is the most heavily aligned with what the survey results said, that biking was the most popular mode that people would be willing to try and that biking would work for many, many people. The specifics of this scenario are included in your staff report, but recognizing that we have a packed agenda, I'll move past this to the ones I think we're gonna spend more time talking about. Scenario two is investing wholly in transit. This was based upon a staff level proposal worked on by City of Santa Cruz and Santa Cruz Metro staff. It would provide transit passes for the approximately 4,000 Downtown employees under a program commonly referred to as an EcoPass. An EcoPass is very, very similar to an insurance pool where you cover the entirety of the group recognizing that only a portion of that group are going to utilize the services. Within this it is approximately $35,000 above the budget that we had established, but does provide for just transit passes and marketing. There is no budget in this scenario for any other programs, biking, carpooling, walking, incentives, but it does provide transit passes to all 4,000 Downtown employees. It is the least responsive to the Downtown surveys of both 2017 and 2018. Scenario three is our proposed staff recommendation and is one of the two recommendations before you today. This is our staff recommendation. It's within the $300,000 that we had established and we think it has the greatest chance of moving the needle towards achieving that 50% drive-alone mode split. There are some real, real high points in here and the components of this program are covered in detail in your staff report. This would include the purchase of bike link cards to give Downtown employees to utilize our bike lockers. It would develop the first of its kind jump subscription membership service. It's something we've been working on with our partners at Jump to be able to provide jump memberships to our Downtown employees. It would have bike commute challenges in May and October through partnership with Ecology Action, our great partners who are already do this type of work. It would also fund a 3X increase in our transit mode split. Right now, as you could see in the Downtown Employee Commute Survey, approximately 3% of our Downtown employees utilize transit to get to work. This would provide enough budget, this identified budget here under transit, $94,000 would purchase monthly transit passes to cover 9% of our Downtown employees. This is a dramatic increase in the number of employees who are able to get Downtown for free with a free transit pass in their pocket over what is there now. This also funds a commute management platform and carpool incentives. Education and encouragement really focused on bringing that education to Downtown employers and offering lunch and learns at different sites rather than expecting people to come to us. Marketing and incentives, so really getting the word out about the program and letting people know about all the great programs we have to offer, as well as purchasing incentives from many of our Downtown businesses to offer as prizes. So say you, we offer a campaign that if you walk to work 10 days this month, you're entered to win dinner for two at Lely Downtown or if you sign up a buddy to take transit for the first time, you're entered to win a cup of coffee at one of our Downtown businesses. So we think that scenario three is a really, really well-rounded program that has a huge opportunity to be able to encourage and incentivize employee mode shift, meet people where they are and offer that wide variety of programs that really will make an impact on our Downtown employees. Scenario four is our Downtown Commission recommendation. And our purpose is with saying, I think there's a couple of things that we didn't do a good job covering at the Downtown Commission. One of the big areas of discussion that came up was the difference between offering monthly transit passes and offering an EcoPass. The recommendation that came out of scenario four out of the Downtown Commission was to take scenario three and add scenario two to it. So all of the benefits I described in scenario three and also add over $200,000 to fully fund an EcoPass program. The discussion that came around that was the idea that the provision of everyone having a transit pass in their pocket automatically would make transit more accessible and easier to use for people. And the piece that I did not do a good job communicating is that the method of delivery for getting transit passes to people would be no different in scenario three or scenario four. We do not have a contact list of all 4,000 plus Downtown employees. We do not have the mailing address to just drop these in the mail and get them to people.  So that there is a step in between that is exactly the same between scenario three and scenario four. Additionally, in my professional judgment, the money we have budgeted in scenario three to provide for a 9% transit mode split will be more than enough in year one to measure and analyze and see the impact of transit investment. And I do not believe that we would achieve a higher mode split than that would we invest in scenario four. That being said, the recommendation that came out of the Downtown Commission was to combine scenarios two and three into scenario four for an annual recurrent budget of $585,000, which is about $285,000 over our recommended budget. Scenario four also does provide all the benefits that I identified in scenario three and would be a path that we could take to move forward. So to reiterate, our staff recommendation is still scenario three. It is within the established program budget and the direction that we were given from you on September 11th. It really does achieve our goals to meet people where they are in a fiscally prudent way that does provide alternatives and options to all Downtown employees. It really does address the survey data that we heard in both 2017 and 2018 that people have a wide variety of interests and needs in how they travel. And it responds to the high interest that we heard in biking, the most popular program component, and also the tripling of transit ridership. It can be implemented in phases and rolled out ASAP. Moving forward to scenario three, we can go out next week and buy transit passes. Moving forward to scenario four, we'll take probably a minimum six months to establish an EcoPass program with Metro, with board approval, et cetera. And we're really just figuring out the backend data. And finally, I think scenario three is a really smart year one investment. It will allow us to track the data, track the effectiveness, track the utilization, and then come back to you in year two with recommended changes based upon how our Downtown employees are actually traveling and really does recognize the changing nature of our Downtown employment and residents as well as the changing nature of transportation. So that, thank you. And I'm here for any questions you have. Thank you, Claire. Thank you both for your presentation. Now's the time for council questions. Council Member Cohn, if you have a question. Thank you, Mayor. When you did your surveys, was there any category for students when you asked them about how they got around? And then, I mean, because the community that I'm part of is the bus is pretty popular and it does go where people wanna go generally. We did not have a student question, but I think getting- A category for students they said, would you work Downtown, are you a student? We did not ask if people are students. Yeah, one thing that may be helpful to what you're getting at. In many EcoPass programs, and I think what we would propose if we move that way was that people who are otherwise covered by a transit pass, so all UCSC students as well as Cabrillo students would not be eligible for this program. It's modeled off of what Boulder does. You have to verify that you're not a student and you don't already have a pass. Yeah, I just wanna get out of how popular the bus is for some people. The survey, 4,000 on page 15.4, there's 4,054 and then 248. How does that match up with the numbers that survey people say you really need to do to get an adequate survey? Is it 5%, 10%, 3% or no off hand? Does it seem like a low number of respondents for 4,000? Yeah, it was a lower number of respondents than we had in the first round of our downtown employee commute survey. That is likely because we got direction in September and wanted to deploy this as soon as possible. So our survey was slam in the middle of holiday time, which as we know in downtown is a really difficult time, especially to reach retail and restaurant workers. So our second annual survey was lower than our first survey, although the results were incredibly consistent between the two lending me at a high degree of confidence in what the results say. The scenario 4 said doing business flex 50,000, what is that? Oh yeah, I like that one. So one of the recommendations from the downtown commission was a recognition that as I really bluntly and ungracefully put it, we're probably gonna get this program wrong. We're making these projections on what people are gonna try to use and there's gonna be an area that we budgeted too much and an area that we probably budgeted too little and that $50,000 flex fee is, they referred to it as the speed of doing business fee. So if we are oversubscribed in a number of people who want bike locker cards, we can use part of that fee to just purchase more cards out of that budget or if more people want a carpool, we can allocate more funding to that as well. And that's only for scenario 4 but not the other three scenarios or is it in every scenario? It's only in scenario 4, although it could be an addition that you could add to any of the scenarios. And the last question, six months to get the program up and running, that seems like a lot, but what's the obstacle for that? What are the hurdles? Yeah, so between us and Metro staff, we had come up with this staff level proposal. The steps that it would take in order to get it set up and running is that we would then have to meet with Metro staff and negotiate a firm proposal, which we would have to ground truth and figure out a lot of the details. How do you play cards? How do you track those cards? How are you monitoring and reporting? How are you really flesh out those details of a firm scope? We would have to then take that to the Metro board for approval. And then because that contract value is over $100,000, we would have to come back to council for approval as well. And then subsequent to that, launch a marketing campaign and then get fair media into people's cards. So it wouldn't be an immediate thing that we could launch. Council Member Myers? I just have a couple of questions. So my understanding right now is our transit ridership for downtown employees is around 3%. Correct. And your projection, if under scenario three, is that it would triple. It will provide sufficient budget for it to triple, yes. And with providing the 4,000 employees with the eco pass, do we see a difference in that predictive accomplishment or not? I, through all my research, have not found any other transit systems that have increased their ridership significantly solely based on the provision of free transit passes. The largest areas that you see increases in transit ridership are when you provide more frequent transit service and more make transit easier to use. I, in my professional opinion, do not think that we would get a larger number of people riding transit in scenario four than we would get in scenario three. And under scenario three, if based on your calculations and if we made adjustments, if we, for example, ran out of the budget to purchase the monthly passes, we could put a contingency in number three, say of $50,000 that was specific to just bus passes, monthly bus passes. So if we got a high demand, we could certainly accommodate people by adjusting the budget on scenario three, but maybe not to the extent of scenario four. Correct. If you were to make a motion today that included the provision of an extra $50,000 or just added $50,000 to the transit line item, that would accommodate that. Two more, well, one quick question and then just a comment. What, is there a set of metrics that you sort of have in mind, as you, you know, that are maybe best practice to sort of look at how these different modes are going to be able to be delivered and then the data presented to us, you know, sort of after our first year, I guess. Yeah, I am really looking forward to coming back to you and presenting the effectiveness of this program and the reach that we have. One of the elements that's included in scenarios one, three, and four is a commute management platform and there's also a line item for a small contract with the College Action to sign people up for that commute management platform to go out and do targeted outreach to make people aware of this program that we have. Through that commute management platform, it's essentially, it'd be a partnership with the RTC, it's essentially a one stop shop where you can go on and you can see here's the benefits that the City of Santa Cruz is offering and here's all the things I can try and one place I can figure out how to access them. It's also the place that we would have a contact management tool so we could send out surveys, we could ask people what would you be interested in trying and how can we match you up with those resources and then we can have people track the trips that they actually take to be entered to gamify the system essentially, to be entered for those dinners out incentives or bike lights or helmets or sign up for different programs. So we're gonna be able to monitor it in that way and we're also gonna be able to monitor in anyone that comes in, we're gonna ask for their contact information and tally up how many people are using that. So really looking to monitor this program to be able to make those year two program recommendations to you that are reflective of how effective it was. Yeah, I'll just close with I think the most important thing that we need to keep in mind is that we need to have a robust program to lower our GHGs and I think that based on the survey data and others that you've presented us with a solid recommendation and I think that people want to choose how they want to reduce their greenhouse gases at this point and I appreciate you giving us that full picture. