the way funding should be available as early as July 1st so that's it for our presentation please let us know if you have any questions Thank you Tiffany I'll go ahead and open it up for questions from Council are there any Council members that have questions regarding this please throw a presentation and a really great staff report very easy to follow what is a very complicated formula that you guys have to work with so thank you okay I will go and take this out to any members of the public that might be interested so if you are interested in commenting on the 2021-2022 housing and urban development action plan please press star 9 on your phone to raise your hand when it is your time to speak you will hear an announcement that you have been unmuted the timer will be then set to two minutes and I do see a phone number ending in 5747 go ahead please if you're unmuted you should be able to go if your phone number ending in 5747 it looks like you're unmuted and you should be able to speak if you have your phone number ending in 5747 it looks like you're unmuted on our end maybe try pressing star 9 again Bonnie do you have any advice there you go try pressing star 9 again and see if we can get you online there you go welcome thank you yeah good afternoon this is Edgar London with the New Avista community resources I would just like to take a brief moment to thank city staff as well as city council for the support and definitely you know we're very grateful and thankful for all the support that we received last year as you saw from the highlight we certainly kept our doors open during the pandemic and we've been just simply very grateful for the funding to be able to provide services in this time of need you know with this pandemic and how everything changed so simply just wanted to take the time to thank everyone for all their hard work and support thank you thank you Edgar and thank you for all your work for the community is there anyone else in the audience today the attendees that would like to speak to this item okay seeing none I'll return it back to council for deliberation and action and council member Watkins no I just also want to echo your comments mayor and thank our staff and Tiffany for the presentation and just the work and the community engagement it's always nice when we get more than we anticipated so you know exclamation mark on that as well as sort of extending our thanks to Edgar and the important work in our community as well so with that unless there's any further deliberation amongst the council I'm happy to move the recommendation before us and council member Cummings did you have any questions or comments or second just wanted to thank the staff for all their work and for bringing us forward and really excited that we're able to provide the support we are for the organizations in our community it seems like we're almost you know meeting everyone's funding needs so I just want to thank everybody for their hard work and I'll go ahead and second the motion okay great and council member Brown I just wanted to add my thank you to the staff for all of your work to prepare this this action plan for us but also for the care that you give in engaging directly with our community partners to receive funding and who provide these really critical services and I know that you do that you know you go above and beyond the you know what's necessary to get these plans together and do the formal submission so thank you for everything that you do and thank you to Edgar for coming and reminding us that Nueva is one of those programs and it's very important part of our community great so we have a motion made by council member walk-ins seconded by council member Cummings to approve the initial funding awards for the fiscal year 2022 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development annual action plan for both community development block grant and home investment partnerships program and could we have a rule called vote please council member Watkins council member Johnson we'll move on to item number 21 which is school district and employer sponsored housing amendments to affordable housing inclusionary ordinance our presenters are going to be Jessica Dewitt with the housing community she's our housing and community development manager and Jessica Malor a management analyst I believe Jessica you are yeah so I've got we've got two presenters and I want to welcome council member Golder welcome to the meeting and for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on you'll want to call in now using the instructions on your screen and the order today for this item will be a presentation by staff followed by questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action back Jessica you guys did such an amazing job you've caught us up so we're we're now completely caught up and on time so thank you for your great reports I'll turn it over to you and Jessica thank you good afternoon council what we're presenting to you today are the remaining inclusionary ordinance amendments that staff and the planning commission housing subcommittee worked on over the last few months in the first part of the presentation I'll discuss the employer sponsored housing recommendation and then Jess Miller also from our housing team will discuss the ordinance cleanup items the proposed inclusionary ordinance in chapter 24.16 and it includes the entire section because the cleanup amendments are scattered throughout in December 2019 the council provided direction to explore ways to make the inclusionary ordinance more effective for workforce housing projects city schools district raised concerns on the increase of the city inclusionary requirement to 20 percent and how that would impact the feasibility of their proposed employee housing project the goal of this proposed ordinance amendment is to help provide more opportunities for affordable housing to retain the local workforce the dilemma is that several people in our local workforce fall into the modern and middle income categories and these households don't qualify for the traditional form of affordable housing but they also can't afford market rate housing either this is the case with the Santa Cruz City Schools District where they're having a lot of challenges attracting and retaining their teachers and support staff so city staff and the housing subcommittee focused on the school district and their proposed employee housing project on the west side of the case study for how