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, Council Member Glover and then any other questions before public comment? Thank you. Thank you for all of this wonderful information and for putting it together and looking at all the different angles. I was curious if you know or if any of my colleagues that sit on the Metro Committee know what is being done currently to improve bus transit in the Santa Cruz and specifically downtown area. Do you happen to know if there's a timeline or any kind of plan associated with improving service? I'll defer to Council Member Mattis. This is a task we got someone from Metro in the audience. Yeah, thanks for having me. And refresh the rolling stock, the buses. The addition of articulated buses has been a big goal in that. Get new buses to replace the older ones, adding technology that provides for knowing when your bus is coming, which is really important for making electronic payment, easier, feasible and so a whole package of electronic upgrades that make operation quicker and more convenient for over the hill and in town. Public safety on the buses and for drivers. I should say that the big cost is in personnel and routes and I think most of you were paying attention to a few years ago when the Metro went through its real economic crisis and had to make some very hard decisions on routes and frequency. And there's an ongoing discussion about how do you balance those two issues? How far out do you go remotely or how do you concentrate on the most well-traveled routes? So I'll just say in reference to earlier discussions about access to transit, that's to some extent fluid. And there are a whole lot of other forces. But I would say there's a range of both operational and capital steps. Every meeting, we deal with those. But I honestly don't see addition of routes and frequency as a silver bullet here. Barrow, you wanna correct me if I have misrepresented that? Okay. Okay, more additional questions? Yeah, thank you for that. And then you had mentioned earlier, Claire, that we don't have a list of all of the businesses and employees in downtown, right? We don't have contact information for every single employee downtown. Employee, right? So is there not a system that we could develop that would either catalog how many employees are at each business and then submit the cards to the business to be distributed by the employer or to ask for the contact information of their employees so that then we can send them bus passes directly? Is there something impeding us from being able to do that? We could, there are a couple of different models. That's not the typical model that's been used. Especially for larger businesses, we have many, many businesses downtown who are five employees or less, but especially for larger businesses, usually an HR person is the point of contact who verifies their employee roles. Typically, eco passes are only available to full-time, non-temporary employees who do not have another transit pass such as from a university. So someone at each of those employers is verifying and saying here are eligible employees. And then typically send those employees in to pick up their pass. There is always the possibility of having a different method of program delivery for then distributing those passes in that way, giving them to each of these employers instead. That would be an alternative. Okay, okay, thank you. And then a question from Vice Mayor Cummings. Any additional questions or we'll open it up to the public after that. You have a question? I think I have a question. If you have a question, you can let me. I had a follow up on the question that Councilman Glover just asked. And did I hear correctly that the bus passes would only be available to full-time employees and not to any part-time employees that work downtown? Typically, and we could always change it. Many other programs that are, that this would be based on eco pass programs are only available to full-time, non-temporary employees. And is this also the same for the other bus pass options? No. But you could always provide different direction on that. Then another question I had, looking at scenario four under the marketing and incentives. Sorry. It says that there'll be an additional $20,000 for transit-specific marketing. And I'm just curious why, like where that comes from, because in scenario three, it's just the $55,000. It doesn't really explain why there would be a $20,000 increase under scenario four. If we're gonna invest over $300,000 in a transit component of this program, my feeling based on conversations with other eco pass programs is that that investment should have our full weight behind it and should have additional specialized marketing behind it. It's a significant increase in cost over what's identified in scenario three. And I think that if we decide to move forward with it, we should have our best foot forward and add to the marketing budget there. And just for clarification, is there any information on what the current use of bike lockers is, because I know that's proposed, is something that we would be? Yeah, and I'm sorry, I can get back to you on that information. We're actually preparing the next update on that report right now and it'll be going to our downtown commission at their next meeting. So I don't have that off the top of my head. I'm sorry. And then I have just one more question. Is the, if the programs are successful, what is the anticipated or estimated reduction in the number of vehicles that would be able to anticipate being downtown? Yeah, do you want to take this one? This is a good complicated question on. So if you just use rough numbers, if we get to that 50% goal and you ignore any increases in car share, because we're figuring all those people now either bike or bus or ride, then the percentage difference equals about 440 people. However, I just want to point out that's not 440 saved parking spaces. It is 440 less trips, but we turn over most of our parking spaces at least twice and some of the more popular lots, you know, up to four times a day. So it takes, you know, four less trips to replace one parking space. So because we have a shared parking model in downtown and we have, we're essentially like a 23 hour downtown, many of our coffee shops open at 4.35 AM and many of our bars close around two. So we have people who are downtown being employed at almost all hours. Those people who are coming downtown, it's not necessarily not a seven day stretch of the week. So some people are Monday through Friday, some are late night, some are early morning. So as Jim said, about 440 cars would not be coming downtown, but that wouldn't be a direct one to one relationship between 440 spaces automatically saved each and every day as part of this program. Complicated answer to a direct question. Okay, Council Member Matthews and then Council Member Crum. Yeah, just to point out that what we're talking about here is a reduction in or more efficient transportation modes for employees. It doesn't count residents or people visiting downtown for any number of reasons. So correct on employees. And then I too was interested in the issue of part-time employees for EcoPass and describe to me how an EcoPass works. Is it for a year or? Yeah, typically EcoPasses are a form of fair media. So right now, if you're familiar, UCSC students have their student ID cards and this identifies them as a student and they get a sticker when they go in. And it says this is now good to use the bus for one year. Well, without getting into a whole lot of detail, I'll just say I would support exploration of some variety of bus pass for part-time that could maybe be a whole lot of our downtown employees, our students that could be for a half year or part-time or something. So I think that's maybe a program detail. It seems to me that the target for users of EcoPass is ambitious and by expanding some possibilities for part-time employees, it could actually have a higher usage. Yeah, the direction could. Understanding the students have the student pass, but you know. Yeah, the direction could be to cover all downtown employees or regardless of how frequently they're employed. Anyway, something to look at, yeah. Any additional questions on this side? And then was there a question here? I'm having a bit of a challenge making the numbers add up for scenarios two and three. So I just want to be clear here. I've added them up and they don't seem to match up with the narrative. So I just, I want to make sure that I'm clear here. So scenario three, we're at 200, it says 291, but when I added up was 290K, including bike transit, commute, carpool, education, then the marketing and incentives and a contingency fund under scenario three. With scenario four, including full funding for the EcoPass program, I'm adding up, the addition is $224,000 increase in the transit column. I've created columns here for full funding of EcoPass and then additional $20,000 for marketing and incentives. So that adds up to 525K, which would actually cover the 9K to 10K contingency plus the 50K contingency recommended by the downtown commission. So I'm not clear how there's no contingency. So it was the 225K that you got to, as well as the $50,000 cost of doing business. That gets you to the two. Okay, thank you. Speed of doing business, I'm sorry. Speed of doing business, yeah, and that's identified and my pages aren't numbered the same as you are, but on the top of the page above the recommendation. While the program budget was established at $300,000 per year, the downtown commission recommended to increase this budget by $50,000 to address any emerging needs. So it's not like in a night-to-night size? No, it's included in one of the paragraphs. Thank you. Yeah. Is there an additional question before we open it up? So there's 4,000 full-time employees downtown. Plus or minus, which changes seasonally. Yeah, and would you, you would probably have any idea, like 20-hour, 30-hour employees? We do have that information that's in the survey attachment and one of the slides did present the percentages of those that were full-time employees. No, but also 20 and 30-hour employees, has it covered that? I believe so, I'd have to look back in, yeah. The last question is jump bike. Was that in scenario four as well? And how does that play itself out? How do I, how would I get a jump bike subscription? Is it free? Do I pay something for it? So right now the program that we're working on with jump and they've never done a program like this before, so we're volunteering to be the guinea pig here because we think this is a worthwhile program that they're building for us. It would be something very similar to the monthly plan that we have available through jump right now, but it would be for downtown employees and you would get the city would pay for 15 minutes of ride time a day at a reduced rate and then anything over that the user would pay. 15 minutes of ride time a day is likely enough for at least your one-way commute, being that the service area of jump right now is within the city of Santa Cruz. So it's about on a e-bike. It's about that three mile radius we have from downtown. All right, at this time we'll open it up to public comment. If you're interested in speaking to this item, this is item number 15. Please stand up to my left and you will have two minutes to address this. Okay, go ahead. Rick Longinati from the campaign for sustainable transportation. Glad to be here with you all this afternoon. It's really a nice event to be voting on transportation demand management. Just want to reiterate that the students at Cabrillo College are really an inspiration to me. So a couple of years ago, they voted to tax themselves $40 a semester. Everybody, every student $40 a semester in return for a bus pass for everybody. And when we were on campus campaigning for that, we were running across students that would never use the bus. That's not how they got to school. But they thought that they were doing the right thing. They voted on it again about a year later and it was an overwhelming majority of students voted for that. So that model of that sort of insurance model where we all contribute and everybody gets covered even though there's a smaller number that would take advantage of it. Actually, in this poll that the staff took, 62% of the people who responded to that poll indicated that free bus passes may be an incentive to switch modes. So there is substantial support. There may be more support for bicycling and carpooling, but there's substantial support for running the bus. And lastly, I just want to say that there's something that's going on here today that we haven't even talked about and that's really the social equity piece. If you wanted to do something to affect a household's transportation and housing costs put together, this would be the thing to do. It would be the downtown commission's option four. And that on this chart, we see housing and transportation costs, cities like Riverside have the highest, at 69% of a household's income. San Francisco, 54%. And we know how astronomical housing is in San Francisco, but the difference is people can get around without owning a car. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. Hi, I'm Brett Garrett. I'm on the downtown commission. Thank you. I'm also a part of a campaign for sustainable transportation. And I'm speaking for myself about why I think it's very important to fund the very full EcoPass program where all downtown employees have access to those bus passes. One reason is on pages 20 and 21 of those SurveyMonkey results that you all got. The question that was asked was what would encourage you, Mr. Employee, or Ms. Employee, to take the bus downtown? Subsidized bus fare or free bus passes? So they're answering would have subsidized, would a free bus pass encourage them to take the bus downtown? 36% said yes, strongly agree. Another 26% said, yeah, I agree. So 62% agreed or strongly agreed that a free bus pass would encourage them to take the bus downtown. I think that's profound. Also, I just wanna point out the downtown commission did unanimously vote to include the full EcoPass and those extra money. It's a wonderful discount. It's a 90% discount on what it would be to provide a pass for all those employees. On the other hand, the staff recommendation is about a 16% discount. It's $54.5 per bus pass that the city would be paying under the staff recommendation. One thing I wanna say about the staff recommendation, I don't agree with the prediction that it will triple the bus ridership. It's 1728 transit passes, that's 144 per month. Which is not much more than the people that are riding the bus anyway. So who's gonna be first in line for those bus passes? Is the people that are already riding the bus? It doesn't meet the TDM goal. I'm all for those people having free bus. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. Are there any other members of the public interested in speaking on this item? Good afternoon, council members. My name is P.S. Cannon from College Action. I'd like to thank the staff and the city council for taking on this item. I think it's important to enact programs that have a direct climate change impact. And this program would do so. 50% of the greenhouse gases mission emitted locally are from the cars that we drive around. And also I wanna state in terms of programs versus projects, the city's taking on a lot of good projects to reduce our drive alone trips. But this is a program, and this is a program that can be enacted quickly and gives people who already have the tools, they live within distances to bike and walk, take the bus or car pole to be able to utilize. And so I think it's important as a pilot program that it goes off as well as possible. But it also I think it'd be viewed in the lens of being iterative that you do it the first year and then you make changes. You don't get stuck in one mode and one direction that you say the overall goal is to increase sustainable transportation. There's a variety of modes that people can take besides driving alone to downtown to work. So whether it be the bus, bike, walk or car pole or a scooter that you look at all those modes. And I think in terms of the original staff amount, a 300,000, if we can put in more towards the 585,000 in EcoPass and look at the totality of all the programs that we're serving or forms of transportation, I think that's a good investment. Putting most of it towards one mode of transportation, sustainable transportation, seems like it maybe is not the best use of resources. But I think whatever program you move forward that making sure that's enough resources and also remembering that it is a program that giving someone a free bus pass and then expecting them somehow to just wake up and say, again, take the bus today is not the course. You need to have follow-up campaign to give them the education support to move that forward. Okay, next speaker please. My name is Susan Cavalieri. I'm also with the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation. I am concerned that only 248 people responded to the survey out of the 4,000 possible downtown employees and I suspect that many of the people commute from places like Watsonville, where the cost of living and owning a house or rents are much less. So if a person can't ride the bike from Watsonville, it becomes necessary to provide them with bus passes. The cost of parking has increased and many of these people may not have the funds to pay for these extra parking fees. The problem is that we can't continue business as usual. The planet will not sustain our children if we don't do something very, very dramatic. So I believe that going with option four is the best way to go. Thank you so much. Thank you. Mayor, council, Jackie Griffith, I'm getting tired. I hope I can think of the things I wanted to say to you. There's some tweaks to this. I would support number four. I think we need to do everything. Excuse me, I'm gonna just pause you. Did we start there? I just want to thank you. Go ahead, I just wanted to make sure that your time was started. So you'll have your full two minutes. Yeah, but am I losing it because you've cut it? No, we... Okay, let's see if I can rattle here. There are some tweaks that I would do to that. I'm not sure about offering somebody a chance to win a cup of coffee or a meal. If that costs us on our staff time, I think that might be a place where you could adapt that. And if you get some freebies offered by a company, great, you can come up with some easy way to pass those out. But it seems to me that if you're trying to trim this in some way, that there might be ways that we could look at, because like Rick was saying, people need to do this, people want to do this, people, I would offer, if I were offering an incentive, I would say anyone who's involved in any of these programs can come to this event and have a big group picture taken and put that in the paper to acknowledge people for they're having taken a step in the right direction towards caring about our climate, rather than giving little things and having to administrate that is all. Oh, the other thing that comes to mind, yeah, I support, it shouldn't just be for people who live in the city, there should be a way for people in unincorporated areas, at areas that cost less to live in, to get here if they work here. I think it should include temporary employees. And I think that bicyclers should have the option of having a freebie a few times, so many times a year because there are times when it's raining or the kids are blah, blah, you know, there's all kinds of reasons why people can't ride their bikes at a particular time. Okay, thank you. Okay, next speaker. Hello, I'm Dana Bagshaw, and I was founding member of Bus by Choice that's been going on in the city for a few years now. Yes, bus is not the most popular way to get to town. And yet, public transit is a way that we can dramatically decrease our greenhouse emissions. So we just need to give it a big push. We've had a lot of people who support biking and it's very visible, and I think it's a good thing. There's a lot of people who can't ride bikes, and there's a lot of people who may want to try public transit. It's just the spontaneity of having that pass in your pocket and being able to just try it for a year and see how it works. I think that marketing is very important. I also would like to volunteer our services. The Bus by Choice, we'd like to go out, collaborate with the city and go out. We're the ones who know how to ride the buses and encourage people to ride the buses. We've gone to businesses with the Keep It Cool campaign. We can do it again. And we just really want to get behind this and I would ask you to rethink meeting people where they are and challenging them. We know now more and more people are getting on board the Green New Deal. Everyone knows we've got to do something and this is a way we can do it. So I strongly encourage you to vote for the one that for number four and the Downtown Commission, the voice of the people. Maybe we can work through the Downtown Association as well to get out to the businesses. So there are possibilities here and I'm very excited about it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Is there any other member in the audience here aside from you who is interested in speaking on this topic? Okay, you'll be our last speaker. Okay, my name's Becky. I'm a manager of a Downtown restaurant, cafe. I just wanted to speak up for my staff. It's 90% part-time. They have bus passes because they're students but we open at 5.30 and we close at midnight. So the buses aren't running at that time. Most of them live without out of your range. So biking is a possibility but I wonder about the safety when the average age is about 20 to 21 years old. So that's something I'd like for you to consider here because right now they're paying $8 which is for a minimum wage worker that's the majority of an hour's worth of work that they are paying to be at work. So I would like for you guys to consider adding something for them if they can get a discount parking, if they live without a range or something along those lines. That's it, otherwise I think it's a great idea. Thank you. Okay, well then we'll close at public comment and return to council for deliberation and action to council member Matthews. Yeah, I wanna first of all thank our staff for several years of good work on this topic. And it's true that not every single downtown employee was surveyed but I think these surveys represented a good effort and give us really good useful information. I very much support the idea of a multimodal approach to this. Just to back up the components of the multimodal I think are based on best practices. We say what are the best practices? Best practices include incentives. Best practices include asking people what will be most appealing to them. And so I am prepared to move option three with the following changes that we under the transit give direction to explore eco passes or similar bus incentives for part time downtown employees and that we take $10,000 from the marketing and incentives and put it into contingency which would then create $20,000 in contingency. My thought there is that could as the popularity of any given option manifests itself that we can then adjust the funding. And if it turns out that the eco passes are wildly popular that's $20,000 to direct as needed. But to me that acknowledges the fact that biking has been our most significant alternative. It's what people wanna do. It incorporates support for transit for carpooling. It plugs into so many different options within the budget that has been established. And I think this is really important too. We just voted on our restructuring of our parking fees and permits. The new structure accommodates a steady cash flow at this point of $300,000 to support TDM. And I think our staff's done a really good job to look at demand options costs and so forth within that budget. I think we can make enormous gains. It's impressive the changes that were made in what, two years in alternative modes downtown. I think everyone who spoke is correct. People know and they wanna do things. And so we're trying to offer the biggest spectrum to improve those numbers dramatically. So I also agree with Piet's comments. It has to be iterative. We expect to be, even throughout the year, analyzing, adapting, coming up with a more effective, more impactful program in the coming year. So with all those statements, I'm going to move option three with those two comments that I made. Can I ask you for clarification on those? The intention behind Snare of Three was that those monthly transit passes that we would purchase would be available to part-time employees, which I think addresses one of the things. And then a clarification of the $10,000 from marketing and incentives. Do you want that move to the transit line item budget? To contingency. Okay, thank you. Which is going to be used for transit. So we have a motion by Council Member Matthews. Yeah, I'll second that. I'm curious if you would entertain a friendly amendment to increase, potentially add an additional 30,000 that could be designated specifically to additional, if we get the demand for additional bus passes that we make sure we have, we have enough in this year's budget that we could accommodate that. 30,000 is not going to break the bank. I'm not willing to double the budget on the TDM. You'll accept the friendly amendment, is that correct? Okay, so, and just to state the obvious, if it doesn't get used, it doesn't get spanned. So the next year, I'll move right now. We have a motion by Council Member Matthews and a second by Council Member Myers. Any further discussion? Council Member Croft? Thank you. Yeah, I just think that scenario four is far superior and it really gives people a chance to who wouldn't normally take the bus to consider taking the bus. I think that's such a step in the right direction. I think that the bolder experience portrays that. And also, they got into those other kinds of buses that would go skip and hop and I see, well, my vision for Metro would be that they do similar things to that. I think the infusion of this capital too into the Metro system is a really positive thing and it helps the whole system and it helps maybe them contemplate adding routes. So I just think that we should go for scenario four. It's really comprehensive and it's doing the best job. Just in seeing it and hearing from the Downtown Commission, unanimously approving it, I was kind of surprised, but they got it, thanks. Council Member Brown? So I just want to say I support the proposal developed by staff for its multimodal approach and significant efforts to collect data to back up the recommendations for our investments. However, I also believe it's time that we take a leap and make a significant investment to encourage public transit and make its use more affordable for Downtown workers. I appreciate the efforts of staff in developing and conducting the survey. I also share concerns raised by Ms. Cavalieri regarding self-selection bias in the survey responses and wonder about many Downtown workers who weren't represented who may actually, if bus passes were made affordable, to them switch their decision-making around commuting from distances further afield than the three-mile radius that is reflected in the survey results. So I understand this is a significant investment in the grand scheme of things. An additional $285,000 seems to me a good investment to encourage public transit. Another speaker, Mr. Alonzo Nadi, suggested that this is really about social equity. And so I would support the recommendation number four, the recommendation made by the Downtown Commission. So I'm not prepared to support the motion at this time. I also want to say that I would like to see future consideration of extension to part-time workers and future consideration for folks who live outside the, so not just for Downtown workers, but folks who live around transit corridors. And I understand that's obviously going to take some more time, but I just want to put it out there that I'm very much interested in hearing more about that from staff in the future. Council Member Glover, and then Vice Mayor Cummings. Yeah, I was struck by the figure that was presented by one of the speakers about the approximately, I think it was Mr. Garrett, Commissioner Garrett, who mentioned the sheer volume of people that said that they would be considered, they would consider using a bus pass if it was made available to them, over 60%. I mean, that's a pretty considerable number of people that would be considered using it. And I do agree with Council Member Brown that it is a significant investment, but I'll call us back to you for those of you that weren't here this morning or this afternoon, and I guess we just spent $925,000 to renovate a restaurant at the DeLavig Golf Course, which does not nearly serve as many people and does nothing to mitigate climate change. So I think that it's within our responsibility to do everything that we can to move forward as expeditiously as possible, so I'll be supporting number four. Okay, Vice Mayor Cummings, and then I have a comment. First of all, I'd just like to thank staff for all the hard work you all have done. I think it's something that we can all celebrate knowing that Santa Cruz is now, in terms of bike riderships, among the employees, the second highest bike ridership in the country, and I really hope that we can continue moving forward to be not only the highest in terms of bike ridership, but also one of the lowest carbon emitting communities in the country as well. So I just want to thank you for the studies and the surveys that you all have done to bring us to where we are now. And moving forward, I just want to also support the recommendations that came from the Downtown Commission. I think that right now we are in an opportunity when we can invest and see how well if we invest heavily into our sustainable modes of transportation, what can come of that. And I think that the one piece of that too would also be, as it was mentioned earlier, that we extend this to part-time employees because not all of them are students and many of them face financial hardships that this would actually help to alleviate a lot of that if they had this as an option. I'm very much hoping that we can track data over time so we can understand whether or not we do have, like what is the increase in ridership, how much our jump bikes are being used, how much biking, because if we can then scale down, I think that it will at least give us an opportunity to see what would happen if we give this our full potential. And so I'm going to be supporting the downtown commission's recommendation today. Okay, I just have a brief, I have a brief question or kind of comment, but in terms of the social equity lens, how, it sounds to me like both, pretty a lot of the scenarios and a lot of the efforts are actually sort of oriented around that. Do you have any response to that? Yeah, functionally they're equivalent. In scenario three or scenario four, if you want to transit pass, I'm going to get you a transit pass. Meet your needs. Okay, thank you. Okay, so I think what we'll do is we'll take the vote on the motion on the floor. And if that fails, then we'll have an additional motion made. So all those in favor? I would like to make one more comment relative to that because I can see where it's going, but the item option four, which I expect to be coming at us next, basically by purchasing an eco pass for every single downtown employee, doubling the amount of funding that's been allocated for this, I think is an irresponsible use of public funds. Option three in my mind has a generous allowance for provision of eco passes to those downtown employees who want them with a contingency that can cover substantially more than anticipated and the ability to change mid-year. But to spend $300,000 on eco passes for everyone, not knowing if they want them or not, I just can't understand that. It does seem to me like an irresponsible approach. I'm just going to put that on the floor. Okay. So we have a vote. Let's go ahead and move the, there's a motion by council member Matthews to move scenario three with a few modifications, which included taking 10,000 out of marketing and incentives and adding that to contingency with a friendly amendment by council member Myers to increase that to 50,000 additional contingency funds for support. So we'll go ahead and vote on that motion and then further discussion. You can go on for the additional motion. I mean, with all due respect, if council member Matthews wants to withdraw her motion after going around for comments, we can, you know, vote it down. We can vote it. Yeah. Okay. All those in favor of the motion on the floors, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. No. Council member Brown, vice mayor Cummings, council member Cron, council member Glover voting no, council member Matthews, council member Myers and myself voting in support. Council member Cron. No, go