to craft an ordinance for employer sponsored housing we studied models for developing school district housing and other jurisdictions and looked at what financing tools are being used to fund this type of housing for example the city of Mountain View has a project where they're using a public private partnership to build market rates school district and city employee housing all together on the same site other jurisdictions are employing ballot measures certificates of participation general obligation bonds to finance school district housing and another source of taxes and bond financing so in one bond financing tool that staff is taking a closer look at and plans to bring back to a future council meeting is the California Community Housing Agency Bond Financing so in addition to looking at how these projects are financed we also took a closer look at the city school district employee income levels including those hardest to attract and retain to better understand how they compare with the city's inclusionary inclusionary affordable ability requirements example several of the salary levels fall into the moderate and middle income categories unlike market rate housing that will charge the highest rents the market will bear employers providing employee housing are highly motivated to charge affordable rents to retain employees with a 100% employee housing project it becomes really challenging to provide affordable rents for all of the employee rental apartments while still needing to meet the city's inclusionary requirements that may not match all of the affordability levels that will help retain local employees we have also been tracking on recent state legislation focused on school district employee housing like assembly bill 3308 and the teacher housing act of 2016 AB 3308 was just approved last fall and its provisions roll up into the teacher housing act are a few of the key points from that act if you back up one more slide it's just yeah just two on this one and then we'll go to the next one so for the teacher school district employee definition section we must be from an employee a unified school district as well as it through pre kindergarten kindergarten in grades one through nine it could also be an employee school or an elementary school district with the same qualifications as a unified school district but it could go through grades eight or it could be a high school district with grades nine through 12 the state legislation also requires that the rental housing be located on school district owned land so there's your housing act are that this occupancy to school district teachers and staff if local state or tax credit funding is used to build the rental housing the district may also allow local public employees and other members of the public to occupy the housing but the school district employees will always have priority and then another key point is the housing must be a majority serving low or moderate income households or the city's proposed school district housing amendment it mirrors the state law on the teacher housing act that we just discussed so you can see here it's for rental rental development only again it prioritizes the restricts occupancy the school district teachers and staff it allows the school districts to rent to public employees or members of the public if they can't find a staff member to rent the units and then the majority is for low and moderate income households through housing amendment it has the same requirements as the school district five percent of the housing must be rented to the employers employees at all times the employers may allow members of the public to live or work that live or work in the city or county of Santa Cruz per our code section 24 16 045 to occupy the housing but again the employers employees still have the priority and then the another difference is the majority instead of just some the majority of the rental units must receive public funding from local state or federal funds affordable housing funds or affordable housing tax credits about the cleanest amendments thank you introduction Jessica the cleanup amendments are coming before you today in response to city council action that was taken on December 12 2019 where council directed staff to review the inclusionary ordinance for any inconsistencies and bring any amendments first to planning commission and then to council for consideration so the amendments we're presenting today are not exhaustive and we do anticipate further amendments to the ordinance will likely occur in the future as we continue to refine the ordinance based on our community's needs so I've grouped them together kind of the way I did in the staff report for these slides so the majority of of our amendments today are located in the definition section of our inclusionary ordinance and the first amendment is actually going to specify that the definition of affordable ownership costs applies to low income for inclusionary units and our legal council advised us that we separate very low and moderate affordable ownership costs definitions from the low income definition in an effort to be consistent with other sections of our code and so we're recommending that we cite the very low and moderate affordable ownership cost definitions that's actually found in our in our density bonus ordinance so that way we'll be consistent between the two parts of code our next group of amendments pertain to definitions of households at different affordability levels again our legal council recommended that our ordinance reference the California code of regulations because this is actually going to direct anyone who is reading our ordinance to the actual income limits that the state releases each year for each category instead of directing them as we did previously to the language that defines how you calculate it this way people are going to actually be able to find the up to date values each year when they check next we have the addition of SOU as a type of inclusionary unit so we currently don't have a reference to an SOU which is a small ownership unit in the inclusionary ordinance however our inclusionary requirements do apply to SOU projects so these amendments will explicitly include SOU as a type of inclusionary unit and our SOU definition is actually coming from a different section of our municipal code so if there's any changes made to that section of code our ordinance should be updated by reference and we also have some clarifying changes that