ahead. Excuse me. Okay. So now we're reopening the discussion and somebody can make a motion moving a different type of direction at this time. I mean, I would move the council, I'd move the downtown commission's recommendation, I think as stated in the staff report. So there's a motion by council member Brown to move the scenario of four, which is the downtown transportation commission's recommendation. Is there a second? Second. Yeah. I'd like to second that just with the response to council member Matthews that it is really interesting just to look at the way that we prioritize our funds. And when we talk about a misuse of public funding, because I'll bring it up again, we heard from the public works director earlier this afternoon that we spent 25% of our overall maintenance budget on one building, which serves a very small population of the community. So this is something that could appeal to and support the entire population of downtown employees. So if I would question the definition of misuse of public funds. Okay. So it's okay. So this is a time for us to continue to move in a direction that's going to lead to policy action. And everybody can have their opinion on how, and you can have your moment as well. But I hope that we can maybe take a moment to remember when we can use our discretion of language as needed. And if it's the interest of moving things along in the direction of the majority of the council, we can go ahead and do that. So at this time, I will acknowledge council member Matthews and then council member Crohn and then hopefully we can move the item as the council desires. Just for the purposes of those who were not present at our earlier discussion, the expenditure for capital improvement at the De La Viega Lodge and shop was a capital improvement, which will result in increased income, which anticipated a payback of those expenditures in five years or less. This is an ongoing operational expense. They're apples and oranges. Okay. So we have a motion by council member. Friendly amendment. One second. Thank you. Okay. We have a motion by council member Brown. We have a second. First scenario number four, we have a second by council member Glover. Council member Crohn, you'd like to be recognized by me. Friendly amendment to actually direct staff to come back with us and figure out how many of 20 and 30 hour a week part-time employees there are. And what does that scenario look like as far as if we were to cover them, how much that would be as well? If I may. Staff, go ahead. The eco pass proposal that's before you would be to cover the universe of 4,000 employees. So we use the high number for the budget calculations. So any of them would already be included in that budget number. It could potentially go lower. Oh, I think you said there's 4,040 hour a week full-time employees. No, there's about 4,000 plus or minus employees in the downtown workforce. A portion of them are part-time. That's really good to hear. Okay. So you remove your friendly amendment because it's encompassing. But think of the greenhouse gases we're saving to and that's an unwritten thing here. So I think that's a part of this whole scenario is that we are actually gonna save money and it's gonna be a great payback. Okay. So we have a motion on the floor. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Those opposed, please say no. No. No. So that passes with Council Member Brown, Vice Mayor Cummings, Council Member Cron, Council Member Glover in support with Council Member Matthews, Council Member Myers and myself voting against it. Okay, the next agenda item. Second, I have a motion that I wanted to make related to transportation. Okay. So number of members of the community have come forward and have expressed that given the changes in transportation demand and different options for transportation in the future, a number of the members of the community came forward and wanted to have a study session on transportation demand management, focusing on parking, pricing, downtown, these alternative forms of transportation, including the EcoPass reform of parking requirements and leveraging affordable housing downtown. It's proposed to be on March 9th at 7 p.m. And the people who would be presenting would be Adam Miller-Ball, Professor from Environmental Studies at UCSC, Pharaoh Emerson, Chief Planner at the Santa Cruz Metro, Patrick Siegman, Transportation and Parking Consultant who worked for 15 years for Nelson Nygaard and Sibley Simon, who is President of the New Way Homes. I'm gonna second that. So you have a motion by Council Member, I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Cummings, second by Council Member Cron, Tony, Mr. Cundadi. Might suggest that that be brought back at your February 26th meeting for action. Okay. So the motion could be to agendize it for action at the February 26th meeting. Would you like to make your motion to agendize it for action? Okay. So the motion now is to agendize that for action on the 26th by Council Member, I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Cummings, seconded by Council Member Cron, Brown, then Matthews. If we're agendizing for action in future meeting, I can make my comments then. That would be the appropriate time to do it because you can't have a discussion about it here. Does the motion to set a TDM study session include the specific presenters called out, or does it ask, is it to direct staff to develop a study session for the education of Council? It's to include the presenters who were announced. No, only those presenters. Vice Mayor Cummings, sorry. If there were other presenters from staff who wanted to be included, I don't see why we couldn't have them in the conversation. I think I'm going to go ahead and stop the conversation. We'll have more conversation. So this is the motion to agendize an item presented by Vice Mayor Cummings to have a study session. I will be voting against this because I feel that there has been already a plan laid out in terms of expectations and various types of study sessions, but if the Council is to go in favor, we can do that. So all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. So that passes with Council Member Brown, Vice Mayor Cummings, Crohn and Glover to agendize this for the 26th for discussion. Council Member Myers, Council Member Mathews and myself voting against it. Okay, so now we'll move on to the tenant protection item which is item number 16 in our agenda and we'll go ahead and start it with a staff presentation. Good afternoon, Mayor and Council Members. I'm the planning director. Let me go ahead and correct the title of it. I apologize for that. That's okay. So the item before us is the proposal for the establishment of a rental housing task force. I should have read my script. I apologize for that. And we'll go ahead and kick off the presentation on that. Thank you for the question. So thank you, Mayor and Council Members, Lee Butler, the planning director. And this topic really doesn't need much of an introduction but I'll give it a quick one for the benefit of the audience. Back in, well, really for quite some time now, tenant protections have been a topic of discussion with the community and the council. It was certainly a point that was raised many times as part of the housing outreach in late 2017. And then almost a year ago to the day, the council passed some interim protections with the rent control and just cause eviction interim ordinances that ultimately expired following the failure of measure M at the November ballot. And then we received some direction from the council to establish a task force that would look into rental housing issues. And we have provided some options for the council to consider and how that task force could be formed. And then we have also provided some information in response to council direction on a number of other topics regarding an application for a task force and community polling and data that can be used to evaluate both the policies that are developed and the repercussions or the benefits that the policies bring to the community. And with that, I will turn it over to Sarah Fleming and Sarah Noisy who prepared the agenda report and you two can take it away. Thank you. I'll also give a little shout out to Amanda Rotella from Economic Development. There's only two seats here, so she's back here. Thank you, Amanda. Okay. Good afternoon, council members. Thank you for having us. I'm gonna give you a little bit of background here. As you can see in as Director Butler indicated, we have come before you on a number of occasions related to this topic, most recently being January 22nd of this year. And at that meeting there was direction for staff to return at this meeting with a proposal for a task force establishment and with information on several other items as Director Butler indicated. So I'm gonna walk you through three options that staff has put together under council direction for your consideration. So option one, this is the option that staff is recommending in your staff report. And this would be to secure professional services in a task force planning stage. And so that would be securing professional services now. What our recommendation is is that you would direct staff to contract with the Sacramento State Consensus and Collaboration Program. That program is a neutral nonprofit unit of California State University that has a mission to build the capacity of public agencies, stakeholder groups and the public to use collaborative strategies to improve policy outcomes. The CCP approach requires stakeholder engagement that supports constructive and open dialogue, mediating disagreements and encouraging stakeholders to develop durable recommendations and solutions through a variety of collaborative methods. Managing Senior Mediator Dave Seppos has over 34 years of collaboration and mediation experience and a comprehensive background in developing consensus based stakeholder driven processes. And we do have Mr. Seppos here today. So during your deliberation process he will be here to answer any questions you might have about his proposal as well as any questions you might have about the collaboration and consensus building process in general. So some of the pros of bringing this organization on at this time is they're experienced, well-respected collaboration experts. We heard from council that you really were looking for a data-driven approach and we feel strongly as staff that bringing in someone from the academic bent would really be able to provide that potentially in a way that a maybe for-profit private firm might not be able to do. They're a neutral third party. So that objectivity would be I think very welcome and needed given the current state of the conversations and debate. And they would be able to provide objective analysis and recommendations on how to form our task force and make sure that we're ensuring all voices are at the table and that we're considering everything moving forward. The cons of taking this particular approach is that by bringing someone on right away there may be a situation where when we put out a RFP or decide to go through the larger task force process we might end up selecting another firm. So it may not, it may be CCP. It may be a different firm depending on what council's preference is. So that could create just a little bit of a break there. The likelihood of the success of this particular scenario is very high. So option two is to go ahead and pause everything and have staff put together an issue an RFP now for the full process. So what this would mean is that one consultant firm would work on this from initiation to completion. Council could do it a number of ways. It could be a RFP, it could be a sole source. It really depends on how you want to move forward with that. The cons of this is that the staff we would be responsible for developing the full scope for the task force and we wouldn't have that professional guidance and not being mediation and conflict experts. There is a chance that there may be some missteps in developing the scope and putting together the request for those proposals. The additional con here is that the start could be delayed by eight to 10 weeks for staff to put together the proposal, get it out on the market, get all the proposals back or put out the request proposals, get the proposals back, rank them, interview them and then come back to council with a contract. So that takes some time. And it is the most costly when you add the cost, the estimated cost of what the work might be for a consultant as well as staff time, this would be the most costly option. That said, the likelihood, did I spell that wrong? That's a misspelling. Likelihood of success is moderate to high on this one. So option three would be a staff manage initiation and then a facilitated task force. So what this would look like is council would direct staff to proceed with the task force development and scoping and then issue an RFP for facilitation services only. How this differs from the last process is that the last process we would bring on a firm who would do what we're recommending CCP does right now, this kind of situation assessment analysis, interviewing, coming up with a work plan for the task force. Thank you. This would, staff would create that work plan and then hire a consultant who then would come on and simply facilitate. This is pro's immediate start and it does have the lowest financial cost. The cons again are the expertise concerns of staff. There I think are some concerns that the neutral that the staff in city does have might not be trusted by all the stakeholders and I think that's an important thing to note. And then it has the highest opportunity cost because there is such a, and what I mean by that is there is such an intensive role of staff that when we look at the resources that we have, there could be some concerns about what, depending on what department that falls in, what gets dropped or gets delayed in order for the staff to be able to take that on. Whereas if we had a consultant on board to kind of manage that process more, that would free up staff to work on some other things. And then the likelihood of success for this one is low to moderate. So now I'll turn it over to Sarah Noisy and she's going to give some information on some of the additional direction that we see, excuse me, received from council recently and the information request, we're receiving some feedback on that for you guys. Good afternoon. So in this section, we're primarily responding to the direction that we received at the meeting on January 22nd. So motion made by Vice Mayor Cummings and included a whole sort of list of data requests and other things of that nature for staff to turn with. So here we're quoting the direction that we received. This is about bringing back a proposal for an application for membership on this task force, sort of identifying the charge of the task force and then coming up with a list of proposed members that would be on the task force. And we did include a draft application. I think the staff report erroneously referred to that as being the WASAC application. It was based on the WASAC application but we did do some editing to that and tailor it to the housing task force, I'm sorry, rental housing task force. And again, this is a draft. It is by no means final and, you know, any whatever that application may look like at some point in the future will be determined by council or through guidance perhaps from a professional. In this case, we're recommending that this document be further developed with the help of CCP in terms of developing both the application and then the membership and charge of the committee. So, but that said, based on prior council direction, we did understand that where we are now at least, the sort of draft charge to this housing, rental housing task force committee is stated here, the rental housing task force committee will use a data driven approach to policy development with the aim of developing policy proposals that address the needs of both tenants and property owners that could get more specific over time that could be broadened over time. So the next piece here is about the membership and this is based on primarily feedback that we heard on January 8th. There was a lot of discussion from various council members about potential members that could be included in the task force. We might want representatives of all of these various organizations, perhaps some also at large representatives. And this totals, this is already at 10. If there is one person representing each of these categories that are listed here, this is a 10 member task force and we did also hear from council that you wanted to keep the task force relatively small in the neighborhood of nine to 14 potential members. So yet again, we're gonna recommend that CCP guide you through this process and make sure that the right stakeholders are there at the table and part of the conversation from the very beginning. The second item was about doing a community survey or poll with the stated goal here was providing information about the issues with rental housing problems and the possible responses. So there are two different kinds of surveys that we can use that we just had a discussion earlier and there was discussion on the 8th about some of the drawbacks or challenges with using sort of a survey monkey model and just doing an open survey. There are pros and cons to that, which the pros are it's low cost, it's quick to execute. We could get it out there right away. It's very useful for identifying if there is an area of broad community consensus or if we are looking to collect anecdotal data stories that people have about their rental housing experience or for crowd sourcing, any kind of ideas that people may have about policy proposals that can be a very useful tool. And then obviously the cons are things that your council has brought up before there's potential for double voting, they're not statistically relevant. And so depending on the goal, the exact goal for that survey or poll, it may be more appropriate to use a more formal polling process, which would be developed by a formal polling firm and would create statistically accurate data and ensure that it was fairly executed and we got a representative cross section of the community. The cons there are, it takes some lead time and there's a cost associated with that with securing a firm and then designing the survey that would be used. So again, I'll just go back really briefly. The goal, the outcome that you're after with that survey or poll is really gonna dictate what's the more appropriate tool and we're gonna recommend again that CCP guide the council through that process, determining when that's the right tool to use and what the content might be. So item three, identifying some data sources about rent increases and evictions occurring in the city. So the city doesn't currently collect any information about rental rates or evictions. We do have a database of rental properties through our rental inspection program and there is an opportunity there to start to begin collecting that data. We looked around for some models of other places that might be collecting data similar to this and the city of San Jose collects information with as each rental unit is registered with the city and we could model a program after that where we start with our annual inspection we basically as it is now for the years where property owners are self certifying their unit they we send them a form they send it back saying that yes we have smoke detectors and my unit is safe and nothing has changed since you were out here last year. We could also add on to that a few line items that would say what's the rental rate that you're currently charging and have you had any evictions in the past year? That would be self reported data. So that would be subject to current data could potentially be verified with the tenant in the unit but any data that we would try to solicit from those property owners going back in time we would have to basically rely on their self reporting which would be some data but may not be perfect data going back in time. Regarding evictions, one of the challenges with evictions is that there are a lot of times when tenants move out of a unit at the request of a property owner that aren't really a formal eviction that don't involve written notice that don't involve involving the courts that I think that's probably most of the times that tenants move out of units. That said the data sources that we could access are available through process servers through the county courts and sheriffs and that would give us a sense of is there a trend that's happening? Is there an increase or a decrease or a change over time? And that is data that where we could go back in time and get data that's as those filings have happened in years past and we could see if there's been a change recently. And then so finally because so many of these renter move outs happen without any real paper trail this may be a place where that community survey or poll would be a useful tool. We could survey renters and talk to them about in the last two years have you experienced any of the following and collect the data in that manner. And again I'd recommend for that that we allow CCP to guide us through that process because that seems like a poll where we really wanna be sure we're getting statistically relevant data and it probably should be executed by a formal polling firm. So lastly market implications in terms of the effect that this conversation around housing and around just cause eviction and measure M has had potentially on the sale of existing rental properties and then therefore removing them from the market there is that data is also a little bit hard to track because the tendency of a housing unit is not something that we keep track of it's not typically something the city regulates so it's not something we have in our records. That said we do as I mentioned have the rental inspection program where we provide the service to landlords to ensure that their units are safe and the rent that they're collecting is legitimate. We can cross-reference that database with information in the assessors the county assessor's property database to look at transfers and there are some challenges with that that the county assessor is typically six to nine months behind in terms of recording all of the property transfers. So we could probably process data from 2016 and 2017 and in 2018 we probably wouldn't be able to get the whole year yet. So and that is a pretty significant outlay of staff time in doing that level of analysis. So that is one option of how we could figure that out. We also of course could contact local real estate firms or contact some recent sellers of properties multi-family properties or properties that we know have been in our rental inspection program and discuss with them what their reasons were for transferring the property. So item four was about developing outreach flyers. Those were attached to your council item, your agenda item today and we have them here. So we priced out two different options with local print and mailing firms, mailing shops in town and we have somewhere between 40 and 45,000 addresses that we would be mailing to and we priced out two options. One is for a postcard which is shown on the bottom so that would be a two-sided postcard and would essentially let folks know that the task forces, this process is happening and direct them to a website which we would develop. And the other option is a larger format flyer that could be printed on both sides and then folded in an envelope. So there are the different costs for those that they're not radically different. Would it, you know, there would allow to be there to be a little bit more information that's printed and included in the envelope that goes directly out to all residents and property owners in the city. If we are going to choose to do a any kind of community polling activity, this would also be a tool to announce that. And again, we are gonna recommend that your council allow CCP to help you decide the timing, utility and function of any kind of flyer or mailer that we send out. So with that, our recommendation, if it wasn't clear by now, is that your council propose a motion directing the city manager or designee to negotiate and enter into a sole source contract with consensus and collaboration program at Sacramento State University for background and scoping services supporting the establishment of the rental housing task force. We are available for questions. Okay, so at this time it would be appropriate for the council to ask any clarifying questions of staff and then we'll open up to public comment and then return for action and deliberation. Clarifying questions? Councilor Glover? Thank you. Thank you for that wonderful presentation and for coming back with what looks like a lot of what we had asked for in the beginning, which is fantastic. I was curious, you'd mentioned the difficulty of obtaining requests or records I should say from other sources outside of the processing judicial system that went to court. Is there, am I correct in saying that? Sure, yeah. Okay, is there a way that we could request records from all of the registered rental units and landlords in order to make it so that they're in compliance with the city, I mean, you know, be like, hey, is there something that we would have to pass as policy that says, hey all rental units should submit the last two to five years of their rental agreements so that we can track what they've been doing with their rentals or is that feasible? I would actually defer to the city attorney on the legality of that. Any thoughts? Our recollection from reviewing other city's rent control ordinances is that some require that landlords provide notice to the city of an eviction as part of the rent control program. So I talked to the vice mayor about this before the meeting and what I said was that I would need to do a little bit of further research in order to flush that out. But I think there may be a precedent for that type of thing out there. I just have not done that analysis or research to determine if that's legally feasible. I just feel like that would be. I have the sense that it probably, that there probably would be some mechanism by which we could require that information to be provided, but I'm not prepared to respond. Yeah. Absolutely. It's one of the logistics around. And then one more is the sale of the rental units which you'd mentioned in the presentation is trying to track census measure M and impact and all that. During the campaigning process of measure M and the opponents of it, there was literature being sent out by realtors urging people to sell their properties to avoid any overwhelming regulations that they may face should measure M pass. I feel like it would be important to include the data set of homes sold from the pressure and or fear put in them by a realtor company of the ramifications of measure M and not just have those under the category of sold with reaction to measure M because it's a clear differential in my opinion there. I'm now council member Matthews and then council member Brown. Could you quickly go over the four items that you're recommending we refer to CCP? Absolutely. So let's start with item one and go in order. So the first is about developing the application, the specific charge and the membership of the task force. This would be part of CCP's effort to essentially scope the process and guide us through that. So the second item is about the utility and timing and content of any community polling or surveying activity we would do. The third item is about collecting data, exactly what type of data are we gonna need to have a data driven process? And then item four is about the flyer. What's the content? What's the timing? What's the purpose of that? Okay, thanks. I'm very supportive of the idea to contract with a firm that has experienced a third party. I think in all of this, the first thing is to be somewhat clear and we'll need their help on this with defining the charge. In some places, I looked at their description of services. Generally it refers to a rental housing task force in a couple places. It refers to tenants rights task force. So right off the bat. And when we're talking about collection of data and so forth, does it expand to impacts on or trends in rental housing supply? So it raises a lot of question to me is what are we asking them to do? And to my mind, their work on charge precedes the application. I had quite a bit of comments on the application form. I think it's very directed in the message that it sends and leaves out some critical possible participants that could be useful. Similarly with the research, there's an infinite number, amount of research we could gather. I think we rely on them to say what's gonna be significant and doable within a certain budget. The flyers are really the last step, it seems to me. So it's really not worth commenting much on those. That'll come out of their recommendations. I endorse the recommendation and their approach. The main thing in my mind is defining what's the scope. So we have additional questions and then we'll open it up for the community and then we'll come back for statements and deliberations. So Council Member Brown. Thank you Mayor Watkins, I'd like to return. First of all, my understanding is that this is an opportunity to ask questions, clarifying questions rather than weighing in on the proposal itself right now before we hear from the public. So I'd like to go to public comment, but I just want to return to Council Member Glover's question that the city attorney commented on and suggests that I am aware of a number of jurisdictions that have such provisions whether in rent control ordinance or as a separate ordinance on the books within the jurisdiction for requiring notification from landlords regarding evictions notices to vacate and rent increases. So I think that there is some research that could be done to kind of look at what is out there just for your information. And I think, so that was the main comment I had, but my question was specifically if you could clarify based upon any other research about the potential to do that retroactively, I mean, I would guess probably not, but maybe moving forward. So if you, just to put that in the mix for questions to be answered at a future date, that would be something I'd be interested in hearing about. So back to that. That part of Council Member Glover's comment and that would be something that I would look into and I have that same concern, but in my recollection is the same as yours with regard to other jurisdictions. I just didn't want to speak out of turn, particularly where we attempted last fall to modify some notice requirements with respect to evictions and we got stymied in that effort. So, but I'm happy to look into it. Thank you. Appreciate that. Yeah, I'm clarifying questions from Vice Mayor Cummings and then, no, first, I'm sorry, Vice Mayor Cummings first and then Council Member Glover. Oh, Chris was first. Okay, good. Chris, Council Member Grun, clarifying questions.  