our legal council advised pertaining to residential development definition and then the applicability of the ordinance and then we have amendments 10 and 11 which are for our small rental project for the fractional inclusionary requirements so this is going to be a rental project that's between five and nine units so currently our ordinance is silent on that fractional requirement for the small project so if we have a 1.7 requirement we don't say what happens to the 0.7 in that case but our proposed amendment is actually going to treat smaller rental projects the same way that we treat the larger which is 10 plus unit rental projects so this is going to make it more clear for staff for developer applicants when they come in they're going to know what their requirement is and it's going to be more clear for the public as well to understand what that requirement is so they can kind of get an idea before we have our public meeting and this is for the fractional requirement only it's not going to change how we apply for the full the whole unit component and then there you may notice there's a second number 11 that we've marked for the start and that's because this change recited in our staff report under the employer sponsored housing section but it's really more of a cleanup item and this is from our legal team advising us to add language that ensures affordable units are constructed in a development project making sure that that funding is secured before the council would approve any alternate method of compliance and then our final amendment was again a suggestion from our legal council in response to some litigation pertaining to the housing accountability act it's just making sure that we have the authority to have implementation guidelines which are complimentary to our ordinance and help explain things in a more easier to understand manner for staff for developers and for the public so today we're recommending that you take the action as outlined on this slide and then before we turn it over for questions Jessica and I wanted to thank the planning commission and specifically the planning commission housing subcommittee because they spent a lot of time and effort helping us craft this recommendation in the language that's before you today they did a a great job and we just wanted to publicly thank them for their efforts so that's it thank you thank you Jessica both Jessica's and yeah thank you very much for the for the presentation it's very clear I'll go ahead and see if there are any questions from council members on this council member brown and thank you for bringing this to us and I know it's been a long time in the making and a lot of effort has gone into it and so I really appreciate staff and the planning commissioners who rolled up their sleeves to to get us this this new language I'm just wondering to I'm not sure who this is for for your team somebody on the team why the the ordinance changes aren't specifically targeted to public sector workforce housing you know it kind of came up as a result of the school district you know case and there there is state law around that but I'm just wondering why not just public sector given that those are jobs that tend to be you know lower waged and and the need is really great so just if you could explain where how that decision got made thanks happy to do that and actually this was a topic and a lot of conversation with the the housing subcommittee we actually brought in outside legal council who are experts in their housing law and what's really happening is for us to be able to just public employees it's it's a it creates a discrimination issue a source of discrimination for income and so we were highly advised to not do that but we have in the language of the ordinance really really tried to promote having you know funding that's coming from a public funding source that supports affordable housing and so we're hoping that we're really focused on you know getting to those those income levels and getting to those folks who need it are there other council members with questions not seeing any I do have a quick question Jessica I just want to understand the the change in the code its reference it's on 21 point page 21.6 in the packet is that it's the number 10 and number 11 on the cleanup list Jeff so I just want to make sure I'm understanding so and I know this fractional inclusionary requirement goes with the larger so this will I'm just trying to understand is this adding that fractional requirement to 5 to 10 dwelling units proposed projects so what this change is actually going to do is we're going to remove so if there's a fractional requirement of 0.7 or less as it states in our code for larger rental projects there's no requirement for that so if it's 2.7 or 3.7 or 3.5 there's no requirement for the 0.5 but if there's a requirement of more than 0.7 so if it's 3.8 or 4.9 we'd round it up to the next whole number for inclusionary units and this is really just a way for us to be consistent between the two different sizes of projects the subcommittee last year was really supportive of trying to treat the rental projects the same because we want to try and encourage like dedicated rentals in our city instead of just having rentals in small ownership projects because that way it's a little there's not that confidence that that unit could be there long term because there's always the option to sell those units that are rented in an ownership project as we allow in our code so this way we're trying to incentivize dedicated rentals that will be recorded in a math that they won't be sold later so it's not necessarily doing anything doing away with the fraction it's just treating them the same so anything 0.7 or less there's no fractional requirements for inclusionary units but anything above 0.7 we're going to still require that additional unit so this isn't adding a new this is not a new requirement for the five to nine units it's just consistency now with the with the other part of the ordinance with that the way the fractional the way that the answer when you end up with that fractional interest got it thank you exactly okay thank you okay that's helpful okay any last call on any other questions or from council no okay I'm going to go ahead and take it out to the public Mr. Phillips approval of this ordinance going to the subcommittee for revision since two of the four three voting eyes were by members soon after recall booted by the public item 21 is redline expense public moneys or property develop housing creating special interest exclusion exclusionary housing for priority exclusive use by government employees to make those affordable at public expense or property this is ethically problematic as government employees are subsidized then by the taxpayers in perpetuity low rents regardless of salary why government employees that public expense are so special in this regard is mythically justified as to me some government employees make the jack compared to the same jobs in the private sector I realized the state originally allowed this kind of thing in the essence is not all your idea but assuring some even highly paid government employees don't have to compete for low cost housing with the public is indefensible the government getting into the housing ownership business is not just a little bit Kelly's way less socialist just because the state has allowed this kind of self-serving corrupt special interest pseudo socialism doesn't mean you have to pursue it teachers here make 65,000 average base wages which per capita is not low income mostly low income earners are under 25 or retired or female no husband or almost no income single men or huge six plus number family households not teachers Santa Cruz actually has a higher median household income than the state and has widened that in the last 10 years to almost 91,000 per household and per capital ends come also remains higher at 42,000 but over the same time frame 10 years or so the gap between the state and Santa Cruz is closing rapidly as C is bifurcated though and that a higher than state percentage 20% percent of households earn less than 30,000 36% earn less than 50 bit of a gap to 75,000 than a greater percentage of the state at 41% earn 75 to 200k and has a high percentage of rich households earning over 200k at 16.2% possibly I suspect going to the fact eight of the top 10 employers are government entities and the other two are healthcare providers most all the rich people are married couples or men single women dominate the medium income brackets seems to me promoting marriage with fewer children might do more for household affordability ideally you would allow the free market to address the low cost housing and not with more regulations or unqualified self-serving subsidies with the kind of monetary debasement going on now a delayed inflation surge like the 2012 2018 surge is a common okay thank you and next up we have phone number ending in 9951 you're unmuted go ahead you're muted there you go welcome hi this is Chris Monroe superintendent for Santa Cruz city schools and I want to express my gratitude to the city staff and the commission for working with us on this really important project to ensure that we can recruit and retain the best possible teachers and educators to support the youth in our community 42% of our employees spend between 30 and 50% of their income on their rent 25% spend more than 50% of their income on their rent and we have continued to lose teachers every year to the high cost of housing then leaving to higher paying districts over the hill or into Carmel or Pacific Grove and our ability to recruit and retain teachers is definitely tied to being able to house them the other issue we've had is we've had numerous teachers who have declined job offers because they haven't even been able to find a housing unit that you know no rentals available so we're super grateful to the city for your support in our efforts and we are looking forward to seeing these amendments made so that we can move forward with a housing project that will help us bring the best possible teachers to serve the children in our community thank you Chris and thank you for everything you're doing for everyone in our community and their children and I agree this is a really really important action by the council today so thank you for your leadership and working with our staff and the planning commission and others to bring this forward I know that you've put a lot of timing as well okay I'll bring it back over to the council and I see council member Golder I also just wanted to thank everybody that's worked so hard on this over the years I know it's been a long time coming and having served on several interview panels for the Santa Cruz City School District over the years in my capacity as a professional and as a parent representative I have to echo what Superintendent Monroe said and that it's really difficult to recruit and retain teachers and staff for certain positions you know especially in science and math and the high school district and for special ed as well and so I think that this is a really important step in keeping the teachers here and keeping them part of our community and so I'm happy to move the item I just saw a couple colleagues pop their hands up so I don't know if you have comments or questions or but if I'm happy to move it muted my dog's barking so I'm muted I have a count motion by council member Golder council member Watkins I saw your hand go up next and then vice mayor Brunner thank you mayor Myers and council member Golder and to the planning commission and the staff and to our school partners for bringing this forward and I just I am happy to second the motion I just want to echo the comments that were made in regards to really just sincere appreciation for getting us to this point but also hopes and that we'll be able to support more teachers being able to be in our community be part of our community and see these types of projects move forward it's really essential for all the reasons that were brought up and we do know that we have a huge need and so this was a concern when the ordinance passed prior and having this as the direction moving forward to really ensure that we're not having any unintended consequences of our policies to not support these types of projects is really critical so thank you very much and happy to second it and looking forward to seeing more movement and traction as a result okay so we have a motion on the table and vice mayor Brunner thank you I wanted to thank city staff on this and especially the planning commission housing subcommittee for the time spent in going through those cleanup updates I wanted to call out the cleanup number two really important to actually call out the current numbers of income limits rather than the calculations I think overall I think it's great to have the options for making the ordinance more effective and prioritizing the flexibility for the