Like, what's the universe? So what we priced out are all residents and property owners in Santa Cruz and that number lands somewhere between 40 and 45,000. And that was based on the motion made by Vice Mayor Cummings. And I don't wanna, maybe you said it, but the elephant in the room is like 400 to 450,000. Is that what we're looking at, the final price tag of this, if we went all the way? I think that's probably fair. Our estimates in the staff report are just that estimates, but the top level is at about 400,000. And is there a timeline? So each scenario has its own timeline that we have again suggested. These things can be flexible, they can change. I would estimate if you went for the full process, it would be somewhere between 12 months to potentially upwards of, and this is securing consultants going through the process, developing recommendations, bringing them back for action, acting on them, having them memorialized. I'd say for a thorough process that goes through all of the, and again, Dave is here, he can speak to this if you have questions of him, but I'd say reasonably 12 to potentially 16 months. Who's Dave? I'm sorry, Mr. Cipos is here from the Center for Collaboration, from Sacramento State. So he is here to answer questions if you have anything. Thank you. Vice Mayor Cummings? I actually have questions for David if it's okay. Yeah, Dave, would you like to join us? Thank you. Afternoon. Afternoon. One of the questions I had is, there's been a lot of concern in the community around timeline for the process, and I was just curious if you could speak to, walk the community through some of the initial stages of the background analysis report that you'd be interested in conducting, and then how that would lead to the formation of the task force, and then a timeline roughly of how long this might take. Sure. The assessment process, which is what the initial kind of conceptual proposal we put together can be done relatively quickly within six to eight weeks or so, but that will frankly depend on a couple of administrative variables and availability variables of the participants would ultimately be included in that assessment. Thereafter, and I think to the point that staff had already made and has really evidenced in the report, and I don't think I have to sort of preach to the choir, so to speak, and this is clearly a very emotional values laden topic in this community, and in all communities throughout the state of California that are dealing similarly with it. While by no means dogmatic, we have a general approach that we do in our efforts, which, and this is all very directly informed from the assessment process, and the first stage is what we call education. It's one of the things to the data point that the council member Matthews was speaking of, and that's one of the things we would assess. We would look to work with the people we interviewed to start pulse checking, if you will, where the various data sources are. I frankly would applaud for that. It's worth to use council and to staff that you really wove data driven into this because on issues that are highly emotional and highly values laden, data can be a very, very valuable tool to normalize, if you will, where folks are at. And so in that regard, getting a sense in pulse checking through the assessment process of finding out what kind of information is really necessary and the education stage, the early stages, are both bringing external education or information in, if you will, to try to help inform, however conflicting various pieces of information might be, but the education process is also the stakeholders themselves, the journey that they're taking, walking through each other's shoes, if you will, and getting to a point where various stakeholders involved in the task force process or any kind of stakeholder process, they aren't necessarily required, certainly the outset to agree, but we want early on to start getting them to understand the motivators and the needs that each other has. Oftentimes in the process we do that, what people start to see is when we can strip away some of the ideology, there can be an effort of less demonizing, more sharing, more understanding of we're actually looking for very similar things, we just maybe operationalizing it in different ways. Moving from education, then you start going into negotiation, and I use the term negotiation sort of loosely, but we in general start trying to work people through negotiating ideas in principle and then moving folks to negotiating ideas in detail. That's a very kind of coming, you start at a macro stage and then you sort of move in greater detail. I'm just giving you a sense of sort of process here in terms of that process, I think that staff is accurate. This is not a fast process to be very blunt. I can't give you an exact amount, but I think that the target that they set of 12 to 16 months I think is reasonable based upon a number of other cases that I've done in local jurisdictions and elsewhere of a similar size and with a similar level of conflict and volatility. So my underlying message is it's not a fast process and I wish I could tell you otherwise, but I don't, my professional opinion is it's not. Thank you for being here and thank you for answering our questions. Do you have any additional questions before we open it up for public comment? I just, out of curiosity, what's the plan in terms of identifying the stakeholders within this process? Well, I think we would, well, to be interviewed or to ultimately become- To be interviewed, potentially. Frankly, I would look to work with staff and very likely recommendations from council of a cross section of opinion leaders, if you will. I mean, there's a term that I oftentimes use which is an assessment needs to be representative but not exhaustive. You can't have a budget enough to do that. I think that's in some ways where the idea of a poll or a survey comes in, but as is evidenced by the staff report, there are absolutely pros and cons and I agree with what they listed. So you can use various forms to sort of pulse check but ultimately you want a reasonable representative cross section of some opinion leaders, people who've got a, and when I say opinion leaders, I mean folks who have been actively engaged, people who are, to be honest, very well versed in the topic areas and people who have networks. You don't, you want to avoid in a process like this having a set of stakeholders sitting at a table who are principally, even if accidentally, speaking for themselves. You want to capitalize on those networks and frankly oftentimes within a charter of a group mandated that they have a responsibility by virtue of sitting on a task force to be showing steps that they are taking to communicate with their broader issue constituencies and bring that back because that can become a danger because you can have people sitting at a table essentially acting as if they have a proxy and that can come back to bite you. And so you want to try to capitalize on, like I said, you're mandating that networking. Does that answer your question? Council Member Brown and then Council Member Glover. Clarifying question. I just want to say that I thank you for your willingness to step forward with this proposal and to bring us something with a very quick turn around and so I really appreciate that you've put some considerable thought into something that is obviously challenging, highly contentious and potentially leading you down the road of engaging in that public debate. So just a quick question. If you could talk a little bit about your approach to, one of the things I think we've made a commitment to is ensuring that stakeholders who do come forward and represent them on the task force that there be an expression of willingness to not really have any lines in the sand with respect to developing proposals, bringing items for discussion and I know that that's something that has challenged us as we've moved through the process of discussing in particular rent control and just cause eviction. So I'm just wondering if you could talk for a moment about your approach to ensuring that we get a stakeholder pool that where we have people who are really committed to engaging in the process and not just being roadblocks. I know that's kind of difficult to say, to have any real confidence that we can do that but just how you would approach that. Sure, you know, I've been doing this a very long time and I earnestly and sincerely, both in sort of general life and professional, I very much like to believe and do believe that people are benign individuals is what I call it, people come with the best of intentions. There are ways in which they act that we observe and that we may, you know, I may observe somebody's behavior and question it but it doesn't mean that that person's motives are nefarious or in any way, shape or form. We are the creatures of that which we believe. To your point, yes, we can and should assess whether people can come in with an open mind. Most people that I know and most people that I've dealt with would, in that question, would more than likely say, yes, of course I can. But we all come with our predisposed considerations. You can codify those kinds of things and depending on how you define membership, I mean, and I'm not advocating, I want to be very clear about this. I'm not advocating, but I certainly have had groups where through a larger convening entity such as a body of elected officials, you create the terms for membership and some of those terms of membership is how folks will function and I wish I had a better term, but behave, if you will. I wouldn't necessarily recommend that because again, I think that automatically sits a little like a prenup agreement. You're already sort of presuming that there might be some intent other than that. I think at the end of the day, what we want to look for is people who are willing to come to the table and just earnestly look you in the eye and say, yeah, this is a challenging question and it's a challenging thing and I want to try to be open-minded and then the process, however cliche this may sound, the process of a stakeholder engagement, a multi-party method that we use, if you think about standard negotiating and a sort of a binary negotiation, you go to buy a car or something, there's a very binary. The one person wants to sell it for as much, one person wants to buy it for as little as much. The process of getting into a structured, focused, facilitated conversation is a matter of a process of discovery and people can begin to see options that they did not previously think were possible or they didn't even conceptualize and however cliche this sounds, you make the pie bigger. So it isn't about who gets to divvy up the finite space of the pie, it's can you get people into a dialogue and they can start seeing opportunities that previously didn't exist. Again, I admit that's cliche and yet I've been doing this a long time and that's exactly what happens. So you ask people a good question, you ask them to commit and then you let the process play itself out and hopefully that process itself delivers those kinds of options. Thank you. Council Member Crone, I'm sorry, Council Member Glover and then Matthews and then hopefully we can get to public comment. Is there any brief questions? Hello and thank you, good evening. Really appreciate you. Are you from Sacramento? I live in Davis. Well, thank you for coming now from Davis to be here with us tonight. I was just curious. That's a color you're sure, by the way, good selection. Thank you, purple power. I was kind of taken back by the 12 to 16 month timeline. I understand it's a slow process and I work at the Resource Center for Nonviolence so I understand the process of communication and working through conflict and in your experience, because you said that this is a conversation happening in different places around California and I take it this isn't your first rodeo when it comes to dealing with this kind of conflict. What have other municipalities or jurisdictions done to protect the vulnerable people in the community during that dialogue process? Because one of the things that I've been most concerned about is that throughout the process of this task force being structured and then going through the process, that there will be unjust action taking place. In the meantime, there's been a concern from the community that establishing any kind of temporary protections would invalidate the process of the task force because of the seemingly rubber stamping of policy by the city council that then would be pushed into the conversation of the task force. So in your experience, have other jurisdictions done things in the interim while this 12 to 16 month process is underway to keep low and middle income people in their homes? I'm gonna answer that in a couple of ways. I wish that I could give you an encyclopedic response of what other communities are doing and I don't think I really can. I mean, I have worked on this topic and related topics about land use and planning in other places. Conceptually, what you're describing is absolutely a concern and a risk on both sides that you just sort of articulated. Yes, if you start trying to do things early on as a means of protecting whomever you seek to protect, the overarching fear is that that immediate temporary action becomes a proxy or is presumed to be a proxy and I think that there's frankly a danger there. And the flip side to that is also true that if you do not do something, then you have an unprotected class of individuals and so there's no easy answer. So a process step, again, I'm not going to say I recommend this in this case because I haven't done an assessment but a process step that I commonly do and in fact, as a city, you are involved currently with another project I am working in this area which is the Santa Margarita Groundwater Basin and Santa Margarita Agency and your Director Menard is very actively involved. Who by the way, Director Menard is an extraordinary resource on this topic. She's, I've worked with her in the past and she knows this topic about collaborative multi-party negotiating. One of the things that we do oftentimes and one of the things that we did early on is that rather than setting framings of what can or can't happen, oftentimes advocate early in a process to develop what I call and it can go by various names of guiding principles. What are the principles that right out of the box we can agree and we can get a group degree and I can be a living document that starts articulating the shared interest and the shared values. That's not necessarily to be clear. It undo itself protecting a class of citizens but it is setting forth a messaging that what this group is about and what the people that have been asked to sit at this about are universally committed to a set of principles and they're gonna be guided by those principles. They're gonna quite literally use it as a totem and refer back to it to help guide when increasingly challenging decisions start happening. It is symbolic by no definition or by no argument to that. However, and almost every case that I've done or some that or some to that effect, I see members if you will of a group like that regularly then referring back to what we said we were committed to do this and we said we were committed to sort of abide by this kind of we hold this truth to be self-evident kind of statement and that's a very valuable and powerful thing that can be even if it begins symbolically relatively through the process, it becomes quite applied. So can it achieve all the things that it sounds to me like you're trying to achieve? Probably not. Can it set a framework in going forward and set a different tone? I firmly believe it can. Thank you. Thanks Council Member Matthews, yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to understand the process. So as I'm reading this, I'm under the impression that you're talking about two groups of discussion participants. One is early on some, you're calling them influencers or thought leaders or experienced people that you will interview individually or some other member of your team will to get a feeling for the topic. And out of that, I'm trying to abbreviate, out of that will come your recommendations for how to define the charge and how to structure solicitation of members and the active public task force