workforce housing projects and really intending to meet the needs of the workforce so I'm happy that there is a first and a second and I will leave it at that thank you thank you vice mayor so we have a motion by council member Golder seconded by council member Watkins to introduce her publication and ordinance amending title 24 of the Santa Cruz municipal code the zoning ordinance part one of chapter 24.16 affordable housing provisions including sections 24.16.01 zero through 24.16.060 and could I have a roll call vote please council member Watkins aye calendar adjonesa aye she get included off so first so that you have a yeah let's give her a minute yeah I don't I'd I'd like her vote to be recorded see her out I see her coming in are you on your bench yes I'm just going to start with the votes again council member Watkins calendar adjonesa aye passes unanimously great thank you so much to staff for that I know there's a lot of work and I really appreciate all the work you guys have done on that important item and next up we have item number 23 excuse me 22 our annual housing element and general plan progress reports for members of the public who are streaming this meeting if this is an item you want to comment on now's the time to call in using the instructions on your screen the order will be a presentation of the item by staff followed by questions from the council we will then take public comment and then return to the council for deliberation and action today we have Catherine Donovan who's senior planner with our planning department as our presenter welcome Catherine welcome see the presentation here we can yes good sometimes I don't get it up there right good afternoon council this is Catherine Donovan senior planner with the advanced planning division every year the all jurisdictions within the state are required to provide two reports one on the general plan and the second on the housing element progress that we have made in meeting our general plan requirements and our housing element requirements the general plan report has no specific format but it should include information on general plan amendments ordinance and policy amendments information regarding intergovernmental cooperation and on how the city has promoted infill development as well as general information on major development projects the housing element report is on a form that is provided by the state and in the last three years since 2018 significant new requirements have been added every year the reports are due to the state on April 1st and if we don't submit the reports we are not eligible for certain state grant opportunities so it's not that the reports make us eligible but if we if we don't submit the reports we are not eligible the first report is the general plan annual report and as I said earlier it covers general information and this year we covered specific projects I did not include all of them on here this represents some of the projects the 119 Coral Street project the Wharf master plan the Ghost Santa Cruz program our progress on the climate action plan our new wayfinding program the resilient coast project the circles development project our progress on the rail trail and a 818 Pacific the Pacific Station South project as well as the objective standards project closing element annual report this report is on how we have been doing on meeting our regional housing needs allocation and for those of you who are not familiar with this term the State Department of Finance anticipates the population growth within the state and assigns shares of that population to the local government organization then hands down specific requirements based on affordability levels to all of the local jurisdictions this reporting period is 2015 to 2023 the cycle is an eight-year cycle this year we have this cycle we have an additional year in there because they're we're catching up so that so that we can be in the same cycle as the metropolitan transportation plan sustainable community strategy so that those two things are aligned and in this arena cycle Santa Cruz has a total of 747 housing units assigned to it and this shows the breakdown as you can see this table shows from 2015 through 2020 2020 was we developed a smaller number of housing units and I'm although I don't have specific evidence I strongly suspect that COVID-19 played a role in that and in the past year we have met all of our arena targets except for the very low income housing and very low income housing has is always difficult we have some some new tools that are coming online and we're hoping that we'll be able to get more of that that very low housing built in the city in this chart shows just a breakdown of development activity in 2020 it's divided up by by the levels of approval step in a development project is submitting a planning application we have in 2020 we had applications for 260 units um in that same year 126 units were approved these are not necessarily the same units because there some that were submitted in 2019 may have been approved in 2020 and then once the planning approval has been granted then the developer can submit for building permits you can see we had 95 units submitted this year 79 units issued and I can't see that last number 218 units were were final this year and because those those permits overlap you can't add them all together to get a total of what's in the pipeline but this gives you a sense of just how many units we have you know there's there's quite a few that are in the pipeline right now and I'm keeping this presentation short because I know you have a long agenda today so if you have any questions I'd be happy to help you thank you Catherine our I'll go ahead and turn it back to the council for questions any let's see council member brown thank you Catherine for the report and for putting both the oral report and this really helpful written report with the charts and all of that it's really great to just be able to walk through it and begin to understand with all of the complexity that is involved in where you know how we categorize and you know where things go so I really appreciate it I have a question about I have one that's very specific and so I'll ask that one first in the report I believe it's a pre-application application for entitlements or requests for entitlements where the affordability levels have yet to be determined and I absolutely understand in general why that's the case I'm wondering if you could just know what's happening with the Coral Street 119 Coral Street the affordability levels pending my understanding was that it's supposed to be an you know entirely low-income project so I so it's just a affordability level within the very low extremely low low categories is that where okay great thank you another question I have actually it's just really a basic question why wasn't the the Planning Commission involved in reviewing the document this as you might guess by looking at the complexity of the form this is something I barely get done in time to present it to the council before it's due on April 1st so we don't have the extra three weeks that it would take to take it to the Planning Commission it's been our practice that once it's been submitted to City Council and you've reviewed it and we send it off to the state that we that we do take it to the Planning Commission for their information but we just don't have time it's not something that they would be making changes to because it's strictly a factual report so so we do we do bring it to them it's just after the fact got it and then I have a question that's more of a comment around the 650 square foot cut off around the ADU you know where they fit with the low income versus you know other moderate income but I'll I'll save that for when we go into deliverance so that's all for now thank you Catherine sure Council Member Cummings Mayor and I I have a similar question regarding the 650 the permitted units issued by affordability and rena targets one of the things that catches my attention is that you know for example with the moderate income units none of them are deed restricted and for the low income units it looks like some but probably close to 100 were not be restricted and one of the things that I'm really concerned with and it's come up in meetings before is that you know we've heard that if you don't be restricted unit then you can't guarantee its affordability moving into the future and you know given that we don't have any mechanism for tracking rental units within the city of Santa Cruz I'm really interested in knowing you know how many of these units actually remain in that affordability category after the permits have been issued and after they've been built because again if there's no way if they're not deed restricted then they could say we're going to be we're in the affordable unit and then the city you know checks it off as meeting one of those requirements but then without there being any restrictions the person could just rent them at market rate potentially so what is actually keeping these units within those categories so one we're meeting our goals but more importantly so that we have this stock of affordable housing in the community almost entirely 80-year units they might also be SROs or SOUs and they're generally the the HTD refers to them as affordable by design I explained in the staff report how we allocate the ADUs based on the on a survey that we've done and on the the size of the ADU and similar with the SROs and SOUs but usually when you have something that's only 300 square feet it's going to be rented at a lower price than if you have a you know a 1200 square foot unit it's that's just that's just the way the market works so while I do share your concerns about if it's not restricted with the ADUs we have not been able to as I again explained in the in the staff report we used to offer a program to to provide incentives to build ADUs by waiving the city's development fees however there was a legal determination that waiving fees was the equivalent of um providing financing for a project and so that made prevailing wage kick in and the cost the additional cost of paying prevailing wage made the fee waivers not really an incentive any longer because the the cost didn't pencil out if you had to pay a prevailing wage you were paying more to build it in the first place so I do believe that especially our smaller ADUs even though we don't have a recorded affordability on those units because they're smaller they will over time always rent for a lower cost than a larger unit and that's also the same with the SRO and SOU it the numbers may not be exactly the same but there there may be other units that are I mean sometimes when I'm writing in that when I know the units that are being developed and there's no affordability agreement and there's there's no way for me to say that it's affordable by design and yet I know it's not going to be a high income a higher income unit I still have to list it as above moderate so I think it these sorts of things over time they do tend to equalize I wish we could use I wish we could restrict the ADUs more because we're getting we get so many of them but we just don't have any method to do that yeah that's what I guess that's one of my concerns too because as someone who's in the rental market you know I've seen some of these kinds of units you know be very expensive for you know and and outside the range of what you know what I guess it's it's really not clear what the definition then is of you know an ADU that's that's for a moderate income or a low income because even with the size of the units a lot of it then what ends up happening is although it might be listed you know within our reports is market rate or moderate for low income when you are engaged in a highly competitive housing market we hear stories about people who you know it just ends up going to whoever the highest bidder is oftentimes so and with a lot of I wouldn't say restrictions but oftentimes when people are applying for these kinds of units tenants are being asked what their income is and what they can afford and that can influence what people are willing to charge because we hear stories about people who say you know I've got this person who's willing to pay more for this unit so you know you're not I'm not going to be able to rent this to you and so what we you know are listing as being from moderate and low income it's hard to know what that actual reality is playing out because if people can afford it they'll pay more and oftentimes without it being be restricted it's it's going to get into that kind of market dynamic of whoever can go to the highest bidder so again I think it's really important for us as a council to consider ways that we can track our rental housing through data and I think it's really important that if there's ways that we can encourage deed restriction on these units that we try to do so because well I appreciate how we calculat