of it, like two different groups of people. There may be some overlap, there may not. There oftentimes is overlap. I'm not really even sure, to be honest, I'm not really sure I would define the first set of people. I'm using semantics here myself, but as a group, it's just a set of people that you go to. Individuals, yeah. Individuals. There is oftentimes overlap. I think that to the point that, frankly, you earlier made in your comments a few minutes ago about, these are my words, not yours, putting the car before the horse, I would tend to agree. Putting an application out on the streets right now, I think it's premature. It's all like buying construction materials for a building you haven't designed yet. And because you have a whole set of processes to get put in place and decide on, such as how would a group, how would this actual task force be seated? How would the decisions ultimately be made? How many who selects what cross-section, et cetera, et cetera? Are they appointed, are they not? For background purposes, for you, what existing work are we looking at? What data do we wanna collect, all of this? That would come out of a defined group, again, for the mayors, I guess, and staff's suggestion on how to give you suggested names of people that you might want to include in the initial interviews. And then you do that, and out of those interviews would come the plan. Right, and to be honest, in my proposal, that number of participants was fairly modest. I'm not saying that's inappropriately, so it just was. As you may have noticed, I recommended that I interview or one of my staff interview, all of you as council members, because one of the most single detrimental things that can occur is have a group formed and then begin its process and accidentally go a field from where the elected body wishes for things to go. That is a loss of faith and trust in a lot of different forms. So you would be part of that. I just wanted to get clear on that. Yes. Well, thank you so much for being here. Clearly, you're an absolute expert in the work that you're doing and describing, so we appreciate you taking the time to be here. I think at this point, we'll go ahead and open it up to public comment and then we'll return back to council for action and deliberation. Thank you very much. I just wanna start with acknowledging, and I'm sorry, Mr. Longianotti, we have a couple of groups who will be speaking to us first who've requested additional time in advance, and then that is Lynn Renshaw from Santa Cruz Together and Cynthia Berger from Santa Cruz Tennis Association, and you each have four minutes to address the council. Who do you wanna do oral communication? And you'll be given four minutes. Okay. Lynn Renshaw, SantaCruiseTogether.com. Santa Cruz Together is a coalition of thousands of local business owners, community leaders, homeowners, renters, and housing providers. Personally, I've lived in Santa Cruz for over 30 years. My career is software marketing, and I'm a volunteer. The rental housing task force requires a complete reset from measure M. The task force scope should be a range of rental housing solutions. Santa Cruz Together agrees there's a severe, affordable housing shortage and is willing to participate in an authentic data-driven analysis of options and their impacts on the rental housing supply and rents. A complete analysis would cover immediate impacts, potential repercussions, future rental supply, and rents a decade later and beyond. Measure M alternatives could include means-tested housing subsidies, affordable by design housing, a workforce housing initiative, and more. We need robust dialogue, facts, and evidence in a proper amount of time. Task force materials suggest starting with device of measure M. The outside firm, CCP, outlines its background research as a study of measure M. Why not instead study best practices from other cities addressing the West Coast affordable housing crisis? Task force applicants are asked how measure M should be changed? Why not ask applicants about their housing expertise? Just cause evictions are an identified objective. By implying JCE is the outcome, this process is already further eroding public confidence in the council. JCE is one of the worst policies in decades as evidenced by broad voter opposition. The political will of the community will not support JCE. Voters expect normal contract law to continue where end dates of mutually agreed upon leases can be enforced. JCE is a bridge too far. It's toxic, divisive, and perceived as forced on the community by a small group of activists. Your job is to hear the community. The council received over 1500 letters opposing JCE with less than 35 letters in support. 19,000 voters said no to JCE, but a margin of nearly two to one. At some point, defying the majority will catch up with you. 60% of homeowners are expecting the freedom to live their lives with flexibility. The city should not pass laws that restrict what they can and cannot do with their houses. We need a complete reset and rental policy study, particularly now that Proposition 10 failed, and Measure M and JCE are a spectacularly bad fit where 75% of renters rely on single family homes that can be easily repurposed as owner occupied property. It's a spectacularly bad fit for all future renters since rents are unlimited on all future rentals. And it's a spectacularly bad fit for homeowners that want to live their lives without city interference. The affordable housing shortage is self-evident. The majority of our community understood that Measure M will make the affordable housing shortage worse. The task force should reset and automatically look, authentically look for solutions that work now and in the future, sanacruzdegather.com. Thank you. All right. And now we will hear from our representative of the Santa Cruz Tennis Association, and you will also have four minutes. Hi everyone, thank you for this opportunity. I'm Cynthia Berger with Santa Cruz Tennis Association. I've run the county's only bilingual Tennis Rights Hotline for the last five years, and I have a list of over a thousand people who have called me ready for any kind of survey you'd like to possibly do personally with them. I'm concerned that renters, tenants be heard from in this issue, and it's not only about building housing. There's other issues besides building housing that need to be addressed and that are more immediate and that involved human lives today. As far as the task force, I'd like to say I've always had a great landlord and paid really reasonable rent. Just want to let folks know that. I think that I had some questions. I agreed with Cynthia Matthews about the name. It was confusing. My preference is that we discuss tenant protections because there aren't any. Housing is another issue for other people, and it's a whole completely different issue than tenant protections, which we don't have any on the books here. We have a lot of housing regulations, though. I think that all the flyers and the applications were also premature. I have some questions about the appointment process for the task force. The Brown Act apply to members of appointed bodies, and if so, how does it affect communications among members when they're meeting outside the committee activities? And that's the main question I have about that. I just wasn't clear on that. I just want to know that the city of Santa Barbara did this exact same kind of thing in about 2017, the same kind of task force, and it didn't have the greatest outcome. You can read all about it. I'd like to also point out that tenant protections are controversial even to academics. As many local academics took public positions during the recent rent control campaign, and we'd just like some assurance that Mr. Seppo and the facilitation team will examine their opinions and assumptions and biases before beginning any such job as this. I don't believe that they have conducted a similar study, facilitated a similar exact kind of study about tenant protection. So this is a facilitation where you may be dealing with one side that has extreme power and another side that has this extreme lack of power. That might be a little different from other facilitation, I don't know, but we just want like to make sure that you examine any possible unconscious biases before beginning this job. The only folks I know who don't have strong feelings about rent control are my unhoused friends, pretty much. Renters, in order to walk in people's shoes, I think renters need to be able to examine the books of several landlords to understand their claims, and they need to be able to look at the financials. So that would be something I think that a committee like this could be useful for walking folks through as the education. The city does need data and like many California cities dealing with their rental emergencies, they realize there are no collection mechanisms established to get that data. So I have a list that I will share from the city of Long Beach, they had an extensive study session on this also in 2017, and I will forward you the list and then have some sort of innovative things and you can. Thank you, and we'll look that for your email. Okay, so those are the two organizations that reached out in advance for additional time. So now we'll open up to public comment and members of the public can address the council for two minutes. I oppose all of the recommendations for a task force and I would think that the staff should go back to the drawing board and come up with a different kind of task force, one that concentrates mostly on how to build low cost to construct housing, because that is the only kind of housing that will be affordable. If you build a $400,000 ADU behind a million dollar house, it won't be affordable and it doesn't matter how many of them you build. But I actually wanted to read this, so I'm just gonna go ahead with that. Measure M is the vampire zombie that is never allowed to die. A task force that has any objectives of any part of Measure M is once again violating the will of the people. I voted against every word of Measure M and it's time to put its stake into every part of Measure M and bury it. When two parties have the same goal, they can talk and compromise if they have differences in how to reach the goal, but that's not what we have here. That's why some of this mediation idea is not that great. We have two parties with different goals and very different problems. There cannot be any single resolution to that condition. I won't get into the goals, how they're different of landlords and tenants, but I will talk about problems. The problems landlords face is an oppressive government who seeks to grant special interest favors to tenants at their and housing industries considerable peril and expense. Their earned property rights are in jeopardy by a city council that seems not to understand inflation is beyond their control. That involuntary regulation of retail prices and contracts create housing supply chain havoc besides just being morally wrong. The damage will play out over a very long time, but damage it will be. The problems that tenants face is none, none of the unproven, unsubstantiated spews lies of oppression. Thank you for coming. Thank you for your time. Can I submit this for your? Absolutely, you can. Hi, Rick Longinati. I've just noticing I think already you're, just talking about a task force and a community dialogue process is kind of mellowed things out. I had a similar reaction to Council Member Meyers or Matthews that about the charge of this task force not being as defined as I think it could be with the Water Supply Advisory Committee, we had a clear charge from the council. It was to analyze potential solutions to deliver a safe, adequate, reliable, affordable and environmentally sustainable water supply. And so we were constantly reflecting back on that charge and I think it would really help expedite matters for this committee if you got clear. But I want to suggest to you that you've already got the charge because you've had a process, at least since 2017 when Mayor Chase was doing her listening sessions and it came out with the Santa Cruz Voices on Housing Fall 2017 Community Engagement Report. And there were three topic areas, housing production, housing protection and community vitality. So the Housing Blueprint Subcommittee that some of you were on submitted recommendations to the council based on those three areas and the one area that was kind of left up to the voters was the housing protection and the voters voted down Measure M but the need remains for housing protection and I think that word protection is key and I think that forms the basis of your charge for this committee. So I think that just the timeline that the Water Supply Advisory Committee was given a one year timeline it got extended for six months. I think there are reasons for that that we were not one of them being we were not all up to speed about what could possible solutions there are but in the world of trying to... Thank you and you're welcome to submit just let me finish my sentence. You know I try to keep it really consistent so that everybody gets their equal amount of time. So I appreciate that and your understanding that. Thank you. Okay, you have your chance. Hi there, I'm Nate Alex dot Kennedy at gmail.com and what I have to say I think is one of the most important things that we need that isn't really being addressed here is mandatory rental inspections before anybody can rent a room, anybody can rent a house, we need to have the places inspected. We need to have it so that any deaths or suicides in a property that have happened within the last five years should be mandatory disclosed which I personally have experience with. We also need it so that one of the last place or one place that I rented a long time ago I had to move out within about two days because the place was had bedbugs, it had old garbage in the room that was listed as furnishings on the rental agreement. There had been heavy meth use in the house, so heavy that like when I was there for two days I could hardly get to sleep because of what I felt, what I had been inhaling from the previous tenants. We need to really take care of this. I think that mandatory rental inspections should happen with every single property that is being rented, whether it's a whole house or just a room. It is, this is that important. And the place I had been at with the bedbugs, the meth use, the plumbing didn't even work in the bathroom. There were so many reasons that this place should not have been rented and it was rented to me and all these problems together slammed me so hard that I was forced out within about 72 hours and I never even got my friggin' money back. So Drew, Justin and Sandy, can you all please get back to me ASAP? Thank you. Thank you. Thanks speaker. Hello, my name is Elena Cohen and I'd like to thank both the city council and the staff for really putting together a very thoughtful option description. And I'm very supportive of the staff recommendation for using the CCP and having data-driven analysis. And I'd just like to respond to some of the comments that have been made by other people here. I think that we all actually really want to have fair, improved, affordable rental housing and the controversy really is is what's the best way to do that. And so I think that building affordable housing is absolutely crucial but to me that seems like it's outside the scope of this particular task force and I would like to see the task force focus on looking at these issues objectively. I think both sides have talked about some of the undercurrents of our prejudices, known or unknown and I think it's really important to not to start with measure M and just cause eviction but rather to start with our currently existing laws and talk about how we can improve it from there because I think that if we start from these very confusing and divisive options that we're really going to get, we're going to go off on a tangent that is not helpful. And so and I think the last thing I'd like to say is that an interim action, while I really understand how important that is, can really cause homeowners to feel that they don't want to get involved with renting and thank you very much. Thank you very much. Okay, next speaker. Good afternoon council. My name is Fred Antacchi. I've been involved in commercial and residential real estate here in Santa Cruz in this area for the past 30 years. I want to just echo something a previous speaker said about the focus, there's three part focus of the creation of housing. There's a preservation of housing. There's overall community health. I think those three things are related and they can't be separated. So I'll just read what I wrote, which is I applaud you guys for your cautious reason to approach to a contentious emotionally laden issue. My experience has shown that there's agreement on the problem, the shortage of housing, particularly affordable housing, but there's deep disagreement on the solution to that problem. Protections need to be provided for everyone's rights, renters and property owners who need to be fairly represented in a broad coalition of community stakeholders. It's laudable to commit the time and financial resources but I'm also concerned that council not forget its obligation to focus on creation of housing. If no concrete actions are taken, my concern is that we will lose logo control and instead have the state step in and set standards with more generic mandates to create housing. For that reason, I hope that's not forgotten in the process of discovery and collective problem solving. And thank you again for what you guys are doing. Thanks. Hi, Carol Paul Hamas. Thanks for listening to yet another of my comments. I was part of the short-term vacation rental task force and as you get ready to set up another task force, I would like to share the feelings that some of us, many of us had on the short-term vacation rental task force, whereas Cynthia said it was sort of directive. The way it was set up, it was directive. It was too directive. People felt like there was already an agenda. There was already a staff bias for lack of a better word. And that's something to be avoided at all costs, I think, because people are volunteering their time. This is a really hotly debated subject like that was. And if people, if you really want to get people's most creative ideas, it needs to be fair. It needs to be objective. It needs to be transparent, as little guided as possible in my humble opinion. Not, I mean, we're not gonna have like a 12 year task force, but maybe a timeline that's guided, but not an agenda that's guided. I just think that's really important. I think people do have creative ideas. I'm really grateful for the opportunity that you have helped us, you know, present the city to talk about it because there are multi-layers and multiple solutions. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, next speaker. Hello, my name is Shelly Keneep. And I'm a housing provider in Santa Cruz. Bear Watkinson City Council members. Anyone on this council who votes to retain any of the procedures outlined in the defeated Measure M is not honoring the will of the people or the principles of democracy. To go against the majority of voters, smacks of autocrassie, tyranny and dictatorship. Measure M was defeated by a two-third majority, woman up or man up, and gracefully accept its defeat.  The women and men of Santa Cruz have spoken. We don't want Measure M or any part of it. Please, stop thumbing your nose at democracy and those who provide housing. Please, stop putting the blame where it does not belong. To do otherwise is oppressive, repressive and unjust. Previously today, there was a proposal based on a model of Boulder, Colorado. I lived in Boulder for 34 years. I raised my family there. City Council of Boulder looked at rent control about 15 years ago and what they decided after looking at the facts of the studies is that they decided not to implement rent control. Why? Because it ultimately hurts those in poverty as Bernie Sanders has also said. Thank you. Hello, council members. My name is Fazz. I wanted to thank you for really getting this process going and doing what previous councils have failed to do, which is really bring people together on this discussion. And I think having the city facilitate this is really a good step forward. I've heard what people from the opposition have been saying about housing supply. I also have to agree with one of the women who just came up to speak and saying how that's not really part of this conversation. This conversation isn't about housing supply, right? I think tenant protections and housing supply are two completely different issues. You have to protect the people who currently live here. And I think that this task force should be centered around tenant protections, whether it be about rent control or just cause evictions or any other potential policies. I think if we really want this process to be comprehensive, then we have to look at everything. But I think housing supply and talking about creation of affordable housing is just not relevant to this specific issue. Renters have an immediate crisis. The people who live here have an immediate crisis. And the discussions in this task force need to be centered around those who are most marginalized and the most displaced and most affected from the housing crisis. I also wanted to just say that I think in regards to the timeline, I understand this needs to be a thorough process. I would also like the council to keep in mind that because we don't have any temporary protections right now for renters or we have very minimal protections, I think it would be worth considering to find a way in which we can shorten that timeline because renters need protections as soon as possible. And also to consider what kind of timeline we can have that will make it short but also make it a thorough process. So just like the council to consider that moving forward. Thank you. Good afternoon, council. I just wanted to start out by saying this might be one of those extremely rare occasions where I'm like really in agreement with city recommendations. I wanna point that out. So I have to say I was not too happy when I first started hearing Justin recommending a task force and I thought that with the power differential, excuse me, differential as Cynthia brought up that it would be unlikely that we could have a task force that would help in a more fair way. And due to the level of oppression that I think the power differential, it's really real. So anyway, I'm getting, I wanna make sure I'm watching my time. So first of all, I have heard wonderful things about mediation process and it sounds like Mr. Seppos, if I'm pronouncing his name correctly, is extremely well versed. I especially liked what he said about how in an emotional and value laden situation like this, having a data-driven kind of directive really helps to take people into a more neutral place. The other thing was guiding principles. I think that sounded extremely helpful. So just all in all, I really like the sound of it. One of my main concerns is somebody who has been deeply investigating homeless, the in general homeless populations, homeless providers, city government and all this. I just wanna say that homeless people absolutely need to have representation on this task force. Please don't overlook that. So many people think the number I'm gonna run out of time was 3,000 in 2014, 2015, according to the grand jury investigation now, it's being cited as 1,500, where did all those people go? Some of them are in their cars. How are they gonna get a postcard? Please consider this thoroughly. Please, I recommend this, you vote yes. Thank you. Next speaker. Hi, my name is Jeff Vesey and I've been a Santa Cruz landlord and resident for 37 years, a long time. So I'm in it for the long term. I have six rentals, I don't wanna sell them. I don't wanna convert them to anything else. So I really like the idea of this task force. I think that it definitely needs to be a reset. It needs to start from ground zero and we need to have people from like that list was great. And I fit on that because I have six rentals. I would volunteer in a minute to be on it. I work part-time, I could do it. I don't know who I need to talk to about it. But anyway, so let me continue. I support this, the task forces as it said, because it's data driven and we have lots of data. I mean, not only here, we don't have too much data here, but there's data from San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Monica, a lot of cities that are put in rent control. We know what happens when you restrict landlords, their control of their rental properties. And so the question is, I really think is, how much do you wanna restrict their control? And it's really gonna come up to the city council to decide because the more you restrict it, the more landlords are gonna sell or convert properties. So it's gonna be a balance. And I really think it's gonna be your decision. I'm not even saying what's right or wrong to do. It's gonna be, it's a balance. And that's why the data is so important. We need to understand, like one thing, for all the landlords and maybe developers, you need to find out what are their three key concerns as far as like landlords not selling their property? What's their big concerns? You need to understand that so you can see the sensitive point. Same thing with developers. What are their concerns as far as building more? That's really, really important. And I think it was Councilman Glover was talking about the inspection plan. That's apartments now for rentals. That's a perfect place to gather more data. I've got 15, 20 years of data, I've always had. You can get rental agreements, 30-day notices from tenants, eviction notices, deposit returns, like when I return a deposit, it says how much was there, what they did. There's lots of data out there. And I think mostly if landlords are smart, they keep it because people can come back a year or two later and have questions. So you keep this stuff for all that's there. Thank you. Yeah. Hello, my name is Barbara Childs. This is so reassuring to me. We are all on the same side. We get this wonderful staff recommendation which recommends a really respected, decades-old organization from outside the city with experience and expertise. And then the main opponents of Measure M are in support of it. And the main opponents, supporters of Measure M are in support of this recommendation. This is a very auspicious beginning for a task force. We all want this to happen. We all think we have lots of data. And let's spread it out on the table. This will make a wonderful process of community education. It couldn't happen in the heat of the battle. We just kept seeing signs that were wildly distorted. It didn't give us any information. This is our chance to educate our community, raise the level of consciousness, dispel the fear on both sides, and maybe come out with a wonderful, really creative solutions. Conflict resolution can produce solutions that neither side ever thought of. And I'm extremely hopeful and very happy at this moment. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Deborah Wallace and I'm a local property manager. And I support the staff recommendation where a third party is hired at the beginning to objectively structure a data-driven task force. I also request that the task force be balanced with all parties equally represented. Measure M was overwhelmingly rejected by the community and should not be used as a starting point. Voters found just cause eviction to be one of the most objectionable aspects of Measure M, so listing just cause eviction as an explicit objective of the task force is not honoring the will of the majority. We need a fresh start. Actual data needs to be collected, verified, and analyzed in order to formulate a plan of action. The majority of your constituents do not want lease end dates to be invalid or for tenants to be able to move any number of family members into rental properties without the consent of the property owner. The task force should work toward an ordinance that will expand the rental supply rather than shrink it. As a property manager, I experienced the fallout of the emergency ordinances and concerns about Measure M firsthand. Our office saw several long-term rentals sold to owner occupants. Owners do not want to lose control of who resides on their property and for how long. Mom and pops just aren't going to take the risk. The woman before me said it very well and I think this is a good place to start and to work together towards some really good solutions. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Hello, City Council. I'm just here to spread love on the situation. Y'all see there's this heart attack sitting up here and out here, we need to break it down. I'm about love and I just want to acknowledge your work and y'all look like you come from good families and whatever decision you make, go back to what grandma said about empathy, love, compassion for the people who without are people who don't have money. I mean, take a look at that when you make that decision. The empathy, I know it's there. You was at a program the other day talking about compassion. I made sure I remember that and I'm so proud to see two black bands up in here at the head of the board. This is our honor and I'm speaking up because it's Black History Month and it's time for a change and you who elected these guys to come up in here, I honor you and I respect you. And I want, if I use up my time now, can I use it at seven? I mean, we go ahead and pause the time, William. This is on the item which is before us which is the establishment of a rental housing task force. Yeah, so I can't, at seven o'clock I can come back. If you have additional conversations. Okay, I don't want to mess that up because that's the serious stuff. But back to acknowledging who you are, I have respect, but my deepest fear is not that I'm inadequate. My deepest fear is I'm powerful beyond measure and you all gave me that 33 years of clean and sober and listening to your counselors, your groups and things. I am on fire with what's coming up for me. And it's all about love because all the racism, the bigotry, I have to jump through those hoops. And I see love in here and I just saw your work out there and I don't hear it up in here. I see everybody talking about their money, their 20 houses. I live with a woman named Jack, my rent up yet because I'm out there cleaning it up. Thank you. I ain't done. But you'll have an opportunity to come back at another time. Thank you. I just want to remind if I could be before you begin that we have moved public comment at oral communications, excuse me, oral communications is now at 7 p.m. And so it had been moved and it was originally at 5 30 p.m. So many folks who are here for oral communications, which is items that are not on our agenda that can return at 7 p.m. to address the council then. And currently what we are addressing and hearing public comment on is item number 16, which is the consideration for the establishment of a rental housing task force. Excuse me, is that a new time from now? Yes, it's a new time from now and that was changed by the council. Okay. That happened well, it was, what happened, it happened for two months ago. Yeah, so no problem. Okay, you're welcome to go ahead, go ahead. Just as the gentleman before you, I have great respect for all of you. And I hope you will respect me by either closing your laptops or paying attention while I speak, thank you. Consensus and collaboration, two great concepts often presented. Are we going to pursue consensus